A shorter name for assigning UNIX commands, scripts and other programs.
Please note that the syntax of the alias command is dependent on the shell you are using. In the examples below, I am using two different syntax. One for born shell /bin/sh, korn shell /bin/ksh, and born again shell /bin/bash and the other for C shell /bin/csh, and true C shell /bin/tcsh. Below, I am in bash shell environment, so the syntax of the alias commands is for born shell environment.
PID TTY TIME CMD
707 pts/3 0:03 bash
1508 pts/3 0:00 ps
I create the following two aliases:
Now, I list the two new aliase that I just created.
alias myf='find . -name "*" -print -exec ls -l {} \;'
alias myls='ls -ltr'
I create one more alias 'myzl' to list the zones or containers that have been created.
Now, I run the 'alias' command two see all the three aliases that I have just created.
alias myf='find . -name "*" -print -exec ls -l {} \;'
alias myls='ls -ltr'
alias myzl='zoneadm list'
At this time, I like to test how my aliases are working.
total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 wahid staff 0 2011-01-09 17:56 newfile
From the output of the alias 'myzl' you can tell there is only one global zone here which is created by the system as the default zone.
global
Now, I update the alias 'myzl' with the '-p' option onf the zoneadm command.
I check the aliases again to make sure my update took place.
alias myf='find . -name "*" -print -exec ls -l {} \;'
alias myls='ls -ltr'
alias myzl='zoneadm list -p'
I run the new alias 'myzl' to see the output.
0:global:running:/::native:shared
Now, I run the alias 'myf' for finding all the files in my current working directory and give a long list of them. This command is simliar to 'ls -lR' which provide a recursive long listing of all files.
.
total 1
-rw-r--r-- 1 wahid staff 0 2011-01-09 17:56 newfile
./newfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 wahid staff 0 2011-01-09 17:56 ./newfile
I think at this time we are ready to use the C shell or true C Shell syntax. To do so, I change my current shell from /bin/bash to /bin/csh by simply typing /bin/csh.
PID TTY TIME CMD
707 pts/3 0:03 bash
1586 pts/3 0:00 ps
1585 pts/3 0:00 csh
As you can see from the above output my prompt had changed to '%' to let me know that I am now in the
C shell environment. I typed the 'ps' command to see my current environment which is the csh with PID of 1585.
I type the 'alias' command to see if I currently have any, in this case there was none, therefor I just got the '%' prompt back.
%
Therefore, I create my new aliase using the C shell syntax.
At this point you should be able to follow up with the rest of the commands easily and figure out what I am doing. For instance, you shoud be able to know why the 'df -hF ufs' returned no output while the file type '-F zfs' did returned the expected result. The answer to this question is the default file system for x86 OpenSolaris is Zeta byte File Systems, (zfs) and not the traditional Unix File Systems (ufs).
myz (zoneadm list -cv)
mydf (df -hF ufs)
myz (zoneadm list -cv)
