The Most Useful Tutorial and Reference, with Hundreds of High-Quality Examples for Every Popular Linux Distribution   Linux is today’s dominant Internet server platform. System administrators and Web developers need deep Linux fluency, including expert knowledge of shells and the command line. This is the only guide with everything you need to achieve that level of Linux mastery. Renowned Linux expert Mark Sobell has brought together comprehensive, insightful guidance on the tools sysadmins, developers, and power users need most, and has created an outstanding day-to-day reference.   This title is 100 percent distribution and release agnostic. Packed with hundreds of high-quality, realistic examples, it presents Linux from the ground up: the clearest explanations and most useful information about everything from filesystems to shells, editors to utilities, and programming tools to regular expressions.   Use a Mac? You’ll find coverage of the Mac OS X command line, including OS X-only tools and utilities other Linux/UNIX titles ignore. Sobell presents a new MySQL chapter. There’s even an expert introduction to Python–today’s most valuable tool for automating complex, time-consuming administration tasks.  

Table of Contents:
Preface xxxvii   Chapter 1: Welcome to Linux and Mac OS X 1 The History of UNIX and GNU—Linux 3 What Is So Good About Linux? 6 Overview of Linux 11 Additional Features of Linux 16 Chapter Summary 18 Exercises 18   Part I: The Linux and Mac OS X Operating Systems 21   Chapter 2: Getting Started 23 Conventions Used in This Book 24 Logging In from a Terminal (Emulator) 26 Working from the Command Line 28 su/sudo: Curbing Your Power (root Privileges) 32 Where to Find Documentation 33 More About Logging In and Passwords 42 Chapter Summary 46 Exercises 46 Advanced Exercises 47   Chapter 3: The Utilities 49 Special Characters 50 Basic Utilities 51 Working with Files 53 | (Pipeline): Communicates Between Processes 60 Four More Utilities 61 Compressing and Archiving Files 63 Locating Utilities 68 Displaying User and System Information 70 Communicating with Other Users 74 Email 76 Chapter Summary 76 Exercises 79 Advanced Exercises 80   Chapter 4: The Filesystem 81 The Hierarchical Filesystem 82 Directory Files and Ordinary Files 83 Pathnames 87 Working with Directories 90 Access Permissions 98 ACLs: Access Control Lists 104 Links 109 Chapter Summary 119 Exercises 120 Advanced Exercises 122   Chapter 5: The Shell 125 The Command Line 126 Standard Input and Standard Output 133 Running a Command in the Background 146 Filename Generation/Pathname Expansion 148 Builtins 153 Chapter Summary 153 Exercises 155 Advanced Exercises 156   Part II: The Editors 157   Chapter 6: The vim Editor 159 History 160 Tutorial: Using vim to Create and Edit a File 161 Introduction to vim Features 168 Command Mode: Moving the Cursor 174 Input Mode 178 Command Mode: Deleting and Changing Text 179 Searching and Substituting 183 Miscellaneous Commands 190 Copying, Moving, and Deleting Text 190 Reading and Writing Files 193 Setting Parameters 194 Advanced Editing Techniques 199 Units of Measure 203 Chapter Summary 206 Exercises 211 Advanced Exercises 212   Chapter 7: The emacs Editor 213 History 214 Tutorial: Getting Started with emacs 216 Basic Editing Commands 223 Online Help 229 Advanced Editing 232 Major Modes: Language-Sensitive Editing 246 Customizing emacs 256 More Information 260 Chapter Summary 261 Exercises 269 Advanced Exercises 270   Part III: The Shells 273   Chapter 8: The Bourne Again Shell (bash) 275 Background 276 Startup Files 278 Commands That Are Symbols 281 Redirecting Standard Error 282 Writing and Executing a Simple Shell Script 284 Control Operators: Separate and Group Commands 289 Job Control 294 Manipulating the Directory Stack 297 Parameters and Variables 300 Special Characters 315 Locale 316 Time 320 Processes 323 History 326 Aliases 342 Functions 346 Controlling bash: Features and Options 349 Processing the Command Line 354 Chapter Summary 364 Exercises 366 Advanced Exercises 368   Chapter 9: The TC Shell (tcsh) 369 Shell Scripts 370 Entering and Leaving the TC Shell 371 Features Common to the Bourne Again and TC Shells 373 Redirecting Standard Error 379 Working with the Command Line 380 Variables 385 Control Structures 398 Builtins 407 Chapter Summary 411 Exercises 412 Advanced Exercises 414   Part IV: Programming Tools 415   Chapter 10: Programming the Bourne Again Shell (bash) 417 Control Structures 418 File Descriptors 452 Parameters 458 Variables 467 Builtin Commands 476 Expressions 492 Implicit Command-Line Continuation 499 Shell Programs 500 Chapter Summary 510 Exercises 512 Advanced Exercises 514   Chapter 11: The Perl Scripting Language 517 Introduction to Perl 518 Variables 526 Control Structures 533 Working with Files 542 Sort 546 Subroutines 547 Regular Expressions 550 CPAN Modules 555 Examples 558 Chapter Summary 561 Exercises 562 Advanced Exercises 562   Chapter 12: The Python Programming Language 563 Introduction 564 Scalar Variables, Lists, and Dictionaries 568 Control Structures 574 Reading from and Writing to Files 579 Regular Expressions 583 Defining a Function 584 Using Libraries 585 Lambda Functions 589 List Comprehensions 590 Chapter Summary 591 Exercises 592 Advanced Exercises 592   Chapter 13: The MySQL Database Management System 595 Notes 596 Installing a MySQL Server and Client 599 Client Options 600 Setting Up MySQL 601 Creating a Database 603 Adding a User 604 Examples 605 Chapter Summary 617 Exercises 617   Chapter 14: The AWK Pattern Processing Language 619 Syntax 620 Arguments 620 Options 621 Notes 622 Language Basics 622 Examples 629 Advanced gawk Programming 646 Chapter Summary 651 Exercises 651 Advanced Exercises 652   Chapter 15: The sed Editor 653 Syntax 654 Arguments 654 Options 654 Editor Basics 655 Examples 658 Chapter Summary 669 Exercises 669   Part V: Secure Network Utilities 671   Chapter 16: The rsync Secure Copy Utility 673 Syntax 674 Arguments 674 Options 675 Examples 677 Chapter Summary 684 Exercises 685   Chapter 17: The OpenSSH Secure Communication Utilities 687 Introduction to OpenSSH 688 Running the ssh, scp, and sftp OpenSSH Clients 691 Tunneling/Port Forwarding 706 Chapter Summary 708 Exercises 709 Advanced Exercises 709   Part VI: Command Reference 711 Utilities That Display and Manipulate Files 713 Network Utilities 714 Utilities That Display and Alter Status 715 Utilities That Are Programming Tools 716 Miscellaneous Utilities 716 Standard Multiplicative Suffixes 717 Common Options 718 The sample Utility 718 sample: Brief description of what the utility does 719 aspell: Checks a file for spelling errors 721 at: Executes commands at a specified time 725 busybox: Implements many standard utilities 729 bzip2: Compresses or decompresses files 732 cal: Displays a calendar 734 cat: Joins and displays files 735 cd: Changes to another working directory 737 chgrp: Changes the group associated with a file 739 chmod: Changes the access mode (permissions) of a file 741 chown: Changes the owner of a file and/or the group the file is associated with 746 cmp: Compares two files 748 comm: Compares sorted files 750 configure: Configures source code automatically 752 cp: Copies files 754 cpio: Creates an archive, restores files from an archive, or copies a directory hierarchy 758 crontab: Maintains crontab files 763 cut: Selects characters or fields from input lines 766 date: Displays or sets the system time and date 769 dd: Converts and copies a file 772 df: Displays disk space usage 775 diff: Displays the differences between two text files 777 diskutil: Checks, modifies, and repairs local volumes (OS X) 782 ditto: Copies files and creates and unpacks archives (OS X) 785 dmesg: Displays kernel messages 787 dscl: Displays and manages Directory Service information (OS X) 788 du: Displays information on disk usage by directory hierarchy and/or file 791 echo: Displays a message 794 expand/unexpand: Converts TABs to SPACEs and SPACEs to TABs 796 expr: Evaluates an expression 798 file: Displays the classification of a file 802 find: Finds files based on criteria 804 finger: Displays information about users 810 fmt: Formats text very simply 812 fsck: Checks and repairs a filesystem 814 ftp: Transfers files over a network 819 gawk: Searches for and processes patterns in a file 825 gcc: Compiles C and C++ programs 826 GetFileInfo: Displays file attributes (OS X) 831 grep: Searches for a pattern in files 833 gzip: Compresses or decompresses files 838 head: Displays the beginning of a file 841 join: Joins lines from two files based on a common field 843 kill: Terminates a process by PID 846 killall: Terminates a process by name 848 launchctl: Controls the launchd daemon (OS X) 850 less: Displays text files, one screen at a time 852 ln: Makes a link to a file 856 lpr: Sends files to printers 858 ls: Displays information about one or more files 861 make: Keeps a set of programs current 869 man: Displays documentation for utilities 875 mc: Manages files in a textual environment (aka Midnight Commander) 879 mkdir: Creates a directory 886 mkfs: Creates a filesystem on a device 887 mv: Renames or moves a file 890 nice: Changes the priority of a command 892 nl: Numbers lines from a file 894 nohup: Runs a command that keeps running after you log out 896 od: Dumps the content of a file 897 open: Opens files, directories, and URLs (OS X) 901 otool: Displays object, library, and executable files (OS X) 903 paste: Joins corresponding lines from files 905 pax: Creates an archive, restores files from an archive, or copies a directory hierarchy 907 plutil: Manipulates property list files (OS X) 913 pr: Paginates files for printing 915 printf: Formats string and numeric data 917 ps: Displays process status 921 renice: Changes the priority of a process 925 rm: Removes a file (deletes a link) 926 rmdir: Removes directories 928 rsync: Copies files and directory hierarchies securely over a network 929 scp: Securely copies one or more files to or from a remote system 930 screen: Manages several textual windows 931 sed: Edits a file noninteractively 937 SetFile: Sets file attributes (OS X) 938 sleep: Creates a process that sleeps for a specified interval 940 sort: Sorts and/or merges files 942 split: Divides a file into sections 951 ssh: Securely executes commands on a remote system 953 sshfs/curlftpfs: Mounts a directory on an OpenSSH or FTP server as a local directory 954 stat: Displays information about files 957 strings: Displays strings of printable characters from files 959 stty: Displays or sets terminal parameters 960 sysctl: Displays and alters kernel variables at runtime 964 tail: Displays the last part (tail) of a file 965 tar: Stores or retrieves files to/from an archive file 968 tee: Copies standard input to standard output and one or more files 973 telnet: Connects to a remote computer over a network 974 test: Evaluates an expression 978 top: Dynamically displays process status 981 touch: Creates a file or changes a file’s access and/or modification time 985 tr: Replaces specified characters 987 tty: Displays the terminal pathname 990 tune2fs: Changes parameters on an ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystem 991 umask: Specifies the file-creation permissions mask 994 uniq: Displays unique lines from a file 996 w: Displays information about local system users 998 wc: Displays the number of lines, words, and bytes in one or more files 1000 which: Shows where in PATH a utility is located 1001 who: Displays information about logged-in users 1003 xargs: Converts standard input to command lines 1005   Part VII: Appendixes 1009   Appendix A: Regular Expressions 1011 Characters 1012 Delimiters 1012 Simple Strings 1012 Special Characters 1012 Rules 1015 Bracketing Expressions 1016 The Replacement String 1016 Extended Regular Expressions 1017 Appendix Summary 1019   Appendix B: Help 1021 Solving a Problem 1022 Finding Linux and OS X Related Information 1023 Specifying a Terminal 1024   Appendix C: Keeping the System Up-to-Date 1027 Using yum 1028 Using apt-get 1034 BitTorrent 1038   Appendix D: Mac OS X Notes 1041 Open Directory 1042 Filesystems 1043 Extended Attributes 1044 Activating the Terminal META Key 1049 Startup Files 1050 Remote Logins 1050 Many Utilities Do Not Respect Apple Human Interface Guidelines 1050 Installing Xcode and MacPorts 1050 Mac OS X Implementation of Linux Features 1051   Glossary 1053 File Tree Index 1105 Utility Index 1107 Main Index 1111