Bash Prompt

Simple text manipulation of a variable is frequently required when we’re working with Bash scripts.

Sometimes you need to create a password or other random string of letters and numbers in a script or on the command line.

When scripting, it is often necessary to store some temporary data.

I recently upgraded a server to Debian Trixy, and I noticed some new lines in /var/log/auth.log: 2025-11-30T00:17:48.220870+00:00 WEB sshd[55238]: srclimit_penalise: ipv4: new 1.2.3.4/32 active penalty of 1s seconds for penalty: connections without attemp…

I recently looked at generating spoken audio from text using here.

WireGuard is an excellent replacement for OpenVPN.

Edit I have found a new way to do this locally that gives excellent results.

I recently modified this website to be accessible via IPv6 so I needed to test that Apache would respond with the site when accessed over IPv6. cURL allows access to an IP address of a server and supply a hostname, bash-prompt.net.

We typically use the whois command to get information about domain names. whois can also get the organization information about the company that an IP address is registered to.

Sometimes the output of commands or the information in log files is not formatted very well which makes it difficult to understand.

dd is a very old command.

Here is the list of all the Bash debugging posts: Verbose Output Using exit command Using echo command Using ShellCheck Jummping Forward The exit command will allow you to halt a script without executing everything after the exit command.

Here is the list of all the Bash debugging posts: Verbose Output Using exit command Using echo command Using ShellCheck Jummping Forward This one is pretty simple.

Here is the list of all the Bash debugging posts: Verbose Output Using exit command Using echo command Using ShellCheck Jummping Forward This debugging tool is useful in your Bash scripts and also in any Bash one-liners that you write.

Here is the list of all the Bash debugging posts: Verbose Output Using exit command Using echo command Using ShellCheck Jummping Forward The exit command in a Bash scrip will immediatly cause the scrip to stop as soon it is exit is executed.

Here is the list of all the Bash debugging posts: Verbose Output Using exit command Using echo command Using ShellCheck Jummping Forward When you run a Bash script it will only usually print the output of the commands that you execute.

We frequently have to run many processes from a script.

I like to listen to audiobooks on my older phone.

Sometimes you need to check if a port is open and available e.g. not firewalled, from your current location.

There are several Bash one-liners that I’ve been shown by the talented Linux admins I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years.

Configuring a web server like Apache2 or NGINX can get quite complicated given the number of elements that are now involved in serving networked data.

I like to run my sites without a www.

I like to run my sites without a www.

OpenSSL is the default package for managing certificates and serving HTTPS pages on Linux servers.

DNS caching is a good thing.

When we’re scripting or running a command on Linux we sometimes don’t want any output from the command.

Entering a password incorrectly too many times happens to all of us.

Introduction WireGuard is a modern Virtual Private Network (VPN) server that allows you to securely route your data between your Android, iPhone phone, or Linux, Windows, or OSX computer.

Over on my personal website https://elliotcooper.com I encountered a problem when I created a redirect from https://www.elliotcooper.com to https://elliotcooper.com.

We all write over-long Bash one-liners to get something done.

Quickly discovering the speed between two Linux servers can often be a chore of copying large files around.

A common job for a system administrator is to troubleshoot a Linux server to find out why it’s running slowly.

A fairly frequent job of a sysadmin is to do some benchmarking of a website.

A fairly frequent job of a sysadmin is to do some benchmarking of a website.

Not too many people know that Apache2 provides a simple caching module mod_cache.

mdadm is the tried and trusted software RAID tool for Linux.

SSH keys are the best way of logging into Linux servers.

Some Bash commands take a long time to finish and provide no estimate for when that will happen.

Some Bash tools are so good that then end up being the goto tool for a particular application year after year.

A common security measure implemented by APT repository maintainers is to sign the packages they distribute.

Bash scripts tend to follow a life time.

We all write Bash scripts.

The life of one of your Bash scripts is hard to reckon when you first write it.

I just spun up a new CentOS 8 VM and ran the mandatory initial update and was rather surprised to see single packages downloading at 50KBps.

A common requirement for backups or just to have a local copy of a website is to mirror it.

The GNU nano is a superb Linux text editor.

Bash commands frequently have need many additional options to do exactly what you need.

We all use find to locate stuff on the command line.

Sometimes you need to determine how many CPU cores a system has.

If you have to work of SSH with a flaky network connection you will have been left with an SSH terminal open to the remote server that is stalled or unresponsive.