Using the screen command for flexibility
You might at first think of “screen” as the device on which your Linux desktop is displayed. That is one meaning. For SysAdmins like us,...
How I send email from the command line
There are times when I find it useful to send email from the command line. I’m not talking about using one of the text mode clients llike Alpine. I mean sending email directly from the command line.
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 05 — Embrace the CLI
Author's note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 6 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with some changes. The Force is...
Check spelling at the command line
Check spelling at the command line like old-school Unix with this cool script.
How to use the base64 command on Linux
The base64 command converts binary data to ASCII data so that it can be transmitted as text. It's a common method of encoding used to...
How to use SSH
You may have heard that Linux and Unix computers give you the ability to control a computer other than the one you're sitting at. That's...
Getting started on the command line
As a SysAdmin, the Linux command line is typically my happy place. The command line interface, the CLI, is the closest I can get to the raw power of my computers. It gives me access to tools that make my work easy, fast, and even fun. I use the command line so much that I sometimes forget how much power I have to manage my computers.
I also forget that it took me a long time to really understand the terminology that applies to the various tools that I use to access that command line. This article is about those tools and the sometimes confusing terminology necessary to function on the CLI.
Mastering the Linux cp Command: A Comprehensive Guide
When I began to use Linux over twenty-five years ago I was not as comfortable on the command line as I am now. I had...
Tips for using the ‘ls’ command in Linux
One of the first commands I learned in Linux was ls. Knowing what’s in a directory where a file on your system resides is important....
Intro to the Linux chgrp and newgrp commands
In a recent article, I introduced the chown command, which is used for modifying ownership of files on systems. Recall that ownership is the combination...
Intro to the Linux chown command
Image by: Opensource.com CC-by-SA 4.0 Every file and directory on a Linux system is owned by someone, and the owner has complete control to change...
Intro to the Linux chmod command
Every object on your Linux system has a permission mode that describes what actions a user can perform on it. There are three types of...
How my easy, home-made backup program saves time, space on the storage medium, and network bandwidth
Nothing can ever go wrong with my computer and I will never lose my data. Riiiiight.
This article discusses the backup program I created to prevent catastrophic data loss and facilitate easy recovery. I also show how you can install and use it yourself.
Intro to the Linux useradd command
Adding a user is one of the most fundamental exercises on any computer system; this article focuses on how to do it on a Linux system.
Play a fun math game with Linux commands
Use these commands to generate random numbers for a fun math quiz game.
Using the command line calendar and date functions in Linux
have always been interested in historical dates and determining the actual day of the week an event occurred. What day of the week was the Declaration of Independence signed? What day of the week was I born? What day of the week did the 4th of July in 1876 occur? I know that you can use search engines to answer many of these questions. But did you know that the Linux command line can supply those answers, too?