Unix

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  • Unix tip: Using Bash's regular expressions

    Posted May 5, 2013 - 8:37 pm

    Bash has quietly made scripting on Unix systems a lot easier with its own regular expressions. If you're still leaning on grep and sed commands to get your scripts to do what you need from them, maybe it's time to look into what bash can do on its own.

  • BOOK GIVEAWAY: Win a copy of 'Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Edition'

    Posted April 30, 2013 - 3:40 pm

    We've got 5 copies to give to some lucky readers. Enter now for your chance to win!

  • No, programmers don't code all day

    Posted April 9, 2013 - 12:00 pm

    A new survey finds out what software developers already know: writing code is only one part of the job

  • So you want to be a Unix sysadmin?

    Posted April 7, 2013 - 10:41 pm

    A number of people have asked recently what it takes to be a Unix systems administrator, what “core competencies” are required, and what are the best and worst aspects of the job. Here are some answers that might work once we get beyond “it depends”.

  • History of the O'Reilly cover animals

    Posted April 3, 2013 - 10:56 am

    O’Reilly’s cover designer tells the story of how they came to use animals on the covers of their popular books

  • Unix commands and tools you just can't live without

    Posted March 31, 2013 - 8:42 pm

    Are you someone who never met a Unix command you didn't like? OK, maybe not. But are there commands you just can't imagine living without? Let's look at some that have made a big difference on my busiest days and those that people I've worked with over the years have said are their most important essentials.

  • Unix: When pipes don't make sense

    Posted March 24, 2013 - 5:17 pm

    While pipes are one of the things that make Unix such a powerful and versatile operating system, they don't always make sense. Many people still fall into the "useless use of a pipe" habit while still others use pipes in situations in which pipes simply don't function at all. Knowing when to pipe and when not to pipe remains a sign of Unix mastery. If you want to look Unix savvy, use pipes only when they provide a critical service and never when they're superfluous or downright wrong.

  • How to script: A Bash crash course

    Posted March 8, 2013 - 11:13 am

    An easy step-by-step guide to the Bash command-line shell and shell scripting.

  • Unix: Rootkits -- Still scary after all these years

    Posted March 3, 2013 - 3:50 pm

    If you haven't worried about rootkits in a while, what are you waiting for? Rootkits remain one of the stealthiest and most worrisome forms of malware compromising systems today.

  • Unix: Under the spell of magic numbers

    Posted February 24, 2013 - 8:09 pm

    If you've ever wondered how Unix systems identify files, you might be surprised to learn that file names really aren't an important factor. Unix systems reach into files looking for special codes called "magic numbers" to figure out what your files really are. They also examine other file content to pick out additional details.

  • Unix: Looking at files this way and that

    Posted February 10, 2013 - 2:46 pm

    Don't throw up your hands if your boss won't buy you Tripwire and a modern debugger. There are a lot of things that your Unix system -- right out of the box -- can tell you about files and processes.

  • Find the next big prime number, win cash and glory

    Posted February 7, 2013 - 12:29 pm

    By participating in GIMPS, a distributed computing project to find Mersenne prime numbers, you could win $3,000 or more, not to mention mathematics immortality

  • 13 Things that a Unix sysadmin will never do

    Posted December 9, 2012 - 7:17 pm

    As we find ourselves hurtling toward 2013, it's a good time to think about all the things that we Unix admins would never do ... and how that keeps us out of trouble.

  • Samba swings both ways

    Posted November 12, 2012 - 10:20 pm

    Samba, the tool that makes it possible to mount Unix directories on Windows systems also works the other way -- allowing you to mount Windows shares on Unix. With an extra package and a few changes in the syntax, you can choose to share files on either platform with the other.

  • 8 favorite Unix admin tricks and time-savers

    Posted November 5, 2012 - 6:55 pm

    Some of my favorite time-savers are here for sharing. Add a comment and tell me about some of your favorite Unix commands.

  • Four commands to spook a sysadmin

    Posted October 30, 2012 - 11:41 am

    Wanna give a good Halloween scare to that special system or database administrator in your life? Try mentioning one of these commands

  • Oracle adds more cloud finesse to Solaris

    Posted October 4, 2012 - 12:01 pm

    Further emphasizing Larry Ellison's fresh enthusiasm for cloud computing, Oracle has updated its Solaris Unix operating system with a number of new capabilities to give it greater cloud capabilities, including a new distributed storage file system and SDN (software defined networking) features.

  • Nvidia releases new Unix driver to fix high-risk privilege escalation vulnerability

    Posted August 6, 2012 - 10:12 am

    Graphics chip maker Nvidia released a new version of its Unix driver on Friday in order to address a high-risk vulnerability that can be exploited by local users to gain root privileges on Linux systems.

  • How to edit images for free

    Posted June 23, 2012 - 7:21 am

    If you work on the Web, you've probably been asked to do some simple image editing, even if your job has little or nothing to do with the artistic side of things. The standard image editors that came with your computer are fine for basic tasks, but complex editing typically requires the more sophisticated functions of Adobe Photoshop. This can be a problem, since Photoshop's $600 price tag is rather hefty.

  • Review

    A better way to learn Unix

    Posted April 22, 2012 - 11:35 am

    If you are still learning Unix or have any involvement in helping others master the command line, here's the book you have been waiting for. The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction (no starch press, 2012) will take you from 0 to 100 in 36 pain-free chapters.

  • Fun with shell $ arguments

    Posted April 9, 2012 - 10:19 am

    How many special shell $ arguments do you use in your daily work? There may be a lot more of them than you think. Let's look over a bunch of them and examine how they can streamline your scripts.

  • Usenix: Dartmouth expanding diff, grep Unix tools

    Posted December 8, 2011 - 6:40 am

    With some funding from Google and the U.S. Energy Department, a pair of computer scientists at Dartmouth University are updating the venerable grep and diff Unix command line utilities to handle more complex types of data.

  • Oracle has a Sun spot

    Posted September 28, 2011 - 3:23 pm

    Oracle is pushing itself into a corner, a fantastic money-making corner, but a corner nonetheless.

  • 2011 timeline of major high tech awards: Cryptographers, Unix pioneers lead the way

    Posted June 6, 2011 - 6:26 am

    The public key encryption scheme developed by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman in the mid-1970s - and influenced by the work of Ralph Merkle - has now made them all pretty darn famous some three-plus decades later: All three have been inducted in 2011 into the Computer History Museum Hall of Fellows and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

  • Computer de-evolution: Features that lost the evolutionary war

    Posted May 26, 2011 - 8:00 am

    Today's tools may be more powerful, but many lack some useful features of their forebears. In the world before popular and simple displaced complex and useful there were such things as clicky keyboards with programmable function keys, text editors would bend to your will, and scrollbars could do more than just drag.
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