Category Archives: Bash

Sourcing a script can be useful for exporting variables in the current shell. However, you can’t use “dirname $0″ to get the directory of the script. Here’s how to get the same effect of dirname, but still allowing you to … Continue reading →

If you bash shell prompt is empty when logging in, here’s how to fix it. Create a ~/.bashrc file: if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then . /etc/bashrc fi Create a ~/.bash_profile file: if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc … Continue reading →

The new short way: $ date -d ’1 day ago’ +’%Y/%m/%d’ 2009/07/21 Or the longer way: Yesterday in epoch seconds $ yesterday=$((`date +’%s’` – 86400)) Get default formatted yesterday’s date $ date -d “1970-01-01 $yesterday sec” Tue Feb 17 01:27:32 … Continue reading →

For example, the “kill” manpage shows: SEE ALSO bash(1), tcsh(1), kill(2), sigvec(2), signal(7) This is how to view section 7 of the “signal” manpage: man 7 signal

How to quickly copy a file or directory over SSH using tar: tar -cf – myfile | ssh target_host tar -xf – If you want to change the target directory, use this: tar -cf – myfile | ssh target_host “cd … Continue reading →

# tar cf – source_dir | ( cd target_dir && tar xBf – )