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1500 questions
2023
votes
3 answers
Why does man print "gimme gimme gimme" at 00:30?
We've noticed that some of our automatic tests fail when they run at 00:30 but work fine the rest of the day. They fail with the message gimme gimme gimme in stderr , which wasn't expected. Why are we getting this output?
Jaroslav Kucera
- 11,072
1677
votes
16 answers
How do I get the size of a directory on the command line?
I tried to obtain the size of a directory (containing directories and sub directories) by using the ls command with option l . It seems to work for files ( ls -l file name ), but if I try to get the size of a directory (for instance, ls -l /home ),…
Abdul Al Hazred
- 27,680
1638
votes
10 answers
What is the exact difference between a 'terminal', a 'shell', a 'tty' and a 'console'?
I think these terms almost refer to the same thing, when used loosely: terminal shell tty console What exactly does each of these terms refer to?
Lazer
- 36,385
1413
votes
12 answers
How to correctly add a path to PATH?
I'm wondering where a new path has to be added to the PATH environment variable. I know this can be accomplished by editing .bashrc (for example), but it's not clear how to do this. This way: export PATH=~/opt/bin:$PATH or this? export…
Paolo
- 17,985
1340
votes
13 answers
How to copy files from one machine to another using ssh
I am using a Linux (CentOS) machine, and I have already connected to another system using SSH . Now, my question is: How can I copy files from one system to another system? Suppose, in my environment, I have two system like System A and System B .…
user3021349
- 17,389
1218
votes
9 answers
How to install a deb file, by dpkg -i or by apt?
I have a deb package for installation. Shall I install by dpkg -i my.deb , or by apt ? Will both handle the software dependency problem well? If by apt , how can I install from the deb by apt ?
Tim
- 107,810
1088
votes
7 answers
How to see full log from systemctl status service?
I check service status with systemctl status service-name . By default, I see few rows only, so I add -n50 to see more. Sometimes, I want to see full log, from start. It could have 1000s of rows. Now, I check it with -n10000 but that doesn't look…
10robinho
- 11,279
1001
votes
17 answers
How can I reduce a video's size with ffmpeg?
How can I use ffmpeg to reduce the size of a video by lowering the quality (as minimally as possible, naturally, because I need it to run on a mobile device that doesn't have much available space)? I forgot to mention that when the video can use…
xralf
- 14,393
- 32
- 119
- 165
982
votes
11 answers
How can I replace a string in a file(s)?
Replacing strings in files based on certain search criteria is a very common task. How can I replace string foo with bar in all files in the current directory? do the same recursively for sub directories? replace only if the file name matches…
terdon
- 254,405
976
votes
3 answers
How to unfreeze after accidentally pressing Ctrl-S in a terminal?
It's a situation that has happened quite often to me: after I press (with a different intention) Ctrl-S in a terminal, the interaction (input or output) with it is frozen. It's probably a kind of "scroll lock" or whatever. How do I unfreeze the…
imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev
- 16,060
936
votes
2 answers
How do I make `ls` show file sizes in megabytes?
What commands do I need for Linux's ls to show the file size in MB?
Paul Sheldrake
- 9,473
875
votes
4 answers
How to cycle through reverse-i-search in Bash?
In the GNU bash shell, I can type Ctrl + R to search for a matching command previously run. E.g., if I type Ctrl + R and then " grep ", it lists my last grep command, and I can hit Enter to use it. This only gives one suggestion though. Is there any…
Village
- 4,437
864
votes
2 answers
Why was '~' chosen to represent the home directory?
I have often wondered why the ~ ( tilde ) character represents the home directory of a user. Is there a reason behind this, or is it just because tilde is an infrequently used character?
Lelouch Lamperouge
- 7,059
- 3
- 18
- 11
852
votes
5 answers
What does "--" (double dash / double hyphen) mean?
I have seen -- used in the compgen command. For example: compgen -W "foo bar baz" -- b What is the meaning of the -- in there?
dogbane
- 30,975
839
votes
40 answers
Tracking down where disk space has gone on Linux?
When administering Linux systems I often find myself struggling to track down the culprit after a partition goes full. I normally use du / | sort -nr but on a large filesystem this takes a long time before any results are returned. Also, this is…
Owen Fraser-Green