May 14th, 2009 — Advanced topics
As some of you may know already, I've recently restarted my activity on another technical blog of mine: Solaris blog.
Solaris blog: http://solaris.reys.net
Solaris blog is the very first blog I started, I was actively posting new material in 2006-2007. Since then my primary focus had shifted to Linux systems, but I realized that I miss Solaris so much that I still need to play with latest versions and features in Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris.
Today I'd like to offer you a few articles from Solaris blog, let me know if you find them useful:
Most of these topics are fairly technical and expect you to have previous knowledge of Solaris OS, but Unix Tutorial is here to take care of the basics – so ask away and I'll be glad to help you discover Solaris in my future posts.
May 11th, 2009 — Basic stuff
show disk size in Unix is a very popular request visitors use to arrive at my Unix Tutorial pages. Since I never addressed the question of confirming the number of hard drivers available on your system or the task of finding out a disk's capacity, I'd like to document a quick and easy way of doing just that.
I hope that when someone looks for a way to show disk size, what's really expected is a command to help you confirm the capacity of a disk in gigabytes.
Using fdisk command in Linux
One of the easiest ways to learn a lot about hard drives installed on your Linux system is to use the fdisk command: Continue reading →
May 8th, 2009 — Linux, RedHat, Ubuntu
I had to download a piece of software today for one of the servers which I haven't used in a while. A question of confirming the 64bit CPU capability came up, and I realized that I never mentioned it here on Unix Tutorial.
Some of you probably remember the uname command which also shows you similar information, but uname confirms the running kernel of your OS and not the CPU capability: if you're booted into 32bit mode, it will not help you to recognize the 64bit potential of your system.
Obtaining CPU information from /proc/cpuinfo
Most Linux distros will have the special /proc/cpuinfo file which contains a textual description of all the features your processors have. This is a very useful file – depending on your task it may help you identify any features of your processors, as well as confirm the overall number of CPUs your system has installed.
Most commonly, the following information is obtained from /proc/cpuinfo:
- processor model name and type
- processor speed in Mhz
- processor cache size
- instruction flags supported by CPU
Continue reading →
May 6th, 2009 — News
I'm finally getting ready to start publishing some tips with screenshots, so today it's just a humble screenshot tour of my fresh Ubuntu 9.04 install.
Let me know if you struggle with any graphics desktop functionality, and I'll try my best to help and show it with screenshots.
By the way: I really like one of the new community themes which come with Ubuntu 9.04, it's called the Dust theme.
May 5th, 2009 — News
Next batch of Unix-related news, this week it's just about announcing all the new releases of various distros.
Unix news
Unix-related releases
See also:
April 21st, 2009 — News
Hi all! New posts are coming, but you'll have to wait a bit longer. Here's a few interesting reads you might explore in the meantime:
Unix news
Unix-related releases
Useful Unix tips
See also:
April 9th, 2009 — Linux
Hi everyone, I'm finally back from my holidays, and simply cannot wait to share some more Unix tips with all of you!
Today I'll talk a bit more about yet another way of learning version information about your Linux OS: the /proc/version file. I mentioned it briefly in one of the previous posts, but would like to finish the explanations.
What you can learn from /proc/version
This file will not show you the name of the actual OS release, but will instead give you specifics about the version of Linux kernel used in your distribution, and confirm the version of a GCC compiler used to build it.
Continue reading →
March 18th, 2009 — News
Hi all, and thanks for a great interest in the Unix Tutorial membership!
A warm welcome to all the new members!
In just 2 days, more than 50 of you have joined, so I'm confident we'll have great time sharing Unix knowledge in the next few months.
I've got the first few modules of material posted already – they're really simple but that's the whole idea as I target beginners of all levels with my introductory course. I'll be posting more modules in the coming days, and there's already a curriculum posted on forums for people to discuss.
Only 3 more days of free UnixTutorial membership
Unfortunately, I'm also seeing a lot of interest from spammers – because the membership is free, no credit card or Paypal transactions are involved, and this means anyone can register and start spamming the protected forums.
Given the above situation, and also because I'm going away for a few weeks rather soon, I have just decided to close the first wave of enrollments earlier than originally planned: Unix Tutorial enrollment will be closed down this Friday, midnight GMT.
If you know someone who's eager to get started with Unix, please tell them about Unix Tutorial membership so that they can get onboard before the enrollment is over. I'm looking for genuinely interested people prepared to commit some of their time, so if it's just about someone hoping to get a placeholder for accessing premium content in the future – please refrain from signing up at this time.
That's it for the moment! Thanks again for your interest, I'll do my best to make sure you learn plenty of new Unix tricks and gain immediately applicable knowledge from the Unix Tutorial members section.
See also:
March 16th, 2009 — News
Finally, the first enrollment period is open for the Unix Tutorial membership! I plan to have registration open for 3 weeks, after which it will be closed for a few months so that I can work with the first group of members and take all their feedback as we learn Unix basics together.
Become a lifetime Unix Tutorial member!
If you think you know enough about Unix Tutorial membership, then wait no more and proceed straight to the Unix Tutorial Sign Up page. For everyone else, there's a bit more information below.
Why I'm setting up a members area
As you've probably seen, I'm trying to encourage as many people as possible to start using Unix-like operating systems. So far, I've been doing this by sharing tips and how-to guides on various Unix challenges I've come across in my 10+ years of system administration. While this had proved to be very popular, I would like to take it all one step further by publishing a few courses on various Unix topics.
Structure makes learning much easier, and I hope to involve even more people by providing a thorough learning plan for each level of Unix learners: beginners, intermediate users and advanced users which plan to use or manage Unix professionally.
Continue reading →
March 6th, 2009 — Questions & Answers
Today, I'd like to answer one of the oldest questions I have in my incoming UnixTutorial questions email folder. Please leave comments if you need any more help with researching Unix groups on your system.
