Deborah R. Fowler
Linux Quick Guide
Updated on April 22 2016
Updated on Sept 13 2023
You can use command line to assemble your frames!
ffmpeg (see section on ffmpeg)
Visual Studio code (NOT Visual Studios) is code on both linux and Windows
Sublime is subl on linux(rocky) and sublime_text.exe on Windows
NOTE: You can use evince on linux to open a pdf via command line
NOTE: You can use eog on linux to open an image file via command line (it stands for Eye Of Gnome)
NOTE: You can use unzip on linux to extract files from dropbox.com
If you do not have access to linux and are on windows: Comparison of DOS versus linux commands.
NOTE: On windows you can use doskey to map things, such as doskey ls = dir
A note about forward / and backward \ slash in programming context
On Windows you can work in the cmd window and also the Powershell to get more of a linux like experience.
For example, on linux you create directory using mkdir, same in Windows. However something like printenv to print your path in linux becomes echo %Path%.
This would be redirected to a file. echo %Path% > test.txt
For more information about Windows see my MS-DOSHelpSheet
| Linux Quick
Guide |
to most
commonly used commands |
cmd on Windows |
| ls |
lists the contents of the directory (folders
are blue, files are black font) MS-Dos uses dir - on a whim, I tried this on linux and it works too! |
dir |
| cd |
change directory ie. cd ../
will go up a level or you may want to do to your home directory cd ~ or cd |
cd |
| ~ |
home directory |
|
| cp |
copy and if it is an entire directory, cp
-r |
copy |
| pwd |
present working directory (where you are) |
echo %cd% |
| . |
current directory |
|
| ./ |
current directory |
|
| ps |
processor status (ie. what jobs are running) |
|
| kill -9 jobid |
kill the job with this id from ps no matter
what kill -segv will force it to save a version to /tmp |
|
| mkdir |
make a directory (new folder) |
mkdir |
| cd /opt |
installations of Houdini can be found here |
cd
C:/Program Files |
| & |
run an application as a background process gedit & this will leave the terminal window free to use |
notepad++.exe
& |
| keyboard up arrow |
recalls the last command to save typing or
... |
|
| history |
history lists recent commands and you can
type !# where # is the number from the list |
doskey /history F7 |
| and less
common but useful commands |
||
| printenv |
prints your
paths and environment settings |
echo %Path% |
| more |
pipes a file
to terminal display |
more |
| eog |
default image file viewer on linux (Eye of
Gnome) |
|
| evince |
evince file.pdf allow you to view a pdf file
via command line |
|
| unzip |
uncompress a zip file |
|
| whereis |
find where an application is located (and on Windows) where /r C:\ mplay.exe | where |
Customizing with .bashrc
There are so many things you can do in linux from the command line!
You can create a .bashrc (used to be .custom_bash) script to be run when you log in.
The top of the .bashrc will have the line #!/bin/bash
This indicated that the file is a bash script and does not require any file extention, and /bin/bash is the location of the bash interpreter. (if it was Bourne shell /bin/sh)
A website with some simple examples of bash scripts can be found here
I would strongly advise you to use at least one line in there:
alias rm='rm -i'
That way it will query you when you delete a file.
Type in alias -h to see more options.
To run a script on our system, type ./name in a terminal, or double click on it in Nautilus (beware you must actually be in the directory or it will fail)
lifewire.com has some useful linux summaries, in particular for beginners here
Houdini Command Line rendering
hrender
NOTE: in more recent versions of Houdini, they are using a python script, thus the version we are using on the renderfarm is referenced with the prefix /tmp
This command can be used to render locally. It is a command line tool (it actually is a shell script that lives in $HFS/bin which you can take a look - use gedit, or more - more views the file without editing - very handy!)
For example:
hrender -d mantra1 testSphere.hipnc
This assumes mantra1 is an output rop in the hip file.
hrender -e -f 1 3 -v -d mantra1 testSphere.hipnc
-e -f 1 3 instructs it to render frames 1 through 3
-v verbose
-d output driver
Type in hrender to see all the options (for example -o test.'$F4'.exr added to the line above would write the information to the files if you have not specified them in your mantra node.)
Troubleshooting on the farm - render locally with command line as a first step to debugging the problem by copying the command from the log file and running it in a terminal window (with renderfarm references removed).
ie. in the log file you will see:
/tmp/hrender -e -v -f 250 250 -o /tmp/farm/Job_285332/blahblah.$F4.exr -d mantraTest blahblah.hipnc
becomes
/tmp/hrender -e -v -f 250 250 -o blahblah.exr -d mantraTest blahblah.hipnc
OR
/tmp/hrender -e -v -f 250 250 -o blahblah.'$F4'.exr -d mantraTest blahblah.hipnc
For caching
render
hscript file.hip
cd /out
render -vA (verbose, alfred) -I (that is an I as in interleave) nodetoprocess ... so for example it looks like
render -vA -I merge1
You can do the same thing in windows from the Houdini Command Line Tool window (it's a cmd window with the proper paths/environment set) (It is in the All Programs/Side Effects Software /Version/Utilities/Command Line Tools)