Potential lessons

[ChristinaLK]

• transferring files, using scp and the like (already written by @bshambaugh )
• using ssh
• navigating man pages (and possibly less shortcuts), see shell-novice PR Update 06-find.md swcarpentry/shell-novice#75
• environment variables
• using aliases
• permissions
• job control (^Z, fg, jobs)

See also https://github.com/swcarpentry/bc/tree/gh-pages/intermediate/shell for starting material.

[wking]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 08:02:39PM -0700, Christina Koch wrote:

• using ssh (does this already exist somewhere)?

https://github.com/swcarpentry/bc/blob/gh-pages/novice/extras/07-ssh.md

[froggleston]

Did the pull requests on shell variables and aliases from the previous repo get pulled into this? I'm happy to contribute more to this section!

[ChristinaLK]

@froggleston, they haven't yet, but I want to make sure we've nailed down scope (per #3) before having people submit PRs. Once we've figured out where everything is going, I will definitely ping you for content! :)

[froggleston]

@ChristinaLK Sounds good to me! :)

[gdevenyi]

Based on #3 I think job control should go into shell-intermediate or maybe shell-hpc (or both? that's a discussion for those repos)

[gdevenyi]

Other potential lessons

• diff
• rsync (add to file transfer lesson?)
• tar/gzip/bzip2
• ps/top (maybe this belongs with jobs)
• tree
• dc/bc

[embray]

Where SSH is concerned, over in swcarpentry/DEPRECATED-boot-camps#22 I had some notes about SSH as well. Though it looks like the SSH lesson already linked to here already covers most of the same stuff. I'll look it over and see if there's anything else worth adding

[gvwilson]

I think the basics of job control (^Z, bg, %1) can go into a short job
control lesson in this repo, and we can defer everything else until this
repo's contents have been filled in.

[gvwilson]

We shouldn't try to be a full-blown Unix shell tutorial - anything that isn't directly relevant to everyday scientific practice should be left out. For example dc/bc are definitely out, as are things like `tree` and `rsync` - anyone who's far enough along to want those can be pointed at http://www.amazon.com/Unix-Linux-Visual-QuickStart-Guide/dp/0321997549/

[jttkim]

It's well worthwhile to cover job control (and other topics discussed here) to the extent that the audience becomes generally aware of these. Personally, I tend to include some discussion of ^D, ^C and ^Z when introducing shell basics, and to explain that while these all can appear to have the same result of making the foreground process "go away", they are fundamentally different. One of my reasons to go over this is that I keep finding users who develop a habit of pressing ^Z as a default means to get their shell prompt back -- I've seen fg show 50+ suspended processes in such cases. Making participants aware that processes can be suspended will hopefully slow down the spread of such habits, and thereby help people to develop good and efficient practices in their scientific computing.

[gvwilson]

+1 to adding a couple of sentences on each of ^C, ^D, and ^Z to `discussion.md` in `shell-novice`.