How do I exit Unix and come back into grex?  Nothing I try seems to work
and I have to sign off and get back on.  Trial & error has not given me
much help.

20 responses total.

By "grex" I think you must mean the "Ok:" prompt. This is actually 
the prompt for "Picospan", which is the conferencing software we are
both using to enter these questions and answers here.

If you typed "unix" to run a unix shell under picospan, you can 
terminated it and return to the Ok prompt by typing "exit".

Or your end-of-file character instead of exit.
(This is likely control-D, unless you've done something to change it.)

I thought I tried "exit" and it did not work.  I'll try again.  I know I did
not try control-D, so I'll try that also.  Thanks.

Hey, I tried both "exit
 and "control-D" and each time, my modem got the hang-up signal.
Any other suggestions?  I'll give it some more trial and error.

I got it!  If you type "picospan" you go back to the "OK" prompt.  Funny
screen comes up if you type "pico" it looks sort of like the Pine mail 
screen without the middle part.  (Just a text editor page?)

Pico is the Pine Composer, which is a text editor based on the Pine mail
program.  PicoSpan is the conferencing system.  You can get into PicoSpan
by typing picospan, or by typing bbs.

Or by typing conf (conf="conference", which is what we say it is, rather
than bbs="bulletinboard system"). It sounds a bit, mcpoz, that you
are approaching readiness for converting to a unix shell (csh or tcsh),
and running Picospan from there. The advantage is that you can jump
out of Picospan anywhere and anytime (by "suspending") into unix, and
later return to exactly what you were doing. Don't do this until you
have a good feeling for the directory system (IMO).

Rcurl, Ok & thanks.  I'll print your message and hold it on my desktop until
I feel brave and adventurous.  

Before you change your login shell to a unix one, you have to create the
files .login and .cshrc in your directory. There is a command called icant
that installs default .login and .cshrc files. You could do that now, and
look at them to see how they are set up. They won't do anything until you
change your login shell to csh or tcsh. 

Do I just type in "icant" and the default files automatically become 
installed?  Either way, I will try the "icant"
Thanks

Do you know how to move around in the directory system? Getting familiar
with that I consider one of the first things to learn. I see you ran
icant - your .login and .cshrc are in your home directory, ready to go.
Congratulations!

I have a long way to go to be able to move around in the directory system, 
but thanks for the advice and encouragement.

This response has been erased.

Ok, will do & Thanks.

sh, which is a Unix shell (& the one you get when you type unix, BTW, if
your login shell is /b (the Picospan login)), does *not* support job
control of the sort Rane describes - but also doesn't require any more control
files than you've already got.

I don't know if you're familiar with MS-DOS, but moving around DOS's
directory structure and Unix's directory structure are done in similar
ways.  The big thing to remember is to substitute a forward slash in Unix
where you would use a backward slash in DOS.

... & use   pwd   instead of   cd   to find out where you are.  cd by itself
takes you back to your home directory.  (Also use mkdir & rmdir instead of
md & rd, but that's another issue.)  Steve's right, though; a lot of DOS
is kind of like a perverted & crippled Unix.

This response has been erased.

I didn't know that.

I'd forgotten about md and rd.  One of the first things I do when I get on
a new Unix system is to bring over a file of aliases, and md and rd are in
it.  I hardly count as a DOS person anymore, but I find md and rd much
easier to type than mkdir and rmdir.

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