[ale] advice for intermediate linux'r

[Transam]

> If there was once piece of advice you could give to all the intermediate [or
> newbie] linux users what would it be?  Or what is the most essential
> (non-obvious) utility that you know of.  I hope this doesn't turn into
> flamebait.  I'm hoping the answer will be something like sed or awk or emacs
> or something I've been procrastinating learning...

Backups, alternate booting method in case the primary fails, and security.

> I think my goal is geared more toward the "command line" processing than the
> "networking" side of things (I know how to use nmap).

As far as the most useful not univerally-known utilities:

     more (or less)
     grep
     find
     tail
     ci and co
     dig -x IP
     telnet some_system some_tcp_port (to test if server listing/working)
     sed
     dd (for working with raw devices such as CDs and Floppies and over SSH)
     wc
     alias phone 'grep -i "\!*" $HOME/phone
       (Use for a primitive but effective phone/address book)
     alias t50 "tail -50 /usr/mail/$USER  | more"
       (Check your most recent new mail)
     ssh, scp, ftp (of course)
     gpg (of course)

Shove the following into /usr/local/bin/pp and make it mode 755:
     (/bin/echo \
     " F    UID   PID  PPID PRI NI SIZE  RSS WCHAN      STAT TTY   TIME COMMAND";\
     /bin/ps axlww|/bin/grep -i $1|/bin/grep -v -w 'grep'|/bin/grep -v -w 'pp')\
     |/bin/more

Then "rehash" if using *csh.

Then "pp netscape" to see if you're running netscape, for example, or
"pp 1234" to see if PID 1234 still is running.

> Any tips?

> Much respect-
> CB

> P.S.
> obviously, i could use some help with my expression's as seen above - my
> goal was "unix or Linux".  any pointers there would be much appreciated as
> well.

"\<[LU]i*n[ui]x\>" should work for most RE parsers such as grep and vi,
with some false positives.

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