Unix - File System Basics

A file system is a logical collection of files on a partition or disk. A partition is a container

for information and can span an entire hard drive if desired.

Your hard drive can have various partitions which usually contain only one file system, such
as one file system housing the /file system or another containing the /home file system.

One file system per partition allows for the logical maintenance and management of
differing file systems.

Everything in Unix is considered to be a file, including physical devices such as DVD-

ROMs, USB devices, and floppy drives.

Directory Structure

Unix uses a hierarchical file system structure, much like an upside-down tree, with root (/) at
the base of the file system and all other directories spreading from there.

A Unix filesystem is a collection of files and directories that has the following properties −

 It has a root directory (/) that contains other files and directories.

 Each file or directory is uniquely identified by its name, the directory in which it
resides, and a unique identifier, typically called an inode.

 By convention, the root directory has an inode number of 2 and

the lost+found directory has an inode number of 3. Inode numbers 0 and 1 are not
used. File inode numbers can be seen by specifying the -i option to ls command.

 It is self-contained. There are no dependencies between one filesystem and another.

The directories have specific purposes and generally hold the same types of information for
easily locating files. Following are the directories that exist on the major versions of Unix −

Sr.No Directory & Description

.

1 /
 This is the root directory which should contain only the directories needed at the
top level of the file structure

2 /bin

This is where the executable files are located. These files are available to all
users

3 /dev

These are device drivers

4
/etc

Supervisor directory commands, configuration files, disk configuration files,

valid user lists, groups, ethernet, hosts, where to send critical messages

5 /lib

Contains shared library files and sometimes other kernel-related files

6 /boot

Contains files for booting the system

7 /home

Contains the home directory for users and other accounts

8 /mnt

Used to mount other temporary file systems, such as cdrom and floppy for
the CD-ROM drive and floppy diskette drive, respectively

9 /proc
 Contains all processes marked as a file by process number or other information
that is dynamic to the system

10 /tmp

Holds temporary files used between system boots

11 /usr

Used for miscellaneous purposes, and can be used by many users. Includes
administrative commands, shared files, library files, and others

12
/var

Typically contains variable-length files such as log and print files and any other
type of file that may contain a variable amount of data

13 /sbin

Contains binary (executable) files, usually for system administration. For

example, fdisk and ifconfig utlities

14 /kernel

Contains kernel files

Navigating the File System

Now that you understand the basics of the file system, you can begin navigating to the files
you need. The following commands are used to navigate the system −

Sr.No. Command & Description

1 cat filename
 Displays a filename

2 cd dirname

Moves you to the identified directory

3 cp file1 file2

Copies one file/directory to the specified location

4 file filename

Identifies the file type (binary, text, etc)

5 find filename dir

Finds a file/directory

6 head filename

Shows the beginning of a file

7 less filename

Browses through a file from the end or the beginning

8 ls dirname

Shows the contents of the directory specified

9 mkdir dirname

Creates the specified directory

10 more filename
 Browses through a file from the beginning to the end

11 mv file1 file2

Moves the location of, or renames a file/directory

12 pwd

Shows the current directory the user is in

13 rm filename

Removes a file

14 rmdir dirname

Removes a directory

15 tail filename

Shows the end of a file

16 touch filename

Creates a blank file or modifies an existing file or its attributes

17 whereis filename

Shows the location of a file

18 which filename

Shows the location of a file if it is in your PATH

You can use Manpage Help to check complete syntax for each command mentioned here.

The df Command
The first way to manage your partition space is with the df (disk free) command. The
command df -k (disk free) displays the disk space usage in kilobytes, as shown below −

$df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/vzfs 10485760 7836644 2649116 75% /
/devices 0 0 0 0% /devices
$

Some of the directories, such as /devices, shows 0 in the kbytes, used, and avail columns as
well as 0% for capacity. These are special (or virtual) file systems, and although they reside
on the disk under /, by themselves they do not consume disk space.

The df -k output is generally the same on all Unix systems. Here's what it usually includes −

Sr.No. Column & Description

1 Filesystem

The physical file system name

2 kbytes

Total kilobytes of space available on the storage medium

3 used

Total kilobytes of space used (by files)

4 avail

Total kilobytes available for use

5 capacity

Percentage of total space used by files

 6 Mounted on

What the file system is mounted on

You can use the -h (human readable) option to display the output in a format that shows
the size in easier-to-understand notation.

The du Command

The du (disk usage) command enables you to specify directories to show disk space usage
on a particular directory.

This command is helpful if you want to determine how much space a particular directory is
taking. The following command displays number of blocks consumed by each directory. A
single block may take either 512 Bytes or 1 Kilo Byte depending on your system.

$du /etc
10 /etc/cron.d
126 /etc/default
6 /etc/dfs
...
$

The -h option makes the output easier to comprehend −

$du -h /etc
5k /etc/cron.d
63k /etc/default
3k /etc/dfs
...
$

Mounting the File System

A file system must be mounted in order to be usable by the system. To see what is currently
mounted (available for use) on your system, use the following command −

$ mount
/dev/vzfs on / type reiserfs (rw,usrquota,grpquota)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nodiratime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
$

The /mnt directory, by the Unix convention, is where temporary mounts (such as CDROM
drives, remote network drives, and floppy drives) are located. If you need to mount a file
system, you can use the mount command with the following syntax −

mount -t file_system_type device_to_mount directory_to_mount_to

For example, if you want to mount a CD-ROM to the directory /mnt/cdrom, you can type −

$ mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

This assumes that your CD-ROM device is called /dev/cdrom and that you want to mount it
to /mnt/cdrom. Refer to the mount man page for more specific information or type mount -
h at the command line for help information.

After mounting, you can use the cd command to navigate the newly available file system
through the mount point you just made.

Unmounting the File System

To unmount (remove) the file system from your system, use the umount command by
identifying the mount point or device.

For example, to unmount cdrom, use the following command −

$ umount /dev/cdrom

The mount command enables you to access your file systems, but on most modern Unix
systems, the automount function makes this process invisible to the user and requires no
intervention.

User and Group Quotas

The user and group quotas provide the mechanisms by which the amount of space used by a
single user or all users within a specific group can be limited to a value defined by the
administrator.
Quotas operate around two limits that allow the user to take some action if the amount of
space or number of disk blocks start to exceed the administrator defined limits −

 Soft Limit − If the user exceeds the limit defined, there is a grace period that allows
the user to free up some space.

 Hard Limit − When the hard limit is reached, regardless of the grace period, no
further files or blocks can be allocated.

There are a number of commands to administer quotas −

Sr.No Command & Description

.

1 quota

Displays disk usage and limits for a user of group

2 edquota

This is a quota editor. Users or Groups quota can be edited using this command

3 quotacheck

Scans a filesystem for disk usage, creates, checks and repairs quota files

4 setquota

This is a command line quota editor

5 quotaon

This announces to the system that disk quotas should be enabled on one or more
filesystems

6 quotaoff
 This announces to the system that disk quotas should be disabled for one or more
filesystems

7 repquota

This prints a summary of the disc usage and quotas for the specified file systems

You can use Manpage Help to check complete syntax for each command mentioned here.

Unix - User Administration

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about user administration in Unix.

There are three types of accounts on a Unix system −

Root account

This is also called superuser and would have complete and unfettered control of the system.
A superuser can run any commands without any restriction. This user should be assumed as
a system administrator.

System accounts

System accounts are those needed for the operation of system-specific components for
example mail accounts and the sshd accounts. These accounts are usually needed for some
specific function on your system, and any modifications to them could adversely affect the
system.

User accounts

User accounts provide interactive access to the system for users and groups of users. General
users are typically assigned to these accounts and usually have limited access to critical
system files and directories.

Unix supports a concept of Group Account which logically groups a number of accounts.
Every account would be a part of another group account. A Unix group plays important role
in handling file permissions and process management.
Managing Users and Groups

There are four main user administration files −

 /etc/passwd − Keeps the user account and password information. This file holds the
majority of information about accounts on the Unix system.

 /etc/shadow − Holds the encrypted password of the corresponding account. Not all
the systems support this file.

 /etc/group − This file contains the group information for each account.

 /etc/gshadow − This file contains secure group account information.

Check all the above files using the cat command.

The following table lists out commands that are available on majority of Unix systems to
create and manage accounts and groups −

Sr.No Command & Description

.

1 useradd

Adds accounts to the system

2 usermod

Modifies account attributes

3 userdel

Deletes accounts from the system

4 groupadd

Adds groups to the system

5 groupmod
 Modifies group attributes

6 groupdel

Removes groups from the system

You can use Manpage Help to check complete syntax for each command mentioned here.

Create a Group

We will now understand how to create a group. For this, we need to create groups before
creating any account otherwise, we can make use of the existing groups in our system. We
have all the groups listed in /etc/groups file.

All the default groups are system account specific groups and it is not recommended to use
them for ordinary accounts. So, following is the syntax to create a new group account −

groupadd [-g gid [-o]] [-r] [-f] groupname

The following table lists out the parameters −

Sr.No Option & Description

.

1 -g GID

The numerical value of the group's ID

2 -o

This option permits to add group with non-unique GID

3 -r

This flag instructs groupadd to add a system account

 4 -f

This option causes to just exit with success status, if the specified group already exists.
With -g, if the specified GID already exists, other (unique) GID is chosen

5 groupname

Actual group name to be created

If you do not specify any parameter, then the system makes use of the default values.

Following example creates a developers group with default values, which is very much
acceptable for most of the administrators.

$ groupadd developers

Modify a Group

To modify a group, use the groupmod syntax −

$ groupmod -n new_modified_group_name old_group_name

To change the developers_2 group name to developer, type −

$ groupmod -n developer developer_2

Here is how you will change the financial GID to 545 −

$ groupmod -g 545 developer

Delete a Group

We will now understand how to delete a group. To delete an existing group, all you need is
the groupdel command and the group name. To delete the financial group, the command
is −

$ groupdel developer

This removes only the group, not the files associated with that group. The files are still
accessible by their owners.

Create an Account
Let us see how to create a new account on your Unix system. Following is the syntax to
create a user's account −

useradd -d homedir -g groupname -m -s shell -u userid accountname

The following table lists out the parameters −

Sr.No Option & Description

.

1 -d homedir

Specifies home directory for the account

2 -g groupname

Specifies a group account for this account

3 -m

Creates the home directory if it doesn't exist

4 -s shell

Specifies the default shell for this account

5 -u userid

You can specify a user id for this account

6 accountname

Actual account name to be created

If you do not specify any parameter, then the system makes use of the default values.
The useradd command modifies the /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group files and
creates a home directory.
Following is the example that creates an account mcmohd, setting its home directory
to /home/mcmohd and the group as developers. This user would have Korn Shell assigned
to it.

$ useradd -d /home/mcmohd -g developers -s /bin/ksh mcmohd

Before issuing the above command, make sure you already have the developers group
created using the groupadd command.

Once an account is created you can set its password using the passwd command as follows
−

$ passwd mcmohd20
Changing password for user mcmohd20.
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

When you type passwd accountname, it gives you an option to change the password,
provided you are a superuser. Otherwise, you can change just your password using the same
command but without specifying your account name.

Modify an Account

The usermod command enables you to make changes to an existing account from the
command line. It uses the same arguments as the useradd command, plus the -l argument,
which allows you to change the account name.

For example, to change the account name mcmohd to mcmohd20 and to change home
directory accordingly, you will need to issue the following command −

$ usermod -d /home/mcmohd20 -m -l mcmohd mcmohd20

Delete an Account

The userdel command can be used to delete an existing user. This is a very dangerous
command if not used with caution.

There is only one argument or option available for the command .r, for removing the
account's home directory and mail file.
For example, to remove account mcmohd20, issue the following command −

$ userdel -r mcmohd20

If you want to keep the home directory for backup purposes, omit the -r option. You can
remove the home directory as needed at a later time.

Unix - System Performance

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about the system performance in Unix.

We will introduce you to a few free tools that are available to monitor and manage
performance on Unix systems. These tools also provide guidelines on how to diagnose and
fix performance problems in the Unix environment.

Unix has following major resource types that need to be monitored and tuned −

 CPU

 Memory

 Disk space

 Communications lines

 I/O Time

 Network Time

 Applications programs

Performance Components

The following table lists out five major components which take up the system time −

Sr.No Component & Description

.

1 User State CPU

The actual amount of time the CPU spends running the users’ program in the user state. It
includes the time spent executing library calls, but does not include the time spent in the
 kernel on its behalf

2 System State CPU

This is the amount of time the CPU spends in the system state on behalf of this program.
All I/O routines require kernel services. The programmer can affect this value by blocking
I/O transfers

3 I/O Time and Network Time

This is the amount of time spent moving data and servicing I/O requests

4
Virtual Memory Performance

This includes context switching and swapping

5 Application Program

Time spent running other programs - when the system is not servicing this application
because another application currently has the CPU

Performance Tools

Unix provides following important tools to measure and fine tune Unix system performance
−

Sr.No Command & Description

.

1 nice/renice

Runs a program with modified scheduling priority

2 netstat
 Prints network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections,
and multicast memberships

3 time

Helps time a simple command or give resource usage

4 uptime

This is System Load Average

5 ps

Reports a snapshot of the current processes

6 vmstat

Reports virtual memory statistics

7 gprof

Displays call graph profile data

8 prof

Facilitates Process Profiling

9 top

Displays system tasks

You can use Manpage Help to check complete syntax for each command mentioned here.

Unix - System Logging

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about system logging in Unix.

Unix systems have a very flexible and powerful logging system, which enables you to
record almost anything you can imagine and then manipulate the logs to retrieve the
information you require.

Many versions of Unix provide a general-purpose logging facility called syslog. Individual
programs that need to have information logged, send the information to syslog.

Unix syslog is a host-configurable, uniform system logging facility. The system uses a
centralized system logging process that runs the program /etc/syslogd or /etc/syslog.

The operation of the system logger is quite straightforward. Programs send their log entries
to syslogd, which consults the configuration file /etc/syslogd.conf or /etc/syslog and, when a
match is found, writes the log message to the desired log file.

There are four basic syslog terms that you should understand −

Sr.No Term & Description

.

1 Facility

The identifier used to describe the application or process that submitted the log message.
For example, mail, kernel, and ftp.

2 Priority

An indicator of the importance of the message. Levels are defined within syslog as
guidelines, from debugging information to critical events.

3 Selector

A combination of one or more facilities and levels. When an incoming event matches a
selector, an action is performed.

4 Action

What happens to an incoming message that matches a selector — Actions can write the
 message to a log file, echo the message to a console or other device, write the message to a
logged in user, or send the message along to another syslog server.

Syslog Facilities

We will now understand about the syslog facilities. Here are the available facilities for the
selector. Not all facilities are present on all versions of Unix.

Facility Description

1 auth

Activity related to requesting name and password (getty, su, login)

2 authpriv

Same as auth but logged to a file that can only be read by selected users

3 console

Used to capture messages that are generally directed to the system console

4 cron

Messages from the cron system scheduler

5 daemon

System daemon catch-all

6 ftp

Messages relating to the ftp daemon

7 kern
 Kernel messages

8 local0.local7

Local facilities defined per site

9 lpr

Messages from the line printing system

10 mail

Messages relating to the mail system

11 mark

Pseudo-event used to generate timestamps in log files

12 news

Messages relating to network news protocol (nntp)

13 ntp

Messages relating to network time protocol

14 user

Regular user processes

15 uucp

UUCP subsystem

Syslog Priorities
The syslog priorities are summarized in the following table −

Sr.No. Priority & Description

1 emerg

Emergency condition, such as an imminent system crash, usually broadcast to all users

2 alert

Condition that should be corrected immediately, such as a corrupted system database

3 crit

Critical condition, such as a hardware error

4 err

Ordinary error

5 Warning

Warning

6 notice

Condition that is not an error, but possibly should be handled in a special way

7 info

Informational message

8 debug

Messages that are used when debugging programs

 9 none

Pseudo level used to specify not to log messages

The combination of facilities and levels enables you to be discerning about what is logged
and where that information goes.

As each program sends its messages dutifully to the system logger, the logger makes
decisions on what to keep track of and what to discard based on the levels defined in the
selector.

When you specify a level, the system will keep track of everything at that level and higher.

The /etc/syslog.conf file

The /etc/syslog.conf file controls where messages are logged. A typical syslog.conf file
might look like this −

*.err;kern.debug;auth.notice /dev/console
daemon,auth.notice /var/log/messages
lpr.info /var/log/lpr.log
mail.* /var/log/mail.log
ftp.* /var/log/ftp.log
auth.* @prep.ai.mit.edu
auth.* root,amrood
netinfo.err /var/log/netinfo.log
install.* /var/log/install.log
*.emerg *
*.alert |program_name
mark.* /dev/console

Each line of the file contains two parts −

 A message selector that specifies which kind of messages to log. For example, all
error messages or all debugging messages from the kernel.

 An action field that says what should be done with the message. For example, put it
in a file or send the message to a user's terminal.
Following are the notable points for the above configuration −

 Message selectors have two parts: a facility and a priority. For

example, kern.debug selects all debug messages (the priority) generated by the
kernel (the facility).

 Message selector kern.debug selects all priorities that are greater than debug.

 An asterisk in place of either the facility or the priority indicates "all". For
example, *.debug means all debug messages, while kern.* means all messages
generated by the kernel.

 You can also use commas to specify multiple facilities. Two or more selectors can be
grouped together by using a semicolon.

Logging Actions

The action field specifies one of five actions −

 Log message to a file or a device. For example, /var/log/lpr.log or /dev/console.

 Send a message to a user. You can specify multiple usernames by separating them
with commas; for example, root, amrood.

 Send a message to all users. In this case, the action field consists of an asterisk; for
example, *.

 Pipe the message to a program. In this case, the program is specified after the Unix
pipe symbol (|).

 Send the message to the syslog on another host. In this case, the action field consists
of a hostname, preceded by an at sign; for example, @tutorialspoint.com.

The logger Command

Unix provides the logger command, which is an extremely useful command to deal with
system logging. The logger command sends logging messages to the syslogd daemon, and
consequently provokes system logging.
This means we can check from the command line at any time the syslogd daemon and its
configuration. The logger command provides a method for adding one-line entries to the
system log file from the command line.

The format of the command is −

logger [-i] [-f file] [-p priority] [-t tag] [message]...

Here is the detail of the parameters −

Sr.No Option & Description

.

1 -f filename

Uses the contents of file filename as the message to log.

2 -i

Logs the process ID of the logger process with each line.

3 -p priority

Enters the message with the specified priority (specified selector entry); the message
priority can be specified numerically, or as a facility.priority pair. The default priority is
user.notice.

4 -t tag

Marks each line added to the log with the specified tag.

5 message

The string arguments whose contents are concatenated together in the specified order,
separated by the space.

You can use Manpage Help to check complete syntax for this command.
Log Rotation

Log files have the propensity to grow very fast and consume large amounts of disk space. To
enable log rotations, most distributions use tools such as newsyslog or logrotate.

These tools should be called on a frequent time interval using the cron daemon. Check the
man pages for newsyslog or logrotate for more details.

Important Log Locations

All the system applications create their log files in /var/log and its sub-directories. Here are
few important applications and their corresponding log directories −

Application Directory

httpd /var/log/httpd

samba /var/log/samba

cron /var/log/

mail /var/log/

mysql /var/log/

Unix - Signals and Traps

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about Signals and Traps in Unix.

Signals are software interrupts sent to a program to indicate that an important event has
occurred. The events can vary from user requests to illegal memory access errors. Some
signals, such as the interrupt signal, indicate that a user has asked the program to do
something that is not in the usual flow of control.

The following table lists out common signals you might encounter and want to use in your
programs −
 Signal
Signal Name Description
Number

SIGHUP 1 Hang up detected on controlling terminal or death of controlling process

SIGINT 2 Issued if the user sends an interrupt signal (Ctrl + C)

SIGQUIT 3 Issued if the user sends a quit signal (Ctrl + D)

SIGFPE 8 Issued if an illegal mathematical operation is attempted

If a process gets this signal it must quit immediately and will not perform
SIGKILL 9
any clean-up operations

SIGALRM 14 Alarm clock signal (used for timers)

SIGTERM 15 Software termination signal (sent by kill by default)

List of Signals

There is an easy way to list down all the signals supported by your system. Just issue the kill
-l command and it would display all the supported signals −

$ kill -l
1) SIGHUP 2) SIGINT 3) SIGQUIT 4) SIGILL
5) SIGTRAP 6) SIGABRT 7) SIGBUS 8) SIGFPE
9) SIGKILL 10) SIGUSR1 11) SIGSEGV 12) SIGUSR2
13) SIGPIPE 14) SIGALRM 15) SIGTERM 16) SIGSTKFLT
17) SIGCHLD 18) SIGCONT 19) SIGSTOP 20) SIGTSTP
21) SIGTTIN 22) SIGTTOU 23) SIGURG 24) SIGXCPU
25) SIGXFSZ 26) SIGVTALRM 27) SIGPROF 28) SIGWINCH
29) SIGIO 30) SIGPWR 31) SIGSYS 34) SIGRTMIN
35) SIGRTMIN+1 36) SIGRTMIN+2 37) SIGRTMIN+3 38) SIGRTMIN+4
39) SIGRTMIN+5 40) SIGRTMIN+6 41) SIGRTMIN+7 42) SIGRTMIN+8
43) SIGRTMIN+9 44) SIGRTMIN+10 45) SIGRTMIN+11 46) SIGRTMIN+12
47) SIGRTMIN+13 48) SIGRTMIN+14 49) SIGRTMIN+15 50) SIGRTMAX-14
51) SIGRTMAX-13 52) SIGRTMAX-12 53) SIGRTMAX-11 54) SIGRTMAX-10
55) SIGRTMAX-9 56) SIGRTMAX-8 57) SIGRTMAX-7 58) SIGRTMAX-6
59) SIGRTMAX-5 60) SIGRTMAX-4 61) SIGRTMAX-3 62) SIGRTMAX-2
63) SIGRTMAX-1 64) SIGRTMAX

The actual list of signals varies between Solaris, HP-UX, and Linux.

Default Actions

Every signal has a default action associated with it. The default action for a signal is the
action that a script or program performs when it receives a signal.

Some of the possible default actions are −

 Terminate the process.

 Ignore the signal.

 Dump core. This creates a file called core containing the memory image of the
process when it received the signal.

 Stop the process.

 Continue a stopped process.

Sending Signals

There are several methods of delivering signals to a program or script. One of the most
common is for a user to type CONTROL-C or the INTERRUPT key while a script is
executing.

When you press the Ctrl+C key, a SIGINT is sent to the script and as per defined default
action script terminates.

The other common method for delivering signals is to use the kill command, the syntax of
which is as follows −
$ kill -signal pid

Here signal is either the number or name of the signal to deliver and pid is the process ID
that the signal should be sent to. For Example −

$ kill -1 1001

The above command sends the HUP or hang-up signal to the program that is running
with process ID 1001. To send a kill signal to the same process, use the following command
−

$ kill -9 1001

This kills the process running with process ID 1001.

Trapping Signals

When you press the Ctrl+C or Break key at your terminal during execution of a shell
program, normally that program is immediately terminated, and your command prompt
returns. This may not always be desirable. For instance, you may end up leaving a bunch of
temporary files that won't get cleaned up.

Trapping these signals is quite easy, and the trap command has the following syntax −

$ trap commands signals

Here command can be any valid Unix command, or even a user-defined function, and signal
can be a list of any number of signals you want to trap.

There are two common uses for trap in shell scripts −

 Clean up temporary files

 Ignore signals

Cleaning Up Temporary Files

As an example of the trap command, the following shows how you can remove some files
and then exit if someone tries to abort the program from the terminal −

$ trap "rm -f $WORKDIR/work1$$ $WORKDIR/dataout$$; exit" 2

From the point in the shell program that this trap is executed, the two files work1$
$ and dataout$$ will be automatically removed if signal number 2 is received by the
program.

Hence, if the user interrupts the execution of the program after this trap is executed, you can
be assured that these two files will be cleaned up. The exit command that follows the rm is
necessary because without it, the execution would continue in the program at the point that it
left off when the signal was received.

Signal number 1 is generated for hangup. Either someone intentionally hangs up the line or
the line gets accidentally disconnected.

You can modify the preceding trap to also remove the two specified files in this case by
adding signal number 1 to the list of signals −

$ trap "rm $WORKDIR/work1$$ $WORKDIR/dataout$$; exit" 1 2

Now these files will be removed if the line gets hung up or if the Ctrl+C key gets pressed.

The commands specified to trap must be enclosed in quotes, if they contain more than one
command. Also note that the shell scans the command line at the time that the trap command
gets executed and also when one of the listed signals is received.

Thus, in the preceding example, the value of WORKDIR and $$ will be substituted at the
time that the trap command is executed. If you wanted this substitution to occur at the time
that either signal 1 or 2 was received, you can put the commands inside single quotes −

$ trap 'rm $WORKDIR/work1$$ $WORKDIR/dataout$$; exit' 1 2

Ignoring Signals

If the command listed for trap is null, the specified signal will be ignored when received. For
example, the command −

$ trap '' 2

This specifies that the interrupt signal is to be ignored. You might want to ignore certain
signals when performing an operation that you don't want to be interrupted. You can specify
multiple signals to be ignored as follows −

$ trap '' 1 2 3 15
Note that the first argument must be specified for a signal to be ignored and is not equivalent
to writing the following, which has a separate meaning of its own −

$ trap 2

If you ignore a signal, all subshells also ignore that signal. However, if you specify an action
to be taken on the receipt of a signal, all subshells will still take the default action on receipt
of that signal.

Resetting Traps

After you've changed the default action to be taken on receipt of a signal, you can change it
back again with the trap if you simply omit the first argument; so −

$ trap 1 2

This resets the action to be taken on the receipt of signals 1 or 2 back to the default.