Examples of "stupid Unix pet tricks"

Example 01,

shows how to use the bash shell to make a simple database of system information.

Example 02,

This is a shell which we will use to execute other shells, making sure we save a data and uid stamped copy in a fixed administrative directory.

Example 03,

These are shell scripts which create accounts on our machines, and are edited before being run to add particular administrators and such.

They actually use the useradd and groupadd commands, which are part of the standard Unix command set.

You should go over the man pages for those two commands, and you learn that useradd in particular does very extensive setup if you, as an administrator, have configured it to do so.

Example 04,

This shows how the lists needed in example03 are created.

Example 05: web man page,

This shows one way to make a man page that displays on the web.

It uses the software man2html which we will soon install on all your machines.

Example 06:NTP,

explains the Network Time Protocol (NTP) usage, to get you an accurate clock.

Also gives a general discussion of the date and related commands.

Example 07:sudo

Example 08: complex sort,

a sort of the listing ls -l /dev/tty on major and minor number.

Example 09: netsnap,

a tool for keeping accumulated snapshots of network activity.

Example 10: qmail,

complete detail for installation on our machines.

Example 11: mail examples,

Some details about mail

Example 12: sending to a special mailbox,

How one user can set up a variety of mailboxes.

Example 14: installing OpenLDAP,