Book Image

Learn Linux Quickly

By : Ahmed AlKabary
Book Image

Learn Linux Quickly

By: Ahmed AlKabary

Overview of this book

Linux is one of the most sought-after skills in the IT industry, with jobs involving Linux being increasingly in demand. Linux is by far the most popular operating system deployed in both public and private clouds; it is the processing power behind the majority of IoT and embedded devices. Do you use a mobile device that runs on Android? Even Android is a Linux distribution. This Linux book is a practical guide that lets you explore the power of the Linux command-line interface. Starting with the history of Linux, you'll quickly progress to the Linux filesystem hierarchy and learn a variety of basic Linux commands. You'll then understand how to make use of the extensive Linux documentation and help tools. The book shows you how to manage users and groups and takes you through the process of installing and managing software on Linux systems. As you advance, you'll discover how you can interact with Linux processes and troubleshoot network problems before learning the art of writing bash scripts and automating administrative tasks with Cron jobs. In addition to this, you'll get to create your own Linux commands and analyze various disk management techniques. By the end of this book, you'll have gained the Linux skills required to become an efficient Linux system administrator and be able to manage and work productively on Linux systems.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)

The PATH variable

You may have noticed that I used ./hello.sh to run the script; you will get an error if you omit the leading ./:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ hello.sh 
hello.sh: command not found

The shell can't find the command hello.sh. When you run a command on your terminal, the shell looks for that command in a set of directories that are stored in the PATH variable.

You can use the echo command to view the contents of your PATH variable:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

The colon character separates the path of each of the directories. You don't need to include the full path of any command or script (or any executable) that resides in these directories. All the commands you have learned so far reside in /bin and /sbin, which are both stored in your PATH variable. As a result, you can run the pwd command:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ pwd
/home/elliot

There is no need to include its full path:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ /bin/pwd...