said by example from "/etc/make.conf":

---

USE="-* x86 3dnow X Xaw3d aalib alsa apache2 arts audiofile avi bindist bzlib caps cdr cross crypt dedicated dga dio divx4linux dvd encode exif ftp gd ggi gif gpm gstreamer imagemagick imlib jack java jikes joystick jpeg kde libwww mad memlimit mikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg msn nas ncurses nocd offensive oggvorbis openal opengl oscar pam png posix prelude qt quicktime readline spell ssl svga szip tcpd tiff truetype usb videos wmf xine xinerama xmms xosd xv xvid yahoo zlib insecure-drivers"

---

said by theguy :

---

To see which programs are using the network connections

netstat -pan ( to test )

---

said by jamies0320 :

---

if you locate a file that is activly growing, you can use

fuser FILENAME

to find the process id of the user, and then

ps -ef|grep PROCESS_ID to determine who is using the file.

---

said by Steve :

---

The oldest UNIX FAQ I know about: "How do I remove a file whose name begins with a dash" (because the filename gets confused with an option), and the answer is to prefix it with dot-slash

code:

---

$ rm ./-troublesome-filename

---

---

said by lanboyo :

---

2.
to replace variable whitespace with a single space

sed s/\ \ */\ /g

...useful for ordering output into parsable text...

---

said by sundaram123 :

---

Linux you can use col command to remove CTRL+M character

col -b --
SCSecA, SCNA, SCSA, SCWCD, SCJP

---

said by jamies0320 :

---

I seem to remember that on SCO the command "memsize" will display the amount of memory installed. Does anyone know of a similar command on other flavors ?

---

said by jamies0320 :

---

I seem to remember that on SCO the command "memsize" will display the amount of memory installed. Does anyone know of a similar command on other flavors ?

I'm most interested in AIX or HP-UX.

---

Turbo mode logins using ssh keys.
 
1) On local-machine type this command...
   
   $ ssh-keygen -t rsa
 
TIP: When it asks for a passphrase just hit enter.
     ie: Do not give it a passphrase.
 
2) This will create a file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
 
3) This will be used for your *PUBLIC* key.
 
4) On local-machine issue this command...

   $ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@remote-machine:.ssh/authorized_keys2

  Assuming you have the same username on both local-machine
  and remote-machine you do not have to use the
  user@remote-machine. Just remote-machine will do in the
  'scp' line above in this case. For the purpose of being
  "proper" this is the syntax I used above...
  user@remote-machine
 
IMPORTANT NOTE: NEVER EVER copy the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa to another machine.
ONLY ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ok?
You do not need to do this for any reason.
Don't do it.
You have been warned.
 
5) On local-machine issue this command...

   $ ssh remote-machine

6) Badabing. Sweet.
 
You want more automation ?
Check this out...
 
7) I personally have a ~/bin directory that is in my $PATH.
   You will need a directory in your home that is in your             
   $PATH. We will assume from this point that you have such
   directory already in your $PATH.
 
8) Create a file called ssh-to on local-machine and put it in your ~/bin directory.
 
   In this file put this sweet little script ...

#-------------snip------------
#!/bin/sh
 
ssh `basename $0` $*
#-------------snip------------

9) Save the file to ~/bin/ssh-to on local-machine and make it executable.
   ie: $ chmod 700 ~/bin/ssh-to
 
10) On local-machine type this command...
 
    $ cd ~/bin
 
11) On local-machine type this command...
 
    $ ln -s ssh-to remote-machine
 
    Tip: If you have an alias in your /etc/hosts file for 
    the remote-machine use those it will make it even nicer.
 
12) On local-machine type this command...
 
    $ remote-machine
 
     Sweet. You should have logged right in to the remote-machine.
 
13) Now that you have this setup try this cool stuff....
    On local-machine of course.
 
    $ remote-machine uptime
 
    $ remote-machine ls
 
    $ remote-machine any-command-you-want-to-execute-on-remote-machine
 
14) Now just repeat these steps for each remote-machine
    that you choose. 
 
15) Another nice side affect of this is that "scp"
    and "sftp" will not require a passwd either :)
 
I hope this helps someone.
 
»linuxtux.org/howtos/ssh-stuff.txt]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10569302
Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:01:07 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10423150
Drunkula : Gentoo has always been very well documented (at least as long as I've been using Gentoo).  But you know what?  They just keep getting better!
--
I just love scanning for lifeforms!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10423150
Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:33:47 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10420700
SuperJudge :  
said by  SuperJudge :
 
said by  MrH :
when installing gentoo(www.gentoo.org) besure to read ALL the directions :) 
That is the damn truth.  Keep the installation help page on another computer screen or print it out (on 29 sheets of paper).
 
links www.gentoo.org :)
--
Updated My Journal

TP&C]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10420700
Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:26:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10390699
moyix : Another way to convert a .deb to a tar/gz file is to just extract it using the dpkg-deb command and then tar up the resulting directory. This can be automated with the following script:
#!/bin/sh
 
tdir=`mktemp -d`
dpkg-deb -x $1 "$tdir"
tar czCf "$tdir" ${1/.deb/.tar.gz} .
rm -rf "$tdir"

Note that just untarring that tgz in the root directory is not usually enough to install the package! Most Debian packages also have scripts that are run before and/or after the files are unpacked, and such packages will often not work correctly without them.

Random bonus tip:
In bash, type Ctrl-r to start a reverse history search. As you type in some characters, the command history will be searched, and the most recent command that contains the string you've typed will be displayed. You can hit Ctrl-r again to show the next-to last match, again for the next-to-next-to last one, etc. When you find the command you wanted, just hit enter to execute it, or the arrow keys to leave the search mode and alter the command before executing it.
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10390699
Tue, 01 Jun 2004 05:11:34 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10371289
gbell72 : Out of curiosity is there a simple way to hide all processes besides the actual users processes as there is in FreeBSD on linux.
On FreeBSD I use in sysctl.conf kern.show_allprocesses=0 anything similar on Linux? Using Gentoo 2004.1

thanks
Gardner]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10371289
Sat, 29 May 2004 15:40:40 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10158501
jdong :  
said by  Spike401 :
I noticed people get the "shock" when they can just "linux single" and get an init 1 login without any authentication.
 


The idea is pretty cool, but still nothing stops a person from going to your computer with a GRUB floppy/CD.
--
WASTING TIME spelled backwards is... :)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,10158501
Wed, 05 May 2004 10:54:22 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9698816
sr1515 :  
said by  deblin :
Cool, didn't work here for some reason... 
 

That's because my post is missing the "less than" symbol in the last index.  Now after seeing your post, I realised how to correctly post such data.  Live and learn... :)

Here's the corrected output:
wget -q -O - www.myip.com | awk '{print substr($1,index($1,"Y")) " WAN " $2 " " $3 " " sub
 *str($4,1,index($4,"<")-1)}'

(*) WARNING 1 long line(s) split

I find your versions better than mine.  Thanks!
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9698816
Wed, 17 Mar 2004 00:46:33 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9698755
deblin : Cool, didn't work here for some reason, but I was able to use perl to get it working:

wget -q -O - www.myip.com | perl -pe 's/.*ip is ([^<]+).*/$1\n/ig'

or for the perl shy :) try:

wget -q -O - www.myip.com | cut -d' ' -f4 | cut -d\< -f1
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9698755
Wed, 17 Mar 2004 00:34:19 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9698698
sr1515 : Here's a quick and dirty script to display the WAN IP (behind router).  Not foolproof but it does the job.

#!/bin/bash
# Obtain WAN IP from www.myip.com and output to console
#
wget -q -O - www.myip.com | awk '{print substr($1,index($1,"Y")) " WAN " $2 " " $3 " " substr($4,1,index($4,"")-1)}'

Note: the last index character which is missing is the "less than" symbol which gets clobbered when posting.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9698698
Wed, 17 Mar 2004 00:25:45 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9684840
deblin : heh, halt -p is less characters :P

Actually, I don't enable ACPI and AMP so I don't think halt -p or poweroff would work for me anyway. I rarely shut my box down anyway, except to install new hardware.
--
"I drank what?" -Socrates]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9684840
Mon, 15 Mar 2004 16:33:54 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9587106
Stevica : Linux RedHat
 "poweroff"
Easyest way to power down :P]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9587106
Fri, 05 Mar 2004 08:18:35 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9444828
dpreview : :D
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9444828
Thu, 19 Feb 2004 19:58:36 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9060227
kleeman : A fantastic compendium of information can be found at this website
»togaware.com/linux/survivor/

Found it when I checked out an attendee at the Oz linux show in Adelaide (featuring Linus and a trail of fanboys ;-))]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9060227
Mon, 12 Jan 2004 21:34:49 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8548743
JohnInSJ : Ok, maybe not... but watch access hosts in apache.

Make a file: 
$ more accesswatch.sh
#!/bin/bash
cat access_log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c

Then in a terminal run it via watch:
$watch -d -n 60 ./accesswatch.sh

Now every minute you'll get an updated (with differences highlighted) list of accessing hostnames with their count of hits, like this:

Every 60s: ./accesswatch.sh       Wed Nov 19 14:01:49 2003

      1 211.43.205.XXX
      3 68.41.40.XXX
      3 68.52.63.XXX
      1 cablemodem-222-XXX.cableonda.net
     13 pcp02131XXXpcs.galitn01.tn.comcast.net
     13 pcp04051XXXpcs.wbrmfd01.mi.comcast.net
      1 ppp-64-115-69-XXX.broadviewnet.net

(XXXd to protect the innocent, and the guilty)

"Fun" to watch as worms spread within a subnet and you get hit by progressively higher ip addresses within a subnet. Sigh.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8548743
Wed, 19 Nov 2003 17:05:46 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8490642
Happyrat : An easy way to create a symbolic link in KDE is to open two instances of Konqueror and just drag the file to its destination directory then select "Link Here" from the menu that pops up.
--
AFTER the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our FRIEND...
»www.ratrancher.com]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8490642
Wed, 12 Nov 2003 23:25:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8295081
Spike401 : I noticed people get the "shock" when they can just "linux single" and get an init 1 login without any authentication.



It doesnt have to be this way,

In the header of your lilo.conf file, add these 2 lines.



password=""

restricted



example:



prompt

timeout=10

default=linux

boot=/dev/hda

password=""

restricted

install=text

change-rules

reset

lba32



image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22

        append="idebus=33 ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14 ide1=0x170,0x376,15 mem=nopentium nomodules"

        label=linux

        read-only

        root=/dev/hda1

        vga=792



When you reload lilo, it will ask you to enter a password, enter your root pass, confirm it.

This will create a /etc/lilo.conf.shs file with a password hash. This file is not readable by anyone but root.



When the lilo prompt comes up at next reboot, typing "linux single" will prompt for the password you inputted earlier on. You cannot append a line after the kernel version you wish to boot, else it will ask for the password. Booting "linux" alone will be fine, but typing "linux single" or "linux init=/bin/sh" isnt going to get a would be intruder very far. Having this along with bios password and being unable to boot from any media makes for a more secure system physically.



-----------------



Lowercasing all filenames in a directory:

Sometimes its better to have lowercase names in that directory of pictures or other stuff you want to use in your webpage, etc.

for f in *; do mv "$f" "`echo $f | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'`"; done

This will lowercase all filenames in a given directory.

Switching upper with lower will reverse the process.

--

Linux: Telling Microsuck where to go since 1991.
[text was edited by author 2003-10-22 09:47:24]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8295081
Wed, 22 Oct 2003 09:43:21 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8285172
lanboyo : I am busy capturing it to text.

Okay...
1.

To see what ports are open on a linux box and what process is listening on them....

netstat -tupan

2.
to replace variable whitespace with a single space

sed s/\ \ */\ /g

...useful for ordering output into parsable text...

so you have ps -auxwww | grep process\ with\ option  | grep -v grep

and you just want the process ids

but cut gives you the whole line... It wants TABs

ps -auxwww | grep process\ with\ option  | grep -v grep | sed s/\ \ */\ /g | cut -d\  -f2

3.
sort -u will sort lines uniquely.. No repeats for those chatty log files.

4. learn some regular expressions if you are serious.

grep sammmy[1234] matches sammmy1 sammy2 sammy3 and sammy4 but not sammy5

5.
On RedHat linux, All that stuff that scrolls by during boot up is put into /var/log/dmesg

Only way I know how much memory I have.

6.
ssh port forwarding is a lifesaver... putty and cygwin both can forward ports to remote boxes on windows. Need to get to your mail server? forward local 25 thru your border firewall.

You can stack multiple ssh sessions this way by forwarding ssh sessions with new forwards.

ssh  -L 11101:secondhost:22 bob@firsthost
ssh -p 11101 -L 11102:thirdhost:22 bob@localhost
ssh -p 11102  bob@localhost

strict key checking is a problem here...

7. 
If you are a network security person... NOTE: your users can do that last one too and allow connections on the remote box to come back with the -R flag.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8285172
Tue, 21 Oct 2003 07:20:39 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8260089
Nutty Hiker : I don't know if this belongs, so if it doesn't, feel free to whack it.

I found a nifty PERL script that converts .deb file to .tar.gz.

»www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/deb/
--
We want PNG, dammit!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8260089
Fri, 17 Oct 2003 23:06:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8032923
Steve :  
said by  paul1238 :
A well written system startup procedure [should normally delete the utmp file when the system boots. 
Yah, sure, but what if you only reboot every two years? :-)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8032923
Mon, 22 Sep 2003 10:34:48 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8026757
davidsmind : Oh, I am sorry. I was commenting on the following:

"Another issue, is that applications may or may not actually generate the entries. Some terminal applications, (like kconsole, if I remember correctly) will generate utmp entries whenever it is spawned. This leads to many extraneous user login entries."

I found it kinda slanderous. Since I use konsole all the time and I've never seen this beheiveor, I was just clearing a small misconseption up.

and BTW, I am only kind of aware of how utmp entries work....but I know enough to know that konsole doesn't open up one per window.
--
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone's trying to kill me."]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8026757
Sun, 21 Sep 2003 15:52:13 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8024938
paul1238 : Do you have a question about how utmp entries work? I didn't quite understand the issue in your post. 

When an application is used normally, you should expect that the utmp database will not contain any orphaned entries. Applications that properly process signals such as SIGINT, SIGHUP, etc. should also not leave any orphaned entries.

Applications that manipulate the utmp databases use the C library functions setutent(), getutent(), endutent(), etc. These functions are actually not portable.

An orphan entry is persisted in the utmp database when an application fails to exit properly as I previously explained. For example, start up a few applications that create utmp entries, then simply power off the system. That's generally a sure way to create an orphaned utmp entry. Bugs in software that do not clean up the utmp database can also leave orphaned entries.

A well written system startup procedure should normally delete the utmp file when the system boots. 

I personally do not have a utmp file on any of my systems, hence I do not have programs like who, and users. IMO, querying the kernel process table with ps is a better method of determining what users might be logged in.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8024938
Sun, 21 Sep 2003 11:18:58 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8019629
davidsmind : I just opened up 24 konsole's, it didn't generate any extra utmp entries. I closed them all as well as loging out, and the processes are not ophaned.
--
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone's trying to kill me."]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8019629
Sat, 20 Sep 2003 17:01:30 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8017641
sblaze : I wrote some stuff awhile back for »www.linuxguru.net
Although I moved all my work to »nixn00b.net after a disagreement

This should prove useful for novice to moderate users. It covers a variety of stuff. Some conventional some not. Suggesstions, comments, and critiques welcomed.

Thanks ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8017641
Sat, 20 Sep 2003 12:14:11 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7981644
paul1238 : Every few months, there is a post about how to log out users that appear to be on a unix system. The typical post is that a who command was issued and extra users appear to be logged in. 

If the user is truly still active, then the command ps -aelf | grep username can be issued to find the process ids of any interactive shell. The kill command is then used to terminate the process.

However, typically no extraneous processes are found but who still reports that users are logged in. 

The process of tracking what user is logged into a unix system is actually a bit odd. It is a sort of a cooperative behavior between applications. Most applications will write a record into a file called utmp or wtmp to indicate that a user has logged in. And applications that want to query to see how many users are logged in will query the database.

If an application does not want to record a connection it doesn't have to. Even in the application xterm, it possible to use the -ut option to tell it not to write a utmp record so that it will not appear that there is another user logged in.

Programs like who and users will read from the utmp file to determine the current logg-ed in users. One of the more annoying problems with this method is orphaned entries. (ie, the application is killed without cleaning up the log-in entry) So a login may appear but in reality does not exist.

Another issue, is that applications may or may not actually generate the entries. Some terminal applications, (like kconsole, if I remember correctly) will generate utmp entries whenever it is spawned. This leads to many extraneous user login entries. This has been a point of much debate. For example, should the NFS server or the SMB server generate a utmp entry whenever someone connects to it. What about the mail server? Etc.

If orphan utmp entries occur, the easiest brute force solution is to delete the utmp file. The utmp file location varies but it can usually be found in /var/run/utmp or /var/adm/utmp. Deleting the file must be done by the root user but it can be performed on a running system.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7981644
Tue, 16 Sep 2003 13:02:21 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7897780
Thasp6 : If you're going to install nice new fonts like the bitstream vera ones, instead of spending a month trying to get mozilla or something to work without crashing, GIVE THE FONTS PERMISSIONS TO BE READ!!! This drove me nuts. 
--
Rejection is having your hand fall asleep while you're masturbating. This has never happened to me before. 
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7897780
Sun, 07 Sep 2003 02:27:15 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7875285
gniknalu : Something useful yet many don't know about it:



Using sed (the stream editor)- try this:

  sed -e "s/^M//" FileName > NewFileName



To get ^M you hold down the CTRL key, press V then while still holding CTRL, press M. 



While using vi:

  % vi filename



While in vi and vim, hit : to get into command mode, then type:

  :%s/^M//g



While in Emacs, go to the beginning of the document and

Type:

  M-x replace-string RET C-q C-m RET RET



where "RET" means press-the-return-key and C-q and C-m mean hold-the-CTRL-key-and press-the-m-(or q)-key.


[text was edited by author 2003-09-04 18:59:08]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7875285
Thu, 04 Sep 2003 16:56:46 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7792073
freerock : removing spaces from filenames:

for i in *; do mv "$i" "`echo $i|tr '\ ' '_'`";done]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7792073
Tue, 26 Aug 2003 18:05:08 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7767400
kleeman : Wow this thread is getting a bit undersubscribed. Anyway here is a good tip: For a Bayesian spam filter to use with Evolution give popfile a try. The documentation is great and the results are very nice. It also works quite a bit faster than spamassassin. If you want a script to start it at bootup (the pop server running popfile) check out the forum page. In evolution all you do is change your username to server: oldusername and your server to 127.0.0.1. Also you add a filter rule which checks for a "Specific header" (enter  "X-Text-Classification") contains (enter: spam (or the bucket name you have chosen)) then move to (enter spam folder).  Took only 20 mins to set up and is working well so far :-)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7767400
Sat, 23 Aug 2003 21:38:34 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7540013
Techie2000 :  
said by  ftzsee :
It's installed with the bsd-games package in Slackware, I think.
In Gentoo you can just "emerge wtf" or you can go to »www.mu.org/~mux/wtf/ to download it.
--
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." - Captain Jean-Luc Picard]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7540013
Wed, 30 Jul 2003 12:02:37 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7445709
bobrk :  
said by  Evolution :
This tip comes in handy especially when viewing Windows partitions through the console. Whenever you encounter a directory with 2 words in it, like "Program Files" you cannot simply enter cd /mnt/Windows/Program Files/ to enter the Program Files directory. You must enter /mnt/Windows/Program\ Files/ to enter into the Program Files folder. Another small little tip for this thread :-)
 
You can also use name completion in most shells to force the shell to find the file names. So you'd type
cd /mnt/Windows/P
 and then hit the tab key. Assuming that there are two directories "Program Files" and "Programs" or something like that, the tab key would cause the line to become 
cd /mnt/Windows/Program
 and the terminal would beep, telling you to add a unique letter. In this case, you'd type space and tab and the completer would then change the line to 
cd /mnt/Windows/Program Files/
 This takes much longer to type and read than it does to just do, so try it! I know it works in tcsh, so it probably works in bash as well.
--
bobrk.com]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7445709
Sat, 19 Jul 2003 21:29:37 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7412311
Evolution : oh ok didnt see the quotes. I guess thats a new tip then, two ways to enter a directory with separated filenames.
--
»www.chrisnylen.com]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7412311
Tue, 15 Jul 2003 23:44:41 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7408028
ftzsee : That works for me, but you must have the " and " around it.
--
Bush/Cheney 2004]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7408028
Tue, 15 Jul 2003 16:00:27 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7402956
Evolution : Nope, that doesn't work. It will look for the directory called "Program" and it is necessary to have that backslach on there.
--
»www.chrisnylen.com]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7402956
Tue, 15 Jul 2003 00:08:10 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7397363
sokhapkin :  
said by  Evolution :
This tip comes in handy especially when viewing Windows partitions through the console. Whenever you encounter a directory with 2 words in it, like "Program Files" you cannot simply enter cd /mnt/Windows/Program Files/ to enter the Program Files directory. You must enter /mnt/Windows/Program\ Files/ to enter into the Program Files folder. Another small little tip for this thread :-)
 


cd "/mnt/Windows/Program Files" will work too.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7397363
Mon, 14 Jul 2003 12:18:18 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7396966
Evolution : This tip comes in handy especially when viewing Windows partitions through the console. Whenever you encounter a directory with 2 words in it, like "Program Files" you cannot simply enter cd /mnt/Windows/Program Files/ to enter the Program Files directory. You must enter /mnt/Windows/Program\ Files/ to enter into the Program Files folder. Another small little tip for this thread :-)
--
»www.chrisnylen.com]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7396966
Mon, 14 Jul 2003 10:54:19 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7297876
jknowler : My dialup ISP dumps me after 480 minutes, so I use this all the time to show time connected and connect speed of a WvDial Dialup connection:


grep CONNECT /var/log/messages | tail -n 1
Jul 3 00:02:45 sulu WvDial: CONNECT 44000/ARQ/V90/LAPM/V42BIS


edit: Added Result


[text was edited by author 2003-07-03 01:29:13]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7297876
Thu, 03 Jul 2003 01:20:36 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7285560
riskable : In Solaris you can get a great swap command output with the following command:

swap -s | /usr/bin/tr -d /k/ | awk '{u = $9} {a = $11} {t = u+a} END {print "Usage is at "u/t*100"% ""\n"a/t*100"% is Available"}'

It'll print your swap usage in percentage--very handy.  Example:

Usage is at 48.6197%
51.3803% is Available


Also, on most Linux systems in most commands you can utilize the -h option to make things "human readable".

For example, the difference in df:


root@hiro/etc/rc.d)$ df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1              9623548   1931312   7692236  21% /
none                    160172         0    160172   0% /dev/shm
/dev/md0              58631548  51250628   7380920  88% /home
root@hiro/etc/rc.d)$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1             9.2G  1.9G  7.3G  21% /
none                  156M     0  156M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/md0               56G   49G  7.0G  88% /home
root@hiro/etc/rc.d)$


Makes things MUCH easier to read.

The lsof command lists currently open files in a system, but it can also be used to tell if a file is in use:

root@hiro/etc/rc.d)$ lsof /var/log/messages
COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE   SIZE  NODE NAME
syslogd 1067 root    5w   REG    3,1 357610 82313 /var/log/messages


However, it's not just limited to files.  If you want to know what process is taking up a certain port on your system, you can very easily check using lsof:

root@hiro/etc/rc.d)$ lsof -i :80
COMMAND   PID   USER   FD   TYPE   DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
httpd    1532 apache   29u  IPv4    60417       TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd    5128   root   29u  IPv4    60417       TCP *:http (LISTEN)
httpd   10161 apache   29u  IPv4    60417       TCP *:http (LISTEN)


You can also figure out what applications (and ports) are listening on a certain IP:

root@hiro/etc/rc.d)$ lsof -i @10.0.0.1
COMMAND   PID     USER   FD   TYPE   DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
named    1309    named   11u  IPv4     3326       UDP hiro.youknowwhat.com:domain
named    1309    named   12u  IPv4     3327       TCP hiro.youknowwhat.com:domain (LISTEN)
named    1310    named   11u  IPv4     3326       UDP hiro.youknowwhat.com:domain


Don't know what port "domain" is?  Check it in the /etc/services file:

root@hiro/etc/rc.d)$ grep domain /etc/services
domain          53/tcp                          # name-domain server
domain          53/udp


I'm sure I'll think of some more]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7285560
Tue, 01 Jul 2003 21:03:31 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7254093
Drunkula : Okay another one from the book.  So simple but cool!

To backup across the net using SSH (assuming /etc as the source to backup and bkuphost is destination hostname or IP):
tar zvcf - /etc | ssh bkuphost "cat > destfile.tgz"
You could also replace the destfile.tgz with /dev/tape to backup to tape.
--
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.  -- Benjamin Franklin]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7254093
Sat, 28 Jun 2003 12:09:34 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7248934
Drunkula : Add the following alias to your .profile then go to /var/mail and issue the ducks command to see which of your email users is sucking up the most diskspace.



alias ducks='du -cks * |sort -rn |head -11'
Okay I got it from a book but I like it...



Follow up:  This tip came from the book "Linux Server Hacks" by Rob Flickenger, published by O'Reilly.  I only got through chapter 1 so far but it seems to have some great info.  However it's geared not so much for newbies but for those with a half-way decent understanding of Linux.
[text was edited by author 2003-06-27 20:41:28]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7248934
Fri, 27 Jun 2003 20:31:57 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7224618
ftzsee :  freerock  told me about this:

 
said by  ftzsee 's ssh window:
[joel@milo joel]$ wtf is bash
bash: bash                 (1)  - GNU Bourne-Again SHell
bash [builtins]      (1)  - bash built-in commands, see bash(1)
[joel@milo joel]$ wtf is shutdown
shutdown: shutdown             (2)  - shut down part of a full-duplex connection
shutdown             (8)  - bring the system down
[joel@milo joel]$wtf is wtf
WTF: {what,where,who,why} the f*ck

It's installed with the bsd-games package in Slackware, I think.
--
Bush/Cheney 2004]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7224618
Wed, 25 Jun 2003 15:49:06 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7183285
kleeman : If you need to connect to secure remote files and edit them kde is your friend: In any kde app (eg konqueror, kwrite, kate, kdevelop.....) simply type in the open box "sftp://user@servername" where your username is user and your remote server is servername and that is sftp not s>>ftp. The latest versions on konq give beautiful tree structure for your remote file system and you can open files with a click with kwrite or kate both of which have great source highlighting facilities. When your done you just save and the remote file is updated. I am very impressed  by this kde feature, it beats the crap out of using Stallman's torture vehicle emacs and its tramp kludge addon. 

 ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7183285
Fri, 20 Jun 2003 23:27:16 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7149664
Steve :  
said by  nixen :
Why issue the sync's?
Because if you've been doing it that way for 20 years, habits are hard to break :-)

Steve
--
Stephen J. Friedl * Security Consultant * Tustin, California USA * my web site]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7149664
Tue, 17 Jun 2003 19:07:38 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7145297
nixen :  
said by  kj6loh2 :
 
said by  MrH :
 myother fav command is

shutdown -r now

weeee 


why not use sync;sync;init 6?
 

Why issue the sync's? Unless you are shutting down via halt/fasthalt, the shutdown and/or init N commands both result in syncs.

-tom
--
You can be only -so- accurate with a sledgehammer.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7145297
Tue, 17 Jun 2003 11:14:38 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7140968
bmn : Do we have any more tips and tricks to add beside kernel features ?! ;)  

If not, we can lock this up and make some of these entries on a webpage that can be linked in the links...]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7140968
Mon, 16 Jun 2003 21:14:27 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7121345
ftzsee : I think this feature was pulled for 2.5 - last time I compiled a 2.5 kernel, I couldn't find it.

It's a pretty neat feature though.
--
Bush/Cheney 2004]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7121345
Sat, 14 Jun 2003 11:57:20 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7108088
paul1238 : If you use Linux, did you know that there is a blazingly fast web server built into the kernel?

khttpd is a kernel-mode web server that is part of the Linux kernel. Because it runs as a kernel module, it is much faster than it's user-mode equivalents. 

If you simple need to serve up static content, check out khttpd. A kernel mode http server can be used to supplement web application servers as a fast static content server.

khttpd is normally built as a kernel module. Configuration of the server is performed using the procfs interface located in /proc/sys/net/khttpd]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7108088
Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:40:34 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7060990
jamies0320 : I frequently work on systems that have already, or are about to fill a filesystem (not my own doing).

I have found this to be most helpful in locating large files

assuming /var is the filesystem in question

du -ax /var |sort -nr|more

the larger files/directories will be sorted to the top, and are usually a good place to look for something that may be growing out of hand.

if you locate a file that is activly growing, you can use

fuser FILENAME

to find the process id of the user, and then

ps -ef|grep PROCESS_ID to determine who is using the file.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7060990
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 23:10:10 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7055045
Starfish :                                
This thread is awesome! :D
                             
I've already learned a few very useful tips..thank you all! :)                                 
--
Mapping Life on Earth | Join the clickeroo!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7055045
Sat, 07 Jun 2003 08:15:24 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7029069
RussianSpy4 : Thats a pretty spiffy site ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,7029069
Wed, 04 Jun 2003 14:25:16 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6991976
kleeman : Here's a great reference which is pretty comprehensive, detailed and up to date. I just used it to set up mplayer:

 »beyond.linuxfromscratch.org/view···dex.html]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6991976
Sat, 31 May 2003 10:56:59 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6987578
bbrkdub :  
quote:
While you still have connectivity, track down a couple really good networking diagnostic HOWTO pages. 


I guess you could do that, but I'd prefer to read the man pages first.
--
Hope this helps...]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6987578
Fri, 30 May 2003 19:38:18 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6984499
cprincipe : If you don't have a good book on Linux on your desk, you can often find answer to what you need online.  However, what if you can't get online or have lost your connectivity for some reason?

While you still have connectivity, track down a couple really good networking diagnostic HOWTO pages.  Create a networking directory somewhere on your machine and save those pages into that networking directory.  If you know a little html, you could code yourself a master page with links to the other pages.  That way, if you have some problems with connectivity, you've got resources right there on your PC.  (Assuming you don't want to go out and buy a book.)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6984499
Fri, 30 May 2003 13:41:57 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6938738
bgrundy : You can get a list of partitions on a disk with fdisk -l
jupiter root # fdisk -l /dev/hda
 
Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1      2550  20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2          2551      2563    104422+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3          2564      2629    530145   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda4          2630     24321 174240990    5  Extended
/dev/hda5          2630      6454  30724281   83  Linux
/dev/hda6          6455      8887  19543041   83  Linux
/dev/hda7          8888     15261  51199123+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda8         15262     20125  39070048+   c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)


You can then identify the partitions (i.e. different types of linux partitions with file -s.  

file -sL is useful for following links, i.e. with devfs.:
 jupiter root # file -sL /dev/hda2
/dev/hda2: Linux rev 1.0 ext3 filesystem data
jupiter root # file -sL /dev/hda3
/dev/hda3: Linux/i386 swap file (new style)
jupiter root # file -sL /dev/hda5
/dev/hda5: Linux rev 1.0 ext3 filesystem data (needs journal recovery)

 
 
--
"If you continue to use Windows, your system may become unstable"  --BSOD]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6938738
Sun, 25 May 2003 13:36:12 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6937308
jaklein1 : I started out life as a mainframe programmer (That's IBM MainFrames).  I've always used ISPF as an editor.  Its Full Screen, wow!  Since I installed LINUX on my home PC, I've had to learn VI.  It's a steep learning curve but I find it enjoyable to use, fun, and more flexable than other editors I used (not that I have extensive experience with Pico, Nano, or Emacs).  ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6937308
Sun, 25 May 2003 10:12:16 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6920289
paul1238 : Sometimes before making changes to a partition table or MBR, it is probably a good idea to perform a backup.

The partition table and the MBR is located on the first 512byte block of the active partition. So assuming that your boot disk is /dev/hda, you can backup your MBR and partition table with:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/tmp/hda.boot.mbr bs=512 count=1

This command will create a file called /tmp/hda.boot which will contain the MBR and partition table.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6920289
Fri, 23 May 2003 11:29:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6910281
dom6791 : Since I always forget where to do it -
If you ever want to change the default login messages
take a look at:

 
quote:
/etc/issue
/etc/issue.net
/etc/motd


If you want to make a change simply comment out the other lines. Here is my /etc/issue.net
 
quote:
#Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche)
#Kernel \r on an \m
This is a test system
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6910281
Thu, 22 May 2003 11:02:08 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6905777
NJRob : how about opening EMACS

bash-2.05$ emacs foo.txt

once in emacs - hit esc then the letter x

then type out the word "spook" (without the quotes)

great way to make your .sig file *heh*]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6905777
Wed, 21 May 2003 21:37:58 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6902787
Clangeddin : Ok, that is a cool little script.  Thanks!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6902787
Wed, 21 May 2003 16:30:49 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6897669
kj6loh2 :  
said by  elluzion :
This may be old news to many...
You can get access to a Linux computer without logging in by typing "linux single" at the LILO "boot:" prompt. I think you can type "linux emergency" as well and get the same effect.

Old news yes.  Booting in single user mode has been historically that way.  Sun and other vendors got around this by using prom passwords, which itself posed problems.  
In order to boot the machine you would need a master password.  So what's wrong with this you may ask?  
Well, what happens when this particular machine hasn't been rebooted in a long time and the administrator leaves?  and does not leave a forwarding number?  And the new administrator did not ask for the prom password and the old administrator forgot to give it?  This happens more often than you'd think.  Since no one needs this until the machine is turned off or reboot.  You do not realize the need for this prom password.  So most administrators didn't use a prom password.  This is a quick way for administrators to restore passwords, etc...
This is why many servers are put behind locked doors.
 
quote:

It boots the computer to runlevel 1

you can edit /etc/runtab or whatever config file it is and edit out run level 1 if you want. 
--
Systems administrator]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6897669
Wed, 21 May 2003 01:08:14 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6897557
kj6loh2 :  
said by  MrH :
 myother fav command is

shutdown -r now

weeee 


why not use sync;sync;init 6?
--
Systems administrator]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6897557
Wed, 21 May 2003 00:48:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6896628
kj6loh2 :  
said by  Skipdawg :

An Introduction to the Linux Command Line Interface, The Core 15 Commands 
»www.wtlug.org/story.php/view/54/


Very good.  This can be further broadened to most unixes if instead of less it referenced more.  gzip is still not on every unix out there.  Neither are killall, locate, dpkg, and rpm.  gcc is usually cc, unless the administrator put gcc on the system, since development packages usually are extra, whereas gcc is free!
--
Systems administrator]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6896628
Tue, 20 May 2003 22:52:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6887499
ftzsee :  
said by  Eatmeingreek :
Typing just / and then enter searches for the last pattern again.
 Even easier is to just press "n".
--
Bush/Cheney 2004]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6887499
Tue, 20 May 2003 00:12:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6883001
Eatmeingreek : You can search for patterns in man pages in the same way as you search in vi - using a slash ("/".)

Say for example, that you wanted to know more about history files in bash(1). After typing "man bash", you'd type something like "/istory".  I like to leave the first letter off, so I catch both "History" and "history".

Typing just / and then enter searches for the last pattern again.  This is the same as "find next".  You can space through the man page looking for items of interest this way.
--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6883001
Mon, 19 May 2003 16:15:20 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6813427
SuperJudge :  
said by  MrH :
when installing gentoo(www.gentoo.org) besure to read ALL the directions :) 
That is the damn truth.  Keep the installation help page on another computer screen or print it out (on 29 sheets of paper).
--
I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time". So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6813427
Sun, 11 May 2003 12:09:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6788827
Eatmeingreek : You can use split(1) to break up large files into smaller chunks.  You can then use cat(1) to reassemble the chunks. This is useful for sending large files over email and maybe dialup.  I'd think wget -c is probably a better option for dialup, though.

Example:

code:
[me@centaur temp]$ ls -lh
total 778M
...
-rw-------    1 me     me          33M Mar 21 12:23 vse701trial_linux.tar
...
[me@centaur temp]$ split -b 2m vse701trial_linux.tar 
[me@centaur temp]$ ls -lh
total 811M
...
-rw-------    1 me     me          33M Mar 21 12:23 vse701trial_linux.tar
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xaa
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xab
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xac
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xad
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xae
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xaf
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xag
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xah
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xai
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xaj
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xak
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xal
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xam
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xan
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xao
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xap
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         752k May  8 11:18 xaq
...
[me@centaur temp]$ cat xa? > vsenew.tar
[me@centaur temp]$ ls -lh
total 844M
...
-rw-------    1 me     me          33M Mar 21 12:23 vse701trial_linux.tar
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me          33M May  8 11:21 vsenew.tar
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xaa
-rw-rw-r--    1 me     me         2.0M May  8 11:18 xab
...

--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6788827
Thu, 08 May 2003 14:35:26 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6756088
MrH : when installing gentoo(www.gentoo.org) besure to read ALL the directions :)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6756088
Mon, 05 May 2003 02:05:35 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6747283
shdesigns : Man page shows the command as part if X (XFree86)

Worked on RH8, 752 colors.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6747283
Sun, 04 May 2003 01:40:22 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6746685
revrus : Works on Suse 8.1 long list the 100 shades of grey kind of surprised me.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6746685
Sun, 04 May 2003 00:06:26 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6741693
Mospaw :  
said by  sago :
I can't vouch for Linux, ...typing ... showrgb ... gives you a list of colors that are available on your system.
I tried it on my local file server, a fairly sparse SuSE 8.0 installation (no GUI) as well as my public web server (SuSE 8.0, a few more services, but still no GUI), and the showrgb didn't work. It did, however, work on my local web server (SuSE 8.0) which has KDE (and a lot more stuff) installed.

it was a really long list. :)
--
My life is a continual parody of my life.
--]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6741693
Sat, 03 May 2003 12:55:40 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6739887
sago : I can't vouch for Linux, (haven't tried it on Linux) - but on I can vouch for Solaris and FreeBSD - 

           typing

bash-2.05$ showrgb

this gives you a list of colors that are available on your system - for instance if you want to start up an xterm in a different foreground and/or background color, or set the color of your window frames (in fvwm2, for instance).

Still need to find a good way to create a way of previewing the color...]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6739887
Sat, 03 May 2003 05:41:47 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6731999
bleatingedge : If I would have read to the end of this thread before replying, I would have noticed how unnecessary it was.

D'oh!

Michael
--
DirecWay SRS | Satmex5 | 1230 | GW: 66.82.158.16 | Win2K Host | 8 XP/Linux/Solaris Clients | Wireless LAN]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6731999
Fri, 02 May 2003 12:01:56 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6731958
bleatingedge :  
said by  AITechSE :
Lose a file on your file system? Or want to find every file with foo in it?  Try this as root in /:

find .. | grep foo


That will find every file with 'foo' in the name. One thing that I usually do if I want to find files that *contain* 'foo' is something like this:

find .  -type f | xargs grep foo

Narrowing it down to only files speeds things up a bit. It's been my experience that xargs is always faster than the exec function of find because it only spawns one process, where exec spawns one for every file found.

YMMV

Michael
--
DirecWay SRS | Satmex5 | 1230 | GW: 66.82.158.16 | Win2K Host | 8 XP/Linux/Solaris Clients | Wireless LAN]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6731958
Fri, 02 May 2003 11:57:12 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6730008
sago : Alternate ways of using your bash shell 

by typing "history" at the command prompt you will the last commands you have entered (the number and types of commands saved in your command history can be adjusted). 

By using the "!" exclamation point, you can select that command and re-run it. 

Here I am manually opening the seti@home client in my home directory. 

bash-2.05$ cd seti
bash-2.05$ ls
bash-2.05$ cd seti-3.03.i386-unknown-freebsd2.2.8
bash-2.05$ ./setiathome -verbose

in my history file this will generate (after one failed attempt because of an extra dash)

502  cd seti/
503  ls
504  cd setiathome-3.03.i386-unknown-freebsd2.2.8
505  ls
506  ./setiathome --verbose
507  ./setiathome -verbose

now... 

bash-2.05$ !502; !504; !507

does the same thing as 

bash-2.05$ cd seti; cdsetiathome-3.03.i386-unknown-freebsd2.2.8; ./setiathome -verbose
 
this is what it looks like in the history now... 

508  history
509  cd 
510  cd seti/; cd setiathome-3.03.i386-unknown-freebsd2.2.8; ./setiathome -verbose
511  history

now... look for a pattern in the command line you want to execute

bash-2.05$  !?verb?

	surround that part with question marks

512  cd seti/; cd setiathome-3.03.i386-unknown-freebsd2.2.8; ./setiathome -verbose
513  history

does the same thing. 

Actually, the bash shell has two modes - vi and emacs.  Imagine each of your previous commands as lines in an emacs or vi file (vi is the default mode).  You can move from line to line, edit the lines, change a letter or two, press enter as you wish. (although you only see one line at a time at your prompt).  You can also set how many lines of history you want to have, or save certain types (or only certain types) of commands. 

There is much much more, as well. It can get pretty confusing, but I do recommend reading "man bash" if you have the time sometime. It's interesting, to say the least. 

Of course it's just much easier to create a shell script, but bash is pretty cool when you look a little deeper into it. ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6730008
Fri, 02 May 2003 05:56:15 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6729452
Sens Rule : For those of us who can't type.. I like the following for removing files with weird name like '* holycow&'

rm -i -- *

It will list each file and ask if you want to delete it..]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6729452
Fri, 02 May 2003 01:59:33 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6726529
dom6791 : Here is a tip someone in this very forum gave me. If you ever want to remotely log in, execute a script and logout with the script running and not terminating it (as long as the script continues running) simply start the script using 'nohup'.
code:
$nohup scriptname.sh &

This is something that I have found very valuable. Thanx to whomever provided me that answer!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6726529
Thu, 01 May 2003 20:00:27 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6672689
stefaanE :  
said by  nixen :
Dude... what's the bit with being exec happy on your find statements? ;) 
 You might have noticed I was explaining the reason for the semicolon and the associated escape, not how to use "find" in a system-friendly way. 
The point is well taken though - but in my 25 years of Unix (I learned the trade on the 7th Edition), I've never had a system choke on fork/execs generated by (even a very ill-conceived) find command. 

Talking about system load, the most remarkable case of sluggishness I encountered was caused by Oracle appending, on each transaction, a couple of bytes to a log file that had grown to several hundreds of megabytes. The DBAs had experience with Oracle 8, and didn't realise that on an instance Oracle 7 running on the system (a Sun Enterprise 5000 if memory serves) logging was turned on by default (Oracle changed it to off for 8). No-one understood why the legacy system using Oracle 7 was running in treacle until I had the idea to truss the process - opening the log file, appending a few bytes and closing it took several seconds... 

Take care,

Stefaan
--
"Technically, Windows is an 'operating system,' which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating." -Dave Barry 
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6672689
Sat, 26 Apr 2003 05:03:19 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6670852
nixen : Dude... what's the bit with being exec happy on your find statements? ;)

Remember, each time you get a match that causes an exec, you fork off a process. If you only have a few matches, fine. However, if you have a bunch of them, you are going to KILL your system. For example, with your find . -type f -exec rm -f {} \; -print, given 1000 matches, you do 1000 exec's/processes. If you, instead, rewrite that as find . -type f -print | xargs rm, you might spawn off 4-5 extra processes beyond the basic find. That's a lot friendlier to your system.

-tom
--
You can be only -so- accurate with a sledgehammer.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6670852
Fri, 25 Apr 2003 22:52:02 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6666282
stefaanE :  
said by  Daniel :
 
said by  stefaanE :
Thus, you have to escape them to protect them from being interpreted by the shell, and passed to "find" as positional parameters instead.
Ok, so you are saying that a semicolon is needed in order to do the command correctly, but that if you don't escape it, it will be seen as an end to the entire command (like in c)?  
 Correct - it would be the end of one shell statement, and the remaining words would no longer be part of the parameters passed to the find command.
 
said by  Daniel :
That makes sense.  So the semicolon (when escaped) is actually similar to a pipe in this case, right?  Sort of like a continuation to the next command.  Otherwise, why not just omit the semicolon altogether?  You wouldn't have to escape something that wasn't there, so it must be being used as a transition from one command to another, right? 
 It's not like a pipe - that's again a shell metacharacter, and it means something akin to the semicolon ("end the command and pipe the standard output into the standard input of the command after the pipe, run both of them concurrently", versus "end the command and start a new one after the first has finished"). 
The semicolon must be escaped because it is interpreted by the "find" command. You can't omit it because otherwise "find" cannot determine when your -exec ends (remember that the commands introduced by exec can have - options:

$ find . -type f -exec rm -f {} \; -print

As you can see, you need a special character to tell find that the command started by -exec is finished. 

That being said, "find" could have been designed differently, but it has its own logic nonetheless.

Take care,

Stefaan
--
"Technically, Windows is an 'operating system,' which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating." -Dave Barry 
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6666282
Fri, 25 Apr 2003 13:48:14 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6665473
Daniel :  
said by  stefaanE :
Semicolons are special to the shell, they terminate a statement just like the end-of-line.
Right, this is what I understood.



 
said by  stefaanE :
Thus, you have to escape them to protect them from being interpreted by the shell, and passed to "find" as positional parameters instead.
Ok, so you are saying that a semicolon is needed in order to do the command correctly, but that if you don't escape it, it will be seen as an end to the entire command (like in c)? 



That makes sense.  So the semicolon (when escaped) is actually similar to a pipe in this case, right?  Sort of like a continuation to the next command.  Otherwise, why not just omit the semicolon altogether?  You wouldn't have to escape something that wasn't there, so it must be being used as a transition from one command to another, right?

--

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." - Sun Tzu
[text was edited by author 2003-04-25 12:26:51]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6665473
Fri, 25 Apr 2003 12:23:48 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6663004
stefaanE :  
said by  Daniel :
 
said by  stefaanE :
$ find /home \( -exec grep TEST {} \; -o -user "me" \) -exec rm {} \;
Ok, sounds great.  I am iffy, however, on the whole use of the escaped semicolon.  How does that work?
 
Semicolons are special to the shell, they terminate a statement just like the end-of-line, which is why

if [ -z "$a" ]
then

is the same as

if [ -z "$a" ] ; then

Thus, you have to escape them to protect them from being interpreted by the shell, and passed to "find" as positional parameters instead. "find" considers the parameters between the -exec (or -ok) and the semicolon as one expression returning either TRUE or FALSE. When an expression evaluates to FALSE, "find" moves to the next file, otherwise it evaluates the next expression. In the example above, if the file contains the word "TEST" or is owned by "me", then it is deleted. Again, the parentheses are special to the shell and need to be protected by either a backslash or by putting them in quotes. 

Take care,

Stefaan
--
"Technically, Windows is an 'operating system,' which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating." -Dave Barry 
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6663004
Fri, 25 Apr 2003 03:15:52 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6658967
Daniel :  
said by  stefaanE :
$ find /home \( -exec grep TEST {} \; -o -user "me" \) -exec rm {} \;
Ok, sounds great.  I am iffy, however, on the whole use of the escaped semicolon.  How does that work?
--
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." - Sun Tzu]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6658967
Thu, 24 Apr 2003 18:24:10 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6657165
elboricua : Wow loads of good info here.  I am surprised that no one mentioned tac.  I use it alot. tac works just like cat only reveresed hence the name tac.



Here is an example.



code:
cat somefile
testing
this
out
to
see
how
cat
and
tac
work




If we use tac it will show the file in reverse order.



code:
tac somefile

work

tac

and

cat

how

see

to

out

this

testing


--

Si te quieres divertir,

con encanto y con primor 

sólo tienes que vivir, Un Verano En Nueva York.


[text was edited by author 2003-04-24 18:58:09]]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6657165
Thu, 24 Apr 2003 14:55:17 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6654649
nixen : If you have a Solaris system that you want to do a quick disk inventory on:

   (iostat -En ; echo) | sed '{
      s/ *Soft.*$//
      s/ *Revision.*$//
      s/ *Product: / /
      s/ <.*$//
      s/^Vendor/   &/
      s/^Size/   &/
      /^Media/d
      /^Illegal/d
      }' | sed '{
      /Size/{N
      s/\n/&&/
      }
   }'

You may want to run devfsadm, first, to make sure that all drives that the OS can query are actually in the hardware graph.

-tom
--
You can be only -so- accurate with a sledgehammer.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6654649
Thu, 24 Apr 2003 09:28:39 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6653145
ftzsee : I know.  I knew about `killall' before I knew about `kill', but /sbin/pidof is pretty nifty too :D]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6653145
Thu, 24 Apr 2003 00:19:43 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6650817
davidsmind :  
said by  ftzsee :
/sbin/pidof [process name] prints the PID of the process.  This is useful for kill -9 `/sbin/pidof whatever`


The killall command works just the same as this, example:

killall smbd

or to be harsh:

killall -9 smbd

Ta Da!
--
 "Unix is the most user friendly system I know, it's just picky about who it considers a friend."]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6650817
Wed, 23 Apr 2003 20:21:13 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6618714
fritzmp : here is one that mite interest people. To loose the redhat logo for the start main menu in RH8 and RH9 and make the foot global across the themes the fast easy way, or any icon you choose. 

Get a Gnome Foot icon .png. Rename it redhat-main-menu.png and cp it to /usr/share/pixmaps copying over the RedHat logo.
--
Free The Code, but remember there is a world outside. Stepping away from the box will help you solve the answers you seek. Anger blocks thought.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6618714
Sun, 20 Apr 2003 10:27:15 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6615216
ftzsee : More fun:

/sbin/pidof [process name] prints the PID of the process.  This is useful for kill -9 `/sbin/pidof whatever`

If you edit your ~/.bashrc or /etc/profile, you don't have to reboot / close your terminal for the changes to take effect.  Just type source ~/.bashrc or source /etc/profile

Typing wget http: //web/path/to/a/file.tar.gz, the file will be downloaded to the directory you are in.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6615216
Sat, 19 Apr 2003 20:18:15 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6614607
davidsmind : Typing 'cd' and 'cd' alone will bring you back to your home directory.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6614607
Sat, 19 Apr 2003 18:38:42 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6607120
ftzsee : When is this topic coming off sticky?

$ cd - will put you in the directory you were last in.  I use this a lot.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6607120
Fri, 18 Apr 2003 19:54:00 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6544070
stefaanE : find is remarkably powerful:

To find and remove all the files with "TEST" in them:
$ find ~ -exec grep TEST {} \; -exec rm {} \;

If you want a prompt before the command is executed, replace
-exec with -ok:
$ find ~ -exec grep SPAM {} \; -ok mv {} /var/tmp/SPAM \;

One can also group "find" expressions:

$ find /home \( -exec grep TEST {} \; -o -user "me" \) -exec rm {} \;
will delete all the files that contain TEST or belong to user "me".

Take care,
--
"Technically, Windows is an 'operating system,' which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating." -Dave Barry 
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6544070
Fri, 11 Apr 2003 17:49:44 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6535243
Eatmeingreek : I use "which" and "what" almost daily. "which" will tell you where in your PATH a binary is.  "what" will tell you some things about how that binary was compiled. E.g.,
code:
bash-2.04$ which telnet
/usr/bin/telnet
bash-2.04$ what /usr/bin/telnet
/usr/bin/telnet:
	commands.c	8.4 (Berkeley) 5/30/95
	 Copyright (c) 1988, 1990, 1993
	main.c	8.3 (Berkeley) 5/30/95
	kerberos.c	8.3 (Berkeley) 5/30/95
	auth.c	8.3 (Berkeley) 5/30/95
	enc_des.c	8.3 (Berkeley) 5/30/95


"what" doesn't appear to exist on Linux (tried Redhat 7.3 and Gentoo.)  It exists on most other Unices (I've used it on Tru64, AIX, and HP-UX.)  It may not be in your PATH on Solaris (/usr/ccs/bin/what.)
--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6535243
Thu, 10 Apr 2003 18:36:26 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6472706
Drunkula : Okay we slowed down so I'll post another.  I'm not sure if this was covered already but...



Temporarily change the runlevel at boot time in Linux:

1.  If you use Grub as the bootloader highlight the Linux kernel you want to boot and just add the number of the runlevel you wish to boot after the respective command.  Be sure there is a space between the runlevel and the other parameters.



2. If you use LILO as a boot loader hit the TAB key to bring up the boot list.  Select the one you want boot by typing it's name followed by the runlevel number.  (example linux 3)



If your default boot is to runlevel 5 this is a quick and easy way to change to textmode or single user or whatever.  Check your distro docs for the different runlevel uses....

--

Real patriots don't criticize their President!

»www.drunkula.net:5517/
[text was edited by author 2003-04-03 19:28:59]]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6472706
Thu, 03 Apr 2003 19:10:23 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6451789
Smitedogg : To run some shell commands while doing a vi edit session enter ":", then enter "shell".

This suspends the vi session and gives you a command prompt where you can use any shell command. When finished, enter the "exit" command and you will be returned to the vi session. 

Dogg
--
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. --Napoleon]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6451789
Tue, 01 Apr 2003 17:42:55 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6409191
jknowler : [RedHat/bash] !Be careful with this one! I found this to be helpful and time saving when getting rid of old kernels and lib module files. Go to the directory where your boot kernel files live. I keep mine in /boot. Enter "rm *xx-yy*" (don't enter the quotes)  where xx-yy is the kernel version you want to remove.  I keep confirm set "ON" so it asks me to delete each file, a safety precaution just in case things go hay-wire :) MAKE SURE IT'S DELETING WHAT YOU WANT! and say "Y" for each file.  Move to the /lib/modules directory and do the same thing. In summation: the file mask character "*" can be used multiple times and where ever you need in the file spec. 
--
EL SRS DAK403_P8, SM 5/990, GW 144, Proxomitron Proxy On, Dual PII 350's, w/256M Ram, XP Pro & ICS, RH & XP clients]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6409191
Fri, 28 Mar 2003 01:01:02 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6386442
lokem : Since there are a couple posts regarding the "find" command, here's an additional one to it ;)  If there's a need to do something to the result of the "find" command, here's how to do it:

find . -name 'core' -exec rm {} \;

The {} string represents the current file name.  While \; is a way to end the -exec param.  The semicolon needs to be escaped.

Hope this helps!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6386442
Tue, 25 Mar 2003 21:01:55 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6386197
lokem : If you'd like to know who has logged in previously, try the "last" command.  You could also use the "lastb" command which also shows the bad login attempts.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6386197
Tue, 25 Mar 2003 20:41:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6371633
tomkb : The following makes vim SO much easier to use.  You can use the arrow keys, delete key, as well as backspace keys much easier, more like a regular editor.  It's very simple, do the following.

In your home directory (most likely /root), create the following invisible file with vim. 

vim /root/.vimrc

(The period in front makes it invisible)

Add the following 2 lines to the file and save the file with the normal :wq

set nocompatible
set bs=2

That's it!  You will be pleasantly surprised with the ease of use next time you use vim.
--
clenetworks.net]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6371633
Mon, 24 Mar 2003 11:44:02 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6337838
fritzmp : favicon.ico Making one for your WebSite on your  *NIX workstation

You know, that cool little icon in your URL field in your browser.

.ico is a MS icon file so you need to convert it. How you say and with what.

With the Gimp and png2ico.

You create the image with the Gimp and save as a .png then convert it with png2ico.

png2ico
»www.winterdrache.de/freeware/png···dex.html

Try to keep the number of colors below 16 and create a 16-color icon using the --colors 16 switch of png2ico (or even create a b/w icon with the --colors 2 switch). This will result in a smaller file that loads faster. 

The short of it is, a favicon.ico is 16x16 pix and 16 color,this is most common, but some browsers support 32 colors.

Then adding a "link rel=" html tags in the head of your pages.

link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"

link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"

This link is a good HOWTO:
»www.winterdrache.de/freeware/png···con.html

This would be a good webmonks tip, but I figured that a lot of people new to *nix are coming to set up web services and mostly Web. Also how to do it on a *Nix box. 

 
--
Free The Code, but remember there is a world outside. Stepping away from the box will help you solve the answers you seek. Anger blocks thought.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6337838
Thu, 20 Mar 2003 15:53:01 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6325155
nixen : ${HOME}/.ssh/ssh_config can make your life a bit easier. You can use that file to specify different behaviors by hostname, etc. Read the man pages for ssh_config. It's pretty slick.

-tom
--
You can be only -so- accurate with a sledgehammer.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6325155
Wed, 19 Mar 2003 10:37:02 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6324702
elluzion : This was new to me today...



Your system probably has a default web browser that gets launched automatically whenever some html needs to be viewed or a link is clicked or whatever. However, you may want to change the system's default browser. Or, you may want your account to use a different broswer than the rest of the system's accounts.



In the first case, changing the system's overall default browser, you do this by editing or creating a file named /etc/htmlview.conf using the following format...



X11BROWSER=<path to browser>



So, for instance...



X11BROWSER=/usr/local/mozilla/mozilla



In the second case, you can set a different browser for just your account by editing or creating a file named ~/.htmlviewrc using the same format as above.
[text was edited by author 2003-03-19 09:28:14]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6324702
Wed, 19 Mar 2003 09:27:16 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6322918
Eatmeingreek : This was a big "duh" for me.  I found myself compiling lots of kernels for my old laptop in trying to get the PCMCIA stuff to work properly.  Problem was it took forever for them to compile on the wheezy Pentium I 266 CPU it has.

It dawned on me I could compile the kernels on my desktop system and just scp them over...

Better still, my desktop has enough disk space that I can keep lots of different kernel source trees on it.  So I could be fiddling with 2.4.19 on the laptop while my desktop crunched away at compiling 2.4.20.
--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6322918
Wed, 19 Mar 2003 00:31:29 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6322387
ironwalker : clock on the top of your terminal: Edit the profile file, vi /etc/profile and add the following line: PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\0337\033[2;999r\033[1;1H\033[00;44m\033[K"`date`"\033[00m\0338"'

 
The result will look like: 
--
"LIVE FREE OR DIE"


www.Theforumz.com

]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6322387
Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:30:18 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6315447
cangeceiro : "man tuning" gives some tips how to tune performance of your FreeBSD system
--
Bang Bang Bang your head(on the desk)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6315447
Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:11:26 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6308960
movement3 : These commands have been helpful to me:

Secure Copy through SSH:

This is handy if you need to copy a file through an encrypted tunnel on one system to another when the file is not under the web or FTP directory.

scp [filename] [remote host address]:/path/remote/computer

scp some_filename bob@domain.com:/home/bob/
or
scp some_filename bob@111.111.111.111:/home/bob/

Screen:

Have multiple screens open rather than having several putty sessions open on your desktop. You can also open a screen session, run a process, close putty and the process will continue.

screen to start a screen session
Ctrl-a (press Ctrl and a at the same time) n to scroll through your different screens if you have more than one.
Ctrl-a d to detached from your screen, and regular to your regular terminal.
screen –r to resume a running screen session

chattr and lsattr:

One time I wanted to delete a filename but it had chattr +i filename on it, without issuing chattr –i you cannot delete or chmod the file. lsattr filename to see what attributes it currently has.

strace:

When you do a top and see a process is taking up the CPU percentage, but you do not know where it’s coming from. Strace will give you a verbose detail output of what the particular process is doing; it can provide clues for troubleshooting.

strace -s 1000 -fxtvo /root/output -p [Process ID]

With these flags, the results of strace will be sent to /root/output. ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6308960
Mon, 17 Mar 2003 19:23:14 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6298674
Gigantopithi : Use distcc to compile across several hosts.  Great for compiling xfree86, kde, gnome.  Saves loads of time and is very efficient if done on a lan.
--
Do you think that's air you're breathing?]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6298674
Sun, 16 Mar 2003 18:45:58 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6296421
Eatmeingreek :  
said by  jknowler :
I have not seen anything about "filename completion".  Key part of the filename and hit the TAB key...
This works by default in bash.  There are ways to do it in the other shells, but I've never researched it, 'cause I almost always use bash.

BTW, did you know you can configure Windows to do this too?

»www.microsoft.com/windows2000/te···tion.asp
»www.fuzzygroup.com/writing/windo···tion.htm
--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6296421
Sun, 16 Mar 2003 14:07:43 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6288370
peterr : Here's my fave:

When faced with deleting a file containing weird characters (especially the previously mentioned file starting with "-"), I use the "unlink" command which does not process any switches.  This lives in /usr/sbin for linux.

/usr/sbin/unlink -stupid_file_name

/P]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6288370
Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:22:13 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6284731
Skipdawg : I love this online tool for finding RPM's »www.rpmfind.net ;)
--
Proud US Navy Veteran.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6284731
Sat, 15 Mar 2003 03:10:34 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6283654
bgrundy : Watching a file "grow"...

If I'm moving a large file across a network (piped through rsh or ssh), or dd'ing a large file (disk image, etc.) I cat watch the progress with the "watch" command.  Basically, it runs the same command over and over again (every 2 seconds by default).

for example, watching the progress of a 2 GB dd image:
-issue the dd command
-switch to another terminal
-"watch ls -lh"
-the "ls" output is updated every two seconds...Progress is now visible.
 
 
--
"If you continue to use Windows, your system may become unstable"  --BSOD]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6283654
Fri, 14 Mar 2003 23:55:02 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6281589
jknowler : I have not seen anything about "filename completion".  Key part of the filename and hit the TAB key.  Works for directories to!  I have worn out more TAB keys on my keyboards.  Also, Hit the up and down arrow keys to scroll up and down through previously entered command lines. Once you find the command you want, hit the forward/back arrow keys, make corrections and hit ENTER.  *whoosh*  :)



Edit:I almost forgot, on "filename completion" hit TAB twice to get a listing of possibilities.  This is helpful you get lost in a long directory path.

--

EL SRS DAK403_P5, SatMex 5/990, GW 144, Proxy Off, RWin 474280, MTU 1500, Dual PII 350's, w/256M Ram, XP Pro w/ICS, RedHat & XP clients

[text was edited by author 2003-03-14 20:35:41]


[text was edited by author 2003-03-14 20:37:12]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6281589
Fri, 14 Mar 2003 20:32:20 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6271773
a_use_r : Want to speed up login time with ssh?

vi /(ssh_base)/etc/ssh_prng_cmds

Remove all commands that don't apply to your particular system/os.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6271773
Thu, 13 Mar 2003 20:51:17 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6271592
BeesTea : Mojosan,

You can just take advantage of shell expansion and accomplish the same thing.

ps -ax | grep [f]oo

will return only procesees named foo, the grep in the process table will not be included.

Cheers,
-BeesT]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6271592
Thu, 13 Mar 2003 20:31:45 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6263915
soulburner : I don't have much to lend, but it was kind of useful to me, so I'll pass it along.

code:
apropos searches a set of database files containing short descriptions of
system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard output.


So, apropos 'expression' would find all commands that have 'expression' in the name/description of the command.

»www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/73 has also helped me out with learning a few things about my FreeBSD box.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6263915
Thu, 13 Mar 2003 01:18:39 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6256165
bbrkdub :  
quote:
i think we should just jump onto the subject of how too root eachothers boxes so we can test all these cool little tricks


Let's don't and say we did :)

Here's another trick I found while reading and OpenBSD article awhile back. This script outputs the PID of a program, w/o the extra 'grep' PID process being displayed. I stripped a little bit of the documentation portion of my script header, so please excuse the mess.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Prerequisite(s):
#  1) A basic understanding of shell programming.
#
# Syntax:
#  pid [pattern]
#
# Example(s):
#  pid root
#  pid sendmail
#

if [ $# != 1 ]
then
  echo "Usage: $0 [pattern]"
  exit 1
fi

ps -awwwwx | grep -v grep | grep $1
--
Hope this helps...]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6256165
Wed, 12 Mar 2003 12:16:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6255374
MrH : i think we should just jump onto the subject of how too root eachothers boxes so we can test all these cool little tricks :D

jp jp jp :D]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6255374
Wed, 12 Mar 2003 10:41:58 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6254627
SuperJudge : Hopefully I'll be able to use half of these some day.  ;)
--
Updated My Journal]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6254627
Wed, 12 Mar 2003 08:48:59 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6248604
paul1238 :  
said by  Steve :
Yes, the numbers aren't hard to learn
Yeah, I thought so too except for the errors with the numbers in my original post :o

Thanks for  freerock  for pointing them out.

 
said by  paul1238 :
rwx------ which represents three sets of bits where each group is made up of three bits. So the groups of bits from right to left describe the: OWNER, GROUP, and WORLD access permissions. Each of the three bits in a group represent READ, WRITE, EXECUTE from right to left.
That should be from left to right. 
 
said by  paul1238 :
Two commonly used bits in the fourth group of bits are the the setuid bit which is 100 000 000 000 (4000 in octal) and the sticky bit which is 100 000 000 000 (1000 in octal).
Obviously, the numbers should not be the same. The sticky bit is 001 000 000 000 which is octal 1000.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6248604
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 18:00:04 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6247680
dom6791 : Im totally surprised by everyone's very helpful tips!
I had no idea of ANY of these tricks whatsoever. Or of the number of generous posts! Far more than I originally expected :) 

I have been printing these posts since you guys started :)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6247680
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 16:39:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6246948
sporkme :  
said by  bbrkdub :

# cat ~/bin/scroll
#!/bin/sh
cat $@ | less

 


Why not just "less filename"?

As to vi -R, usually "view" is a link that will do the same.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6246948
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 15:30:57 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6246357
Eatmeingreek :  
said by  Steve :
Yes, the numbers aren't hard to learn, but they are not relative.
That is a disadvantage to me.  I seldom want to set relative permissions on a bunch of files.  I often want to set absolute permissions on a single file.
--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6246357
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 14:26:45 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6245499
bbrkdub : Ok, I'll add another one. If you like cat(1) and less(1), then combine them to 'scroll' through your files. I use this little script for viewing a lot of my documentation without risking an accidental write from vi(1) (NOTE: I know about vi -R, but I like the way this script works).

# cat ~/bin/scroll
#!/bin/sh
cat $@ | less


Then, I just add an alias to my ~/.bashrc file:

alias s='scroll'
--
Hope this helps...]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6245499
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 12:51:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6244841
Steve :  
said by  Eatmeingreek :
I dunno, Steve. I find the numbers much easier to remember than the alphabet soup. At this point I just know 0600 means read and write by owner without doing the math.  There really are only a few combinations that are really useful. 
Yes, the numbers aren't hard to learn, but they are not relative. If you want to make your files unreadable by anybody else: 
code:
# ls -l
-r--r--r--   1 root      9825 Jan 11  2000 License.txt
-r--r--r--   1 root      7060 Jan 11  2000 README
-r--r--r--   1 root     23065 Jan 11  2000 Release_Notes
-r--r--r--   1 root      3301 Feb 15  2000 install.cfg
-r-xr-xr-x   1 root     31919 Jan 11  2000 install.sh*
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root      1024 Jan 11  2000 pkg/

# chmod 600 *

# ls -l
-rw-------   1 root      9825 Jan 11  2000 License.txt
-rw-------   1 root      7060 Jan 11  2000 README
-rw-------   1 root     23065 Jan 11  2000 Release_Notes
-rw-------   1 root      3301 Feb 15  2000 install.cfg
-rw-------   1 root     31919 Jan 11  2000 install.sh
drw-------   2 root      1024 Jan 11  2000 pkg/
Oops! You just made install.sh un-executable, and now you can't visit the pkg subdirectory anymore - your numeric modes acted on bits you didn't care about.

But chmod og= * would have done exactly what you wanted in one step.

Steve
--
Stephen J. Friedl • Security Consultant • Tustin, California USA • my web site]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6244841
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 11:22:23 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6244751
SegFault : Here's one I recently picked up (at least on Linux)...I've been using different unix for about 15 years and have always been annoyed that when I setup a crontab job to run every 5 minutes, I had to enter 0,5,10,15,20,25,etc into the crontab file. Instead I found out that you can use "/" to divide up the settings so the following runs every 5 minutes:

*/5 * * * * /bin/some/command

The following runs every 4 hours:

* */4 * * * /bin/some/command

You get the picture...check out man 5 crontab
--
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6244751
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 11:10:10 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6244022
Schmackdown : Here's two I use on a regular basis. First, puTTY keys. I log in to about 5 RH 7.3/8.0 machines on a regular basis from a win2k box, and using Pageant and openSSH makes things a lot easier. You need puTTY, Puttygen and Pageant, all available from the puTTY website. Crank up Puttygen and kick out an SSH2 RSA key. Name it something(I usually name my keys after the workstation I'm logging in from), and give it a passphrase. Copy the text in the field at the top of the window, then save the private key on your hard drive. Open up puTTY, configure it to connect to your linux box using SSH2 and your username, then create a .ssh folder in your home directory if it's not there already. Set permissions on that to 755, cd to it and create a file called .authorized_keys. Edit it and paste in the key you copied from puttygen(vi .authorized_keys, hit i, right-click the mouse button for that sweet puTTY paste action, esc, :wq! and you're done), change the permissions on that file to 644, exit the session, open Pageant and load in your private key via the passphrase, open the connection from puTTY again and BAM it should authenticate with the key from Pageant. As a bonus, you get a computer with a fedora hanging out in your system tray.

Note that if you have ssh.org's SSH2 suite rather than openSSH, you'll have to do things a little differently, but the principle is the same. ssh.com should have documentation for it.

Second tip: use date's many flags to label files. I have a number of cron jobs that archive database dumps, transaction logs, access logs, etc. into tarballs that are labeled by date. Here's an example line from a cron job that uses date:

tar -zcf /scratch/dumps/MS-SQL/`date +%b%d%Y`MS-SQL.tar.gz /scratch/DMT*.dmp

That gives an output similar to Feb182003MS-SQL.tar.gz- it means I can stack up job output in a central directory until they get to be the perfect size for a CD, which gets monitored by another cron job. 'man date' for a slew of other options.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6244022
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 09:38:51 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242703
fritzmp : That proves to me Steve does lots of technical writing, which I hate. Bless those who that have the gift.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242703
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 02:08:42 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242690
Eatmeingreek : I dunno, Steve. I find the numbers much easier to remember than the alphabet soup. At this point I just know 0600 means read and write by owner without doing the math.  There really are only a few combinations that are really useful.
--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242690
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 02:04:50 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242663
Steve :  
said by somebody quoted by  paul1238 :
 Some no0bs don't understand the number system that is associated with files and directories.
Neither the n00bs nor anybody else should fool with the numbers: it's difficult and often dangerous. Much better is to use the symbolic permissions, which are much less subject to surprises.

Symbolic permissions with chmod are a list of "sets", each of which is

scope
operation
permissions

"scope" is one or more of:
•u = user (the owner of the file)•g = group•o = other•a = same as ugo


"operation" is one of
•+ add the permissions to existing ones•- subtract the permissions to existing ones•= set the permissions absolutely


"permissions" is one or more or
•r read permissions•w write permissions•x execute permissions
(yes, there are other permissions, such as sticky bit and setuid, but that's all in the man pages).

By stringing these together you can do what you want:

chmod a+r * - make all files readable

Because these permissions are relative, they don't destroy existing permission bits that you don't care about. There is no single numeric mode that would do this because no matter what you pick, it's going to muck with the (for instance) execute bits that you don't really want to. This means that you'll end up with directories that you can't get to any more.

Even when you do want to set hardcode permissions, do it with the symbolic mods:

chmod a=rwx * - same as chmod 777
chmod og= *  - take away *everything* from others and group, but not touching "user" permissions

I cannot think of a downsize of the symbolic permissions, but I sure as hell can with the numbers.

Steve
--
Stephen J. Friedl • Security Consultant • Tustin, California USA • my web site]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242663
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 01:56:53 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242051
paul1238 :  
said by  fritzmp :
File Permissions: Some no0bs don't understand the number system that is associated with files and directories.
Good idea for a tip. I hope you don't mind if I elaborate a bit.

In order to understand the filesystem's concept of permissions and file mode, it's important to remember that the file information are stored as bits. When using chmod or displaying file permissions and modes with ls -l, those applications are actually using a short-form notation.

The symbolic representation for a file permission can be:

rwx------ which represents three sets of bits where each group is made up of three bits. So the groups of bits from right to left describe the: OWNER, GROUP, and WORLD access permissions. Each of the three bits in a group represent READ, WRITE, EXECUTE from right to left. 

The numbers that are used are base-8 or octal numbers not decimal numbers. An octal number is a convienient method of representing groups of three bits. 

So when you do chmod 755 somefile, you are actually using octal numbers to represent the bit stream 
111 101 101. 

Note, that there are actually more bits available that describe a file. Two commonly used bits in the  fourth group of bits are the the setuid bit which is 100 000 000 000 (4000 in octal) and the sticky bit which is 100 000 000 000 (1000 in octal).

So for example, if you want to create a file with setuid access, you might do chmod 4755 somefile. This would represent the bit stream 100 111 101 101.

The file mode bits actually contain several other bits which are not normally accessible to chmod but are available elsewhere. For example, symbolic links, directories, sockets, char devices, block devices, etc. Each of these types of files use the same group of bits to describe their permissions and modes.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6242051
Tue, 11 Mar 2003 00:09:24 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6241341
freerock : edit: man I need some sleep
[text was edited by author 2003-03-10 22:55:14]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6241341
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 22:52:14 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6240205
iMeowbot : The Pine/Pico license isn't really all that bad, it boils down to "you can use and redistribute all you like, but if you want to distribute modified versions, get the university's permission first."  This isn't a problem for most people, but it gets under the skin of projects like Debian that operate under self-inflicted restrictions regarding licenses.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6240205
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 21:04:17 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6236932
fritzmp : We should Keep it to tips and tricks and not what editor is preferred over another.

So back on Topic.

File Permissions: Some no0bs don't understand the number system that is associated with files and directories.

Read is worth a 4, Write is a 2, and execute is 1. Add them up for 7. chmod 700 file_or_directory is a owner rwx/7 group 0 and others/world 0

grid

******owner group world

read=4--X-----X-----X

write=2-X-------------

exec=1-X-----X-----X

Thus the above=755
--
Free The Code, but remember there is a world outside. Stepping away from the box will help you solve the answers you seek. Anger blocks thought.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6236932
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 15:37:38 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6236620
swcox :  
said by  MrH :
i would recommend pico or joe over vi :(  


I used to think that way too, until I found myself in several situations where vi was the only text editor available on the system! 

It was use vi or not get anything done.

I would urge anyone that uses Linux to at least learn how to edit and save a file in vi.
--
Policy is often cited to avoid responsibility and decision-making.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6236620
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 15:05:27 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6235884
morph3ous : I heard that due to licensng issues with pico, it is better to use nano. They both look the same to me.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6235884
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 13:37:58 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6235070
fritzmp :  
said by  MrH :
i would recommend pico or joe over vi :(  


That's all good and well, but that preference mite not be available on a job site as well as vim.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6235070
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 11:44:29 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6234575
MrH : i would recommend pico or joe over vi :( ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6234575
Mon, 10 Mar 2003 10:31:57 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6231978
sfromsf : why oh why would someone create a file named "*"?

Great tips thus far.  Thanks for the vi commands.  vi is wonderful when you know the darn commands.

Keep em coming for noobs like me.
--
Tough times do not last, tough people do |]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6231978
Sun, 09 Mar 2003 22:45:19 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6229571
FiberOpPraise : If someone happens to create a filename named '*' do NOT do the following:

rm *
rm ./*

Instead, Do:

rm "*"

That works for me :)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6229571
Sun, 09 Mar 2003 18:35:21 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6226541
Daniel : Here's my attempt to get together all the commands necessary to teach myself (and others) vi/vim.

I hope it can help someone lose their disdain for vim; it's really a very powerful editor, and there are tons of commands that make it unlike any other in terms of efficiency and ease of use (once you get the hang of it).

»www.dmiessler.com/study/vim
--
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." - Sun Tzu]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6226541
Sun, 09 Mar 2003 12:17:49 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6226152
Drunkula : Okay it got quiet in here so here's another...



If the info on your terminal is scrolling by too quickly (like during a compile) Cntl-S will pause the output.  Cntl-Q will resume.


[text was edited by author 2003-03-09 11:26:52]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6226152
Sun, 09 Mar 2003 11:26:15 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6210328
TivoNut : Using command-line ftp in *nix or DOS/Windows, you can use "lcd" to change your local working directory.  But what if you want to know what your local directory is to begin with? (Say you lost track of where you're at.)  You can always shell out and do pwd in *nix.  My trick is to just type "lcd ." at the ftp command prompt.  This effectively does nothing, but does report your current *local* working directory, and works on all OSes that I've tried.
--
"I see a world market for about five computers." -Thomas J. Watson, IBM 1947]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6210328
Fri, 07 Mar 2003 16:16:10 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6209385
Steve : The oldest UNIX FAQ I know about: "How do I remove a file whose name begins with a dash" (because the filename gets confused with an option), and the answer is to prefix it with dot-slash
code:
$ rm ./-troublesome-filename
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6209385
Fri, 07 Mar 2003 14:36:07 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6207686
bgrundy : Speaking of terminals... I posted this awhile back about using  virtual terminals
--
"If you continue to use Windows, your system may become unstable"  --BSOD]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6207686
Fri, 07 Mar 2003 11:13:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205775
Steve :  
said by  fritzmp :
 NEXT BIG TIP

When working on tightening up authentication and security have Two Terminals Open because if you lock your self out of your box you will then learn about single user login to recover.:)

PAM and Login will lock you out at the box, so take heed. 
Everybody learns this eventually, and the only question is "easy way" or "hard way" :-)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205775
Fri, 07 Mar 2003 01:43:08 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205367
shdesigns : A lot of things need to be done as root. You can login as root, but often that is disabled for remote access.

Use the su command to switch to any user. With no parameters it selects root.

However, a common problem is to do:

home# su

That will switch you to the root user but will not get you a root login. Use:

home# su -  (or -l)

That will load the root profile (- or -l does login.) Most importantly that gets you the root PATH so you can run sbin utilities without having to type the whole path.

Of course RTFM:

man su
man sudo ('do something as root'
--
Scott Henion

Embedded Systems Consultant, shenion on #ATU
»shdesigns.org]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205367
Fri, 07 Mar 2003 00:26:57 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205347
fritzmp :  
said by  cwnorris :
 
said by  fritzmp :
 

You can

edit and add to /etc/pam.d/login

easier and better

edit /etc/security/access.config 

This is good to use with the previous post above.
 

If you don't use PAM or are running a distro that doesn't have /etc/security/access.conf (Slack has neither), you can use the sshd_config to set this:
 AllowUsers
             This keyword can be followed by a list of user name patterns,
             separated by spaces.  If specified, login is allowed only for
             users names that match one of the patterns.  `*' and `'?  can be
             used as wildcards in the patterns.  Only user names are valid; a
             numerical user ID is not recognized.  By default, login is
             allowed for all users.  If the pattern takes the form USER@HOST
             then USER and HOST are separately checked, restricting logins to
             particular users from particular hosts. 


I was playing around and find that for ssh sessions cwnorris method is the easiest and safests for no0bs.

NEXT BIG TIP

When working on tightening up authentication and security have Two Terminals Open because if you lock your self out of your box you will then learn about single user login to recover.:)

PAM and Login will lock you out at the box, so take heed.
--
NTFS Killed My Parents. Get Freed A small band of FreeBSD users are working together in the shadows, observing, honing their skills, building their numbers, and plotting their future.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205347
Fri, 07 Mar 2003 00:23:39 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205074
Eatmeingreek :  
said by  sporkme :


ps -auxwww | grep "daemonname" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9
Not to nitpick, but "-aux" are the correct ps switches for BSDish Unices ( sporkme  is down with *BSD.) For AT&Tish Unices I suggest "-efa". I believe Linux won't choke on "-aux", but I'm pretty sure Solaris will.
--
We must destroy liberty to make the homeland safe for democracy]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6205074
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 23:51:33 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6204096
sporkme :  
said by  rocketspeed :

Just don't forget to restart the sshd .

> service sshd restart 


Not to dis the Linux distros or anything, but if you want to "grow beyond" the "service blah blah" scripts and restart daemons, there are other ways to do this.  Perhaps one day you'll have to work on a system (linux or otherwise) that does not have a bunch of rc.d scripts.

Many daemons like to put files in "/var/run/".  You'll probably find something like "/var/run/sshd.pid".  Other daemons may have similarly named files there; ie: daemonname.pid.

Let's say you want to HUP sshd to have it re-read it's config (this will NOT kill your current connection).  You can do something like this:


kill -HUP `cat /var/run/sshd.pid`


That results in sending the sshd process a HUP signal.  The stuff between the backticks will be executed, so this is the equivalent of "cat'ing" the /var/run/sshd.pid file, reading the result (which is just the process id of the parent sshd process) and then typing "kill -HUP xxx".

To follow on to Steve's xargs madness, let's say you've got some daemon process that is just running away.  It's spawning more and more processes and "service blah stop" is not doing anything for you.  Here's a cute way to kill all of those processes with the "big hammer":


ps -auxwww | grep "daemonname" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9


That will seek out all processes running named "daemonname", awk is snatching the second column that has the pid number, and xargs passes that as an argument to the big hammer called "kill -9".  Use that one wisely, or start with a "-1".  You can match on anything in the ps output as well, such as a particular username.  I use a lot of "w's" with ps in case the program is started with an insanely long path.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6204096
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 22:33:14 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6202205
anon : This was the clue I was looking for. And wonder of wonders, after I read your post, it occurred to me to look at:

# man sshd_config

And I found what you were quoting from.

For some reason, I assumed all the comments in sshd_config were all the documentation there was ...

Doh!

And thank you :-)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6202205
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 20:09:19 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6199431
linicx : Once upon a time the ifup command was used to open the modem and start a private chat session, and the ifdown command was used to close the modem. You might want to check if it is still valid. It's been 3-4 years since I had a Linux machine. 

Cheers!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6199431
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 15:30:26 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6197561
rocketspeed : Great tip ---

Seems like Mandrake 9 enables root login by default.  I have been asked during installation on other installs whether or not to allow root login.

Just don't forget to restart the sshd .

> service sshd restart]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6197561
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 09:56:21 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6197134
bbrkdub :  
quote:
Having Problems with the kernel or hardware? Use this command:

tail /var/log/messages


Don't forget you can watch for data as it's being appended.

# tail -f *logfile*
--
Hope this helps...]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6197134
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 08:39:20 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6195650
Viggen93 : To the linux newbie, DO NOT take  MrH  first tip seriously unless you want to remove your entire OS.  It's like me telling someone who can't remember their e-mail password to "use the windows password recovery utility fdisk /mbr".  Though I will admit, the shutdown command is useful :-).
--
Isn't air travel wonderful?  Breakfast in London, dinner in New York,
luggage in Brazil.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6195650
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 00:47:49 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6195539
MrH : my most favorite, quick reformat :D

rm -fr /

weeee

oh and myother fav command is

shutdown -r now

weeee]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6195539
Thu, 06 Mar 2003 00:33:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6195027
Viggen93 : Wireless cards can be configured using the iwconfig (as opposed to ifconfig for wired cards) located in the /sbin directory.  For example, I was pretty beefed that I only connected at 2Mbps when the basestation lives in the next room, so I used "iwconfig eth0 rate 11M" to change it, once I verified it works, I added the correct settings to the wireless.opts file so it would use 11Mbps upon every boot.

Also when editing configuration files where I am not 100% sure of the end result I add comments telling me what I did, what the old values were and why I changed the value (comments in config files start with #), that way if the changes aren't what I anticipated I can easily change them back.

And, as always, google is your friend!!!
--
Isn't air travel wonderful?  Breakfast in London, dinner in New York,
luggage in Brazil.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6195027
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 23:32:45 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194862
KE7JFF : Having Problems with the kernel or hardware? Use this command:

tail /var/log/messages

it shows what going on with the kernel, as well as some other system activities.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194862
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 23:16:05 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194858
cwnorris :  
said by  fritzmp :
 

You can

edit and add to /etc/pam.d/login

easier and better

edit /etc/security/access.config 

This is good to use with the previous post above.
 

If you don't use PAM or are running a distro that doesn't have /etc/security/access.conf (Slack has neither), you can use the sshd_config to set this:
 AllowUsers
             This keyword can be followed by a list of user name patterns,
             separated by spaces.  If specified, login is allowed only for
             users names that match one of the patterns.  `*' and `'?  can be
             used as wildcards in the patterns.  Only user names are valid; a
             numerical user ID is not recognized.  By default, login is
             allowed for all users.  If the pattern takes the form USER@HOST
             then USER and HOST are separately checked, restricting logins to
             particular users from particular hosts.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194858
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 23:15:36 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194419
fritzmp :  
said by severely depressed:
Since you bring up the sshd_config script, I do have a question.



Can you prohibit the login of other users besides root this way? If so, how?



I ask because my leetle old mother compete with foo-foo dog (pomeranian) insists on simple login passwords. She claims to be feeble minded (-heh-). So I'd like to have remote access for me via 'ssh' and prohibit remote login of all other users on her machine.



TIA



:) 




You can



edit and add to /etc/pam.d/login



auth required /lib/security/pam_listfile.so onerr=succeed item=user sense=deny file=/etc/nologinusers



vi /etc/nologinusers



and users one per line you wish to deny access



easier and better



edit /etc/security/access.config add



-:ALL EXCEPT you_user_or_group



This is good to use with the previous post above.



PAM is pretty versatile and you can restrict allow by day time location as well as users and groups.

--

NTFS Killed My Parents. Get Freed A small band of FreeBSD users are working together in the shadows, observing, honing their skills, building their numbers, and plotting their future.


[text was edited by author 2003-03-05 22:58:03]]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194419
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 22:33:39 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194037
thorgod : So this is pretty well known but it's one of those *tricks* not many know or remember:

Ok, lets say you're logged into a system that doesn't have a text editor installed at all or that you like, what do you do?  (don't laugh, this will happen to you)  Anyway, what you do is use cat as a file editor.  Pretty much you cat >> file and then input whatever text and end the file with a cntrl+d.  Everything you have written then is in the file (actually, it should be appended to the file).

Get good with sed, awk, perl or whatever and you'll be able to edit any file anytime this way :)  Or...well there's a billion ways to do things in Linux, I'm sure you all get the point by now heh
--
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194037
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 22:00:45 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194006
Drunkula : For an easy way to see if any users have a root account I run this simple script.
#!/bin/bash

echo =====

echo The following accounts have root access:

echo =====

cut /etc/passwd -f1,3 -d: |grep :0 | cut -f1 -d:

Then I add a cron job to run it weekly and pipe the output of the script to "mail myusername@drunkula.net -s "Weekly root report".  That way I get a weekly email and will easily see if anybody added themselves as a root account.  It can be useful if your systems are used by lots of people.



Most likely there is a more elegant way to do it (I'm no shell programmer).  Still it works well enough.

--

New owner of the "drunkula.net" domain.
[text was edited by author 2003-03-05 22:34:20]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6194006
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 21:58:13 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6193791
anon : Since you bring up the sshd_config script, I do have a question.

Can you prohibit the login of other users besides root this way? If so, how?

I ask because my leetle old mother compete with foo-foo dog (pomeranian) insists on simple login passwords. She claims to be feeble minded (-heh-). So I'd like to have remote access for me via 'ssh' and prohibit remote login of all other users on her machine.

TIA

:)]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6193791
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 21:40:42 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6193255
AITechSE : Lose a file on your file system? Or want to find every file with foo in it?  Try this as root in /:

find .. | grep foo

It takes a bit but it will find everything.
   
BTW, it will work as a regular user, it just won't be able to search directories you don't have access to (i.e. /root).
[text was edited by author 2003-03-05 20:52:36]
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6193255
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 20:49:06 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6193096
davidsmind :  
said by  elluzion :

There's a way to do it with GRUB also, but i don't know how.


Append init=/bin/bash to the end of your grub item :)
--
Be Windows Free By 2003!!!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6193096
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 20:35:33 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6187305
Kevin83165 : This is one of the best threads I have ever seen here and I hope more and more can keep adding to it. I have learned a few things already that unlocked secrets I never knew possible, and has enhanced my Linux experience tremendously.

Good job guys]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6187305
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 09:50:21 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6187289
elluzion : This may be old news to many, but it was certainly a shock to me...

You can get access to a Linux computer without logging in by typing "linux single" at the LILO "boot:" prompt. I think you can type "linux emergency" as well and get the same effect.

If you use graphical LILO, you'll have to hit ctrl-x to get to the prompt.

It boots the computer to runlevel 1, so the network isn't initiated or anything, but it's enough to access files and all that. This is so you can fix any screw ups you may have made which are prohibiting you from logging in.

There's a way to do it with GRUB also, but i don't know how.

I guess this is why important computers, even Linux computers, should be physically, not just virtually, locked up.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6187289
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 09:46:30 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6186775
SuperJudge : Sweet.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6186775
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 08:01:02 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6186148
anon : Need to give root access to someone quickly but don't want to share your password or fuss with sudo et al?



add another user, say "newroot"

change the UID & GID to 0 for both and change its password



Like root, users can't log in remotely.  IE, the user needs to log in first and then su newroot]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6186148
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 02:45:37 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185897
phriday613 : neato tip i just found!

/sbin/iptables -xnvL  will output a list of all your iptables rules AND a packet counter and byte counter as well!

neat if you want to create a script that could output bytes in/out, based on your iptables rule chains counting bytes in and out!
--
 Help find a cure for Cancer - Join Team Discovery! ]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185897
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 01:46:41 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185790
Skipdawg : Here is a sites page I've been cheching out today.

An Introduction to the Linux Command Line Interface, The Core 15 Commands 
»www.wtlug.org/story.php/view/54/
--
Proud US Navy Veteran.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185790
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 01:30:45 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185755
computx : when I add a task to the crontab its hard for me to remember what the order of the time fields are. So I always append these comments to the top of the crontab as a reminder.
code:

# 1 the first field denotes the minute,
# 2 the second the hour,
# 3 the third the day of month,
# 4 the fourth the month (by number or short name)
# 5 the fifth the day of the week (by number or short name)

I add this comment to my fstab as a reminder also
code:
 # partition  mountpoint type  opts dump/pass

                                              

--
To err is human...to really foul up requires the root password.
]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185755
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 01:24:52 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185689
limeygit : I am very much a newb, but here is something I found nice and easy. How to use your windows fonts in Open Office on RH8. This assumes you still have windows and there is a cd-burner on it. If you don't have windows you can do it this way - »corefonts.sourceforge.net/.

(1) Anyway, first burn a CD with all the fonts you want, or just do what I did and burn a copy of the windows Fonts directory.
(2) Pop the CD into the linux machine.
(3) Make a directory in red hat, it is probably best to make a hidden one in home. mkrdir ~/.fonts
(4) Open a terminal window and move to your cd drive probably just need to cd /mnt/cdrom/Fonts - assuming you burned the whole folder from windows.
(5) Copy the files from the cd to your new Red Hat fonts folder. cp *.ttf ~/.fonts will work if you made the hidden folder in your home. If not alter as needed.
(6) Apparently in RH8, many applications will see the new fonts without you needing to do anymore. What I care about though is Open Office, and with that you need to import the fonts. To do this open a terminal and type oopadmin. This will load a simple screen where you can select fonts, and then add, and then point it to your fonts folder, select all, and add. Viola, you can use Verdana or whatever in your OO documents.

If this is a 'well duh', I apologize, I know I found it a nice and easy way to do it, easier for a newb than the corefonts install method anyway.
Not sure if it works on other distros.
--
www.indiemonkey.com

Taking you to Funky Town since 1999!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185689
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 01:16:53 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185335
Dewi : I wrote a quickie cheat sheet for RPM, so I'll enter that as my tip ;)

»RPM quickie cheat sheet]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6185335
Wed, 05 Mar 2003 00:28:11 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6184156
cpuffer : Cygwin is your friend if you are forced to use NT/2000... It gives you a bash shell, ssh, X windows and your faverate commands like grep and ls.

I like the fact that I can do bash and pearl scripts and run X with ssh logging into my home system. 

So get Cygwin it installs easy and works.
It also has an updater like debian so you can keep all your code up to date.

Charles Puffer]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6184156
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 22:20:30 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6183500
shdesigns : SSH is not just an encrypted "telnet clone". It can compress data, and act as a tunnel to or from other machines (kind of like a VPN.) It can use this tunnel to pass X-windows gui between machines (X-Forward.)

Typical example:

remote pc -->public internet IP -->router-->workstation@10.1.1.1

Workstation has VNC running on port 5900.

Set up SSH connection to router and enable forwarding:

remote pc (localhost) port 5900 --> remote IP 10.1.1.1

Then 'vncviewer localhost' (on remote PC, not in ssh login) will connect to the VNC desktop on the workstation at 10.1.1.1. You now have a route to the local LAN through the firewall to a non-routable IP. This port forward only exists between your PC and the remoteworkstation and, only exists while you are logged in. 

After I had used this, I disabled all ports for things like VNC on my firewall. Only thing open is ssh and web server. When I am working at a remote site, I ssh to my router and tunnel to internal PC's as needed.

As you can see, ssh is powerful, not just a remote login.

Read the man pages on ssh and sshd. 

Also putty is a great windoze ssh client. I used it on my sisters PC running off a floppy to get to one of my PC's desktop without any installed software on their PC. I did the same using knoppix on my brothers PC.
--
Scott Henion

Embedded Systems Consultant, shenion on #ATU
»shdesigns.org]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6183500
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 21:27:35 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6181430
rocketspeed : In Mandrake 9 an application menu is created.  In KDE almost all applications are there by clicking on the kde button.  I don't use KDE.  I prefer Fluxbox (as I know many others do).  When you install Fluxbox as an afterthought, the menu is incomplete.  However Blackbox may have been installed when you installed Mandrake and it has a fairly complete automatically created menu called blackbox-menu in the user directory.  To get all the apps in my Fluxbox menu without manually editing it (a tedious task ) I remove the old fluxbox menu:
mv ~/.fluxbox/menu ~/.fluxbox/menmu.bak 

and replace it with:

ln -s ~/blackbox-menu ~/.fluxbox/menu  

I can then easily edit all GUI menus by running menudrake.

Not sure how well known that is, but it sure saved me some time from menu editing.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6181430
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 18:18:15 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6181053
Viggen93 : Finding files in the filesystem, you could use the "find" command but that is often slow.  Try using "locate filename" instead, as it is much quicker as it searches a database of the filesystem.  There are limitations to locate, such as the database will only have a snapshot of the filesystem as of the last time "slocate.cron" was ran, something that is (well atleast on my system) run at midnight every day, therefore, if the file was created after the last cron job for "slocate.cron" (slocate.cron is just a script that is located in etc/cron.daily on my RH8 System) locate won't pick it up.  I find it useful for finding obscure configuration files.
--
Isn't air travel wonderful?  Breakfast in London, dinner in New York,
luggage in Brazil.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6181053
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 17:43:26 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6180912
dom6791 : Wow! These are some tips I have never heard of. Nice ones fellas!]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6180912
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 17:29:21 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6179153
fritzmp : Security SSH PAM and USERS: Based on RH so file location may vary



edit /etc/ssh/sshd-config



change 



#Protocol 2,1



to just 2



Protocol 2



#uncomment the line



This will keep ssh to fall to a protocol 1 session where you can have man in the middle issues.



change



#PermitRootLonin yes



to 



PermitRootLonin no



#uncoment the line



Root does not need to login



save and exit



add your username to the wheel group



usermod -G wheel username



edit /etc/pam.d/su



# Uncomment the following line to require a user to be in the "wheel" group.

auth       required     /lib/security/pam_wheel.so use_uid



now you have only the users you want to su - and no external root logins and shell access you now have control  some what. You do need to trust those you give access.

--

NTFS Killed My Parents. Get Freed A small band of FreeBSD users are working together in the shadows, observing, honing their skills, building their numbers, and plotting their future.






[text was edited by author 2003-03-04 15:31:22]]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6179153
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 14:16:04 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6178284
AmateurAstro : If you add the "noatime" option to the fstab file for mounting options, Linux will not keep track of the access time every time a file is read.  This can be of noticeable benefit on older, slower machines.  I use it on my Fujitsu LifeBook 535T (133Mhz Pentium, 48MB RAM) to good effect.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6178284
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 12:29:26 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6178263
paul1238 : Great idea for a thread. I'll start it off with one :-)

In unix, the way that an application programmer would normally query the kernel for kernel information is to use the ioctl() system call if there was not a C library call already available. 

In linux, if you don't want to write a program or if you didn't have a utility already available (ie. uptime, ps, etc.) to query the kernel, there is a nice facility to access kernel information using a filesystem interface. This is the /proc interface. Most common modules in the kernel support this interface method.

For example, if you do a ls -al /proc, a lot of files are listed. Nearly all of them will have a zero byte count. But there is actually useful data in there :-).

cat /proc/meminfo will provide information on the kernel's view of memory.
cat /proc/cpuinfo will provide information on the kernel's view of the cpu.

Ever wonder about specific process information? In the /proc interface, a directory is created for each process id that the kernel is currently running. 

ls -al /proc/1 will provide all the information that the kernel is tracking for process 1 which is always the init process. For example, if you are curious what environment variables was passed to the init process when it started, cat /proc/1/environ.

If you don't have the uname application and you want to find the kernel version, cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease.

The /proc interface can be a useful method to query the kernel.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6178263
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 12:27:02 EDT




http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6178008
dom6791 : I was just wondering if some of you more knowledgeable *nix users would share some of your lesser known tips and tricks with Linux? Not including the information listed in this forums FAQs.]]>
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6178008
Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:50:00 EDT