More Unexpected Applications of grep
Nov 6,
2015
Quentin Tarantino said “I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don’t do homages.” He stole that from Pablo Picasso, who said “When there’s anything to steal, I steal,” and “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” In that frame of mind, let’s see a very elegant use of grep that, believe it or not, I […]
Two Reasons the vim Text Editor Really Is vi Improved!
Jul 15,
2015
The vi editor is one of the big hurdles in seriously using Linux or any other member of the UNIX family of operating systems. The operating system is configured and controlled almost entirely with simple text files. Until you can comfortably edit them, you have no hope of doing any system administration. It’s not really […]
Getting Started With Linux, Part 2 — Six Free and Easy Ways to Have Your Own Linux Server
Dec 1,
2014
When I teach Learning Tree’s Linux server administration course, I frequently find attendees who have taken the introductory Linux for users course and who are in the server course because they are about to be put in charge of running some critical servers, but they don’t have the needed skills. They’re just not ready to […]
Getting Started With Linux, Part 1 — Knowledge Versus Skill and Why You Have to Use It.
Nov 25,
2014
Teaching classes has taught me that you can get two very different things out of a Linux training course — knowledge and skill. Knowledge can be communicated efficiently and gained quickly. “Springfield is the capital of Illinois.” “Most system configuration is stored under /etc.” Skill, on the other hand, is something that you can’t directly […]
Using the Amazon EC2 Command Line Tools and API
Sep 28,
2010
There are three ways to interact with Amazon EC2: Web based AWS Management Console Command line tools An API for programmers The Web based console is very easy to use and you can (and should!) do a lot with it. There are times, however, where what you want to do is beyond what is currently […]