It is easy to dismiss bash — the typical Linux shell program — as just a command prompt that allows scripting. Bash, however, is a full-blown programming language. I wouldn’t presume to tell you that ...

I’m going to go ahead and admit it: I really have too many tray icons. You know the ones. They sit on your taskbar, perhaps doing something in the background or, at least, giving you fingertip access ...

Here are some basic skills to get started with bash, one of the best shells for preparing and using scripts on Linux. Scripting in Linux–putting commands into a file so you can run them as a group—is ...

I must admit that I don't really follow basketball. But, I do like to engage with folks at work, and every spring I've always felt a little left out when my work colleagues fill out their NCAA March ...

Oh happy day! I got an e-mail from a reader with a shell script question that didn't appear to be homework from a programming class or anything to do with hacking passwords. The reader wrote: I am ...

I've got a little FreeBSD box running as a web/mail server. Every so often I'll make some tarball backups of important files and directories. First, there's the important system configuration stuff, ...

Jack Wallen shows how you can create a Linux shell script that requires a password without having to save a password within the script. Image: dennizn/Adobe Stock ...

While administrators scramble to fix the newly discovered Shellshock vulnerability, Harvard University researchers are putting the finishing touches on a scripting language built to mitigate the ...