Samuel Berry

This tutorial explains how to use the cd command in Linux to change the directory you are currently in, within the shell. We’ve previously covered how to look around in directories with ls. But now you need to start navigating around the directories. We’ll do that easily with cd, change directory. Let’s start with something simple, how do we learn more about simple baked in utils like cd? If you try: man cd It’ll report, “No manual entry for cd”. Most likely. Instead for baked … Read more

With the Linux chmod command, we can recursively change file permissions on all files and directories. This guide explains how. It’s likely you’ve run into the following errors before: 111 [Permission Denied] “Linux-Screw” [Permission Denied] “Linux-Screw” [readonly] For any system files, using sudo is the preferred way of editing a file. This allows you to keep all the system context. For everyday use with user files, it’s best to change permissions. chmod can do that for us. It keeps us from needing to escalate permission … Read more

This tutorial explains how to use the Linux passwd command to change a user password or disable an account. You’re assigned a ticket: A simple password reset, but it’s for a Linux machine. What do you need to know to reset a password on Linux? First the basics. For users, the passwd authentication token is store in the /etc/shadow file. For groups, it’s stored in the appropriately named /etc/gshadow file. passwd allows you to change passwords for either. The normal usage of passwd is: Reset … Read more

The ls command in Linux is likely one of the first commands you ever need to use. In this article, we’ll go over the command and commonly used parameters. My preferred set of options is as follows: ls -Zaltrh Let’s dig into each option individually, and explain why the entire glob of options is helpful. Linux LS Command Syntax #ls [OPTION] [FILE] OPTIONS: [-a], do not ignore entries starting with . or .. [-h], with -l, print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M … Read more

In this guide, we explain how to use systemctl to list services and check on their status. We will also cover some of the other uses for systemctl. Coming from run_init service, systemctl is a breath of fresh air. I’m sure there are many reasons I’m wrong and I’ve heard the debates for and against it and changed my mind a few times. After using it daily at work, I’m in the systemctl camp now. The language of the command feels more natural now. On … Read more

There are numerous methods that can be utilized to kill a process in Linux. This tutorial will teach you how to find and kill broken processes. A process can become orphaned easily. Whether on purpose or not, a parent process can crash and leave a child process running. Sometimes, a parent process fails to reap a completed child process, and it becomes a zombie. Both of these processes are stuck and need manual intervention. Enter job control. Let’s take a look at how to kill … Read more

In this tutorial, we explain how to rename a directory in Linux, using the “mv” and “rename” commands. Renaming directories is not very different from renaming files. Because after all, this is Linux, where everything is a file. Even the directories. So, most of what we discussed with renaming files works here too. Renaming directories with mv mv RenameDir/ renameDir There it is. Just mv it, like the song. Only special concerns, if you have anything directed to the directory. Make sure to search your … Read more