Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 30 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She lives in the mountains in Virginia where, when not working with or writing about Unix, she's chasing the bears away from her bird feeders.
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Sandra Henry-Stocker and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications, Inc., its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.
The zip command lets you compress files to preserve them or back them up, and you can require a password to extract the contents of a zip file.
The shred command is a good option for removing files from a Linux system in a way that makes them virtually impossible to recover.
A few Linux commands offer different ways to see which users are logging into your Linux servers, how often they log in, and how long they’ve been active or idle.
Directories provide a hierarchical way to organize your files, and you can categorize them to suit your needs.
The annual World Backup Day, which is March 31, is a good reminder to review your backup policies and practices.
Aliases provide an easy way to reuse complicated or often-used commands.
Leap years are not quite as regular as we might have believed. A fairly simple Linux script can tell you whether a year will be a leap year or not.