Web Developer, Web Designer, Chef, Music Lover, Blogger, Family man From Penticton, British Columbia
Ok, so for the past couple months, I’ve been busy on my project management site. This will be a new site that anyone can use for free to track projects.
It’s mostly there, just a couple content changes to make and it will be ready for launch.
I will be launching by the end of the year.
Should be pretty interesting as I used a lot of new ideas and design styles for this site, and yet, kept a lot of familiar styles too. If that makes sense, then good 
So, over the past 2 days, I got QuickPipe.com redone with a new template, still a couple things left to do, but I wanted to give it it’s own thing.
I haven’t finished all the changes for it yet, but it’s got a good start happening. The rest will be happening shortly.
The past few weeks have seen me busy at work on the scaleborg project which is going to be a scalable grid solution that uses amazon s3 and ec2 to create a nice server farm system.
The system will let you add as many servers as you need as you need them.
Built on a mixture of php, ruby and python for maximum flexibility.
I’ll have more on that as I get it out of early alpha and into invite beta which will be happening by early November.
I just finished working on the activitypipe.com plugin for wordpress which makes a pretty nice looking lifestream page powered from activitypipe.com.
You can take a look at the page here
I’ve also made the plugin available for download to activitypipe users.
Just moved this site to the new server over the weekend and am now working on the wordpress plugin for activitypipe, will be nice to be able to display a nice looking lifestream right on the blog here.
Been busy on some new developments lately, a couple more updates to DBStract, and a new server scaling solution that uses amazon’s web services in the backend.
Will be writing more about that very soon….
The New and Improved Version of DBStract is now live to all our users…..
After months of development, hard work and lots of testing, we have finally launched the new site.
Enjoy and discover the new features.
These are some of the more common Linux commands that you will find in use.
| When you type the Command shown, the Action described is what should happen. (Italicized portions replaced with your specific information, of course.) | |
| Command | Action |
| Basic Navigation | |
| cd | When typed by itself, cd (”change directory”), will take you back to your $HOME directory. |
| cd /path/to/directory | To change to a specific directory, type cd followed by the path to the directory. If it is a subdirectory of the current directory, you can just type the directory name–for example, when in your account’s root directory (/big/dom/xdomain), you can just type cd cgi-bin to go to your cgi-bin. |
| cd .. | Typing cd .. moves you up one directory from your current location. |
| pwd | To see which directory you are in, type pwd (”print (display) working directory”). |
| exit | Just as it sounds, use exit to log out. Alternatively, you can type logout or just press the “d” key while holding down the Ctrl key. |
| Creating and Deleting Directories | |
| mkdir directoryname | To create a new directory, type mkdir (”make directory”) and specify the new directory’s name. |
| rmdir directoryname | To delete an empty directory, type rmdir (”remove directory”) and the directory’s name. |
| Listing Files | |
| ls | To display a list of files and subdirectories in your current directory, type ls (”list”) |
| ls -a | To see a more complete list which includes files that begin with a “.” (dot), type ls -a. |
| ls -la | To list all files and directories in long format which will provide details about each file and directory, type ls -la. |
| ls -lS | To list all directories and files, sorted by size, in long format, type ls -lS. |
| ls -lta | To list all files and directories in long format by time modified, type ls -lta. |
| Copying Files | |
| cp oldfilename newfilename | Will copy the contents of one file to another file, resulting in two copies of the same file on your account. |
| cp directory/* destinationdirectory | Will copy the contents of one directory to another directory. Make sure you have created the destination directory before trying to copy files to it - see mkdir above. Results in two copies of the files on your account; one copy in the existing directory and another in the destination directory. |
| Searching Files and Directories | |
| find -name ‘n*’ | The find command can be used to locate files or a group of files. It can also be used to display directories. The example given will find all file and directory names within the current directory and subdirectories of it that begin with the letter n. (You can also explore using the locate command - type info locate and/or man locate for usage information.) |
| grep -inw text filename | Can be used to locate text in a specific file or directory of files (use * in place of filename to search all of the files in the current directory). The -i argument indicates the search is to disregard cASe, the -n instructs to show the corresponding line number, and -w tells it to match only based on the whole word. (This doesn’t even begin to touch on the power of grep and its many uses. In addition to its searching capability, the grep command can be used in combination with other commands to act as a filter. It also allows the use of “wildcards”. Two other variations of grep are also available, egrep and fgrep. To begin your quest for more information, type man grep and/or info grep.) |
| Displaying/Comparing File Content | |
| wc filename | Counts and displays the number of lines, number of words, and number of characters of the given file. |
| cat filename | Displays the entire contents of a file. |
| nl filename | Shows the content of the file, including line numbers (nl=number lines). |
| more filename | Displays the contents of a file one screen at a time. Press the SPACEBAR to display the next screen of text. |
| cmp filename1 filename2 | Compares the contents of the two named files and reports the first different character found and the line number. |
| diff filename1 filename2 | Compares the contents of the two named files and reports all of the differences found. (Can also be used for comparing the contents of two directories.) |
| Moving, Renaming, and Deleting Files | |
| mv oldfilename newfilename | Can be used to rename a file (mv fileA fileB), move a file (mv fileA /dirA/), or both (mv fileA /dirB/fileB). |
| rm -i filename | Removes (deletes) the specified file. (The -i is not necessary, but is recommended as it will prompt you to confirm the action first. When prompted, type y to confirm or type n if you changed your mind.) |
| Changing Permissions | |
| chmod permissions filename | Changes the permissions on a filename or directory as specified. See this guide for further information on change mode. |
| Archives and Compression | |
| tar -cvf filename.tar directoryname | To archive a directory and all of its contents including subdirectories, navigate to where the directory is located and type the above command, replacing filename.tar with the name you wish to give the archive file and directoryname with the name of the directory you wish to archive. Alternatively, you can archive a select group of individual files (or directories) by specifying each file name in place of directoryname separated by spaces, like tar -cvf filename.tar fileA fileB fileC. Note: When creating a tar file (aka “tarball”) be sure to specify the name you wish to give the tar file! (TAR indicates Tape ARchive, as it was originally a tape archiving program. The -c means “create”, v means “verbose” (which basically says tell me what you’re doing), and the f indicates that a filename will follow (filename.tar).) |
| tar -tvf filename.tar | Typing this command will result in a list of the contents of the tar file. This is generally a good thing to do before unpacking the tar to be sure that there are no matching filenames which will result in files being unintentionally overwritten. |
| tar -xvf filename.tar | You can see the similarities to the command used to tar the file. This time, though, you use -x to “extract” instead of the -c used to create. You can also extract only certain select files (or directories) by specifying the individual names, separated by spaces, after the tar filename, such as tar -xvf filename.tar fileA fileC |
| gzip filename.tar | This utility, gzip (gnu zip), is used for compression. Normally, when you wish to compress a set of files, you will tar them first then compress them using this command. In doing so, the filename will automatically change from filename.tar to filename.tar.gz (appending .gz to the file extension). |
| gunzip filename.tar.gz | This command (g”unzip”) is used to uncompress a .tar.gz file, which will also result in the filename being changed back to filename.tar. Once it has been uncompressed, you can then untar it using the tar command above. (Alternatively, you can use gzip -d (for “decompress”) in place of gunzip.) |
| tar -czvf filename.tgz directoryname | This command, which uses a z switch (”zip”), allows you to take a bit of a shortcut instead of using the tar and gzip commands separately. The example will result in a compressed archive named filename.tgz. |
| tar -xzvf filename.tgz | This command is used to uncompress and extract the files from a .tgz archive. |
| Another compression utility is bzip2/bunzip2. See the man or info page for more details. | |
| Miscellaneous Commands | |
| man command | To view the online manual for a command in order to find out more about its usage, just type man and the command. For example, typing man ls will show the usage documentation for the ls command including arguments (options) that can be used with it. To exit the documentation, type q (for quit). (See also info.) |
| info command | Similar to the man command, info provides information on a command but in a different format and often more detailed. (You can also view the help pages of a command by typing command –help (replace “command” with the actual command. For example, ls –help will provide help on the ls command.) |
| whatis command | A quick way of getting information on what a specific command does. For example, typing whatis ls will tell you that its job is to list directory contents. |
| whereis command | Used to locate the binary, source, and manual page files for specified commands/files. For an example, type whereis perl. |
| which command | Shows the full path of the command. For an example, type which perl.) |
This is not by any means a complete list of the commands and their options, but this should get you started.
So, I recently got a Mac Mini because a client decided I needed to be able to test their web sites from it so he got one for me to use as a work station at home.
It’s pretty cool. So much power in a such a tiny little box. The mini stands at a total size of 2 inches high and 6.5 inches by 6.5 inches in width and length.
I installed the new Tiger upgrade for their OS and I have to say, it’s a pretty smooth system. I won’t be putting my laptop away anytime soon, but for development purposes, the mac is definitely nice to have.
I also recently got an iPod Shuffle. That thing’s gotten used everywhere since I got it. I’ve been using an FM transmitter to broadcast it over the radio in the car, nice change to be able to listen to MP3s in the car instead of the radio or a CD.
Am I a Mac switcher? No, merely a Mac user. However, that won’t stop me from using my mac more and posting about new stuff on there 
© 2008 Roger Stringer’s Blog. Powered by Wordpress. 
