Advice for everyday Unix systems administration and some clever ways to approach more challenging problems.
Unix tools make it easy to find strings in files, but what if you want to find specific whole words, more complex text patterns, or every instance of a word or pattern?
The top command is one of the most useful commands for getting a quick glimpse into how your Unix server is performing, but stopping there might mean that you're missing out on a lot of interesting options.
You can spend 50-60 hours a week managing your Unix servers and responding to your users' problems and still feel as if you're not getting much done or you can adopt some good work habits that will both make you more successful and prepare ....
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The ifconfig command doesn't suck; it's just not as cool or sophisticated as ip.
Need a jump start on Unix networking? Whether you're working on your home network or setting up systems at work, here are some basic Unix networking commands and insights that might prove helpful.
Unix systems administrators tend to be very serious about their responsibilities -- except when they're not. And, when they're not, the pranks that they play on each other and some of their more annoying users might surprise you.
The find command is one of the most basic Unix commands, but that doesn't mean you're making good use of its many features.
You might be the sole Unix geek at work or one among many, but there are things we can all do to develop and maintain better relationships with the people lucky enough to work with us.
Pushing and popping might not be your idea of a good time, but some Unix admins swear that these operations make working in multiple directories as easy as 1, 2, 3, 2, 1.
Leaving a job can be one of the hardest decisions you'll ever make. You know the routine, you've made many friends, you know what's expected of you ... but the last thing you want to do is wake up one day and realize that you're n....
Are you confident that all the accounts you manage are still required and still current? Or might some of them be ghost accounts that you should have blocked five years ago?
Do you find yourself rewriting scripts because it's easier than finding or modifying your old ones? Do you find yourself spending far too much time reworking scripts when you need to make what seems like a small change? Let's look at how yo....
Want to tune your shell scripts to run more efficiently? Let's check out a few changes that might help them run faster.
Secure connections can be even more secure or even less troublesome if you use a key pair and do it right.
It's a new year and a great time to review what you're doing right and not so right in your Unix career. Time to commit to an effective to do list!
Need a way to make connecting to lots of servers using different settings and usernames easier? Look no further than the ssh config file.
Whether your aware of it or now, copyrighted or pornographic material on your work or personal computer can land you in jail or in the poor house.
If you get a secret thrill out of a well crafted Perl one-liner, but only have a few that you can pull out of your mental pocket and use, this book may be just what Santa should be leaving under your tree!
Sometimes what seems like the simplest of questions can have you scrambling for answers. Today's seemingly simple question is "How can a bash script identify its own location?"
Sorting data numerically and alphanumerically isn't generally much of a challenge on Unix systems, but sometimes .5 is smaller than .11.
Last week's post provided some tips and tricks for debugging scripts. This week's provides some even better ones!
All kinds of things can go wrong with your shell scripts, but they don't have to. Let's look a some debugging tips that can help ensure your scripts run the way you intend.
The kill command provides a lot more functionality than just terminating processes. You can use it to send any of more than 60 signals to processes and what happens next depends on the signal, the process and maybe even your settings.
It's easy to find files on Unix systems. You can find them by almost any criteria that you can imagine. The bigger challenge is deciding how to describe what you're looking for and deciding what to do with the files once you find them.
One of the most endearing qualities of Unix devotees is how determined they are to be as efficient as possible. Why type three characters if you can do the same thing with two? And one of the best ways to cut down keystrokes is to turn common command....
Unlike federal shutdowns, Unix shutdowns (and reboots) are generally smooth and easy, don't cost $24B and leave the system in better shape.
Ever need to look into a Unix process to see exactly what it's doing? The ps and top commands only give you a bird's eye view of what's going on. But strace will let you peer into a process' inner workings.
The CISSP is a valuable certification, but it takes a lot more than just your many years of experience to prepare for it. You will likely have to learn about a lot of technology and processes that you’ve never worked with, some of it not especi....
Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. But if you want to call them back, you need to give them names.
If you work in cyber security or incident response, you MUST read this book. It is the best book ever for preparing yourself and your staff for handling inevitable network intrusions.
No matter how much disk space you add to a system, sooner or later you're going to run short. But watching disk space get slowly used up is a lot like watching grass grow. How do you avoid a disk space crisis and avoid being lulled into a data s....
The only thing wrong with sed is that most of us barely grasp how powerful it is. We use it in pipes to change "this" to "that", but we rarely consider it for the big editing jobs where it could save us considerable time and effor....
Moving files between Linux (and other) servers is a lot smarter and more versatile when you discover lftp.
The things that make you love a job or drive you to thinking about moving on may have less to do with how much you earn than whether you look forward to Monday morning.
Sitting in a chair for 40 or more hours a week might seem like the makings of a good life if it's combined with an impressive salary, but if you value your health and/or your career, you might rethink your priorities. This invaluable book could ....
You need to understanding routing tables if you're going to do any kind of network troubleshooting. Let's take a look at what Linux commands can tell you about how your system is making connections.
Friday, July 26th,2013 is Sysadmin Day or "Systems Administrator Appreciation Day" -- a good reason to celebrate those individuals who devote themselves to keeping our servers available, usable and secure, but how do you go about thanking t....
Firewall logs. There's never enough time to review them, but you can't ignore them. Here's one way to look for malicious connections without spending a lot of time at it.
CSV (comma-separated values) files represent a common standard for transmitting data between applications. Like the more generic "flat files", each line in a CSV file represents a record. Exporting or importing data from and to applications....
The grep command has a lot more options and "flavors" than the casual command line pioneer might expect, but there are some options and limitations that you should know about when you're working with big data files.
Big data may be a tech buzzword of the moment, but Unix admins who need to hunt through logs to figure out what's going with their systems have been grappling with huge data sets for decades. Here are tips on command-line tools and techniques th....
Wise men say that you should never choose the easy path but, instead, live life fully. But when it comes to moving around the Unix file system, easy is good. And bash's builtin shopt command can make maneuvering even the most complicated file sy....
The history feature in Unix shells can save you a lot of time when typing long, fairly repetitious commands, but don't count on it to accurately represent history.
If someone told you that, on average, an advanced attacker was on a system for 243 days before he was detected, would you fall off your seat? If so, then, fall off your seat.
Knowing how and when to use the escape character can make your day, but commands get a little hairy when you first have to escape your escape.
You can make your life a little easier and more productive by adding some Unix power to your Windows system.
BSD -- the Berkeley Software Distribution flavor of Unix -- is alive and well and thriving on a remarkably secure system near you. And the second edition of Absolute OpenBSD (Michael W. Lucas, 2013, no starch press) is ready to teach you all about it....
Whether you're setting up accounts for existing users on a new server or providing accounts for a crop of new staff members on your primary server, it's nice to be able to do the job quickly and accurately. The newusers command in Linux is ....
Bash has quietly made scripting on Unix systems a lot easier with its own regular expressions. If you're still leaning on grep and sed commands to get your scripts to do what you need from them, maybe it's time to look into what bash can do....