Unix as a Second Language 
by Sandra Henry-Stocker
Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 18 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She currently works for TeleCommunication Systems, a wireless communications company, in Annapolis, Maryland, where no one else necessarily shares any of her opinions. She lives on a small farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
This blog offers advice for every-day Unix systems administration and some clever ways to approach more challenging problems.
Send comments and suggestions to mailto:bugfarm@gmail.com.
Book Review: The Book of Inkscape
Years ago, I discovered Gimp, the free tool that provides Photoshop-like processing of images. Only recently have I come across Inkscape -- the free graphics editor that competes with the likes of Adobe Illustrator. Even you can prepare professional quality graphics if you take the time to learn this fabulous tool. And now here's a book to teach you everything you need to know.
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Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?
One way to check the integrity of files on your Solaris systems is by comparing their ownership, sizes and checksums against their original values. You don't need expensive application software to do basic integrity checking. One easy and free way to do this is to take advantage of a file that your system maintains on your behalf and a command called pkgchk.
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Looping the Easy Way
One of the nice things about writing a column every week is that I don't often have to tackle the really big issues -- such as why Unix is still the best OS or which big company is buying which other big company and how this is going to affect all of us. Instead, I can hone in on an issue as small and personal as how you loop through a sequence of values in a script. Speaking of looping, I've just learned (and then implemented) a new trick.
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Unix Tip: Grepping on Whole Words
If every time you grep for a specific word or string, you get a pile of lines that don't match what you were looking for, maybe it's time to learn about whole word searching. In today's column, we examine two ways to get what you want, the whole of what you want and nothing but what you want.
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