#to check the default prompt shell colors/settings, we can do echo $PS1 #The BASH color codes: export red="\033[1;31m" export green="\033[1;32m" export yellow="\033[1 ...

Linux system administrators are more productive when they create shell programs that automate their tasks. The more automation we have in place, the more time we have available to fix real problems ...

Here are some basic skills to get started with bash, one of the best shells for preparing and using scripts on Linux. Scripting in Linux–putting commands into a file so you can run them as a group—is ...

While Linux systems install with thousands of commands, bash also supplies a large number of “built-ins”—commands that are not sitting in the file system as separate files, but are part of bash itself ...

A recent post about debugging constructs surprised me. There were quite a few comments about how you didn’t need a debugger, as long as you had printf. For that matter, we’ve all debugged systems ...

Last year, I wrote an article for Linux Journal titled "Building Your March Madness Bracket" My article was timely, arriving just in time for the "March Madness" college basketball series. You see, I ...

Few aspects of Unix system administration are more intimate than the relationship between the admin and their chosen shell. After all, the shell is the most fundamental interface to the system, the ...