Book Image

The Software Developer's Guide to Linux

By : David Cohen, Christian Sturm
5 (2)
Book Image

The Software Developer's Guide to Linux

5 (2)
By: David Cohen, Christian Sturm

Overview of this book

Developers are always looking to raise their game to the next level, yet most are completely lost when it comes to the Linux command line. This book is the bridge that will take you to the next level in your software development career. Most of the skills in the book can be immediately put to work to make you a more efficient developer. It’s written specifically for software engineers, not Linux system administrators, so each chapter will equip you with just enough theory to understand what you’re doing before diving into practical commands that you can use in your day-to-day work as a software developer. As you work through the book, you’ll quickly absorb the basics of how Linux works while you get comfortable moving around the command line. Once you’ve got the core skills, you’ll see how to apply them in different contexts that you’ll come across as a software developer: building and working with Docker images, automating boring build tasks with shell scripts, and troubleshooting issues in production environments. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to use Linux and the command line comfortably and apply your newfound skills in your day-to-day work to save time, troubleshoot issues, and be the command-line wizard that your team turns to.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
18
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19
Index

Monitoring Application Logs

Welcome to the world of Linux logging! As software developers, understanding logging in Linux, especially with tools like systemd and journald, is crucial. Here’s a breakdown of what you need to know.

Logs are records of events happening in a software application or operating system. It’s a flexible format and unique to each application, but how logs are processed, stored, and retrieved is more uniform on modern systems. It’s essential for you to understand logs as a developer because the logs you can access in Linux provide insights into the behavior of the operating system and all applications running on it. You’ll use this knowledge to understand errors, track application performance, and debug. Logs are your first line of defense in troubleshooting, so prepare to get comfortable with them.

In this chapter, we’ll give you an overview of Unix and Linux logging, and show you the most common ways that software...