Topics

How do I navigate around my folders when logged on with telnet?

Navigating is easy and quite necessary if you're going to do any work on the server while logged on with telnet.

The Unix command is cd and is almost identical to the MS-DOS command, except that it's far less forgiving of mistakes, while maybe a bit more flexible. One thing that the Unix cd command will not forgive, is to ommit the space between the command and its argument(s).

There are a few concepts to know about the folder structures, just as in MS-DOS, there are 2 entries in each folder that specify the "parent", with ".." (without the quotes), and the current folder itself, with ".". These entries aren't listed by ls when the -a switch isn't specified (ls -a), because they are considered "hidden" or "invisible". The .. entry, which is the "parent" folder, is the folder which contains the one you are currently in. The . entry is the current folder itself, the one you are located in.

The first thing you need to know is how to "pop" down to the parent folder, which is getting out of the current folder. To "pop" out of the current folder, the command is:

cd ..

The space between the .. and cd is needed, or it won't work.

When you are first logged on your account with telnet, you are automatically placed in your account's "root folder". If you issue the command ls right after you just logged on with telnet, you will see your account's directory structure, thus you should see folders such as "home", "cgi-bin", "logs", "etc", "bin" and maybe others. The "home" folder is the one that contains your web site's files, and nothing "outside" of that folder will be accessible by the web server to be sent out to the world. The "cgi-bin" folder is special, it contains your own cgi scripts, and it is not directly accessible to the web server, so none of its contents can be listed or downloaded from the web, while the scripts it contains can still be executed. The folders "etc" and "bin" are there for the FTP server and you shouldn't concern yourself with them. The "logs" folder is only found in accounts that have their own domains and contains the web server's log files pertaining to that domain only.

To navigate into other folders, you use the same cd command and specify which folder you wish to "move" into. For example, from your "root folder" folder, you want to "move" into your "home" folder, the command to do this is:

cd home

And if you then wish to "pop" out of it, the command would be:

cd ..

This is the simplest way to navigate around your folders, without getting lost. In the case you forgot where you are and need to make sure, use the command pwd to find out the "path" to your current location, the rightmost part of the answer is the current folder you are located in.

If you want to learn more advanced functions of the command cd or ls, you can use the Unix online help for these commands. When logged on with telnet, use the command:

man ls

for the ls command, or

man cd

for the cd command. You will get the online manual pages for these commands, or any other by using:

man commandname

With commandname replaced by the command you wish to learn more about.

orbhost's Support

Check the How Do I page for answers to many of the most common basic questions  Hit Counter  FTP login  Telnet login  Basic UNIX  Basic CGI  permissions  E-mail & Mailboxes  Web design Tips and tools  Search Engines Hints & strategies  Shopping cart Also check the external links about Minivend  Database Also check the external links about MySQL

External Links

MySQL site Relational database  Minivend site Shopping cart  wwwcount Graphical hit counter  Perl Links  Search engines Info & resources

In case of emergency

E-mail the tech support or you can also try contacting the system administrator directly on ICQ at #18164451