What utilities are available

The utilities that SCO Shell recognizes are listed in the Utilities window. To see the Utilities window, select Utility and press <Enter>. The menu bar vanishes, and a list of utilities appears in a window on the screen. The top item on the list is highlighted; if you press <Enter> again, that utility will be activated.

It is possible to install many utilities on your system; not all of them will fit in the window at the same time. You can tell that there are items outside the visible area if the right hand edge of the window is showing a scroll bar (a slider control that you can drag up and down or move using the arrow keys).

If you use the up and down arrow keys, the list of available utilities moves up and down behind the window to reveal the additional items:

If you do not want to run a utility, you can return to the menu by pressing <Esc>.

A number of utilities come with SCO Shell. Here is a brief explanation of what they do:

List Users

Lists all the users who are currently logged into the system, along with their terminal and the date and time at which they logged in.

Compare

Compares two files, visually highlighting the differences between them. You are prompted for the type of the file (whether a binary (program-like file), or a text file, or a directory), then to select two filenames. Compare then presents you with a visual indication of the lines or characters that differ in the second file with respect to the first.

Find

Locates a file in the filesystem. You are prompted for the name of a file to look for. Find then searches for everything that matches this filename.

Search

Searches for text contained in a given file. You are prompted for a piece of text to look for, then for a file to search. Search reports if it locates the text in question.

Usage

Reports on how much space is used by the files stored below the current directory. The output is reported in disk blocks, and is broken down by directory.

Disk Free

The opposite of Usage; reports how much space remains available on the filesystems currently accessible to your machine.

Kill

Allows you to terminate a program that you are currently running. For an explanation of this feature, see ``Controlling processes''.

Processes

Lists the currently running processes under your control. (The SCO OpenServer system allows you to run several programs simultaneously; a running program is termed a ``process''.)

All procs

Lists all the processes currently running on the computer. (There will be a large number of these, and you will probably be unable to kill any that do not belong to you. In general, do not attempt to destroy processes unless you know what they are for; if you succeed, you may impair the functioning of the system.)

OS Version

Prints a message containing technical information about the type of system you are running on the computer.

Set colors

If you are working on a color terminal or console, this tool allows you to select the colors in the applications and utilities that are displayed. You must pick an application from the list that you are presented with, then select the particular object within that application to change color; the utility then allows you to pick new colors for that object. You should save your settings when you finish using this utility. The next time you start the changed program, its colors will have changed.

Adding a utility to the list

To add a utility to the list, from the top level menu, select:

Options Utillist

The Utillist menu allows you to add a command to the list, edit or delete an item on the list, or undelete an item you have deleted by mistake.

You can also create a folder; that is a menu item containing other items. (When you select the Create menu option within the Add menu you are asked whether you want to create a command that can be added to your list, or a folder.) Folders are displayed on the list with trailing ellipses (...), and from the Utillist menu you can open a folder and add commands within it. Thus, by using folders you can define multiple levels of nested utility commands.

When you edit a command or create a command, you are given a form to fill in that contains fields for the command name, a brief description (displayed on the line below the menu when the command is highlighted) and the pathname of the command (the absolute pathname required to execute it):

For an explanation of pathnames, see ``How directories are organized''.

Once you have created a new command and added it to the list or to a folder that is added to the list, you can run it by selecting:

Utility command_name