Administering systems

Administration interfaces

When you do administrative tasks on your system, you can usually use either of these interfaces:

the graphical user interface - including the desktop and SCOadmin
the command line (shell) interface

Their descriptions will help you decide which interface you may need to use, or which you may prefer to use, when you have a choice.

Desktop graphical user interface

The system includes a choice of desktop graphical user interfaces (GUI). Moving around from window to window, and executing commands, is done largely through the use of a mouse device (as opposed to typing command lines at a prompt).

If a system administration task can be done from the desktop, it is found in the SCOadmin launcher. SCOadmin makes it easy to complete most common system administration tasks, but it does not cover all tasks, or all possible variations of a task that you might need to do.

For example, if you are configuring a local or remote printer, you can start the SCOadmin launcher, then select the Printer Setup Manager, which opens a window in which you can perform the task. But, if you need to define user priority levels for making print requests, you can only do this task through the shell interface.

The command line (shell) interface

The shell, or command line, interface is the traditional method used to enter commands and work with files in the UNIX operating system. This interface is typically referred to as ``the shell'' or the ``command line interpreter''. It is often preferred by many professional system administrators and users who have some background in computer science or experience with earlier versions of the UNIX system.

By executing commands and editing system files you can do the same administration tasks you can do in the other administrative interfaces. In addition, you can connect the output from one command to the input of another command (using pipes), execute recursive operations using loops, and direct the output to a file or device. See Customizing your environment for more information.

NOTE: To do administration and configuration tasks from the shell you usually need to be root, or invoke the command through the tfadmin(1M) command, which determines if you have been assigned the appropriate privileges by the system owner or another authorized user. Such privileges can be assigned so that a single user can execute only a small number of administrative commands or the entire set of administrative commands. See ``System security'' for more details.

When you log in to a system that is not running a desktop interface, or when you open a terminal window from the desktop, you are presented with a shell prompt. The shell prompt, by default, is the pound sign (#) for the root user and a dollar sign ($) for all other users, but you can change it if you like. The prompt is the system's way of notifying you that it is ready to execute your command.