Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Techniques

Using the command line in Linux is one of the most common approaches to system administration. This book covers everything you need to implement it and use it as part of the shell scripting process.

Practical and actionable recipes for using shell and command-line scripting on your Linux OS with confidence

• Learn how to use the command line and write and debug Linux Shell scripts
• Automate complex repetitive tasks and backups, and learn networking and security
• A practical approach to system administration, and virtual machine and software management

Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Techniques begins by taking you through the basics of the shell and command-line utilities. You'll start by exploring shell commands for file, directory, service, package, and process management. Next, you'll learn about networking - network, firewall and DNS client configuration, ssh, scp, rsync, and vsftpd, as well as some network troubleshooting tools.

You'll also focus on using the command line to find and manipulate text content, via commands such as cut, egrep, and sed. As you progress, you'll learn how to use shell scripting. You'll understand the basics - input and output, along with various programming concepts such as loops, variables, arguments, functions, and arrays. Later, you'll learn about shell script interaction and troubleshooting, before covering a wide range of examples of complete shell scripts, varying from network and firewall configuration, through to backup and concepts for creating live environments. This includes examples of performing scripted virtual machine installation and administration, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack provisioning and bulk user creation for testing environments.

By the end of this Linux book, you'll have gained the knowledge and confidence you need to use shell and command-line scripts.

• Get an introduction to the command line, text editors, and shell scripting
• Focus on regular expressions, file handling, and automating complex tasks
• Automate common administrative tasks
• Become well-versed with networking and system security scripting
• Get to grips with repository management and network-based file synchronization
• Use loops, arguments, functions, and arrays for task automation

This book is for anyone looking to learn about Linux administration via CLI and scripting. Those with no Linux command-line interface (CLI) experience will benefit from it by learning from scratch. More experienced Linux administrators or engineers will also find this book useful, as it will help them organize their knowledge, fill in any gaps, and work efficiently with shell scripts to increase productivity.