The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 08 — Always use shell scripts
Author’s note: This article is excerpted in part from chapter 9 of my book, The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, with some changes to update the...
The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins, Tenet 07 — Automate Everything
SysAdmins are most productive when creating the shell programs that automate the solutions that they have conceived while appearing to be unproductive. The more automation we have in place the more time we have available to fix real problems when they occur and to contemplate how to automate even more than we already have.
Terminal size and ncurses
When programs like vi first came along, terminals had a predefined size: usually 80 columns and 24 lines (actually 25 lines, but the last line...
Searching text files from the command line
The find command is a powerful and flexible tool to locate files under a path.
Random numbers from the Linux kernel
Let the kernel generate random numbers for you using ‘getrandom.’
Working with Ollama
Now that I'm working with Ollama, I needed to figure out how to locate the models on my storage medium and determine the amount of...
A gentle introduction to ncurses
You can create your own programs that use a text user interface to control the screen.
Sharing Linux with a friend
I volunteer with Meals on Wheels once a week, and one of the clients on my route is a man my age. We frequently spend...
Exploring Ollama and Llama 3.1 for Advanced Language Modeling
Everywhere you look, someone is talking or writing about artificial intelligence. I have been keenly interested in the topic since my graduate school days in...
Heading to the Beach
Tomorrow, Saturday as I write this, we’ll be heading to Atlantic Beach, our current favorite. By then time you read it, we’ll be there enjoying the amazing views including the one in the picture above. We do this every year.
To make my computing life as seamless as possible, I take my laptop. I always sync my home directory from my primary workstation to my laptop, named Voyager3 or vgr3 for short.
Easy File Management with Thunar
Computers are all about files. Linux itself is a collection of many files; application programs like LibreOffice are made up of many files; and the documents, spreadsheets, financial data, photos, videos, audio, and more that you use are all files. Working with files is a very important part of your work as a user.
This article introduces the use of the Thunar graphical file manager for managing files.
Setting the status line for the screen program
In my recent article about the Screen program, I mention that one of the best things about the Screen program is that it gets out of the way and lets you just do your work. As a result, there may be no on-screen indication that you’re in a Screen session. That can cause a bit of bother.
I decided to investigate. What I found is interesting.
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.
How to access Rescue mode (runlevel 1) in Linux
I frequently find need to perform maintenance on the filesystem of one of my dozen or so physical computers. Many maintenance tasks require the system to be running the Rescue.target, formerly, runlevel 1. There are two methods you can use to enter Rescue mode.