Questions tagged [bash]

Bash is a free shell for Unix-like operating systems from the GNU Project.

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74 votes
6 answers
179k views

How to SSH into WSL from Windows on the same machine

I followed the instructions in this answer: How can I SSH into “Bash on Ubuntu on Windows 10”? I'm attempting to SSH from PuTTY in Windows on the same machine. Using Port 22, which matches my config ...
Basel Alghanem's user avatar
71 votes
9 answers
117k views

Can I use pipe output as a shell script argument?

Suppose I have a bash shell script called Myscript.sh that need one argument as input. But I want the content of the text file called text.txt to be that argument. I have tried this but it does not ...
Narin's user avatar
  • 813
66 votes
5 answers
62k views

Bash command to focus a specific window

Is there a way, in bash command line, to give focus to a specific window of a running process. Assume I know the process' name, number, and anything else I need. For instance, if I have a single ...
Malabarba's user avatar
  • 8,668
65 votes
7 answers
66k views

Newlines in sed on Mac OS X

I find that \n doesn't work in sed under Mac OS X. Specifically, say I want to break the words separated by a single space into lines: # input foo bar I use, echo "foo bar" | sed 's/ /\n/' But the ...
Ivan Xiao's user avatar
  • 2,815
55 votes
5 answers
173k views

How to cd to a directory that contains a space in its name?

I have a directory called "Reader 0.5" in my Desktop on Mac Os X. When to access the directory in terminal, I am using below code: cd /Users/niho/Desktop/Reader 0.5 but it throws: No such file or ...
user avatar
52 votes
4 answers
176k views

Copy list of files

I have a list of files separated by spaces in a file list.txt. I'd like to copy them to a new folder. I tried to do: cp `cat list.txt` new_folder but it did not work. How would you do this ? ...
Klaus's user avatar
  • 653
51 votes
6 answers
91k views

Change DNS Server From Terminal (or script) on Mac OS X

How can I change my DNS server from the Terminal on Mac OS X? [I need this because my DNS is not working correctly with my VPN. Sometimes it's using the DNS for my main connection, and sometimes it's ...
Dan Rosenstark's user avatar
51 votes
6 answers
55k views

"watch" the output of a command until a particular string is observed and then exit

I'm looking for a way to programmatically watch the output of a command until a particular string is observed and then exit. This is very similar to this question, but instead of tailing a file, I ...
gdw2's user avatar
  • 1,355
44 votes
9 answers
54k views

How do I keep my bash history across sessions?

I am working on a x86 target running fedora 9. Whenever I reboot it, my history returns to some state, and I do not have commands I did in the sessions before the reboot. What I have to change to ...
BЈовић's user avatar
41 votes
5 answers
72k views

Writing "tail -f" output to another file

As a continuation from my last post where I have used grep & tail -f to find occurences of "rare" events. I would like to record this in another file. I've tried turning tail -f log.txt | ...
Mike's user avatar
  • 635
35 votes
5 answers
32k views

How to replace part of a text file between markers with another text file?

Say I have a text file like this: # custom content section a b ### BEGIN GENERATED CONTENT c d ### END GENERATED CONTENT I'd like to replace the portion between the GENERATED CONTENT tags with the ...
smokris's user avatar
  • 1,602
33 votes
3 answers
161k views

How to replace line in file with pattern with sed?

I'm reading a lot of documentation on sed, and am still stumped on my particular use case. I want to replace this line in a conf file with my own line: Replace this line: #maxmemory <bytes> ...
Henley Wing Chiu's user avatar
30 votes
7 answers
117k views

'No such file or directory' error in bash, but the file exists?

On Ubuntu, I get a 'No such file or directory' error when I try to execute a command. I have checked with ls -la , the file adb is there and it has 'x' flag So why I am getting a 'No such file or ...
michael's user avatar
  • 5,945
28 votes
2 answers
4k views

Where is the Ubuntu console on Windows10? [duplicate]

I updated my Windows 10 system to the 1607 "Anniversary Update" version and I can't find the Ubuntu Bash console. So... Where is it?
Marek M.'s user avatar
  • 407
27 votes
4 answers
7k views

A command before every bash command

Does anyone know a mean of putting a 'time' command before every command in a bash session?
jthoenes's user avatar
  • 373
26 votes
2 answers
4k views

Tab-completion with directories/links

I have this problem with tab-completion in terminal in both archlinux and ubuntu: I have a link which links to a directory named "something" in my home directory. Now when I open a terminal and want ...
houbysoft's user avatar
  • 4,434
26 votes
6 answers
137k views

How to get real-time network statistics in Linux with KB/MB/Bytes format and for specific port or application processID?

I used IPTraf, Iftop, vnstat, bwm-ng, ifconfig -a. None of them is helping me to find real-time packets that are being sent/received from my application in KB or MB format. The reason is I am writing ...
YumYumYum's user avatar
  • 1,677
23 votes
2 answers
9k views

Writing shell scripts that will run on any shell (using multiple shebang lines?)

I've just started getting deeper into shell scripting, and I've always just thrown my script in a file, marked it chmod +x and then done /path/to/script.sh and let whatever interpreter is the default ...
swrobel's user avatar
  • 365
22 votes
11 answers
20k views

Pushing my PS1 prompt over ssh

I use a specific "PS1" prompt that I like. I share a few logins with other other people on a few different servers. I was wondering if there was a way to specify in my local bash profile a remote ...
Unfundednut's user avatar
  • 7,120
21 votes
2 answers
5k views

Cannot execute script while its permission is 'x'

I have a script in the current directory, however, given that: the permission is -rwxr-xr-x the script has a shebang #!/bin/bash at the top of the file my shell is /bin/bash I can execute it using ...
Henry's user avatar
  • 325
20 votes
9 answers
15k views

How to retrieve the absolute path of an arbitrary file from the OS X

I'm looking for a simple command that can be used within Bash to find the absolute and canonicalized path to a file on an OS X (similar to ``readlink -f'` under Linux). The following sample bash ...
Michael Wehner's user avatar
19 votes
3 answers
17k views

Program to check/look up UTF-8/Unicode characters in string on command line?

I've just realized I have a file on my system; it lists normally: $ ls -la TΕSТER.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 8 2013-04-11 18:07 TΕSТER.txt $ cat TΕSТER.txt testing ... yet, it crashes a piece of ...
sdaau's user avatar
  • 5,538
18 votes
1 answer
737 views

Multiple Installations and Understanding $PATH

I have an older version of Git installed at: /usr/bin/ I recently downloaded a newer version to: /usr/local/bin When I type: which git I get the location of the old version. I believe that this ...
user1551817's user avatar
16 votes
1 answer
2k views

When should I put configurations into .bashrc vs into. .bash_profile?

I was looking at Questin 9152: Why doesn’t my path update now?. Which customizations should go into my ~/.bashrc file vs. into my ~/.bash_profile file?
pcapademic's user avatar
  • 3,761
16 votes
2 answers
9k views

What happens to running processes when I lose a remote connection to a *nix box?

I occasionally lose my remote SSH connection to my VPS. I use screen for long-running processes, but am wondering what happens to the processes I had running aside from those run within a screen ...
David Marble's user avatar
14 votes
4 answers
8k views

Bash Run command for certain time?

I am making a bash script for my own use. How can I run a command for a certain time (like 20 seconds) and then terminate it? I have tried a lot of solutions but nothing works. I also tried the ...
Umair Riaz's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
31k views

Write a PID file manually from Bash script

How could I write a Bash-script that runs a long running program and stores the programs process id in a separate file? I want something like #!/bin/bash exec long_running_tool echo `ps af |grep "...
DerMike's user avatar
  • 879
14 votes
5 answers
9k views

How to replace vim screen buffer with previous bash activity after quitting?

I'm trying to find out what a bash (or vim) feature is. Here's the scenario. I'm in a bash terminal, then edit something with vim, then exit back to bash. In some terminals, the vim session screen ...
user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
517 views

Reuse text on a bash command

If i'm writing a long command or just typing an extensive file path, is there any that i can "reuse" it with some command shortcut? e.g: 1.cp /home/myuser/really/big/file/here/and/there.png /home/...
Fisher's user avatar
  • 213
13 votes
6 answers
14k views

Messed up keys in vim when running inside tmux

I have been playing with tmux and I'm loving it. However, there's an annoying issue when running vim inside it. Somehow the arrow keys get remapped, but only on certain times, like when firing up ...
Ivan's user avatar
  • 4,509
12 votes
5 answers
26k views

Ubuntu/ Gnome : Open an application in a specific workspace

How do tell an application to open in a specific workspace? More info: I like to have my C++ IDE in workspace 2, my Java IDE in workspace 3, and my email, browser and miscellaneous in workspace four....
bguiz's user avatar
  • 2,081
12 votes
2 answers
7k views

Make OS X Terminal commands I type BOLD

I'd like to make commands I've typed (input) into terminal stand out from all the output. For example: imac:~ buster$ chmod -R g-w myfolder imac:~ buster$ cd myfolder imac:myfolder buster$ ls -l ...
Meltemi's user avatar
  • 6,957
12 votes
2 answers
3k views

How do I make OS X set the terminal title back to the original title when coming back from ssh?

Starting on OS X, I ssh into foo (a Linux box). My terminal title changes to foo. I then ssh into bar (another Linux box). My terminal title changes to bar. I log out of bar. My terminal title ...
Chas. Owens's user avatar
  • 2,512
11 votes
3 answers
3k views

Calling a script with ./bla.sh vs. . bla.sh

Can anybody explain to me what the shell does in the two examples A) and B) below? It obviously behaves differently, but I can't find out why the output is different. Example: Let's have a script in ...
Wolf's user avatar
  • 2,553
9 votes
2 answers
1k views

How do I delete a file named "-p" from bash?

How do I delete a file named -p in bash? Trying rm "-p" complains that -p is not a valid argument.
fmark's user avatar
  • 1,847
9 votes
1 answer
8k views

colouring output of ls according to file extension

I am working on some C++ files all of which are in a single folder. When I do ls both the .cpp and the .h files show up in the same colour. Is there a way to tell the bash shell that I want to ...
smilingbuddha's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
2k views

Creating an alias containing bash history expansion

I often forget to run a command with sudo, so I find myself often typing sudo !! immediately afterwards. I tried aliasing this, but bash chokes on the !! part. Is there some way to represent this ...
andrewdotnich's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
43k views

Find difference with mtime - and +

What is the difference with mtime's - and + switches as both are not bringing back the results I need? I'm looking to delete all files older than 5 days: find /mnt/sdb1/tmp/ -type f -mtime +5 -exec ...
Grimlockz's user avatar
  • 205
8 votes
4 answers
4k views

Terminal: prefix previous command?

Frequently in Terminal (though I fully expect any answer will work in bash and most others), I type some command, and then get some sort of permission error due to missing sudo. Okay, so press 'up', ...
OJFord's user avatar
  • 631
8 votes
5 answers
31k views

How do I run a script in the background and leave it running when I log out? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Leave bash script running on remote terminal while not logged in? I have a bash script that runs Gaussian, a chemical structure calculator, which spends a couple days toying ...
Nick T's user avatar
  • 2,686
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

How to set the command prompt's color in Bash?

Browsing the last command's results in Bash is a bit hard because the command prompt and results are the same color. This makes it hard to separate the results of consecutive commands. How do I ...
Yasser Zamani's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
14k views

Associating linux shell (.sh) scripts on Windows 10 to Bash or WSL [duplicate]

If you ever tried to run an .sh linux script on Windows 10 by double-clicking it, after assigning it to bash.exe (Ubuntu Bash for Windows 10) by default, you most likely noticed it wouldn't open. Why ...
Alex Sim's user avatar
  • 371
7 votes
1 answer
2k views

Bash pipeline signal propagation - how does it work?

While answering this question, I was unable to fully explain how signals propagate through a pipeline. Consider the following examples. Using timeout as the first element in the pipeline This ...
Attie's user avatar
  • 19.9k
7 votes
3 answers
17k views

Why does `ls` work on my cmd? (Windows)

I'm running windows 7, it's old and I have messed around with it a bit. When I'm in cmd I find that ls works just like I would expect it to in Linux. So do a few other commands such as mv and rm. This ...
Clumsy cat's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
967 views

bash: per-command history. How does it work?

OK. I have an old G5 running Leopard and a Dell running Ubuntu 10.04 at home and a MacPro also running Leopard at work. I use Terminal.app/bash a lot. On my home G5 it exhibits a nice feature: using ↑...
romainl's user avatar
  • 22.9k
5 votes
2 answers
3k views

How to keep the command line prompt on the first line of terminal?

I need to keep the command line on the top of the screen and see the output of any command below it. How can I achieve this using any available tools on any platform? Currently, on the all terminal ...
Real Dreams's user avatar
  • 4,952
4 votes
5 answers
1k views

Command-T for shell

I'm looking for a shell extension that allows me to do filename completion similarly to Command-T. Command-T a feature in TextMate and a plugin for Vim that allows you to select filenames by typing ...
Ryan Patterson's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
751 views

How to foreground a process started by upstart?

Is it possible to foreground a process started by upstart? root@me:~# ps aux | grep my-app root 2208 0.2 0.0 1456 480 ? S 17:38 0:01 /opt/me/my-app root@me:~# fg 2208 -bash: fg:...
tarabyte's user avatar
  • 2,323
4 votes
3 answers
10k views

sudo permission denied

I ran this code: sudo cat <<EOF | sudo sed -e "s,%,$,g" >/etc/init.d/dropbox echo "Hello World" EOF But even though, I get "permission denied", cause you have to be root to make changes ...
8k_of_power's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
4k views

Crossfading Video AND Audio with ffmpeg

This Super User answer crossfade between 2 videos using ffmpeg has got me so far, but now that I have tried many solutions and seen every SO link out there, it's time to ask you all for help. I am ...
Jonathan_W's user avatar

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