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1500 questions
1859
votes
3 answers
Why does man print "gimme gimme gimme" at 00:30?
We've noticed that some of our automatic tests fail when they run at 00:30 but work fine the rest of the day. They fail with the message
gimme gimme gimme
in stderr, which wasn't expected. Why are we getting this output?
Jaroslav Kucera
- 9,702
1631
votes
16 answers
How do I get the size of a directory on the command line?
I tried to obtain the size of a directory (containing directories and sub directories) by using the ls command with option l. It seems to work for files (ls -l file name), but if I try to get the size of a directory (for instance, ls -l /home), I…
Abdul Al Hazred
- 26,630
1600
votes
10 answers
What is the exact difference between a 'terminal', a 'shell', a 'tty' and a 'console'?
I think these terms almost refer to the same thing, when used loosely:
terminal
shell
tty
console
What exactly does each of these terms refer to?
Lazer
- 35,307
1366
votes
12 answers
How to correctly add a path to PATH?
I'm wondering where a new path has to be added to the PATH environment variable. I know this can be accomplished by editing .bashrc (for example), but it's not clear how to do this.
This way:
export PATH=~/opt/bin:$PATH
or this?
export…
Paolo
- 17,355
1270
votes
13 answers
How to copy files from one machine to another using ssh
I am using a Linux (CentOS) machine, and I have already connected to another system using SSH.
Now, my question is: How can I copy files from one system to another system?
Suppose, in my environment, I have two system like System A and System B. I'm…
user3021349
- 16,569
1191
votes
9 answers
How to install a deb file, by dpkg -i or by apt?
I have a deb package for installation.
Shall I install by dpkg -i my.deb, or by apt?
Will both handle the software dependency problem well?
If by apt, how can I install from the deb by apt?
Tim
- 101,790
993
votes
6 answers
How to see full log from systemctl status service?
I check service status with systemctl status service-name.
By default, I see few rows only, so I add -n50 to see more.
Sometimes, I want to see full log, from start. It could have 1000s of rows.
Now, I check it with -n10000 but that doesn't look…
10robinho
- 10,299
961
votes
10 answers
How can I replace a string in a file(s)?
Replacing strings in files based on certain search criteria is a very common task. How can I
replace string foo with bar in all files in the current directory?
do the same recursively for sub directories?
replace only if the file name matches…
terdon
- 242,166
951
votes
3 answers
How to unfreeze after accidentally pressing Ctrl-S in a terminal?
It's a situation that has happened quite often to me: after I press (with a different intention) Ctrl-S in a terminal, the interaction (input or output) with it is frozen. It's probably a kind of "scroll lock" or whatever.
How do I unfreeze the…
imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev
- 15,462
889
votes
2 answers
How do I make `ls` show file sizes in megabytes?
What commands do I need for Linux's ls to show the file size in MB?
Paul Sheldrake
- 9,003
883
votes
13 answers
How can I reduce a video's size with ffmpeg?
How can I use ffmpeg to reduce the size of a video by lowering the quality (as minimally as possible, naturally, because I need it to run on a mobile device that doesn't have much available space)?
I forgot to mention that when the video can use…
xralf
- 15,415
862
votes
2 answers
Why was '~' chosen to represent the home directory?
I have often wondered why the ~ (tilde) character represents the home directory of a user.
Is there a reason behind this, or is it just because tilde is an infrequently used character?
Lelouch Lamperouge
- 7,039
- 3
- 15
- 11
815
votes
4 answers
How to cycle through reverse-i-search in BASH?
In the terminal, I can type Ctrl + R to search for a matching command previously typed in BASH. E.g., if I type Ctrl + R then grep, it lists my last grep command, and I can hit enter to use it. This only gives one suggestion though. Is there any way…
Village
- 5,035
- 15
- 50
- 84
811
votes
5 answers
What does "--" (double-dash) mean?
I have seen -- used in the compgen command.
For example:
compgen -W "foo bar baz" -- b
What is the meaning of the -- in there?
dogbane
- 29,677
803
votes
13 answers
How do I grep for multiple patterns with pattern having a pipe character?
I want to find all lines in several files that match one of two patterns. I tried to find the patterns I'm looking for by typing
grep (foo|bar) *.txt
but the shell interprets the | as a pipe and complains when bar isn't an executable.
How can I…
Dan
- 9,492