Unix Tips: Advice from Unix experts

Tips and tricks for every-day Unix administration tasks and some clever ways to approach more challenging problems. Send your comments or questions to submissions@itworld.com.

Terminating unattended processes (03/27/2008)

Easy way to terminate processes left running after users log off a system. Read more.

More on bc (03/19/2008)

The bc utility is not just a command line tool. You can also write numerically intensive scripts in bc. The tool incorporates enough syntax to assign values to variables, write and call functions, collect responses from users and print annotated results. Read more.

Using bc for big calculations (03/12/2008)

For sysadmins who want to perform simple calculations on the command line, there's a considerably more useful tool than expr. Try bc. Like expr, the bc command allows you to do simple math. Here are some examples. Read more.

Burning bootable DVDs (03/05/2008)

One of the messages that you don't want to see when getting ready to upgrade a system to Solaris 10 is "can't open boot device". The problems this kind of error suggests, such as bad CD/DVD reader or improper device alias, can be troublesome. So, when I ran into this problem on a Friday afternoon, I was not amused. I had tried various boot commands, but got the same basic response each time... Read more.

Terminating options processing with -- (02/28/2008)

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine