Bash command line


Tuesday, April 27
9 am–5 pm Pacific Time

This course will start at 9am Pacific Time and will run until 5pm Pacific Time. Its format will be a combination of several interactive Zoom sessions and pre-recorded reading and video materials in-between the Zoom sessions. Course materials will be added here shortly before the start of the course.


This is a hands-on introduction to the Linux command line and the interaction with a remote server. This course mixes Software Carpentry materials with WestGrid’s custom training.

Instructor: Alex Razoumov (WestGrid)

Prerequisites: This is an introductory course, no previous experience is required. We will provide guest accounts to one of our Linux systems.

Software: All attendees will need a remote secure shell (SSH) client installed on their computer in order to participate in the course exercises. On Windows we recommend the free Home Edition of MobaXterm. On Mac and Linux computers SSH is usually pre-installed (try typing ssh in a terminal to make sure it is there).


Zoom   9am-9:30am Pacific
Morning opening session

Introduction (10 min)
Navigating the filesystem (9 min)
Creating, moving and copying things (10 min)
Archives and compression (12 min)
Transferring files and directories to/from remote computers (15 min)
Wildcards, redirection to files, pipes, and aliases (10 min)
Loops (9 min)


Zoom   11:30am-1:30pm Pacific
Mid-day session

Bash scripts and functions, and variables (32 min)
Finding things with `grep` and `find` (13 min)
Text manipulation (19 min)


Zoom   3pm-5pm Pacific
Late-afternoon session