Unix as a Second Language

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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 25 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 company that builds innovative technologies to make critical connections happen -- where no one else necessarily shares any of her opinions. This blog offers advice for everyday Unix systems administration and some clever ways to approach more challenging problems. Send comments and suggestions to mailto:bugfarm@gmail.com.

by Sandra Henry-Stocker

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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 25 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 company that builds innovative technologies to make critical connections happen -- where no one else necessarily shares any of her opinions. Send comments and suggestions to bugfarm@gmail.com.

A little bit of history

Posted Oct 15, 2012 - 06:00 pm

Just about anyone who works on the command line of a Unix/Linux systems knows about history. Having the ability to repeat their most recent command by just typing !! or the most recent command that starts with a particular letter by typing something like !s saves them a lot of typing and a lot of typos.
HISTIGNORE, history
Counting processors on your Linux box

Posted Feb 04, 2013 - 11:52 am

The quickest way to determine what and how many processors are installed on a Linux system is to turn to the mighty gateway of kernel data -- the /proc pseudo-filesystem. In it, you'll find a file called /proc/cpuinfo that provides a lot of information in the processors in your system. Read on to see how easily you can get answers to questions and an explanation of what those answers really tell you.
/proc, cores
Easy fixes using perl

Posted May 28, 2012 - 09:57 am

There are a lot of really nice scripting languages available to Unix admins, but Perl is still one of my favorites for doing any work that involves regular expressions -- any text that you can describe with a pattern.
manipulate, match
Fun with shell $ arguments

Posted Apr 09, 2012 - 10:19 am

[chunklet]
shell scripts, Unix
Groping through big data with grep

Posted Jul 06, 2013 - 04:49 pm

The grep command has a lot more options and "flavors" than the casual command line pioneer might expect, but there are some options and limitations that you should know about when you're working with big data files.
big data, grep
How (and why) to celebrate Sysadmin Day

Posted Jul 25, 2013 - 07:32 am

Friday, July 26th,2013 is Sysadmin Day or "Systems Administrator Appreciation Day" -- a good reason to celebrate those individuals who devote themselves to keeping our servers available, usable and secure, but how do you go about thanking these geeky superheroes? First, you have to disentangle them from whatever tasks they're currently juggling and then you have to get and hold their attention long enough to express your appreciation.
appreciation, holiday
How to enforce password complexity on Linux

Posted May 06, 2012 - 08:17 pm

[chunklet]
Linux, minlen
How to keep yourself from losing important files on a Unix system

Posted Apr 02, 2012 - 05:45 pm

There are a number of tricks that you can implement on a Unix system to lessen the chance that you will accidentally erase important files. The two that we'll examine will 1) help protect files in an important directory 2) set up a trash can to hold files for a period of time before they are actually deleted and 3) good old Unix security smarts.
How to put Lubuntu into automatic login mode

Posted Aug 12, 2012 - 07:03 pm

Some Unix/Linux systems require that a username and password be entered for login. Some can be set up to log you in automatically. For Lubuntu -- a lightweight version of the popular Ubuntu distribution, you can move between these two login options with a mere flick of your wrist and a wee bit of editing.
automatic login, Boot
How To: Grep Tricks for Linux Users

Posted Apr 28, 2010 - 11:39 am

Here's a couple tricks you can play with grep, several that don't appear to have corresponding support in some of the other Unix versions.
file names, grep tricks

October is...
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AMD pushes forward with new video cards and a few surprises

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BRIC Nations Plan Their own "Independent Internet"

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