Helpful editing tips within SMIT screens

Many people love using SMIT but find its editing functionality a little cumbersome. So here are some editing tips you should find useful, and you may not have been aware of:

• If you want to wipe out the value you have entered, you can delete to the end of the field by using Ctrl-k (that's holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the k).

• To delete a single character, use Ctrl-x.

• To go down a page at a time, press Ctrl-v

• To go up a page, use Esc-v.

• The tab key allows you to toggle through true / false fields such as yes / no fields or some fields where there is a range of values.

Practical SMITTY

Supposing you're creating a set of new file systems, and you have a series of values you want to change from the default. For example, you want to set the file system to mount automatically after restart. (I'll never know why that's not the default).

So you press enter to create the file system.

Since you don't want to re-enter all the same non-default values, you can hit F3 to return to the menu with all the options you previously selected. You can then create a new file system on a different Logical Volume.

At this point you can up arrow to the new LOGICAL VOLUME name and hit F4 to list available LVs. Then down arrow to enter the new MOUNT POINT and press Ctrl-k. Whammo! The field is blanked out, ready for you to enter a new mount point.