how to use UNIX variants

• Command Line tips

doing su (change to super user) is often helpful

If having to copy files over to server, sometimes need more access, so chown (regular id) (directory)

to give a long directory listing sorted by moddate: ls -l --sort=t

to find a file by name, start from the directory to start searching

• find . -name "thread*"

  • to find a directory add -type "d"

to find files by contents

• grep contentstofind *

to remove a non-empty directory rm -r (directory)

show length of file: wc -l file

to show the contents of a file use cat

• or head -count file or tail -count file

to print matching lines from a file: grep -F "Aii" events.log

uncompressing:

• use gunzip on a .tgz file

• tar xvf (filename) for a .tar file

processes

• ps -A to see everything

• ps -C java to see subset

• kill pid to kill process with number pid

• ps auxww to see lots of detail on specific apps running

disk utilization:

• df -h will tell you the basic availability on the machine

• "find -printf %s %p\n | sort -nr | head" - will tell you the 10 biggest space consumers

run things in a detached screen (which, among other things, keeps them running after you disconnect)

• one variation: screen -dmS sessionName commands, then, to access its console while running: screen -r sessionName

• or just screen -S sessionName, then type commands as usual, then when ready hit ctl-a d to detach

make

• make compiles (after fetching necessary pieces)

• make install (after make) installs (or instead of make compiles, then installs)

  • can make, then tweak a file, then go straight to make install

• http://www.zettai.net/Members/george/python213FreeBSDPlone.blog/view

• http://ezine.daemonnews.org/199810/ports.html

• http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/gnustep-dev/2002-12/msg00032.html

• http://www.freebsd.org/ports/

• http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports-using.html

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