[H-GEN] Useful not so obvious tips

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Anthony Irwin wrote:

> I actually mean't xargs but haven't had a need to use xset.

Ah, that makes more sense :)

> It's nice to know I'm not the only one picking up new tid bits of
> information. In unix world it's like there is always something new to
> know/do/try.

For sure.  Just checkout the man page for bash :)  And then there is the
rest of the system :)

> I didn't know about that one. I've used it a couple times now already
> it's a command I will be commiting to memory it's going to save me a ton
> of typing.

The command "cd -" was infact the first thing I learnt at HUMBUG (1995).

> Another thing like that is cd ~/downloads/mozilla is the same as typing
> cd /home/username/downloads/mozilla

Yes, very useful.  You know it works for other users too: cd ~test will
take you to $HOME for user test (assuming you are using an a/c that can
see that directory).

Here is one to use if your system is really broken:

Can't execute ls?  No problem.  echo * will give you the filenames in the
current directory.  I have used this in the real world.

Speaking of broken systems, pass init=/bin/bash to lilo/grub to get into a
Linux system at the console.  This is great if something in your bootup
scripts is preventing the system from coming up properly.  Lilo can be
password protected to prevent un-authenticated access to the system.
However if they are at the console they could just use a boot disk or
steal the harddrive :)

Cheers,
	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073, Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net, http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.