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 ...

Bash scripts are powerful, but with power comes great responsibility. It’s very easy for sloppy or poorly-planned code to do real damage, so it’s a good idea to be careful and practice defensive ...

Harness the power of bash and learn how to scrape websites for exciting new images every morning. So, you want a cool dynamic desktop wallpaper without dodgy programs and a million viruses? The good ...

You need to package up a bunch of files, send them somewhere, and do something with them at the destination. It isn’t an uncommon scenario. The obvious answer is to create an archive — a zip or tar ...

Build a bash script that controls what, where, and when backups run. Schedule the executable backup.sh with cron and review logs and destination after runs. Test the script, use absolute paths to ...

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 ...

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Sometimes what seems like the simplest of questions can have you scrambling for answers. Today's seemingly simple question is "How can a bash script identify its own location?" When a question like ...