<chapter id="konsole-intro">

<chapterinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Gardner</firstname>
<surname>Bell</surname>
</author>
</authorgroup>
</chapterinfo>


<title>&konsole; Introduction</title>

<para>Extremely brief intro to managing in a shell</para>

<para>Emergency procedures: killing wild apps, etc</para>

<para>SSH, sessions, envars, other fun things</para>

<para>Some tips and tricks</para>


<!-- Some Content borrowed from the konsole handbook -->

<para>&konsole; is a terminal emulator for the X Window System. It is
essentially based on the <ulink url="http://vt100.net">DEC's VT100</ulink> 
and many of its succesors.  &konsole; &ndash; also referred to as a
shell &ndash; is an
essential tool on &Linux; and &UNIX; based machines for fast and productive
work.</para>

<para>Emergency Procedures:</para>

<para>On &Linux; and &UNIX;-based systems every process runs independently in its own memory
space so it can't accidentally overwrite any other processes memory, unless
of course it has <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> privileges. 
If a process in &kde; crashes due to a bug one should not need to worry
about it accessing any other active process.</para>

<para>To keep track of all system processes use the <command>top</command>
command or <command>ps</command> in &konsole;.  Using these utilities will
make it much easier to find and kill off rogue programs.</para>

<para>An example of using signals in &konsole;,  &konqueror; has crashed
leaving behind a running process of
<application>nspluginviewer</application> which is taking up 12% of your
memory and 10% of your cpu cycles.  In <command>top</command> use the <keycap>k</keycap>
command switch to kill the task.  You will be prompted for the PID and then
the signal to send to kill it.  For more on info on what signals you can
send to a running process see the full manual on signals (type
<command>man signal</command> in a &konsole; or go to
<userinput>#signal</userinput> in &konqueror;).</para>

<para>SSH, sessions, envars, other fun things.</para>

<para>If you are using &konsole; for remote administration consider using
&konsole;'s <quote>Session</quote> feature.  To use this click on the menu
entry
<menuchoice><guimenu>Settings</guimenu><guimenuitem>Configure &konsole;</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.
From here choose the <guimenuitem>Sessions</guimenuitem> tab and fill in the
name for your new session.  This will now become your default session when
you start &konsole;.</para>

<para>When &konsole; is invoked <application>bash</application> specific
commands and &kde; specific variables are read and executed from
<filename>~/.bashrc</filename> or <filename>~/.bash_profile</filename>. 
The preferred configuration file for user environments is
<filename>~/.bash_profile</filename>, the commands
<command>printenv</command> or <command>env</command> can be used to
display all currently set variables.  To set a variable in the shell use 
<command>VARNAME=<replaceable>value</replaceable></command>.  For a full
list of variables that can be set in &kde; see the <ulink
url="http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Environment+Variables">wiki
</ulink>.</para>

<para>Some tips and tricks</para>

<para>To rename &konsole;'s session use <keycombo
action="simul">&Ctrl;&Alt;<keycap>S</keycap></keycombo> and enter the new
name.</para>

<para>If you find the need to run any &kde; program with <systemitem
class="username">root</systemitem> privileges,  you can use the &kdesu; command with the <option>-c</option> switch
from the command line like this: <userinput><command>kdesu</command>
<option>-c -n <replaceable>PROGRAM</replaceable></option></userinput>, using
the <option>-n</option> switch will prevent &kde; from remembering your
passwords.</para>

<!-- Add links to "further reading" here -->
<itemizedlist>
<title>Related Information</title>


<listitem><para>The &konsole;
Handbook has much more information about the features available in
&konsole;. You can read it in &khelpcenter; or by entering
<userinput>help:/konsole</userinput> in &konqueror;'s
<guilabel>Location</guilabel> bar.</para>
</listitem>

</itemizedlist>





</chapter>

<!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
Local variables:
mode: xml
sgml-omittag:nil
sgml-shorttag:nil
sgml-namecase-general:nil
sgml-general-insert-case:lower
sgml-minimize-attributes:nil
sgml-always-quote-attributes:t
sgml-indent-step:0
sgml-indent-data:true
sgml-parent-document:("index.docbook" "book" "chapter")
sgml-exposed-tags:nil
sgml-local-catalogs:nil
sgml-local-ecat-files:nil
End:
-->
