Basics

locale

Your locale tells the computer your location, preferred time-and-date format, standard language, papersize, et c. A list of supported locales is available at /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED See a full list with: 1cat /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED Take the first portion to generate full locale information for a region: …

locating

1 min read · basics

Type type shows what kind of thing you're running, be it an alias, function, or binary program. 1type cd 2type ls 3type -P ls 4type -a cat Whereis the Program Where is grep and all its configuration files? 1whereis grep Which one of these is the binary file which you actually use? 1which grep More Search instantly with …

ls

1 min read · basics

Firstly, your ls is probably aliased to something. Check it with: 1alias ls If the prompt shows some alias, then start by removing it: 1unalias ls Now we can begin. Check the most recently modified file: 1ls -t Reverse this with tac to see the file which has been unmodified the longest: 1ls -t | tac Group files by …

processes

1 min read · basics

Proccesses See running items in current terminal with 1ps or more with 1ps -a Or the entire system with 1ps -e Or the entire system with more information, BSD style, with: 1ps aux And then search for a particular program with 1ps aux | grep cmus Jobs Pause a job with ^z. Put it in the background with the '&' suffix. …

Quality of Life

3 min read · basics setup

This & That Refer to 'that last thing', and 'the first thing': 1fortune -l > file1 2cat !$ | tr -d u 3diff !^ !$ NB: this can go wrong: 1ls -l file1 file2 2cat !^ Done <C-d> If you have a command, Control + d will execute the command. If you have nothing, exit. Input Run-Commands (~/.inputrc) Alias Expansion 1echo …

soft links

2 min read · basics links

A soft link is a file which says how to go to another file. When a program encounters a soft link, it will make a guess at whether it should ignore it, or try to get to that file. To make a soft link to a file in the current directory, linking is easy: 1fortune > $file_1 2ln -s $file_1 $link_1 Now imagine your …

swap

1 min read · basics

Making a Swap File 1su root 2cd /var/cache/ 3dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1K count=4M This creates a swapfile of (1k x 4M) 4 Gigs. Change 4M to XM for an XGig swap. 1chmod 600 swapfile 1mkswap swapfile 1swapon swapfile Test it's working with top 1top -bn1 | grep -i swap or: 1echo "/var/cache/swapfile none swap sw 0 …

time

1 min read · basics time

systemd Set time to synchronize with an ntp server: 1timedatectl set-ntp true This info stays in /usr/share/zoneinfo. Local Time Local time is kept in /etc/localtime. According to Dave's LPIC guide, you can set the local time by making asymboling link from your timezone to /etc/localtime, as so: 1sudo ln -sf …

tree

1 min read · basics tree markdown

The tree utility outputs a full listing of everything in your current directory, and those below. Just directories: tree -d Output colour to less: tree -C --info | less -re Ignore files in the .gitignore file: tree --gitignore You can place information about the files in a directory to use with the tree --info option, …

users

3 min read · basics

Basic Information Let's get some entries with 'getent', e.g. passwd or group. 1getent passwd 1getent group Obviously: 1getent shadow Examples 1sudo adduser maestro add user 'maestro' This depends upon the settings in the /etc/default/useradd file and /etc/login.defs 1sudo useradd -m pinkie add user 'pinkie' with a home …