If you want to help people,
keep it simple!

Overcome Command-Not-Found errors (once and for all)

No - I don’t have any empirical data for this. But …

if I should name the top 5 frustrations of Linux beginners, then the “command-not-found” errors would be most certainly on this list.

Especially if you are new to the Linux command line, it’s not always obvious what is causing this error.

First: You simply don’t know all the tools

As you start exploring the Linux command line (aka “the Linux shell”), you simply don’t yet know the tools that are available there.

There are a load of them and unfortunately not every tool is available on every Linux distribution. And don’t worry - you will get to know them step-by-step once you proceed through your Linux journey.

(I’ll show you a shortcut for getting all the really essential tools later on - but that’s _not_ the point of this post at all)

The point here is …

The shell searches in it’s own way …

To understand (and really overcome) these “command not found” errors, we need to understand what causes them, don’t we?

So let’s face the challenge and let’s have a look how the shell searches for a command to run.

Continue reading »

Get to know your linux-system - Step 3

In this third step of “Get To Know Your Linux-System”, we wanna examine the diskspace a system uses.

And disk space - this is the number one resource if it comes to unplanned outages.

I would say - at least one time a month - a customer of mine has a problem related to a completely filled up disk space somewhere.

… and this then leads to

  • user complains
  • services that stop working
  • and it may even lead to data loss.

Yes - this hasn’t to be a problem if we had a decent monitoring in place - but this is a completely different story.

What you will learn:

Let me show you in this lesson,

  • how to get insights into the used disk-space

… and as much important like this …

  • how to examine where - in which directories and by which files - all the disk space is consumed.
Continue reading »

Get to know your linux-system - Step 2

In this second step of “Get To Know Your Linux-System” you will learn more about the CPU- and memory-load of your system.

What you will get

  • We will have a look at the processes a system is currently busy with
  • You will see, how much memory a system has installed and how it is used
  • You will get the insight, if your system, is slowed down because of a memory-overload.

… and incidentally, I will show you, how you can pause a process and reactivate it later on.

So let’s start with the single command, that prepares for you most of the needed information in one single view …

Continue reading »

Get to know your linux-system - Step 1

In this lesson I wanna show you a command, that gives you with just two keystrokes a load of useful information about a linux system.

What you can expect

In this lessen I will talk about

  • The one command I always type in at first after logging in into a system.
  • The current time and the timezone your system is configured with
  • How to find out, if your system is currently overloaded or not
  • If there are other users active on the system and what they are doing

(Yes - linux is a multi-user environment. And therefore it’s often very useful to see, what other users are doing on the system at the time you are working there.)

Continue reading »

What the heck are they using xargs for?

You know how to connect two tools via stdin and stdout? Great!

  • But how about the commands that don’t read from it’s input-datastream?
  • How to interconnect commands together, that naturally won’t fit?

This is, where xargs comes into play.

And because I know your time is precious - I’ve created this really short video-training … only 7:32 min :-)

In this video you will also discover …

  • the one big philosophy you can expect from most linux-tools

  • which commands can be interconnected directly

  • and the only two parameters you need for controlling the behavior of xargs most of the time.

So sit back, watch and enjoy …

×