About This Guide

This chapter includes:

What you'll find in this guide

The QNX Neutrino User's Guide is intended for all users of a QNX Neutrino system, from system administrators to end users. This guide tells you how to:

The Neutrino User's Guide is intended for programmers who develop Neutrino-based applications, as well as OEMs and other “resellers” of the OS, who may want to pass this guide on to their end users as a way to provide documentation for the OS component of their product.


Note:
  • We assume that QNX Neutrino is already installed and running on your computer.
  • If you've installed the QNX Software Development Platform (which includes the QNX Momentics Tool Suite), see the Welcome to the QNX Software Development Platform guide for an overview of the system and the documentation.
  • Your system might not include all of the things that this guide describes, depending on what software you've installed. For example, some utilities are included in the QNX Momentics Tool Suite, and others are included in a specific Board Support Package (BSP).

    The online version of this guide contains links to various books throughout our entire documentation set; if you don't have the entire set installed on your system, you'll naturally get some bad-link errors (e.g. “File not found”).

  • Disable PnP-aware OS in the BIOS.

The following table may help you find information quickly:

To find out about: Go to:
How Neutrino compares to other operating systems Getting to Know the OS
Starting and ending a session, and turning off a Neutrino system Logging In, Logging Out, and Shutting Down
Adding users to the system, managing passwords, etc. Managing User Accounts
The basics of using the keyboard, command line, and shell (command interpreter) Using the Command Line
Using Neutrino's graphical user interface Using the Photon microGUI
Files, directories, and permissions Working with Files
How to edit files Using Editors
Configuring what your machine does when it boots Controlling How Neutrino Starts
Customizing your shell, setting the time, etc. Configuring Your Environment
Creating your own commands Writing Shell Scripts
The filesystems that Neutrino supports Working with Filesystems
Accessing other machines with Neutrino's native networking Using Qnet for Transparent Distributed Processing
Setting up TCP/IP TCP/IP Networking
Adding printers to your system and using them Printing
Adding USB devices, terminals, video cards, and other hardware to your system Connecting Hardware
Adding embedded HTTP services and dynamic content to embedded web applications Setting Up an Embedded Web Server
Keeping track of changes to your software and other files Using CVS
Backing up and restoring your files Backing Up and Recovering Data
Making your Neutrino system more secure Securing Your System
Analyzing and improving your machine's performance Fine-Tuning Your System
How many processes, files, etc. your system can support Understanding System Limits
How to get help Technical Support
Samples of buildfiles, profiles, etc. Examples
Terms used in QNX docs Glossary

For information about programming in Neutrino, see Getting Started with QNX Neutrino: A Guide for Realtime Programmers and the Neutrino Programmer's Guide.

Typographical conventions

Throughout this manual, we use certain typographical conventions to distinguish technical terms. In general, the conventions we use conform to those found in IEEE POSIX publications. The following table summarizes our conventions:

Reference Example
Code examples if( stream == NULL )
Command options -lR
Commands make
Environment variables PATH
File and pathnames /dev/null
Function names exit()
Keyboard chords Ctrl-Alt-Delete
Keyboard input something you type
Keyboard keys Enter
Program output login:
Programming constants NULL
Programming data types unsigned short
Programming literals 0xFF, "message string"
Variable names stdin
User-interface components Cancel

We use an arrow (→) in directions for accessing menu items, like this:

You'll find the Other... menu item under Perspective-->Show View.

We use notes, cautions, and warnings to highlight important messages:


Note: Notes point out something important or useful.


Caution: Cautions tell you about commands or procedures that may have unwanted or undesirable side effects.


WARNING: Warnings tell you about commands or procedures that could be dangerous to your files, your hardware, or even yourself.

Note to Windows users

In our documentation, we use a forward slash (/) as a delimiter in all pathnames, including those pointing to Windows files.

We also generally follow POSIX/UNIX filesystem conventions.

Navigation buttons

At the top and bottom of our HTML docs, you'll see some or all of these buttons:

Use this button: To move:
Previous To the previous part of the document.
Contents “Up” in the document:
  • In a prose book, this typically takes you to About This Guide.
  • In a reference book, it takes you to the listing of items that start with a given letter. For example, if you're looking at the docs for abs(), this button takes you to the listing of the functions that start with A.
Keyword index To the keyword index.
Next To the next part of the document.

Technical support

To obtain technical support for any QNX product, visit the Support area on our website (www.qnx.com). You'll find a wide range of support options, including community forums.

Copyright © 2004–2012, QNX Software Systems Limited. All rights reserved.