Source repo: basic_skills | Branch: hpc-training-doc | Last synced: 2026-04-24 10:27:17.425 UTC

Basic Linux Skills on Expanse

When you log on to Expanse, your computer operating system will be a Linux or Unix shell.
"A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional Unix-like command line user interface. This environment is very different from the easy to use GUI interfaces we have all become used in the Windows and MacOS systems"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_shell).

Basic Linux skills are necessary to complete the hands-on exercises. If it’s been a while since you’ve worked in a Linux environment, be sure to reacquaint yourself with the following topic (many of which are demonstrated below)s:

copying, listing, deleting and renaming files
using wildcards
navigating directories
changing file permissions
setting environment variables
using common utilities (grep, cat, less, head, sort, tar, gzip)

This tutorial is focussed on using Linux on the SDSC Expanse supercomputer. There a a lot of other tutorial on the Web:

A nice tutorial can be found here: http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
You should also be comfortable with one of the standard Linux editors, such as vim, emacs, or nano.
For a fun tutorial on Linux, see the UCSD/SDSC Supercomputing Club's tutorial, based on a Google community project:
https://supercomputing-club.sdsc.edu/posts/advent-of-scc-2023/advent-of-scc-epilogue/

note

Notes:

For the examples below, we are using the bash shell, which is the default shell for new accounts on Expanse. For the purposes of following SDSC tutorials and exercises, please do not change the shell.
For any Linux command, you can find out what it does by asking for help. The syntax is usually:
- command --help
- man command → invokes a user guide or manual
- search the web using google or some other search engine
In Linux/Unix, everything is a file: a text file, a directory, even the output for a command
Linux/Unix is case sensitive

Note: if you have difficulties completing this task, please contact staff at
consult@sdsc.edu.

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