General Q&A about Linux and Unix-like operating systems
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Is it practical to use libostree for user files? Or is it too specialized for tracking an entire OS? I am not familiar with libostree, but sounds like it's "Git for filesystem trees". Seems like t...
I've been learning some Linux and I finally feel like I can find my way around the command line. But now I hear people say there are other, "non-POSIX" kinds of shell, with different semantics. Wha...
How can a file list be manually filtered with a gitignore file. I want to do the equivalent of git ls-files, but it should work even if I remove .git, so I can't use git(1). Currently, I'm doing ...
I saw another post recommend using Fedora if you want cutting edge features. Is Fedora really a "cutting edge" distro? I am not very familiar with Fedora, I know it's a community counterpart to R...
Will the overall unit status be failed if either ExecStop or ExecStopPost fail? I would expect it to be so, but the documentation isn't very explicit about it.
Suppose I want to get random numbers from /dev/random with basic CLI tools. Is there a way to do it, that's easier to type and read than python -c 'import random; print(100 + 200*random.random())'?...
Do any of the cron implementations allow you to manually trigger cron jobs (stuff in your crontab) right now, in the exact same manner as they would have when triggered on their usual schedule, exc...
What is a modern and practical way to handle scheduling tasks on a Linux desktop? Modern means basic features should not rely on obscure or convoluted commands and standards Practical means you...
In gpg(1), one normally adds recipients of an encrypted message with --recipient. Those recipients will be able to decrypt the message, and their key ID will appear unencrypted, so anyone will kno...
How to ignore server certificate when using ldapsearch command-line tool? Of course this isn't something you should be doing regularly, but it would be a handy asset for troubleshooting.
Desktop files always have either %u or %U as an argument for the program being launched. E.g. here's a line from my firefox.desktop: Exec=/usr/lib/firefox/firefox %u What does it mean?
Using For the console: /etc/vconsole.conf ---- KEYMAP=dvorak For X Session: .xinitrc ---- setxkbmap -layout us -variant dvorak & Problem For the console, it applies the dvorak lay...
Can I restrict myself from certain actions when I SSH in from outside a certain IP range? For instance no sudo? Maybe with ~/.ssh/authorized_keys having a from="!1.2.3.4/26" option with some kind ...
I have a systemd unit that does some stuff on the internet. Sometimes this gets fired at startup. I want to make sure it's delayed until the computer is connected to the internet. In my notes I fo...
How to pretty print XML in a shell? I have command-line tool which outputs XML in a single line, totally unreadable. I would like something to pipe this into, to turn it into human readable XML wi...
I want to connect to my university network via OpenVPN under Fedora GNOME. I imported the openvpn configuration provided by the university in the Network Manager GUI and specified the user certifi...
How can I remap buttons on my mouse, especially for more exotic ones like MMO mice?
On a default Arch install, faillock makes it so that if you enter the sudo password wrong too many times, even the correct password will be rejected until the timer is up. At the same time, you ca...
On my current setup (running Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon), I have an administrative user and several ordinary users. I intend for all of these users to be in the same group, which happens to have the ...
I want to switch hard drives. How do I migrate my root FS from the drive it's on, to the new one, so that everything is exactly as it is?
How can I get notifications to dunst when systemd units fail?
I store my address book with abook(1). https://manpages.debian.org/bookworm/abook/abook.1.en.html Let's say I want to introduce some contact in some field that accepts the usual name <email>...
Neomutt (and probably Mutt too, but I didn't try) seems to be hiding header fields from email, such as the Message-ID field, and fields that are added by SMTP servers when they receive the message....
On Arch Linux, I installed albert (from AUR) and picom as the compositor. I am using i3 as the window manager. When I bring up the albert window, it is surrounded by the ghost of a window in the b...
When hardening my system with Lynis I had information about /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net being found weak. Lynis redirects me to Enterprise, which is a paid product and a bit overkill for my home...
From what I can tell, both NixOS and Guix are built around a package manager which, instead of installing package into the "common environment" as is traditional, isolates them to mitigate issues a...
I'm trying to run a pipeline to update a PDF after every push to the 'main' branch. I want it to be atomic, so it doesn't touch the existing PDF until it has finished, so I need to use sponge(1) (...
flatpak uninstall --unused currently tells me that there is Nothing unused to uninstall. This seems wrong to me, based on the list of packages I see vs. the "root" packages I explicitly installed p...
I am testing some DHCP stuff, and I want to manually end a lease so I don't have to wait hours for them to expire. How can I do this with OpenWrt?
How to convert a json file to yaml? Technically json is already valid yaml, but I'm talking about the characteristic easy-to-read yaml formatting with indentation and minimal quotes.
My goal is to use a french AZERTY keyboard layout with Arch linux and Gnome desktop environment but use US English as "OS language". Note that I am also open to a "working" solution on any other d...
Suppose I want to limit what characters are allowed in filenames. For example, I want file creation to fail if there is a \n in the name. Is there a way to enforce this? If it matters, I prefer a...
How can I search for files on my system? Ideally, I would like to search by various criteria, like date, name, extension, etc.
My primary drive is partitioned basically like so (only roughly to scale): / /home junk v v v |xx###############...
I can start services with systemctl start. I can see logs with systemctl status or journalctl. But by the time I run the second the process has already started. I'd like to start a service and imme...
BTRFS is capable of spanning over multiple drives. How to add one more to an existing filesystem?
Wine has options for "Synchronization", like "Esync" or "Fsync". What do these actually do? What is the purpose of such an option? What is the impact to normal usage of a Windows program in Wine?
What switches do I need to add to see my video RAM (VRAM) with inxi? inxi -G shows my video card model and other info, but not video RAM.
How can I run a command later? I'm looking for a CLI way to schedule a command to be run later. I know that I could create a systemd timer, install it, activate it... That is too much work. I want...
Some pacman functions require sudo. When I forget the sudo, you get: error: you cannot perform this operation unless you are root. I then have to press the keys: up, home, s, u, d, o, space, en...
There are many GUI apps on my computer that show up as eg. items in the start menu. When I launch these, what if I want to control how exactly they are launched, such as setting environment variabl...
When I enter the login password incorrectly 3 times, my computer locks me out from attempting a login for 10 minutes. How can I change the timeout?
Suppose I have a PDF which is 2x3 in. I want to create a PDF with a single page, which has multiple copies of this. For example, if the small pieces are in landscape, and the large page is in portr...
Problem How do I find product and vendor names for use with a xorg.conf file? Neither the xorg.conf nor the xinput manuals specify how to do this. xinput lists info, but the output lacks column ...
You often have to read man pages to use Linux/Unix software. However, many man pages are not easy to read. They are very long, not always conveniently arranged, and man does not appear to have any ...
Spotify runs on my computer with higher DPI (bigger UI elements) than I'd like. How can I reduce it?
Say I have some Bash function my-func, that expects a filename and does some processing on the corresponding file. For demonstration purposes, my-func() { cat "$1"; } If I want to apply that fu...
When formatting drives with Gnome Disks, there is an option to "Erase". The help text says this takes longer, but "completely" erases data. What exactly does this option do? Is there a CLI equival...
