Commonly mentioned in the Linux (and systems administration) world is the word shell. But what is it?
A shell in the context of Linux is a user interface that allows users to
interact with the operating system. It provides a way to execute commands, run
programs, and manage files from a command-line interface (CLI) instead of a
graphical user interface (GUI).
Types of Shells
There are several types of shells available in Linux, each with its own
features. The most common are listed below.
Bash
The Bourne Again SHell, the default shell for many Linux distributions, known
for its rich feature set and scripting capabilities.
Zsh
Z Shell, an extended version of Bash with enhanced features such as improved
auto-completion and globbing.
Fish
Friendly Interactive SHell, designed for user-friendliness, with syntax
highlighting and automatic suggestions.
Tcsh
An enhanced version of the C shell (csh), offering command-line editing and
job control. |
Key Functions of a Shell
Let's review why a shell exists in the first place.
Command Execution
You can run commands to perform tasks such as file manipulation, program
execution, and system monitoring.
Scripting
Shells allow users to write scripts to automate repetitive tasks, making
system administration more efficient.
Environment Management
Users can set and manage environment variables, affecting how processes
behave.
Job Control
You can manage running processes, including background tasks and foreground
processes.
How to Access the Shell
So how does one access a shell in Linux?
Open the Terminal
You can typically find the terminal in the applications menu or by using a
shortcut like `Ctrl + Alt + T`, using the mouse (click on the terminal icon)
or in Gnome, press the Super key -> terminal to start it.
Command Line Interface
Once open, you will see a command prompt where you can type commands.
Basic Commands
Here are some basic commands everyone should know while using the shell.
ls Lists files and directories.
cd [directory]: Changes the current directory.
cp [source] [destination]: Copies files or directories.
mv [source] [destination]: Moves or renames files or directories.
rm [file]: Deletes files.
What to learn next
We recommend learning Bash next. Bash is the default shell in most Linux
distros, and also default on enterprise Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or
RHEL.
Conclusion
The shell is an essential component of Linux, giving users powerful
functionalities for interaction without needing a graphical interface.
Understanding how to use the shell can greatly enhance productivity and system
control. Whether you're a beginner or advanced user, getting comfortable with
the shell will improve your efficiency in managing a Linux environment.
Monday, March 2, 2026
Using WebDAV on Linux
Learn to use WebDAV, a networking tool to mount filesystems, a great option for collaborative environments
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is an extension of the HTTP
protocol that facilitates collaborative editing and management of files on
remote web servers. It provides a framework for users to create, change, and
move documents on a server, enabling various functionalities crucial for web
collaboration.
Key Features
File Management
WebDAV allows users to manage files on a server, including creating, editing,
deleting, and moving files.
Collaborative Editing
Multiple users can edit the same document simultaneously, helping in teamwork
and collaboration.
Locking Mechanisms
To prevent conflicts, WebDAV supports file locking, which ensures that only
one user can edit a document at a time.
Metadata Support
Users can attach metadata to web resources, enhancing information
management.
Cross-Platform Compatibility
Compatible with various operating systems and applications, allowing seamless
integration.
Deploying WebDAV
So let's see how to deploy and use WebDAV
1. Install davfs2
Install from your package manager (in Ubuntu it's named
davfs2) or download the latest
version of davfs2 from
the
davfs2 download page.
2. Configure the davfs2.conf file.
Make sure the following properties in the file are configured as shown
below:if_match_bug 1 delay_upload 0 use_locks 0
3. Create the mount point.mkdir
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/dav
4. Mount a share in the dav directory on your server.
For example, to set up a WebDAV connection to dotcms.org at the mount point
/mnt/dav on your local host, use the following command:
mount -t davfs http://<IP>/webdav/live/1 /mnt/dav
You will then be prompted for your username and password which will give you
access to your WebDAV server.
Unmounting
You must manually unmount the WebDAV folders when you are finished:
$ sudo umount /mnt/dav
Common Use Cases
Content Management Systems (CMS)
WebDAV is often used in CMSs for file management and editing.
Cloud Storage Solutions
Many cloud storage services use WebDAV for file access and editing.
Version Control
WebDAV can be integrated with version control systems to manage document
versions effectively. Today, this would be more common to host documents
(think Word, Excel, etc) than to replace Git.
Conclusion
WebDAV enhances the capabilities of web servers by providing a structured way
to deal with resources, making it an essential tool for collaborative
environments.
Monday, February 23, 2026
Using the ip command in Linux
Why you have to stop using ifconfig and start using ip, the modern method for
configuring a Linux network interface.
For a long time, the ifconfig command was the default
method for configuring a network interface. It served Linux users
well, but networking is complex, and the commands to configure it
must be robust. The ip command is the new default
networking command for modern systems, and in this article, I'll
show you how to use it.
The ip command is functionally organized on two layers
of the
OSI networking stack: Layer 2 (data link layer) and Layer 3 (network or IP layer). It
does all the work in the old net-tools package.
The ip command is included in the
iproute2util package. It's probably already included in
your Linux distribution. If it's not, you can install it from your
distro's software repository.
Comparing ipconfig and ip usage
The ip and ipconfic commands can be used
to configure a network interface, but they do things differently.
I'll compare how to do common tasks with the old
(ipconfig) and new (ip) commands.
View network interface and IP address
If you want to see the IP address of a host or view network
interface information, the old ifconfig command,
with no arguments, provides a good summary:
The new ip command provides similar results, but
the command is ip address show, or just
ip a for short:
$ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether bc:ee:7b:5e:7d:d8 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 08:71:90:81:1e:b5 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 10.1.1.6/27 brd 10.1.1.31 scope global dynamic wlan0
valid_lft 83490sec preferred_lft 83490sec
inet6 fdb4:f58e:49f:4900:d46d:146b:b16:7212/64 scope global noprefixroute dynamic
valid_lft 6909sec preferred_lft 3309sec
inet6 fe80::8eb3:4bc0:7cbb:59e8/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
Add IP address
To add an IP address to an interface with ifconfig, the
command is:
$ ifconfig eth0 add 192.9.203.21
The command is similar for ip:
$ ip address add 192.9.203.21 dev eth0
Subcommands in ip can be shortened, so this command is
equally valid:
$ ip addr add 192.9.203.21 dev eth0
You can make it even shorter:
$ ip a add 192.9.203.21 dev eth0
Remove an IP address
The inverse of adding an IP address is to remove one.
With ifconfig, the syntax is:
$ ifconfig eth0 del 192.9.203.21
The ip command syntax is:
$ ip a del 192.9.203.21 dev eth0
Enable or disable multicast
Enabling (or disabling)
multicast
on an interface with ifconfig happens with the
multicast argument:
# ifconfig eth0 multicast
With ip, use the set subcommand with
the device (dev) and a Boolean or toggle
multicast option:
# ip linkset dev eth0 multicast on
Enable or disable a network
Every sysadmin is familiar with the old "turn it off and then on
again" trick to fix a problem. In terms of networking interfaces,
that translates to bringing a network up or down.
The ifconfig command does this with the
up or down keywords:
# ifconfig eth0 up
Or you could use a dedicated command:
# ifup eth0
The ip command uses the set subcommand to
set the interface to an up or down state:
# ip linkset eth0 up
Enable or disable the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)
With ifconfig, you enable ARP by declaring it:
# ifconfig eth0 arp
With ip, you set the arp property
as on or off:
# ip linkset dev eth0 arp on
Pros and cons of ip and ipconfig
The ip command is more versatile and technically more
efficient than ifconfig because it uses
Netlink sockets rather than ioctl system
calls.
The ip command may appear more verbose and more complex
than ifconfig, but that's one reason it's more
versatile. Once you start using it, you'll get a feel for its
internal logic (for instance, using set instead of a
seemingly arbitrary mix of declarations or settings).
Ultimately, ifconfig is outdated (for instance, it
lacks full support for network namespaces), and ip is
designed for the modern network. Try it out, learn it, use it.
You'll be glad you did!
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Why use the Linux terminal
The command-line (aka terminal) is a scary thing for new Linux users. But
understanding it can be a huge step in your Linux journey and a significant
step in your career
If you're new to Linux, the command-line interface (also known as CLI
or terminal) may look scary. But it shouldn't. The CLI is a powerful and
resourceful tool that every aspiring Linux user should learn and be
comfortable with. On this article, let's review many reasons why you should
learn and use the command line, commonly (and often incorrectly) referred to
as terminal, shell, bash and CLI.
Ubiquitous
The command-line interface (CLI) is available in every operating system, not
only in Linux. Very frequently, developers and system administrators spend
most of the time in them. If you want to work with Linux and technology in
general, better start learning it.
Terminals are available in every operating system including Linux,
Windows and Macs
Powerful
CLI-based apps are much more powerful than their GUI-based equivalents. That
happens because usually GUIs are
wrappersaround libraries
developed by developers. Very frequently, these libraries contain way more
functionality than what's available in the graphical interface because, as you
might expect, since software development takes time and costs money to
produce, developers only add to GUI apps the most popular features.
For example, these are some of the options that the
GNU find tool provides
us:
Does your GUI-based find tool has all those options?
Quicker
Common and repetitive tasks are also faster in the terminal with the advantage
that you will be able to repeat and even schedule these tasks so they run
automatically, releasing you to do actual work, leaving the repetitive tasks
to computer.
For example, consider this standard development workflow:
If you were doing the above using a GUI-based git client (for example, Tortoise Git), the workflow would be similar to the below, taking you approximately 20
minutes to complete:
Right-click a folder in Nautilus (or Windows Explorer, or Finder) ->
Select clone -> Paster the Url -> Click OK
Wait for the download to Complete -> Click OK
Back to Nautilus -> Find File -> Open it
Make your changes (by probably using GEdit, KEdit or Visual Studio Code)
-> Save
Back to Nautilus
Right Click -> Commit
Right Click -> Push
Take a deep breath
In the terminal (for example, in Ubuntu),
the workflow would be equivalent to the below and could be completed in less
than 2 minutes:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install git -y # install
git
git clone <url> # clone the GitHub repo locally
vim/nano file -> save # edit the file using a text-based editor
git commit -m <msg> # commits the file locally
git push # push the changes back to our GitHub repo
Scriptable
Terminal/CLI-based tasks can be scripted (automated) and easily repeated
meaning that you will be able to optimize a big part of your workflow. Another
benefit is that these scripts
can be easily shared, exactly as
business and professional developers do!
So let's continue the above example. Our developer realized she is wasting too
much time in the GUI and would like to speed up her workflow even more. She
learned
some bash scripting
and wrote the function below:
gcp ()
{
msg="More updates";
if [ -n "$1" ]; then
msg=$1;
fi;
git add ./ && git commit -m "$msg" && git push
}
She's happy because now she can run from the terminal, the below command as
soon as she finishes her changes:
gcp <commit-msg>
What previously took 5 minutes is now is done in 2 seconds (1.8 seconds to
write the commit message and 0.2 to push the code upstream). A huge advantage
in her workflow. Imagine how much more productive she would be during the
course of her career!
It's important to always think how can you optimize your workflow. These small
optimizations add up to your productivity significantly over time.
Lightweight
Not only the CLI is faster and more lightweight than equivalent GUI-based
applications but it's quicker to run the same commands. For example, consider
a Git client like Tortoise Git. It was
supposed to be lightweight (what most GUI apps aren't) but it takes 3s to
completely load and uses 10Mb of memory:
Our GUI-based git client TortoiseGit
Meanwhile, its CLI equivalent, git status runs in 0.3s and consumes less than
1Mb. In other words, 20 times more efficient memory-wise and 10 times
faster.
A simple CLI command is 20x more efficient and 10x faster then its GUI
equivalent
Disk Space Efficient
Another advantage of terminal apps over their GUI-equivalents is reduced disk
space. For example, contrast these two popular apps. Can you spot the
differences?
Application
Installation Size
Total Size
Memory Usage
Visual Studio Code
80Mb
300Mb
500Mb (on sunny days)
Nano
0.2 Mb
0.8 Mb
3 Mb
400x more efficient
375x more efficient
160x more efficient
Extensible
Another important aspect is that the CLI is extensible. From it, skilled users
could easily either extend its basic functionality using its built-in features
like pipes and redirections combining inputs and outputs from different tools.
For example, sysadmins could list the first two users in the system who use
Bash as a shell, ordered alphabetically with:
What's interesting from the above command is how we combined 5 different tools
to get the results we need. Once you master the Linux terminal, you'll too
will be able to utilize these tools effectively to get work done significantly
faster!
This is a more advanced topic. We'll see in future posts more details about
it.
Customizable
As you might expect, the terminal is extremely customizable. Everything from
the prompt to functions (as seen above) and even custom keybindings can be
customized. For example, want to bind Ctrl+E to open the Nano text editor on the terminal? Simple. Add this to your
.bashrc
file:
bind '"\C-E":"nano\n"'
Extensive range of Apps
Contrary to what most newcomers thing, the terminal has apps too! You will
find apps for pretty much any use case. For example:
Want to work with Linux? Another important aspect of using the terminal is
that it will make you more ready for the job market. Since Linux servers
usually don't have GUIs, you will end up having to use some of the above tools
on your day-to-day work. So why not start now?
Learn more about Linux
Hopefully at this point you realize that you will learn way more about your
Linux system and computers in general when you use the terminal. This is the
secret sauce that the most productive developers want you to know!
It's also a huge win for testing new tools, maintaining your system,
installing software, fixing issues and tweaking as you wish.
Getting Started
Ready to get started on your terminal/CLI journey? Watch the video below:
Note: We don't have any affiliation with the video above. We just want you
to learn the terminal 😊
Conclusion
Every modern computer has a terminal. Learning it will save you time, allow
you to automate common actions, make you learn more about your system, save
time, grow professionally and be more comfortable with Linux. Well worth the
effort, isn't it?
