Tag: Systems Administration
Using Help to Supplement Man Pages
Man pages are an invaluable tool in the Unix eco-system. Providing both a starting overview and a deep-dive future reference, what you need to know about a command is only a $ man <command> away. But there are times when the man command doesn’t provide all the information needed. Many of the most common Unix [...]
Referencing Last Argument in Bash using Special Parameters
Bash contains a number of powerful special parameters that can be used on both the command line and inside scripts. My most used of the bunch is $_, which references the last argument of the preceding command. To illustrate the power of this, take the example of creating a new directory and cd’ing into it. [...]
Preserving a Copy in Linux with Tar
Ah, $ mv and $ cp how venerable they are. But there are times when a bit more is needed, namely when an exact copy (with hidden files, permissions, etc all preserved) is required. In that case tar is ready to step in: tar cf – . | (cd /newdir ; tar xf -) It’s [...]