Jerry Peek's Linux Magazine Articles

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I've written the Linux Magazine (the US publication -- not the UK) Power Tools column monthly since September 2002. Each article's online version is available at some time after print publication; reading it requires a free subscription (you'll be asked to sign in or to create a new account). You can read the PDF versions without a subscription.

Jump to articles for the year...
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2010

February 8, 2010 Power Up Linux GUI Apps: Launching windowing applications from the command line adds shell power to the GUI interface.

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2009

April 16, 2009 Slicing and Dicing on the Command Line: More about the powerful ways you can handle text under Linux, the second of two articles about rearranging text -- both words and TAB-separated fields. Includes examples of processing text from GUI apps like spreadsheets.
April 5, 2009 Linux Runs on Text: Understanding & Handling Text: Continuing to look into the powerful ways you can handle text under Linux, here's the first of two articles that shows how to see what text is in a file (including nonprinting characters like carriage returns) and to rearrange it (basically, by juggling newline characters). Covers Windows and Classic Mac files too.
February 22, 2009 Piles of Files: A continuation of the Filenames by Design series, this article covers ways to use text and utilities to organize and access files.

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2008

December 3, 2008: Filenames by Design, Part Three: The last of a three-column series shows examples of ways to use the systems of files you've built. (There are many, many other ways; these are idea-starters.)
November 2, 2008: Filenames by Design, Part Two: The second in a three-column series covers ways to design and build systems of files. The article also has a separate sidebar, Details of the File-Renaming Loops.
October 15, 2008: Filenames by Design, Part One: Linux filesystems have rock-solid reliability, few resrictions on file naming, and their filenames can be quite long. This, in combination with the fantastic power and flexibility of utilities and shells, lets you use systems of filenames as a sort of database. We start a three-column series by looking at overall designs and principles.
(Between July and September, the magazine transitioned from both print and online publication to online-only.)
June 2008: Wizard Boot Camp, Part Ten [PDF] [HTML] The last in this ten-part series is also the last in a three-part sub-series on utilities and some non-obvious uses: csplit and split; file; locate and updatedb; look; mail, sendmail, etc.; od and friends; and ssh and scp. (Whew.)
May 2008: The Importance of Command Line Literacy [PDF] [HTML] This article (which isn't one of my Power Tools columns, by the way) explains why the shells and utilities are worth knowing.
May 2008: Wizard Boot Camp, Part Nine [PDF] [HTML] Second in a sub-series, here's more about ln and links, as well as the tiny editor sed and uses like editing email as it zips through a server. [errata: the clean_triprep script, which you can get from that link or from the online HTML version, wasn't shown in the print version of the article:]
April 2008: Wizard Boot Camp, Part Eight [PDF] [HTML] Some of the contents of /bin and /usr/bin can be surprising. This is the first of a sub-series on features of utility programs (and related shell/system features) that all wizards should know. This month: cat; date and touch; echo; grep; gzip and bzip2; and ln.
March 2008: Wizard Boot Camp, Part Seven [PDF] [HTML] The /proc filesystem is loaded with information about proceses. We look at ways to get the information and how to interpret it (including the twisty corners of /proc/self).
February 2008: Wizard Boot Camp, Part Six [PDF] [HTML] Continuing the sub-series about processes, this column discusses daemons (using shell scripts), then explains how and why you'd want to suspend a shell process. (Named the #1 article in the Top 10 Sys Admin Articles of 2008.)
January 2008: Wizard Boot Camp, Part Five [PDF] [HTML] The main way to control processes is by sending signals. This leads to job control, suspended processes, and catching signals in a shell script using trap.

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2007

December 2007: Wizard Boot Camp, Part Four [PDF] [HTML] This column starts a sub-series about Linux processes and their characteristics. This month: ps(1) output, what's underneath it, parent-child relationships, and using user-defined output formats to get just what you want.
November 2007: Boot Camp for Wizards, Part Three [PDF] [HTML] This month, more about using open files from a shell: manipulating file descriptors, using named pipes (FIFOs), as well as why you would (and wouldn't) want a file without a name.
October 2007: Boot Camp for Wizards, Part Two [PDF] [HTML] Using standard I/O from a shell means understanding characteristics of open files and how they're passed to child processes -- as well as writing a script that behaves like a filter.
September 2007: Wizard Boot Camp, Part One [PDF] [HTML] As I begin my sixth year writing this column, I start a survey of little-known but important Linux concepts that wizards need. This month's column covers the (not-so-basic) basics, then starts with shells.
August 2007: Doing More with Less, Part Two [PDF] [HTML] More about less, including various search methods, viewing and searching multiple files, scrolling sideways, marking places (and returning), reading standard input and watching files grow.
July 2007: Doing More with Less, Part One [PDF] [HTML] Most people know about the viewer program named less, but its long list of features isn't as well-known.
June 2007: Merging and More with diff3 [PDF] [HTML] This last column in the series about GNU diffutils covers diff3, an unusual tool for comparing and combining three files.
May 2007: sdiff and More [PDF] [HTML] Although there are much "GUIer" side-by-side file comparison tools, sdiff has some advantages -- as you'll see in this second column of a series about GNU diffutils.
April 2007: What's the Diff? [PDF] [HTML] In this first column of a series about GNU diffutils, we dig into diff. (The previous column covered cmp, which is actually also part of diffutils.)
March 2007: Bits and Pieces: Comparing Data [PDF] [HTML] See data bit-by-bit (or byte-by-byte, or ...) with od. Compare data with cmp. To do more, combine those tools with a script, with diff, and ...
February 2007: Cygwin, Part Three [PDF] [HTML]
January 2007: Cygwin, Part Two: Linux-like Shells [PDF] [HTML]

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2006

December 2006: A Better Windows Command Line [PDF] [HTML] The freely-available Cygwin package gives you the power of Linux shells and utilities on a Microsoft Windows system.
November 2006: The Joy of vim, Part Three [PDF] [HTML]
October 2006: Why Use vim?, Part Two [PDF] [HTML]
September 2006: The Joy of vim, Part One [PDF] [HTML] Linux users can choose from two major text editors, Emacs and vi. Vim is one of the most popular replacements for vi. This month, in the first of a series, we'll see why.
August 2006: ImageMagick, Part Three [PDF] [HTML]
July 2006: ImageMagick, Part Two [PDF] [HTML]
June 2006: ImageMagick, Part One [PDF] [HTML] Editing Images from the command line? Yes -- with the very powerful editing tools in ImageMagick, some jobs are done more easily (and more flexibly) than with a graphical tool like Photoshop or The GIMP.
May 2006: Semi-Automated Editing [PDF] [HTML] Automating a difficult text-conversion job completely -- handling every little problem with an algorithm -- can be more trouble for "one-off" jobs than it's worth. Consider writing little macros and running them by hand.
April 2006: What's GNU, Part Seven [PDF] [HTML] We wrap up the series with a look at some changes to diff, wc, du, date, touch, and sed.
March 2006: What's GNU, Part Six [PDF] [HTML] The sixth of a series about some new features of old utilities. This month: tar, the "tape archiver" that's now aimed more at non-tape archives.
February 2006: What's GNU, Part Five [PDF] [HTML] The fifth of a series about some new features of old utilities. This month: sort, which is quite different from the original text-sorting utility.
January 2006: What's GNU, Part Four [PDF] [HTML] The fourth of a series about some new features of old utilities. This month: find, the file-finder that has even more handy features now than it used to.

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2005

December 2005: New Shells, Part Three: fish [PDF] [HTML] The last of the series: fish, the Friendly Interactive Shell, is "friendly" because it's easier to use (not "dumbed down").
November 2005: New Shells, Part Two: vshnu [PDF] [HTML] The second of the series of three: vshnu is a "visual shell" that runs in a terminal window, combining navigation shortcuts with a standard shell and the power of Perl.
October 2005: New Shells, Part One: Zoidberg [PDF] [HTML] The first of a series of three columns about nontraditional shells. This month: zoid, a shell that lets you type both traditional shell commands and Perl code.
September 2005: No column this month.
August 2005: What's GNU in Old Utilities, Part Three [PDF] [HTML] The third of a series about some new features of old utilities (to be continued later). This month: three related utilities -- mv, cp, and ln. We also look at ways to use and remove "backup" files created by these.
July 2005: What's GNU in Old Utilities, Part Two [PDF] [HTML] The second of a series about some new features of old utilities. This month: grep.
June 2005: What's GNU in Old Utilities, Part One [PDF] [HTML] The first of a series about some new features of old utilities. This month: ls.
May 2005: Filename Trouble [PDF] [HTML] Filenames with spaces and other "special" characters that aren't a problem for users with GUIs can cause headaches on the command line. What are the problems, and what's a shell user to do?
April 2005: More Data Surgery [PDF] [HTML] A followup to the October 2004 column, which covered editing data byte-by-byte. This month we slice and dice words and lines with xargs, fmt, fold, column, join, and printf.
March 2005: The Unknown Power Tool: m4, Part Two [PDF] [HTML] More about m4: diversions, included files, frozen files, debugging and tracing, and rough edges (with some workarounds).
February 2005: Macro Magic: m4, Part One [PDF] [HTML] The m4 macro processor hides "behind the scenes" on Linux boxes, building configuration files for big systems like sendmail. It's handy for plenty of other things, as we'll see this month and next.
January 2005: It's (Not) Magic [PDF] [HTML] The Linux kernel doesn't require that filenames end with an "extension" like .exe to know how to open a file. It uses magic numbers instead. Many common file formats, such as ZIP, do the same.

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2004

December 2004: On the T(r)ail of Open Files [PDF] [HTML] How Linux handles files that have been opened by a program is important to low-level programmers. It's also useful to understand if you're a user who wants to take advantage of all that Linux can do. [errata]
November 2004: gFTP and More [PDF] [HTML] We cover the gFTP graphical file-transfer program specifically and details about file transfer in general.
October 2004: Performing Data Surgery [PDF] [HTML] In Linux, data is typically a stream of characters or bytes. We look at tools and techniques for using and editing data: the utilities dd, head, tail, and od, the /dev/random device, and more.
September 2004: Think Links [PDF] [HTML] With links, you can give a program more than one name, make multiple views of the files in a directory or combine multiple files from various directories into one directory.
August 2004: Fix Images Fast with Netpbm [PDF] [HTML] The Netpbm utilities give you hundreds of ways to convert image files from one format to another, slicing and dicing (cropping, rotating, transforming...) as needed. Shell "glue" helps you put them together.
July 2004: Great Email Features (You've Never Heard Of) [PDF] [HTML] This feature-length article (not my regular Power Tools column) helps you find the power buried in your email program: features you might not know that it has.
June 2004: Execution and Redirection [PDF] [HTML] Controlling execution of programs, and redirection of their input and output, is an important part of Linux process management. We cover useful but mostly-unknown shell features for doing that.
May 2004: Great Command-line Combinations [PDF] [HTML] A graphical (GUI) tool can be easy and intuitive, but its simple interface can also make it weak and inflexible. We look at some powerful reasons for using a command line.
April 2004: Personal Version Control [PDF] [HTML] Programmers use version control software like CVS and RCS. Version control can also be very useful for personal projects -- and not just for programs.
March 2004: Even Wilder Wildcards [PDF] [HTML] A follow-on to the December 2003 and February 2004 columns: some of the most powerful zsh wildcards and related features in other shells.
February 2004: Catching Some ZZZs [PDF] [HTML] The Z shell has powerful features that other shells don't. We show several that are obscure but still useful.
January 2004: Cross-platform Command Lines [PDF] [HTML] The command line, that time-tested keyboard interface, isn't just useful on Linux systems. Many basic command lines will probably work on all of your systems -- Linux, Windows, and more.

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2003

December 2003: Wildcards Gone... Wild [PDF] [HTML] Wildcards (characters like * and ? that you type on a command line) are much more powerful and flexible than filename completion, Most shells have their own advanced wildcards. We look into wildcards' power at matching specific sets of names with just a few keystrokes. [errata]
November 2003: (Very) Small Editors [PDF] [HTML] Three lesser-known text handling tools: the line editors ex (which is usually part of the vi editor) and ed; and the stream editor sed.
October 2003: Email Control [PDF] [HTML] Ways to filter mail using procmail, emphasizing ways to detect messages by what's in the header or body.
September 2003: (Not So) Stupid Shell Tricks [PDF] [HTML] Making your shell prompt in multiple colors isn't only cool, it can help you spot problems -- if you configure the shell to notify you by changing colors. We look at shell tricks that can actually be very useful.
August 2003: Pure Postal Power [PDF] [HTML] All about fetchmail, a utility that gets your email messages from a remote server by POP, IMAP, and many other protocols -- and how to combine it with other local utilities to do more email automation.
July 2003: Personal Post [PDF] [HTML] This feature-length article (not my regular Power Tools column) covers the fundamentals of how email is transmitted, received, edited, and stored -- then shows some ways to build a custom email solution that fits your needs.
June 2003: screen: Windows that Follow You [PDF] [HTML] The handy screen utility maintains the state of a terminal window between login sessions. The column also covers useful details about processes, ttys, and the environment. [errata]
May 2003: Transfer Tips, Part III [PDF] [HTML] Making two sets of files identical with rsync and unison. [errata]
April 2003: Transfer Tips, Part II [PDF] [HTML] Transferring and synchronizing sets of files automatically with ftp, sftp, and wget. I've also included some material that we didn't have room for in the original magazine article: Command-line Network Control. [errata]
March 2003: Transfer Tips, Part I [PDF] [HTML] Using ssh and scp -- and, especially, the power of the shells that they run -- to run remote commands, as well as to move files, data, and window connections, securely and easily, between hosts. [errata]
February 2003: Running Jobs Unattended [PDF] [HTML] How to do something, sometime later, while you aren't there, using the Linux utilities sleep, at, cron, and anacron. [errata]
January 2003: Mozilla: Inside the Lizard's Lair [PDF] [HTML] Mozilla is more than a great web browser: it's a platform for developing standards-based cross-platform applications.

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2002

December 2002: Using Power Wisely [PDF] [HTML] How to manage root access; juggling Linux processes and shells. I've also made a separate article about process trees and job control as background for the column.
November 2002: Sharing Files (Carefully) [PDF] [HTML] An overview of, and tips and tricks about, Linux filesystem permissions. [errata]
October 2002: What's in a Pathname? [PDF] [HTML] Locating things in the filesystem easily and quickly; what a current directory really does; command substitution. [errata]
September 2002: A Very Valuable Find [PDF] [HTML] How the Linux find utility really works: by short-circuit evaluation of a logical expression from its command line. [errata]

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Last change: 9 February 2010

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