The Official Ubuntu Server Book, Second Edition

Chapter 14Basic Linux Administration

IN CHAPTER 2, Essential System Administration, I discussed some core tools any administrator should know. In this chapter I expand on that foundation and describe more basic shell concepts and tools. Then I will talk about some different Linux file types: hard and symbolic links and device files. Finally I describe how to use cron and at to schedule programs to run at different times.

Shell Globs

When you work on the command line, you often need to run a command against more than one file at a time. For instance, you might want to copy all of the files from one directory to another, or you might want to move only the files that match a particular pattern. While you could certainly type each of these filenames ...