Scripting repetitive tasks improves the efficiency of system administration. That’s great for local machines, but what if you oversee remote servers? Can you run a local script on a remote computer? Yes!…

By default, a Bash script on Linux will report an error but keep running. We show you how to handle errors yourself so that you can decide what needs to happen next.

Subnetting a large network improves security, increases performance, and organizes your network in a logical way. But some of the calculations are tough. The Linux ipcalc command makes the planning stage easy….

On Linux, files have three sets of permissions. One set is for the file’s group. Before you allocate a file to a group, you may want to check who the group members are.

The sudo command gives a user superuser or root powers. No doubt you gave them the “with great power comes great responsibility” speech. Here’s how to check if they listened or not.

Although Arch Linux is great, its installation is a show-stopper for many people. But now there’s a straightforward GUI-based installer for Arch. And you already know how to use it.

Of all the Bash commands, poor old eval probably has the worst reputation. Justified, or just bad press? We discuss the use and dangers of this least-loved of Linux commands.

How can you check if two Linux binaries are the same? If they’re executable files, any differences might mean unwanted or malicious behavior. Here’s the easiest way to check if they differ.

Privacy is an increasingly hot topic. On Linux, the gpg command lets users encrypt files using public-key cryptography, in which case losing your encryption keys would be catastrophic. Here’s how to back them up….

In Linux, all directories and files have access permissions. You can use chmod to set your preferred access rights for different users. But what decides their default permissions? Let’s talk about umask….

The Linux arping command is like ping, but for local networks only. Its advantage is it operates at a lower networking level, sometimes getting responses when ping cannot. Here’s how to use it.

If there’s one thing Linux is well-equipped with, it’s utilities for manipulating strings. But there’s a whole set of functionality built right into the Bash shell too. Here’s how it’s used.

Counting the number of lines, words, and bytes in a file is useful, but the real flexibility of the Linux wc command comes from working with other commands. Let’s take a look.

Directories on Linux let you group files in distinct, separate collections. The downside is it becomes tedious moving from directory to directory to perform a repetitive task. Here’s how to automate that….

With thousands of free Linux applications, it’s easy to lose track of what you once installed but no longer use. Here’s how to list the installed applications on the major Linux families.

Sometimes Linux users need to exchange files with computers running other operating systems, such as Windows or macOS. That’s simple enough with a USB drive—as long as it is formatted correctly.