Linux - Hardlinks and Softlinks explained

In this video-lesson you will learn how links in a Linux filesystem are working.

You will also learn:

• the differences between hard- and softlinks (also called symlinks)
• what are the limitations of hard-links

Enjoy!

Linux Shell-Scripting: How To Get Started

How to write the most simple shell-script: How to edit, how to run and where to place it :-)

Enjoy the video :-)

Robert

Get to know your linux-system - Step 3

In this third step of “Get To Know Your Linux-System”, we wanna examine the diskspace a system uses.

And disk space - this is the number one resource if it comes to unplanned outages.

I would say - at least one time a month - a customer of mine has a problem related to a completely filled up disk space somewhere.

… and this then leads to

• user complains
• services that stop working
• and it may even lead to data loss.

Yes - this hasn’t to be a problem if we had a decent monitoring in place - but this is a completely different story.

What you will learn:

Let me show you in this lesson,

• how to get insights into the used disk-space

… and as much important like this …

• how to examine where - in which directories and by which files - all the disk space is consumed.

Get to know your linux-system - Step 2

In this second step of “Get To Know Your Linux-System” you will learn more about the CPU- and memory-load of your system.

What you will get

• We will have a look at the processes a system is currently busy with
• You will see, how much memory a system has installed and how it is used
• You will get the insight, if your system, is slowed down because of a memory-overload.

… and incidentally, I will show you, how you can pause a process and reactivate it later on.

So let’s start with the single command, that prepares for you most of the needed information in one single view …

Get to know your linux-system - Step 1

In this lesson I wanna show you a command, that gives you with just two keystrokes a load of useful information about a linux system.

What you can expect

In this lessen I will talk about

• The one command I always type in at first after logging in into a system.
• The current time and the timezone your system is configured with
• How to find out, if your system is currently overloaded or not
• If there are other users active on the system and what they are doing

(Yes - linux is a multi-user environment. And therefore it’s often very useful to see, what other users are doing on the system at the time you are working there.)

What the heck are they using xargs for?

You know how to connect two tools via stdin and stdout? Great!

• But how about the commands that don’t read from it’s input-datastream?
• How to interconnect commands together, that naturally won’t fit?

This is, where xargs comes into play.

And because I know your time is precious - I’ve created this really short video-training … only 7:32 min :-)

In this video you will also discover …

• the one big philosophy you can expect from most linux-tools

• which commands can be interconnected directly

• and the only two parameters you need for controlling the behavior of xargs most of the time.

So sit back, watch and enjoy …

If your shell always get’s you wrong - quote the right way

Here is another question that often comes up by my students and clients:

” … how can I solve the problem with these special-characters? The shell always gets me wrong …”

The fast and simple answer to this is: You have to quote!

… and you have to to it the right way.

But let’s start from the beginning:

As you know, there are characters at the command line, that simply has special meanings for the shell.

You use them for instance, for referencing the content of a variable (“$”)

robert@demo:~$ echo Hello $NAME

… or for redirecting a datatream to a file (“>”):

robert@demo:~$ ls -l /etc > $TEMPFILE

But everytime you wanna use these special characters without their special meaning for the shell, you have to take special care about it.

(huh - three times “special” in one sentence. this must be really special ;-) )

So instead of writing

robert@demo:~$ echo Buy this book for $9 now
Buy this book for now

you have to write something like

robert@demo:~$ echo 'Buy this book for $9 now'
Buy this book for $9 now

In this way, the shell won’t try to interprete $9 as a variable. Instead it would take the “$”-sign just like what it is: a $-sign.

This mechanism is called “quoting” and technically explained for instance in depth in the Bash-Documentation.

Let me show you, how the quoting works. And your shell never gets you wrong again … ;-)