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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  • Unix How-To: Counting Anything

    Posted Sep 15, 2010 - 11:23 am

    A reader recently asked whether it was possible on Unix systems to count how many times a particular character appears on each line of text. "On Unix", I answered, "not only is just about anything possible, but there are usually half a dozen ways to do it".

  • Unix How-To: Making Better Use of Find

    Posted Sep 22, 2010 - 04:58 pm

    Find is not just useful for locating files, but also for doing things with the files once it finds them. You can find files based on numerous criteria -- their names, their owners, their size, etc. -- and you can then perform some operation on the files from simply listing them to changing permissions or analyzing their contents. You can also make the operation that you specify to occur only if you confirm that you want it to happen after you are prompted. Let's see how this works.

  • Unix Tip: Avoiding the Oops

    Posted Aug 11, 2010 - 07:32 pm

    Ever type "rm -rf dirname" and then realize you've just blown away the wrong directory? You can always alias the rm command to "rm -i", but let's look at a way that you can selectively determine which directories get that special "Are you sure you want to do that" treatment and which get quietly blown away.

  • Unix How-To: Quotes to Live By

    Posted Sep 09, 2010 - 11:10 am

    One of the things that really throws new Unix users is when to use quotes and which kind of quotes. Between single quotes, double quotes and back ticks, a person can start to feel that Unix is unnecessarily tricky.

  • Why I Love Unix

    Posted Oct 27, 2010 - 08:48 am

    I love Unix because of all the wonderful things that I can do on the command line. When I first used Unix in 1983, it was love on first sight. With a list of the most basic commands by my side, I quickly discovered how much I could accomplish with several command strings strung together.

  • Unix How-To: Checking Responses with ckyorn

    Posted Sep 01, 2010 - 08:11 am

    In last week's column, we looked at ckrange, a Solaris tool for validating numeric responses in scripts. A related command, ckyorn (for "check yes or no"), ensures that a user responds with some version of yes or no. With similar behavior to ckrange, ckyorn has the same advantages of simplifying your code so that you don't have to check whether a user has entered y, Y, Yes, yes, n, N, No, no or even YeS or nO.

  • Unix How To: Peering at a Process with lsof

    Posted Jan 27, 2010 - 12:35 pm

    You have probably used lsof from time to time, probably when tracking down some sort of problem. But maybe you haven't tried all of its permutations or looked at it just to get a deeper understanding of how some particular process works. Let's look at one particular lsof command that can provide a lot of insight into a single process.

  • Greening the Data Center

    Posted Nov 12, 2008 - 04:20 pm

    Think you're the only one having problems keeping your data center cool and powered up? Think again. At least the Green Grid (an international non-profit organization with a mandate to increase energy efficiency in the IT sector) is coming up with answers and I got to go to a trade show!

  • Getting started with sar

    Posted Jul 29, 2012 - 04:55 pm

    sar on Linux

    If the sysstat package isn't installed on your Linux system (which it generally isn't by default), you can easily grab a copy with your favorite Linux installer -- typically one of the following commands will do the job: 
    yum install sysstat
apt-get install sysstat

  • How to enforce password complexity on Solaris

    Posted May 12, 2012 - 07:44 pm

    To ensure the security of passwords on Solaris systems, you need to edit the /etc/default/passwd file and assign values to a series of settings that enforce length and complexity.
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