Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition

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By Jerry Peek, Shelley Powers, Tim O'Reilly, Mike Loukides

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Released: October 2002

Pages: 1160

With the growing popularity of Linux and the advent of Darwin, Unix has metamorphosed into something new and exciting. No longer perceived as a difficult operating system, more and more users are discovering the advantages of Unix for the first time. But whether you are a newcomer or a Unix power user, you'll find yourself thumbing through the goldmine of information in the new edition of Unix Power Tools to add to your store of knowledge. Want to try something new? Check this book first, and you're sure to find a tip or trick that will prevent you from learning things the hard way.

The latest edition of this best-selling favorite is loaded with advice about almost every aspect of Unix, covering all the new technologies that users need to know. In addition to vital information on Linux, Darwin, and BSD, Unix Power Tools 3rd Edition now offers more coverage of bash, zsh, and other new shells, along with discussions about modern utilities and applications. Several sections focus on security and Internet access. And there is a new chapter on access to Unix from Windows, addressing the heterogeneous nature of systems today. You'll also find expanded coverage of software installation and packaging, as well as basic information on Perl and Python.

Unix Power Tools 3rd Edition is a browser's book...like a magazine that you don't read from start to finish, but leaf through repeatedly until you realize that you've read it all. Bursting with cross-references, interesting sidebars explore syntax or point out other directions for exploration, including relevant technical details that might not be immediately apparent. The book includes articles abstracted from other O'Reilly books, new information that highlights program tricks and gotchas, tips posted to the Net over the years, and other accumulated wisdom.

Affectionately referred to by readers as "the" Unix book, UNIX Power Tools provides access to information every Unix user is going to need to know. It will help you think creatively about UNIX, and will help you get to the point where you can analyze your own problems. Your own solutions won't be far behind.

Basic Unix Environment
1. Chapter 1 Introduction
  1. What's Special About Unix?
  2. Power Grows on You
  3. The Core of Unix
  4. Communication with Unix
  5. Programs Are Designed to Work Together
  6. There Are Many Shells
  7. Which Shell Am I Running?
  8. Anyone Can Program the Shell
  9. Internal and External Commands
  10. The Kernel and Daemons
  11. Filenames
  12. Filename Extensions
  13. Wildcards
  14. The Tree Structure of the Filesystem
  15. Your Home Directory
  16. Making Pathnames
  17. File Access Permissions
  18. The Superuser (Root)
  19. When Is a File Not a File?
  20. Scripting
  21. Unix Networking and Communications
  22. The X Window System
2. Chapter 2 Getting Help
  1. The man Command
  2. whatis: One-Line Command Summaries
  3. whereis: Finding Where a Command Is Located
  4. Searching Online Manual Pages
  5. How Unix Systems Remember Their Names
  6. Which Version Am I Using?
  7. What tty Am I On?
  8. Who's On?
  9. The info Command
Customizing Your Environment
1. Chapter 3 Setting Up Your Unix Shell
  1. What Happens When You Log In
  2. The Mac OS X Terminal Application
  3. Shell Setup Files — Which, Where, and Why
  4. Login Shells, Interactive Shells
  5. What Goes in Shell Setup Files?
  6. Tip for Changing Account Setup: Keep a Shell Ready
  7. Use Absolute Pathnames in Shell Setup Files
  8. Setup Files Aren't Read When You Want?
  9. Gotchas in set prompt Test
  10. Automatic Setups for Different Terminals
  11. Terminal Setup: Testing TERM
  12. Terminal Setup: Testing Remote Hostname and X Display
  13. Terminal Setup: Testing Port
  14. Terminal Setup: Testing Environment Variables
  15. Terminal Setup: Searching Terminal Table
  16. Terminal Setup: Testing Window Size
  17. Terminal Setup: Setting and Testing Window Name
  18. A .cshrc.$HOST File for Per Host Setup
  19. Making a "Login" Shell
  20. RC Files
  21. Make Your Own Manpages Without Learning troff
  22. Writing a Simple Manpage with the -man Macros
2. Chapter 4 Interacting with Your Environment
  1. Basics of Setting the Prompt
  2. Static Prompts
  3. Dynamic Prompts
  4. Simulating Dynamic Prompts
  5. C-Shell Prompt Causes Problems in vi, rsh, etc.
  6. Faster Prompt Setting with Built-ins
  7. Multiline Shell Prompts
  8. Session Info in Window Title or Status Line
  9. A "Menu Prompt" for Naive Users
  10. Highlighting and Color in Shell Prompts
  11. Right-Side Prompts
  12. Show Subshell Level with $SHLVL
  13. What Good Is a Blank Shell Prompt?
  14. dirs in Your Prompt: Better Than $cwd
  15. External Commands Send Signals to Set Variables
  16. Preprompt, Pre-execution, and Periodic Commands
  17. Running Commands When You Log Out
  18. Running Commands at Bourne/Korn Shell Logout
  19. Stop Accidental Bourne-Shell Logouts
3. Chapter 5 Getting the Most out of Terminals, xterm, and X Windows
  1. There's a Lot to Know About Terminals
  2. The Idea of a Terminal Database
  3. Setting the Terminal Type When You Log In
  4. Querying Your Terminal Type: qterm
  5. Querying Your xterm Size: resize
  6. Checklist: Terminal Hangs When I Log In
  7. Find Out Terminal Settings with stty
  8. Setting Your Erase, Kill, and Interrupt Characters
  9. Working with xterm and Friends
  10. Login xterms and rxvts
  11. Working with Scrollbars
  12. How Many Lines to Save?
  13. Simple Copy and Paste in xterm
  14. Defining What Makes Up a Word for Selection Purposes
  15. Setting the Titlebar and Icon Text
  16. The Simple Way to Pick a Font
  17. The xterm Menus
  18. Changing Fonts Dynamically
  19. Working with xclipboard
  20. Problems with Large Selections
  21. Tips for Copy and Paste Between Windows
  22. Running a Single Command with xterm -e
  23. Don't Quote Arguments to xterm -e
4. Chapter 6 Your X Environment
  1. Defining Keys and Button Presses with xmodmap
  2. Using xev to Learn Keysym Mappings
  3. X Resource Syntax
  4. X Event Translations
  5. Setting X Resources: Overview
  6. Setting Resources with the -xrm Option
  7. How -name Affects Resources
  8. Setting Resources with xrdb
  9. Listing the Current Resources for a Client: appres
  10. Starting Remote X Clients
Working with Files and Directories
1. Chapter 7 Directory Organization
  1. What? Me, Organized?
  2. Many Homes
  3. Access to Directories
  4. A bin Directory for Your Programs and Scripts
  5. Private (Personal) Directories
  6. Naming Files
  7. Make More Directories!
  8. Making Directories Made Easier
2. Chapter 8 Directories and Files
  1. Everything but the find Command
  2. The Three Unix File Times
  3. Finding Oldest or Newest Files with ls -t and ls -u
  4. List All Subdirectories with ls -R
  5. The ls -d Option
  6. Color ls
  7. Some GNU ls Features
  8. A csh Alias to List Recently Changed Files
  9. Showing Hidden Files with ls -A and -a
  10. Useful ls Aliases
  11. Can't Access a File? Look for Spaces in the Name
  12. Showing Nonprintable Characters in Filenames
  13. Counting Files by Types
  14. Listing Files by Age and Size
  15. newer: Print the Name of the Newest File
  16. oldlinks: Find Unconnected Symbolic Links
  17. Picking a Unique Filename Automatically
3. Chapter 9 Finding Files with find
  1. How to Use find
  2. Delving Through a Deep Directory Tree
  3. Don't Forget -print
  4. Looking for Files with Particular Names
  5. Searching for Old Files
  6. Be an Expert on find Search Operators
  7. The Times That find Finds
  8. Exact File-Time Comparisons
  9. Running Commands on What You Find
  10. Using -exec to Create Custom Tests
  11. Custom -exec Tests Applied
  12. Finding Many Things with One Command
  13. Searching for Files by Type
  14. Searching for Files by Size
  15. Searching for Files by Permission
  16. Searching by Owner and Group
  17. Duplicating a Directory Tree
  18. Using "Fast find" Databases
  19. Wildcards with "Fast find" Database
  20. Finding Files (Much) Faster with a find Database
  21. grepping a Directory Tree
  22. lookfor: Which File Has That Word?
  23. Using Shell Arrays to Browse Directories
  24. Finding the (Hard) Links to a File
  25. Finding Files with -prune
  26. Quick finds in the Current Directory
  27. Skipping Parts of a Tree in find
  28. Keeping find from Searching Networked Filesystem
4. Chapter 10 Linking, Renaming, and Copying Files
  1. What's So Complicated About Copying Files
  2. What's Really in a Directory?
  3. Files with Two or More Names
  4. More About Links
  5. Creating and Removing Links
  6. Stale Symbolic Links
  7. Linking Directories
  8. Showing the Actual Filenames for Symbolic Links
  9. Renaming, Copying, or Comparing a Set of Files
  10. Renaming a List of Files Interactively
  11. One More Way to Do It
  12. Copying Directory Trees with cp -r
  13. Copying Directory Trees with tar and Pipes
5. Chapter 11 Comparing Files
  1. Checking Differences with diff
  2. Comparing Three Different Versions with diff3
  3. Context diffs
  4. Side-by-Side diffs: sdiff
  5. Choosing Sides with sdiff
  6. Problems with diff and Tabstops
  7. cmp and diff
  8. Comparing Two Files with comm
  9. More Friendly comm Output
  10. make Isn't Just for Programmers!
  11. Even More Uses for make
6. Chapter 12 Showing What's in a File
  1. Cracking the Nut
  2. What Good Is a cat?
  3. "less" is More
  4. Show Nonprinting Characters with cat -v or od -c
  5. What's in That Whitespace?
  6. Finding File Types
  7. Squash Extra Blank Lines
  8. How to Look at the End of a File: tail
  9. Finer Control on tail
  10. How to Look at Files as They Grow
  11. GNU tail File Following
  12. Printing the Top of a File
  13. Numbering Lines
7. Chapter 13 Searching Through Files
  1. Different Versions of grep
  2. Searching for Text with grep
  3. Finding Text That Doesn't Match
  4. Extended Searching for Text with egrep
  5. grepping for a List of Patterns
  6. Approximate grep: agrep
  7. Search RCS Files with rcsgrep
  8. GNU Context greps
  9. A Multiline Context grep Using sed
  10. Compound Searches
  11. Narrowing a Search Quickly
  12. Faking Case-Insensitive Searches
  13. Finding a Character in a Column
  14. Fast Searches and Spelling Checks with "look"
  15. Finding Words Inside Binary Files
  16. A Highlighting grep
8. Chapter 14 Removing Files
  1. The Cycle of Creation and Destruction
  2. How Unix Keeps Track of Files: Inodes
  3. rm and Its Dangers
  4. Tricks for Making rm Safer
  5. Answer "Yes" or "No" Forever with yes
  6. Remove Some, Leave Some
  7. A Faster Way to Remove Files Interactively
  8. Safer File Deletion in Some Directories
  9. Safe Delete: Pros and Cons
  10. Deletion with Prejudice: rm -f
  11. Deleting Files with Odd Names
  12. Using Wildcards to Delete Files with Strange Names
  13. Handling a Filename Starting with a Dash (-)
  14. Using unlink to Remove a File with a Strange Name
  15. Removing a Strange File by its i-number
  16. Problems Deleting Directories
  17. Deleting Stale Files
  18. Removing Every File but One
  19. Using find to Clear Out Unneeded Files
9. Chapter 15 Optimizing Disk Space
  1. Disk Space Is Cheap
  2. Instead of Removing a File, Empty It
  3. Save Space with "Bit Bucket" Log Files and Mailboxes
  4. Save Space with a Link
  5. Limiting File Sizes
  6. Compressing Files to Save Space
  7. Save Space: tar and compress a Directory Tree
  8. How Much Disk Space?
  9. Compressing a Directory Tree: Fine-Tuning
  10. Save Space in Executable Files with strip
  11. Disk Quotas
Basic Editing
1. Chapter 16 Spell Checking, Word Counting, and Textual Analysis
  1. The Unix spell Command
  2. Check Spelling Interactively with ispell
  3. How Do I Spell That Word?
  4. Inside spell
  5. Adding Words to ispell's Dictionary
  6. Counting Lines, Words, and Characters: wc
  7. Find a a Doubled Word
  8. Looking for Closure
  9. Just the Words, Please
2. Chapter 17 vi Tips and Tricks
  1. The vi Editor: Why So Much Material?
  2. What We Cover
  3. Editing Multiple Files with vi
  4. Edits Between Files
  5. Local Settings for vi
  6. Using Buffers to Move or Copy Text
  7. Get Back What You Deleted with Numbered Buffers
  8. Using Search Patterns and Global Commands
  9. Confirming Substitutions in vi
  10. Keep Your Original File, Write to a New File
  11. Saving Part of a File
  12. Appending to an Existing File
  13. Moving Blocks of Text by Patterns
  14. Useful Global Commands (with Pattern Matches)
  15. Counting Occurrences; Stopping Search Wraps
  16. Capitalizing Every Word on a Line
  17. Per-File Setups in Separate Files
  18. Filtering Text Through a Unix Command
  19. vi File Recovery Versus Networked Filesystems
  20. Be Careful with vi -r Recovered Buffers
  21. Shell Escapes: Running One UnixCommand While Using Another
  22. vi Compound Searches
  23. vi Word Abbreviation
  24. Using vi Abbreviations as Commands (Cut and Paste Between vi's)
  25. Fixing Typos with vi Abbreviations
  26. vi Line Commands Versus Character Commands
  27. Out of Temporary Space? Use Another Directory
  28. Neatening Lines
  29. Finding Your Place with Undo
  30. Setting Up vi with the .exrc File
3. Chapter 18 Creating Custom Commands in vi
  1. Why Type More Than You Have To?
  2. Save Time and Typing with the vi map Commands
  3. What You Lose When You Use map!
  4. vi @-Functions
  5. Keymaps for Pasting into a Window Running vi
  6. Protecting Keys from Interpretation by ex
  7. Maps for Repeated Edits
  8. More Examples of Mapping Keys in vi
  9. Repeating a vi Keymap
  10. Typing in Uppercase Without CAPS LOCK
  11. Text-Input Mode Cursor Motion with No Arrow Keys
  12. Don't Lose Important Functions with vi Maps: Use noremap
  13. vi Macro for Splitting Long Lines
  14. File-Backup Macros
4. Chapter 19 GNU Emacs
  1. Emacs: The Other Editor
  2. Emacs Features: A Laundry List
  3. Customizations and How to Avoid Them
  4. Backup and Auto-Save Files
  5. Putting Emacs in Overwrite Mode
  6. Command Completion
  7. Mike's Favorite Timesavers
  8. Rational Searches
  9. Unset PWD Before Using Emacs
  10. Inserting Binary Characters into Files
  11. Using Word-Abbreviation Mode
  12. Directories for Emacs Hacks
  13. An Absurd Amusement
5. Chapter 20 Batch Editing
  1. Why Line Editors Aren't Dinosaurs
  2. Writing Editing Scripts
  3. Line Addressing
  4. Useful ex Commands
  5. Running Editing Scripts Within vi
  6. Change Many Files by Editing Just One
  7. ed/ex Batch Edits: A Typical Example
  8. Batch Editing Gotcha: Editors Fail on Big Files
  9. patch: Generalized Updating of Files That Differ
  10. Quick Reference: awk
  11. Versions of awk
6. Chapter 21 You Can't Quite Call This Editing
  1. And Why Not?
  2. Neatening Text with fmt
  3. Alternatives to fmt
  4. Clean Up Program Comment Blocks
  5. Remove Mail/News Headers with behead
  6. Low-Level File Butchery with dd
  7. offset: Indent Text
  8. Centering Lines in a File
  9. Splitting Files at Fixed Points: split
  10. Splitting Files by Context: csplit
  11. Hacking on Characters with tr
  12. Encoding "Binary" Files into ASCII
  13. Text Conversion with dd
  14. Cutting Columns or Fields
  15. Making Text in Columns with pr
  16. Make Columns Automatically with column
  17. Straightening Jagged Columns
  18. Pasting Things in Columns
  19. Joining Lines with join
  20. What Is (or Isn't) Unique?
  21. Rotating Text
7. Chapter 22 Sorting
  1. Putting Things in Order
  2. Sort Fields: How sort Sorts
  3. Changing the sort Field Delimiter
  4. Confusion with Whitespace Field Delimiters
  5. Alphabetic and Numeric Sorting
  6. Miscellaneous sort Hints
  7. lensort: Sort Lines by Length
  8. Sorting a List of People by Last Name
Processes and the Kernel
1. Chapter 23 Job Control
  1. Job Control in a Nutshell
  2. Job Control Basics
  3. Using jobs Effectively
  4. Some Gotchas with Job Control
  5. The "Current Job" Isn't Always What You Expect
  6. Job Control and autowrite: Real Timesavers!
  7. System Overloaded? Try Stopping Some Jobs
  8. Notification When Jobs Change State
  9. Stop Background Output with stty tostop
  10. nohup
  11. Disowning Processes
  12. Linux Virtual Consoles
  13. Stopping Remote Login Sessions
2. Chapter 24 Starting, Stopping, and Killing Processes
  1. What's in This Chapter
  2. fork and exec
  3. Managing Processes: Overall Concepts
  4. Subshells
  5. The ps Command
  6. The Controlling Terminal
  7. Tracking Down Processes
  8. Why ps Prints Some Commands in Parentheses
  9. The /proc Filesystem
  10. What Are Signals?
  11. Killing Foreground Jobs
  12. Destroying Processes with kill
  13. Printer Queue Watcher: A Restartable Daemon Shell Script
  14. Killing All Your Processes
  15. Killing Processes by Name?
  16. Kill Processes Interactively
  17. Processes Out of Control? Just STOP Them
  18. Cleaning Up an Unkillable Process
  19. Why You Can't Kill a Zombie
  20. The Process Chain to Your Window
  21. Terminal Windows Without Shells
  22. Close a Window by Killing Its Process(es)
3. Chapter 25 Delayed Execution
  1. Building Software Robots the Easy Way
  2. Periodic Program Execution: The cron Facility
  3. Adding crontab Entries
  4. Including Standard Input Within a cron Entry
  5. The at Command
  6. Making Your at Jobs Quiet
  7. Checking and Removing Jobs
  8. Avoiding Other at and cron Jobs
  9. Waiting a Little While: sleep
4. Chapter 26 System Performance and Profiling
  1. Timing Is Everything
  2. Timing Programs
  3. What Commands Are Running and How Long Do They Take?
  4. Checking System Load: uptime
  5. Know When to Be "nice" to Other Users...and When Not To
  6. A nice Gotcha
  7. Changing a Running Job's Niceness
Scripting
1. Chapter 27 Shell Interpretation
  1. What the Shell Does
  2. How the Shell Executes Other Commands
  3. What's a Shell, Anyway?
  4. Command Evaluation and Accidentally Overwriting Files
  5. Output Command-Line Arguments One by One
  6. Controlling Shell Command Searches
  7. Wildcards Inside Aliases
  8. eval: When You Need Another Chance
  9. Which One Will bash Use?
  10. Which One Will the C Shell Use?
  11. Is It "2>&1 file" or "> file 2>&1"? Why?
  12. Bourne Shell Quoting
  13. Differences Between Bourne and C Shell Quoting
  14. Quoting Special Characters in Filenames
  15. Verbose and Echo Settings Show Quoting
  16. Here Documents
  17. "Special" Characters and Operators
  18. How Many Backslashes?
2. Chapter 28 Saving Time on the Command Line
  1. What's Special About the Unix Command Line
  2. Reprinting Your Command Line with CTRL-r
  3. Use Wildcards to Create Files?
  4. Build Strings with { }
  5. String Editing (Colon) Operators
  6. Automatic Completion
  7. Don't Match Useless Files in Filename Completion
  8. Repeating Commands
  9. Repeating and Varying Commands
  10. Repeating a Command with Copy-and-Paste
  11. Repeating a Time-Varying Command
  12. Multiline Commands, Secondary Prompts
  13. Here Document Example #1: Unformatted Form Letters
  14. Command Substitution
  15. Handling Lots of Text with Temporary Files
  16. Separating Commands with Semicolons
  17. Dealing with Too Many Arguments
  18. Expect
3. Chapter 29 Custom Commands
  1. Creating Custom Commands
  2. Introduction to Shell Aliases
  3. C-Shell Aliases with Command-Line Arguments
  4. Setting and Unsetting Bourne-Type Aliases
  5. Korn-Shell Aliases
  6. zsh Aliases
  7. Sourceable Scripts
  8. Avoiding C-Shell Alias Loops
  9. How to Put if-then-else in a C-Shell Alias
  10. Fix Quoting in csh Aliases with makealias and quote
  11. Shell Function Basics
  12. Shell Function Specifics
  13. Propagating Shell Functions
  14. Simulated Bourne Shell Functions and Aliases
4. Chapter 30 The Use of History
  1. The Lessons of History
  2. History in a Nutshell
  3. My Favorite Is !$
  4. My Favorite Is !:n*
  5. My Favorite Is ^^
  6. Using !$ for Safety with Wildcards
  7. History by Number
  8. History Substitutions
  9. Repeating a Cycle of Commands
  10. Running a Series of Commands on a File
  11. Check Your History First with :p
  12. Picking Up Where You Left Off
  13. Pass History to Another Shell
  14. Shell Command-Line Editing
  15. Changing History Characters with histchars
  16. Instead of Changing History Characters
5. Chapter 31 Moving Around in a Hurry
  1. Getting Around the Filesystem
  2. Using Relative and Absolute Pathnames
  3. What Good Is a Current Directory?
  4. How Does Unix Find Your Current Directory?
  5. Saving Time When You Change Directories: cdpath
  6. Loop Control: break and continue
  7. The Shells' pushd and popd Commands
  8. Nice Aliases for pushd
  9. Quick cds with Aliases
  10. cd by Directory Initials
  11. Finding (Anyone's) Home Directory, Quickly
  12. Marking Your Place with a Shell Variable
  13. Automatic Setup When You Enter/Exit a Directory
6. Chapter 32 Regular Expressions (Pattern Matching)
  1. That's an Expression
  2. Don't Confuse Regular Expressions with Wildcards
  3. Understanding Expressions
  4. Using Metacharacters in Regular Expressions
  5. Regular Expressions: The Anchor Characters ^ and $
  6. Regular Expressions: Matching a Character with a Character Set
  7. Regular Expressions: Match Any Character with . (Dot)
  8. Regular Expressions: Specifying a Range of Characters with [...]
  9. Regular Expressions: Exceptions in a Character Set
  10. Regular Expressions: Repeating Character Sets with *
  11. Regular Expressions: Matching a Specific Number of Sets with \ { and \ }
  12. Regular Expressions: Matching Words with \ < and \ >
  13. Regular Expressions: Remembering Patterns with \ (, \ ), and \1
  14. Regular Expressions: Potential Problems
  15. Extended Regular Expressions
  16. Getting Regular Expressions Right
  17. Just What Does a Regular Expression Match?
  18. Limiting the Extent of a Match
  19. I Never Meta Character I Didn't Like
  20. Valid Metacharacters for Different Unix Programs
  21. Pattern Matching Quick Reference with Examples
7. Chapter 33 Wildcards
  1. File-Naming Wildcards
  2. Filename Wildcards in a Nutshell
  3. Who Handles Wildcards?
  4. What if a Wildcard Doesn't Match?
  5. Maybe You Shouldn't Use Wildcards in Pathnames
  6. Getting a List of Matching Files with grep -l
  7. Getting a List of Nonmatching Files
  8. nom: List Files That Don't Match a Wildcard
8. Chapter 34 The sed Stream Editor
  1. sed Sermon^H^H^H^H^H^HSummary
  2. Two Things You Must Know About sed
  3. Invoking sed
  4. Testing and Using a sed Script: checksed, runsed
  5. sed Addressing Basics
  6. Order of Commands in a Script
  7. One Thing at a Time
  8. Delimiting a Regular Expression
  9. Newlines in a sed Replacement
  10. Referencing the Search String in a Replacement
  11. Referencing Portions of a Search String
  12. Search and Replacement: One Match Among Many
  13. Transformations on Text
  14. Hold Space: The Set-Aside Buffer
  15. Transforming Part of a Line
  16. Making Edits Across Line Boundaries
  17. The Deliberate Scrivener
  18. Searching for Patterns Split Across Lines
  19. Multiline Delete
  20. Making Edits Everywhere Except...
  21. The sed Test Command
  22. Uses of the sed Quit Command
  23. Dangers of the sed Quit Command
  24. sed Newlines, Quoting, and Backslashes in a Shell Script
9. Chapter 35 Shell Programming for the Uninitiated
  1. Writing a Simple Shell Program
  2. Everyone Should Learn Some Shell Programming
  3. What Environment Variables Are Good For
  4. Parent-Child Relationships
  5. Predefined Environment Variables
  6. The PATH Environment Variable
  7. PATH and path
  8. The DISPLAY Environment Variable
  9. Shell Variables
  10. Test String Values with Bourne-Shell case
  11. Pattern Matching in case Statements
  12. Exit Status of Unix Processes
  13. Test Exit Status with the if Statement
  14. Testing Your Success
  15. Loops That Test Exit Status
  16. Set Exit Status of a Shell (Script)
  17. Trapping Exits Caused by Interrupts
  18. read: Reading from the Keyboard
  19. Shell Script "Wrappers" for awk, sed, etc.
  20. Handling Command-Line Arguments in Shell Scripts
  21. Handling Command-Line Arguments with a for Loop
  22. Handling Arguments with while and shift
  23. Loop Control: break and continue
  24. Standard Command-Line Parsing
  25. The Bourne Shell set Command
  26. test: Testing Files and Strings
  27. Picking a Name for a New Command
  28. Finding a Program Name and Giving Your Program Multiple Names
  29. Reading Files with the . and source Commands
  30. Using Shell Functions in Shell Scripts
10. Chapter 36 Shell Programming for the Initiated
  1. Beyond the Basics
  2. The Story of : # #!
  3. Don't Need a Shell for Your Script? Don't Use One
  4. Making #! Search the PATH
  5. The exec Command
  6. The Unappreciated Bourne Shell ":" Operator
  7. Parameter Substitution
  8. Save Disk Space and Programming: Multiple Names for a Program
  9. Finding the Last Command-Line Argument
  10. How to Unset All Command-Line Parameters
  11. Standard Input to a for Loop
  12. Making a for Loop with Multiple Variables
  13. Using basename and dirname
  14. A while Loop with Several Loop Control Commands
  15. Overview: Open Files and File Descriptors
  16. n>&m: Swap Standard Output and Standard Error
  17. A Shell Can Read a Script from Its Standard Input, but...
  18. Shell Scripts On-the-Fly from Standard Input
  19. Quoted hereis Document Terminators: sh Versus csh
  20. Turn Off echo for "Secret" Answers
  21. Quick Reference: expr
  22. Testing Characters in a String with expr
  23. Grabbing Parts of a String
  24. Nested Command Substitution
  25. Testing Two Strings with One case Statement
  26. Outputting Text to an X Window
  27. Shell Lockfile
11. Chapter 37 Shell Script Debugging and Gotchas
  1. Tips for Debugging Shell Scripts
  2. Bourne Shell Debugger Shows a Shell Variable
  3. Stop Syntax Errors in Numeric Tests
  4. Stop Syntax Errors in String Tests
  5. Quoting and Command-Line Parameters
  6. How Unix Keeps Time
  7. Copy What You Do with script
  8. Cleaning script Files
  9. Making an Arbitrary-Size File for Testing
Extending and Managing Your Environment
1. Chapter 38 Backing Up Files
  1. What Is This "Backup" Thing?
  2. tar in a Nutshell
  3. Make Your Own Backups
  4. More Ways to Back Up
  5. How to Make Backups to a Local Device
  6. Restoring Files from Tape with tar
  7. Using tar to a Remote Tape Drive
  8. Using GNU tar with a Remote Tape Drive
  9. On-Demand Incremental Backups of a Project
  10. Using Wildcards with tar
  11. Avoid Absolute Paths with tar
  12. Getting tar's Arguments in the Right Order
  13. The cpio Tape Archiver
  14. Industrial Strength Backups
2. Chapter 39 Creating and Reading Archives
  1. Packing Up and Moving
  2. Using tar to Create and Unpack Archives
  3. GNU tar Sampler
  4. Managing and Sharing Files with RCS and CVS
  5. RCS Basics
  6. List RCS Revision Numbers with rcsrevs
  7. CVS Basics
  8. More CVS
3. Chapter 40 Software Installation
  1. /usr/bin and Other Software Directories
  2. The Challenges of Software Installation on Unix
  3. Which make?
  4. Simplifying the make Process
  5. Using Debian's dselect
  6. Installing Software with Debian's Apt-Get
  7. Interruptable gets with wget
  8. The curl Application and One-Step GNU-Darwin Auto-Installer for OS X
  9. Installation with FreeBSD Ports
  10. Installing with FreeBSD Packages
  11. Finding and Installing RPM Packaged Software
4. Chapter 41 Perl
  1. High-Octane Shell Scripting
  2. Checking your Perl Installation
  3. Compiling Perl from Scratch
  4. Perl Boot Camp, Part 1: Typical Script Anatomy
  5. Perl Boot Camp, Part 2: Variables and Data Types
  6. Perl Boot Camp, Part 3: Branching and Looping
  7. Perl Boot Camp, Part 4: Pattern Matching
  8. Perl Boot Camp, Part 5: Perl Knows Unix
  9. Perl Boot Camp, Part 6: Modules
  10. Perl Boot Camp, Part 7: perldoc
  11. CPAN
  12. Make Custom grep Commands (etc.) with Perl
  13. Perl and the Internet
5. Chapter 42 Python
  1. What Is Python?
  2. Installation and Distutils
  3. Python Basics
  4. Python and the Web
  5. urllib
  6. urllib2
  7. htmllib and HTMLParser
  8. cgi
  9. mod_python
  10. What About Perl?
Communication and Connectivity
1. Chapter 43 Redirecting Input and Output
  1. Using Standard Input and Output
  2. One Argument with a cat Isn't Enough
  3. Send (Only) Standard Error Down a Pipe
  4. Problems Piping to a Pager
  5. Redirection in C Shell: Capture Errors, Too?
  6. Safe I/O Redirection with noclobber
  7. The ( ) Subshell Operators
  8. Send Output Two or More Places
  9. How to tee Several Commands into One Place
  10. Redirecting Output to More Than One Place
  11. Named Pipes: FIFOs
  12. What Can You Do with an Empty File?
2. Chapter 44 Devices
  1. Quick Introduction to Hardware
  2. Reading Kernel Boot Output
  3. Basic Kernel Configuration
  4. Disk Partitioning
  5. Filesystem Types and /etc/fstab
  6. Mounting and Unmounting Removable Filesystems
  7. Loopback Mounts
  8. Network Devices — ifconfig
  9. Mounting Network Filesystems — NFS, SMBFS
  10. Win Is a Modem Not a Modem?
  11. Setting Up a Dialup PPP Session
  12. USB Configuration
  13. Dealing with Sound Cards and Other Annoying Hardware
  14. Decapitating Your Machine — Serial Consoles
3. Chapter 45 Printing
  1. Introduction to Printing
  2. Introduction to Printing on Unix
  3. Printer Control with lpc
  4. Using Different Printers
  5. Using Symbolic Links for Spooling
  6. Formatting Plain Text: pr
  7. Formatting Plain Text: enscript
  8. Printing Over a Network
  9. Printing Over Samba
  10. Introduction to Typesetting
  11. A Bit of Unix Typesetting History
  12. Typesetting Manpages: nroff
  13. Formatting Markup Languages — troff, LATEX, HTML, and So On
  14. Printing Languages — PostScript, PCL, DVI, PDF
  15. Converting Text Files into a Printing Language
  16. Converting Typeset Files into a Printing Language
  17. Converting Source Files Automagically Within the Spooler
  18. The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS)
  19. The Portable Bitmap Package
4. Chapter 46 Connectivity
  1. TCP/IP — IP Addresses and Ports
  2. /etc/services Is Your Friend
  3. Status and Troubleshooting
  4. Where, Oh Where Did That Packet Go?
  5. The Director of Operations: inetd
  6. Secure Shell (SSH)
  7. Configuring an Anonymous FTP Server
  8. Mail — SMTP, POP, and IMAP
  9. Domain Name Service (DNS)
  10. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
  11. Gateways and NAT
  12. Firewalls
  13. Gatewaying from a Personal LAN over a Modem
5. Chapter 47 Connecting to MS Windows
  1. Building Bridges
  2. Installing and Configuring Samba
  3. Securing Samba
  4. SWAT and GUI SMB Browsers
  5. Printing with Samba
  6. Connecting to SMB Shares from Unix
  7. Sharing Desktops with VNC
  8. Of Emulators and APIs
  9. Citrix: Making Windows Multiuser
Security
1. Chapter 48 Security Basics
  1. Understanding Points of Vulnerability
  2. CERT Security Checklists
  3. Keeping Up with Security Alerts
  4. What We Mean by Buffer Overflow
  5. What We Mean by DoS
  6. Beware of Sluggish Performance
  7. Intruder Detection
  8. Importance of MOTD
  9. The Linux proc Filesystem
  10. Disabling inetd
  11. Disallow rlogin and rsh
  12. TCP Wrappers
2. Chapter 49 Root, Group, and User Management
  1. Unix User/Group Infrastructure
  2. When Does a User Become a User
  3. Forgetting the root Password
  4. Setting an Exact umask
  5. Group Permissions in a Directory with the setgid Bit
  6. Groups and Group Ownership
  7. Add Users to a Group to Deny Permissions
  8. Care and Feeding of SUID and SGID Scripts
  9. Substitute Identity with su
  10. Never Log In as root
  11. Providing Superpowers with sudo
  12. Enabling Root in Darwin
  13. Disable logins
3. Chapter 50 File Security, Ownership, and Sharing
  1. Introduction to File Ownership and Security
  2. Tutorial on File and Directory Permissions
  3. Who Will Own a New File?
  4. Protecting Files with the Sticky Bit
  5. Using chmod to Change File Permission
  6. The Handy chmod = Operator
  7. Protect Important Files: Make Them Unwritable
  8. cx, cw, c-w: Quick File Permission Changes
  9. A Loophole: Modifying Files Without Write Access
  10. A Directory That People Can Access but Can't List
  11. Juggling Permissions
  12. File Verification with md5sum
  13. Shell Scripts Must Be Readable and (Usually) Executable
  14. Why Can't You Change File Ownership?
  15. How to Change File Ownership Without chown
4. Chapter 51 SSH
  1. Enabling Remote Access on Mac OS X
  2. Protecting Access Through SSH
  3. Free SSH with OpenSSH
  4. SSH Problems and Solutions
  5. General and Authentication Problems
  6. Key and Agent Problems
  7. Server and Client Problems

Glossary
Colophon

Title:

Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition

By:

Jerry Peek, Shelley Powers, Tim O'Reilly, Mike Loukides

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print
Ebook
Safari Books Online

Print:

October 2002

Ebook:

February 2009

Pages:

1160

Print ISBN:

978-0-596-00330-2

| ISBN 10:

0-596-00330-7

Ebook ISBN:

978-0-596-10369-9

| ISBN 10:

0-596-10369-7

Description

Table of Contents

Product Details

About the Author

Colophon

Recommended for You

Basic Unix Environment

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Getting Help

Customizing Your Environment

Chapter 3 Setting Up Your Unix Shell

Chapter 4 Interacting with Your Environment

Chapter 5 Getting the Most out of Terminals, xterm, and X Windows

Chapter 6 Your X Environment

Working with Files and Directories

Chapter 7 Directory Organization

Chapter 8 Directories and Files

Chapter 9 Finding Files with find

Chapter 10 Linking, Renaming, and Copying Files

Chapter 11 Comparing Files

Chapter 12 Showing What's in a File

Chapter 13 Searching Through Files

Chapter 14 Removing Files

Chapter 15 Optimizing Disk Space

Basic Editing

Chapter 16 Spell Checking, Word Counting, and Textual Analysis

Chapter 17 vi Tips and Tricks

Chapter 18 Creating Custom Commands in vi

Chapter 19 GNU Emacs

Chapter 20 Batch Editing

Chapter 21 You Can't Quite Call This Editing

Chapter 22 Sorting

Processes and the Kernel

Chapter 23 Job Control

Chapter 24 Starting, Stopping, and Killing Processes

Chapter 25 Delayed Execution

Chapter 26 System Performance and Profiling

Scripting

Chapter 27 Shell Interpretation

Chapter 28 Saving Time on the Command Line

Chapter 29 Custom Commands

Chapter 30 The Use of History

Chapter 31 Moving Around in a Hurry

Chapter 32 Regular Expressions (Pattern Matching)

Chapter 33 Wildcards

Chapter 34 The sed Stream Editor

Chapter 35 Shell Programming for the Uninitiated

Chapter 36 Shell Programming for the Initiated

Chapter 37 Shell Script Debugging and Gotchas

Extending and Managing Your Environment

Chapter 38 Backing Up Files

Chapter 39 Creating and Reading Archives

Chapter 40 Software Installation

Chapter 41 Perl

Chapter 42 Python

Communication and Connectivity

Chapter 43 Redirecting Input and Output

Chapter 44 Devices

Chapter 45 Printing

Chapter 46 Connectivity

Chapter 47 Connecting to MS Windows

Security

Chapter 48 Security Basics

Chapter 49 Root, Group, and User Management

Chapter 50 File Security, Ownership, and Sharing

Chapter 51 SSH

Glossary

Colophon

Jerry Peek

Shelley Powers

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