The Command Line Crash Course Controlling Your Computer From The Terminal

http://learncodethehardway.org/cli/book/cli-crash-course.html

by goodweeds • 15 years ago

204 87 15 years ago

learncodethehardway.org

8ig8• 15 years ago

I know the OP is not the author, Zed Shaw, but I simply wanted to say Thanks to Zed for this.

zedshaw6• 15 years ago

You're welcome.

jimmyjim• 15 years ago

> The next warning is stay off IRC or other places where "hackers" hang out. They think it's funny to hand you commands that can destroy your computer. The command rm -rf / is a classic that you must never type. Just avoid them. If you need help, make sure you get it from someone you trust not from random idiots on the internet.

I don't really agree with that. I know for sure that popular channels in OFTC and Freenode are monitored by very smart and responsible people that would never let this happen. In my many years on IRC I have not seen a single novice guy looking for help actually get had by someone intentionally trying to mislead/screw over.

I would instead encourage novices to read this: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#usefora ('How To Ask Questions The Smart Way: Web and IRC forums directed towards newbies often give the quickest response')

burgerbrain• 15 years ago

I think the exact opposite advice would actually be more proper. Newbies probably don't often even know about IRC, but it can be a great way to get exposed to some really cool stuff.

Mithrandir• 15 years ago

I have seen on some IRCs people writing 'sudo rm -rf /*" etc. (not as advice, but as a joke,) but that person is always promptly kicked out and everyone in the channel tries to warn others.

The author's view is definitely too pessimistic. Most people on IRCs like Freenode aren't evil 'hackers' out to 'hack' you (this reminds me of an episode of Numb3rs.) Other smaller IRC servers can get rowdy, but I've yet to see that on Freenode et al.

I think much better advice would be to not randomly execute crap you see online without knowing what the program is and does, especially in root.

nassosdim• 15 years ago

A few days ago I decided to pick up a bash book from O'reilly and, truth be told, the guys in a room in Freenode knew how to help me in any question I made, no matter how silly I might felt for even asking (specifically I remember asking them about case insensitive shell expanding of wildcards which ended up being a locale issue in my installation).

That doesn't mean that they're all saints, I just find it comforting that there are people out there who will gladly assist a complete stranger (in my case, me).

dangrossman3• 15 years ago

My first experience on IRC was looking for help with my first Linux install. Someone in the channel telnet'd into my computer and wiped my hard drive while I was chatting.

I was 9 or 10 years old at the time and my root password was one of those common strings (12345, abcde, I don't remember at this point). It had taken me 3 days to learn how to download Linux, make a stack of installation floppies, find and use partitioning tools, install Linux and set up a boot loader, etc. I cried when I realized what had been done to me.

dredmorbius4• 15 years ago

Unless someone 'fessed up to it, you really have no way of knowing who did this. It could just as easily have been a drive-by script.

And regardless, it was a hard, cheap, early lesson in the importance of ensuring fundamental levels of system security. I've ... suffered worse.

I strongly suspect you'll never forget this.

naner• 15 years ago

The next warning is stay off IRC or other places where "hackers" hang out. They think it's funny to hand you commands that can destroy your computer.

It would be simpler just to tell the student to not run any command unless he or she can explain exactly what the program and arguments mean.

non123• 15 years ago

How to ask questions the smart way?

Lesson 1: Register with a female nickname: Jane123, KatyG, ... You'll see response time shorten dramatically.

jgmmo3• 15 years ago

I got 1 upvote for anyone that can provide me a pdf of this thing.

brewerja3• 15 years ago

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8605032/cli-crash-course.pdf

git clone git://gitorious.org/the-cli-crash-course/the-cli-crash-course.git

Use dexy with a Tex install and it's a cinch. Only hiccup might be a few specialized Tex packages it complains about needing.

jgmmo3• 15 years ago

I was very psyched to see this, however, I am afraid to tell you that this is missing parts of the text. It is missing the 'Do This/Source Examples' - a vital part of the text for sure. Replace with fixed copy and report back! Thank you kind sir!

zedshaw6• 15 years ago

Feel free to read the PDF, and I'll be putting it up for free since it's a huge benefit to my students if they know the CLI.

But, PLEASE, do not pass the PDF around to newbies until I say it's ready. Having old versions with potential errors floating around or that are half-done is really bad for them.

Raphael• 15 years ago

Why on earth would you want a PDF?

JJMalina• 15 years ago

I've been waiting for something like this. Thanks a lot Zed!

sc00ter• 15 years ago

pushd / popd where have you been all my life?! How did I not know this? Thanks Zed!

dboyd• 15 years ago

Related to that... the 'cd' section seems to be missing "cd -" (ATM).

    $ cd /some/really/long/dir
    $ pwd
    /some/really/long/dir
    $ cd ~
    $ pwd
    ~
    $ cd -
    $ pwd
    /some/really/long/dir

I'm pretty sure "cd" and "cd -" are my most used commands. CDPATH ranks pretty important too.

kkwok• 15 years ago

What is the difference between the three?

seany• 15 years ago

`please` don't use this in scripts. It makes it so hard to debug things later when the next guy comes along and has no idea where you end up after you pop. (can you tell this has been happening to me recently?!)

joelthelion• 15 years ago

May I suggest [autojump](https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump/wiki)?

jseliger• 15 years ago

I just wrote to Zed:

I haven't read past section 0 yet, but I do have a suggestion for people who want to learn how to memorize things faster: use SuperMemo or a modern equivalent, like http://ankisrs.net/ . Such programs use spaced repetition techniques to improve memory speed. I used Anki for improving my French and recommend it. If you'd like to learn more, see http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia... .

Cheers,

mekoka• 15 years ago

Anki and Mnemosyne (http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/) are both available from the Ubuntu repos.

robert_nsu• 15 years ago

I've been watching this for a little while. With powershell, a lot of the *nix commands have been or can be aliased to the windows commands (e.g. ls and Get-ChildItem). Judging from his notes so far, he isn't taking advantage of this, but hopefully he will.

achompas• 15 years ago

Was talking about going Linux soon, and this'll help me work from Terminal exclusively. Thanks!

dekz• 15 years ago

You won't regret it! I'm not sure if I could ever stand windows as a main development environment again. POSIX is just a lovely environment to be in. Once you get the hang of it you'll see you become a lot more faster at mundane tasks (even scripting them). Good Luck!

graysnorf• 15 years ago

I second dekz's encouragement. I went from windows/eclipse to windows/eclipse + cygwin to linux/eclipse to linux/vim(et. al).

It's worth it. It really is. At some point you will marvel that you ever thought it was a good idea to navigate filesystems with the mouse, or edit text in a non-modal editor.

pault• 15 years ago

I use a macbook as my main workstation, but all my development happens in linux VMs. It only takes a few minutes to install a headless ubuntu in VMWare, so I create a new one for every project I start. This has several advantages:

- No configurations/installs from previous projects screwing things up (I know you can use tools like RVM and virtual-env, but in my experience starting from scratch is easier).

- Snapshots. It's great to be able to restore from a snapshot when you bork an upgrade.

- I've become very good at configuring a basic LAMP stack from memory.

Screen+Vim and the ability to suspend/resume machine images makes for an extremely flexible and ubiquitous development environment. I've considered doing this with AWS but there are still odd times where I find myself without an internet connection.

cturner• 15 years ago

Hey - I like doing this but find the power consumption of my laptop goes through the roof, and it gets uncomfortably warm. Does anyone have any tricks for beating this? I've just upgraded to latest vmware but haven't deliberately tested this yet.

minikomi• 15 years ago

I was recently given a small netbook and took the plunge with arch / xmonad and it has been pretty eye opening.. Going from "I need more control over screen brightness", to being able to assign keys that control the display precisely how I want has been frustrating and satisfying in just the right way. Thanks Zed for another great source!

gbog6• 15 years ago

On page 3, about "whoami"

> type this command 20 times and say it out loud

I have many years of daily command line use behind me and never needed to use this command. I don't like being taken for a child.

robbles• 15 years ago

Then why work through the examples?

The "learn by rote" method he's using here is designed to help people with little or no experience catch up quickly, and remember what they've learned without the many years of daily use.

If you just want to learn the odd helpful new trick, and basically know what you're doing, just ignore these parts.

gbog6• 15 years ago

That is just one example of the tone of this book, and I just don't like it, and I don't understand why it has so many supposedly adult people accepting things like:

> No, seriously, type it 20 times and say it out loud. Sssh. Just do it.

I supposed it was a kind of cold joke but it appears not to be. It is just very disrespectful for the reader. Grown up human beings are not to be taken by the hand like /this/ to learn something as serious and advanced as command line.

grannyg00se3• 15 years ago

I agree. The tone is not for me and it sounds really put on.

"The only piece of advice I am going to give you is this:

Shut the hell up and type this in then try to understand it.

Sorry to be mean, but that's what you have to do. You have an irrational fear of the command line and the only way to conquer an irrational fear is to just shut up and fight through it."

Why say "shut the hell up"? Why assume that the reader has an irrational fear? Most people are just trying to learn because they currently don't know. Not because they are afraid. They don't need some kind of drill sergeant to aggressively push them into it. They've already taken the initiative to seek out the knowledge and begin reading it.

zedshaw6• 15 years ago

Is it the word "hell" you disagree with or being told to do something? If it's "hell" I can remove that. If it's just because you don't want to be told to do something then don't read my book. You won't learn anything from it since the entire book is me telling you to do repetitive boring tasks.

As for why I wrote it: You may not have an irrational fear but a huge number of Windows and OSX users do. They've been told that the CLI is dangerous and antiquated so they avoid it and panic over it. Having someone like me just push them through actually gets them past that and on to learning how to use it.

VonLipwig• 15 years ago

If you don't like it use something else.

Copy and pasting usually means you never knew what the code said anyway.

Typing it once means you will remember it till the end of the day but tomorrow? The day after?

Typing it 20 times and saying it out loud to yourself helps it stick. There is no need to run to Google to look up the command. You should know it after doing it this many times. Especially if in the following days you recap with some basic memory exercises.

I have always thought that this is what set's Zed Shaw's books apart. They teach you a language in a way that sticks.

If you don't find it useful or for your style of learning pick up a book focusing more on theory rather than doing.

dredmorbius4• 15 years ago

It's handy in a multi-user environment when you're sudo/su -ing to various users. I'll use it reasonably frequently to test that sudo works as anticipated. "sudo whoami" should return "root".

atsaloli• 15 years ago

Yup. "id" is pretty good for that too, and is shorter to type. Give it a whirl.

jodrellblank2• 15 years ago

I don't like being taken for a child.

That's a problem with you which you should fix, instead of getting all defensive and whiny.

gbog6• 15 years ago

I tried to express a view differing from the global appraisal in the comments. If it sounds defensive and whiny, maybe it is a problem with the way I expressed it, but it was not meant to be.

I don't like "for the dummies" books either, I think this relatively new way to write books teaching something is no good for anyone. Showing a supposedly humorous disrespect for the reader seems to be acceptable in some cultures. It is not in mine. A very strong bullshitting of the reader is ok in some literary works, as it is part of the facture of the book (I am thinking LF Celine), but it is not ok in utilitarian literature.

But, you'd tell me, it is a first-world problem, I can live with this new trend (it will be replaced soon enough), as long as I am allowed to express out-fashioned point of views in places like HN.

morsch• 15 years ago

I agree. I don't mind tongue-in-cheek rudeness or expletives in how-tos in documentions, but this thing just struck me as unpleasant and hostile. I'm not sure the format is well suited to the goal, either, and some of the didactic methods seem bizarre.

I'm sure better tutorials have been available for years. E.g. http://linuxcommand.org/learning_the_shell.php

zedshaw6• 15 years ago

It's not meant to be insulting, it's meant to be a method of learning the basics of a language that works. If you're insulted by it then just don't read it.

jseban• 15 years ago

Your goal: A resource containing a method for learning, in a non-insulting way, for people to use.

What happened: People reporting of being insulted.

So you failed, why not use the feedback to improve the thing instead of making it personal.

S4M• 15 years ago

Well, as someone who has "many years of daily command line use" behind him, you will not learn anything from that book targeting newbies, but if you try something you're a complete noob at - a foreign language sticks to my mind - you will have to use this kind of technique to memorize the things you will learn.

qjz• 15 years ago

File and directory names can contain spaces and require special treatment. This should be addressed up front, before introducing commands with side effects.

zedshaw6• 15 years ago

Oh yeah, thanks I need to put that early in the exercises.

keithpeter• 15 years ago

How about including some examples of globbing all files of a given type including filenames with spaces?

e.g. 1) Find all file names in a directory that contain spaces and replace spaces with _

2) E.G save mp3 format sound out of a directory full of flv files using ffmpeg, flv files can have arbitrary file names, mp3 file names saved with no spaces

That kind of activity would be interesting to younger proto-hackers

I'm a teacher. A group of teenagers in a computer room (which is not your target audience) would not actually read your tutorial in an a to b fashion, but, when set a task would raid your work for the bits that help then achieve the task. I'd then follow up with a multi-choice quiz in Moodle or something similar to structure recall like your flashcards.

rmc2• 15 years ago

Exactly. As someone who's taught command line basics, this is a problem that people have a lot at first

gcb• 15 years ago

always considered myself an ace of the command line... heck for some time i even used X only for webbrowser (while cursing) and used TTY1 for vim and TTY2 for a shell where i'd run version control commands and build...

but yesterday, installing debian-testing on a new notebook, the radeon cards didn't worked out even with the vesa drivers and i had to use the console for a few hours...

i panicked when i realized I had no idea how to bring the wifi up.

...and everytime something like this happens (previous one was some punk changing the kernel parameter "single" or "1" or "init 1" to "text")... i feel old and outdated. it hurts.

Adaptive• 15 years ago

I find wifi on the command is still surprisingly hard if using just primitives like iproute2. I'm trying to force myself to use just that for a bit to learn the new(ish) ip / iw commands.

Really, though, wpa_supplicant seems to be the most troublesome critical wireless "primitive". Not fun command line syntax.

tsm• 15 years ago

I've had successful experiences with ceni--a relatively unknown interactive network manager. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=918442

AndresNavarro• 15 years ago

I found about this problem when moving from gnome to a minimalistic window manager that had no task bar whatsoever. I now use cnetworkmanager which is a python cmd application that uses dbus to connect with the regular NetworkManager service in Ubuntu, but for a couple of minutes it was a weird feeling, not being able to do something this basic

gcr• 15 years ago

You might consider switching to a lightweight distribution like Arch. Distributions intended to be used from the command line give you tools to make these tasks easier.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wifi

xradionut2• 15 years ago

Am I just a cranky old geek or does anyone else find Zed teaching CLI skills mildly amusing? Or is there truly a large population mentally bound by the graphical interface?

Know the basic commands of getting things done isn't just for the experienced admins/developers like myself who have been using keyboards and terminals since the early DOS and VMS days. Ordinary users were able to create documents, check mail and write simple Excel macros, etc. Coworkers shared tips, people had books and kept notes. None of this has ever been rocket science.

zedshaw6• 15 years ago

Yes, sadly Microsoft (and to a certain extent Apple) have done an excellent job convincing people that the CLI is both dangerous and antiquated. So when they come to my other books and I tell them to use the CLI they have major problems. I'm writing this mostly as a quick way to get them over that speed bump then on to more useful programming topics.

eliben• 15 years ago

Zed's productivity is truly inspiring

jisaacstone• 15 years ago

Once again - another resource with almost no windows support. At least he has a todo. . .

Back when I just did PHP and never used a command line having a widows box was painless. Recently I have been learning UNIX at work and Python at home and have been impressed by the lack of resources/support for working with Windows.

I suppose I should stop complaining and just blog what I've learned so far . . . though admittedly it isn't much.

readme• 15 years ago

No problem, just install mingw. Or install msysgit and you get git-bash which comes with it. CMD.exe is a pile of garbage. I would understand if you wanted to learn about powershell, though. That's definitely on my todo list.

Also, CMD.exe has copy + paste, you know? You can right click to start a mark, then left click and drag. Enter performs the copy. However, it doesn't understand newlines or line wrapping, so you end up getting artificial newlines where the end of the terminal is (which is unfortunately capped at 80 chars, so if you wanted to make it bigger, you couldn't)

aridiculous• 15 years ago

I like the tone of the books. It makes things interesting and you feel like stuff is getting done. Just wanted to throw that out there since most of the comments are complaining about it. I don't want you, Zed, to get the perception that everyone is sheepish about it.

The Command Line Crash Course Controlling Your Computer From The Terminal

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