Unix as a Second Language

2 grep commands that will help you find whole words

Whenever you use a simple grep command to find a single word or phrase in a file, you run the risk of getting a lot of extra "stuff" you didn't want to see. Here are two grep commands that will do just what you want.

Is Your Web Site Under Attack?

Easy Email Filtering with Procmail

There are two ways that procmail can be set up. You can set it up so that each user can choose to use it (or not) or you can have it invoked through your mailer. We're going to examine the first method.

Eradicate Spam from Unix Service Accounts!

Putting Text in Window Title Bars

Unix Prompts for the Masses

Handling holidays on Unix

The /etc/acct/holidays file is intended to be used by various accounting utilities on your system that might need to behave differently on certain days of the year -- holidays.

Checking the Status of Your NICs

The Day that Cron Stood Still

Relaying Mail from Subdomains

Book Review: The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security

You’re nobody until …

Getting help with scat

Probing into Core Dumps with mdb

Setting up sudo, part 2

Serial numbers in zone files: Yours and named’s

Serial numbers in zone files help your DNS service determine whether it should re-ingest your zone files or ignore them. But there's more to these pseudo timestamps than meets the eye.

Setting up sudo

Unix Wizdumb: Document It!

Unix Wizdumb: Clean up empty “in use” files with “cat /dev/null”

Unix: Impossible File Types

Unix: Adding swap space on the fly

Network Know-How: An Essential Guide for the Accidental Admin

So many passwords, so few hiding places

Redirecting errors with exec

Unix tip: Password complexity for users

Solaris 10 offers a suite of settings that provide a lot more control over users' password choices. These settings, stored in the /etc/default/passwd file, allow you to your own rules.

Unix tip: Making do with less

Wizzywig volumes 1: Phreak and 2: Hacker

Mapping Ports and PIDs

Unix tip: Recursively removing empty directories

Sftp-Only User Accounts

Peeping into PostgreSQL

Checking disk space

Unix tricks – Useful but unusual

Finding process IDs with fuser

Book Review: Cisco Routers for the Desperate, 2nd Edition

Spring forward file fixing

GPG fundamentals for encrypting messages

If you're ever tempted to send encrypted messages to a particular recipient but have never used PGP, you might be happy to learn that it's not all that hard to get started. Enter GnuPG and a handful of gpg commands!

Creating images with a text editor

Even if you're familiar with the basic difference between raster and vector images, it might not be immediately obvious that you can create simple images using nothing more than a text editor. Learn how.

Who’s Using Samba?

Unix tip: Finding a fault when your server’s shut down

Unix tip: Monitoring network switches

Unix tip: Putting old systems to sleep

I had to pull the plug on some really old systems recently, yet leave them in a state from which they could be easily booted at some later time if needed. The process turned out to be a bit more complex than I had imagined.

Unix sysadmins and their good/bad bosses

Unix tip: Inter-host trust on Unix, part 2

Unix tip: Inter-host trust on Unix, part 1

Unix tip: 7-Zip to the rescue

Unix tip: Monitoring networks with Nagios

Unix tip: Useful Unix aliases

Bristle.com – High on content, low on frills

Need to learn Unix or Ajax, do a price comparison or figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar acronym? Let Fred Stluka at Brsitle.com give you suggestions on where to begin your search.

Unix tip: Monitor disk arrays with sccli commands

Disk arrays take a lot of worry about disk failure off your shoulders, but that's no reason not to notice when one goes bad. The sccli command can tell you a lot about what's happening with your StorEdge arrays. Let it warn you about disks ....