Errata

Learning the Unix Operating System

Errata for Learning the Unix Operating System

Submit your own errata for this product.

The errata list is a list of errors and their corrections that were found after the product was released. If the error was corrected in a later version or reprint the date of the correction will be displayed in the column titled "Date Corrected".

The following errata were submitted by our customers and approved as valid errors by the author or editor.

Color key: Serious technical mistake Minor technical mistake Language or formatting error Typo Question Note Update

Version Location Description Submitted By Date submitted Date corrected
Printed
Page 2
Warning in middle of page

Warning starts with a ^M character

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 11
footnote

Change "in Glossary" to "in the Glossary"

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 19
Second to last paragraph

Last sentance reads:

You can skip ahead to "the section "Running Programs."

Remove extra quotation mark:

You can skip ahead to the section "Running Programs."

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 27
line 17

The text between the first and third clicks
should be
Text between the two clicks

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 29
last line

The word "boxes" doesn't make sense. Change the last line to read:

The three buttons at the top right corner have symbols inside them.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 31
Tip section

after CTRL-D there should be a period, not a semicolon;
the new sentence should start afterward. That is:

"If you have a shell prompt, type exit or press CTRL-D. If the
program has a menu..."

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 43
fourth line

change:

"you can make your own files"

to

"you can store your own files".

Also in same line, change:

"you can also store"

to

"you can also make".

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 43
third paragraph

two instances of "pico" need to be changed from Courier (constant-width) to boldfaced non-Courier (Roman)

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 45
second bullet

in "(a subdirectory of root)", the word "root" should not be italicized

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 47
last paragraph

Remove "^M" from the beginning of the paragraph

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 49
Listing Files with ls: second paragraph

Remove ">" from beginning of paragraph

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 50
5th Paragraph

In paragraph starting "When you use ls -a", the two "-a" options need a wider dash.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 54
second paragraph of "Looking Inside Files with less"

Add a sentence to the end of the paragraph (which shouldn't
change the page break) that says:

less is called a pager program.

The word "less" should be boldfaced and "pager program" should
be in Italics.

By the way: somehow that sentence seems a bit clumsy to me.
If you can think of better wording, please go ahead and use it.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 55
Table 3-1 "Useful less Commands"

Command "b" should have the description: "Move backward one page"

Command "v" should have the description:
"Invoke Editor specified by $VISUAL or $EDITOR, or vi by default"

Command "h" should have the description: "Help"

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 56
first bullet, near end of page

"wildcards" needs a cross-reference to Chapter 4, the section on Wildcards. (We
haven't explained Wildcards before this point.)

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 64
line 20

If this file is a program or a directory, both umask settings also
give execute (x) permission to all users.
should be:
If this file is a directory, both umask settings also
give execute (x) permission to all users.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 65
first line

The sentence

"You can execute any of these programs from the command line, as well."

should be rewritten as:

"You can execute a setup file entry from the command line, as well."

because the setup file entry

LESS='eMq'

is not a program.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 67
Example code:

columns are jagged. Delete extra space after the "1674"

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 68
First Paragraph

Replace "hyphen" with "dash" to be consistent with rest of book

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 70

two places, change "dollar sign" to "currency sign" to be consistent with rest of book

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 71
first paragraph in "pico tour" section

change:

"use only letters and numbers in the filename"

to:

"follow the file naming conventions earlier in this chapter."

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 71
item number one

change "the previous example" to "Figure 4-1"

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 73
last paragraph.

The sentence:
If you choose CTRL-T, "To Files," you'll go to a
file browser where you can look through a list of your files
and directories.
should be made into its own paragraph. [The way it is now, I get
the impression that the following discussion of filename completion
pertains to the browser screen, but it really belongs to the
^O (WriteOut) screen.]

When you make this change (page 73), if you want me to help you
shorten the other text on the page to delete a line -- so this
change won't affect page breaks -- just let me know. For instance,
shortening the first paragraph in item 6 by one word would save a
line [by deleting the word "state.)" that's on a line by itself].

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 73
1st paragraph of item 6

At the end of the first line, the word "pico" should be capitalized and should NOT be boldfaced. That is, the sentence should read "...good idea to save your work from Pico every few minutes."

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 73
3rd paragraph of item 6

In "This part confuses some pico beginners," the word "Pico" should be capitalized.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 80
Problem checklist

We're generally using the word "dot" to describe the character ".". So, to be consistent, the word "period" should be changed to "dot".

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 82
table 4-1, left column

"header" should have straight quotes, not curly quotes, around it. (These quotes need to be typed literally by the reader.)

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 82
text related to option "-d" in table 4-1

(Before I describe the error, I want to mention that I'm the book's author.)

This book's Polish translator was confused by the term "double-spaced". In his translation, he mentioned
that -d adds space between *lines*, not space between characters. I wonder if double-spaced is a colloquial
American English term that needs to be replaced with something everyone (not just typographers and Production
Editors :) will understand? Maybe editors at ORA offices overseas can advise you on this?

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 84
Problem checklist, second item "My printout is garbled...", second sentence

To clarify this sentence, change it to read: "For instance, a file in PostScript format can look fine when you use a PostScript viewer on your terminal but look like gibberish when you try to print it."

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 88
2nd paragraph

The next-to-last sentence should end with a period, not a comma. That is, change "...most powerful and flexible Unix features, We'll..." to read "...most powerful and flexible Unix features. We'll..."

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 88
and p {89}, both password file examples

In the middle of the "root" line of the example, change
x&k8KP30f;(
to
U.XYTe.4By/pM

because a tradtitional encrypted Unix password can only contain
letters, digits and the characters asterisk, minus, period, slash.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 89
2nd paragraph

In this sentence:

When you add "> filename" to the end of a command line...

I'd suggest deleting the phrase "the end of". Although people usually write it that way, the redirection operator doesn't have to be last on a command line.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 94
table 5-1

Some of the dashes in the left column seem to be too narrow. Check to be sure that they're all en-dashes.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 95
3rd paragraph

In the sentence: "...modify the output of the ls -l command." the dash in "-l" needs to be wider: use an en-dash instead.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 96
last line

This book's Polish translator pointed out that the last line isn't consistent with previous lines.
To be more consistent, it could be changed to read:

Enter pr users | lp (or lpr)

with "lpr" boldfaced, as most of the rest of the line is.


Anonymous   
Printed
Page 99
footnote

For rsh and rcp, you can either store your remote password in a
file named .rhosts in your local home directory, ...

This is wrong. It is even dangerous because it may fool beginners to
put a clear-text password into a world-readable file. It should be:

For rsh and rcp, you can either enter the full network name of your
local computer in a file named .rhosts in your remote home
directory, ...

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 101
end of the section "Windows from Other Computers"

In the first paragraph, delete the phrase:

, when you use it together with an SSH agent program,

so that the first paragraph starts like this:

The ssh program can open remote windows securely...

In the example at the middle of the page, add an extra line
underneath the existing line so that the example becomes:

localmach$ ssh jdnelson@biolab.medu.edu datavis
jdnelson@biolab.medu.edu's password:

This change will cause page break problems, I think. I can see
two ways to lose a line and avoid page break problems:

1) On the second line of the first paragraph, change

fairly easily, and without needing

to:

easily, without needing

and see whether that makes the first paragraph fit onto just
two lines (instead of three, like it is now). If you need to
delete more words, try changing the sentence to end this way:

easily, without logging into the remote computer first.

2) If that change (in 1) doesn't do the job, you could edit the
last paragraph in the section so that it starts like this:

Figure 6-2 shows the xterm program running on your local
computer versus when ssh coordinates access to the remote
datavis program.

That phrase "versus when ssh coordinates..." seems clumsy to
me. Maybe you can think of a better way to word the sentence?

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 102
2nd paragraph

The two locations "http://www.oreilly.com" and "www.oreilly.com" should have straight quotes, not curly quotes, around them. That's because the reader types those quotes literally (the reader should NOT try to type two backquotes `` or two singlequotes).

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 104
Figure 6-4

Follow this link "backward" to the previous page

is incorrect because the left-arrow key doesn't follow a link; it simply goes back to the previous location.

I'd add that the text by the right arrow isn't very precise because a link may point to a *different location* on the *same* page (
not always a *new* page).

So I'm suggesting that the figure be revised in the next printing to have these two new bits of text:

- Change the text by the left arrow to read:

Go "backward" to the previous location

- Change the text by the right arrow to read:

Follow this link "forward" to a new location

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 105
line -6

Change this:
Another program, ftp, is more flexible and secure than rcp (but
much less secure than scp).
to this:
Another program, ftp, is more flexible than rcp (but
much less secure than scp).

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 115
3rd item in bulleted list

Delete the first quote in this sentence: (See "the section "Pine address book," later in this chapter.)

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 117
2nd paragraph

In the second line of the paragraph, the dash keycap should have a wider dash (an en-dash

120 figure 6-10, caption
Pine newsgroup collection list screen
should be
Pine newsgroup folder list screen

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 120-122
various places

This book's Polish translator pointed out that the book generally uses "RETURN" as the name of the key instead of using "ENTER". (
The Preface, p. xi, explains that ENTER basically does the same thing as RETURN, and that we use RETURN in the book.) But, on page
s 120, 121 and 122, the keycaps show ENTER. To be consistent, these keycaps should be changed to say RETURN.

I think most readers can figure this out, so I'd like you folks to decide how soon to fix it.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 133
first text paragraph

In the seventh line of the paragraph are two small changes. In the command "ps x", it would be nice to have more space between the "ps" and the "x" so it's clear that they're separate words. And in the command "ps -u username", the "-" should be a wider en-dash to match other options throughout the book.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 133
Example 7-1

Change the beginning of the third line of the example from:
27285 pts/3 0:01 csh
to:
27281 pts/3 0:01 csh
because two processes can't have the same PID number.

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 139
2nd paragraph

Change "one of the long pipelines the section" to "one of the long pipelines in the section"

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 143
"alphanumeric"

Change the phrase
including punctuation characters (such as _ and ?)
to read:
sometimes including the underscore character (_)

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 146
last paragraph

An alphanumeric terminal displays alphanumeric characters--and possibly simple graphics (lines, boxes and
maybe a few special symbols). It can't handle a window system and typically doesn't have a mouse or other
pointing device; if the cursor can be moved around the screen, it's probably done with arrows or other keys
on the keyboard. See also alphanumeric.

Please note that the last word should be in Italics.

When you make this change, would you also move the footnote marker (the *) to the previous paragraph? I think
it would be better if it were put at the end of the second sentence:

"...and the output is a glass or plastic screen.*"

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 149
middle of left column

Under "- (hyphen) for command options", two changes: the dash should be wider (an en-dash), and we use the word "dash" in the rest of the book (not "hyphen").

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 149
bottom of left column

Under "# (hash mark)", change the subentry "using IRC" to "IRC, using" -- to match other similar entries [like the subentry under "ampersand (&)"].

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 150
middle of left column

In the entry "bracket ([]) as wildcards", should the word be plural (brackets)?

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 152
middle of left column

There's a bogus "N" category with just one entry. It should probably be put into the "F" category, and maybe the "n" should be removed.

Also, the entry should have the word "(less)" after it, as other index entries do, because "nf" is a command for the less pager.

153 index "less"
Page number "S" should probably be "54-55"

154 index "not command"
Delete this bogus entry

Anonymous   
Printed
Page 154
index "pager"

"pager" has two quite different meanings in the book:
- pager in a desktop panel to switch desktops
- a pager program like less, more, pg

So add a second entry (or make "pager" into two subentries?)
like this:
pager programs, 54
where the indes entry points to the new sentence I added on
page 54 (earlier in this message)

Anonymous