Server Fault Stack Exchange
Server Fault Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [linux]

Linux is the generic term for a UNIX-like open source operating system based on the Linux kernel.

GNU/Linux is a UNIX-like Open Source operating system. Linus Torvalds originally wrote the Linux kernel with contributions from others on the MINIX usenet board. Since then, Linux had thousands of developers, both paid by companies and volunteers. The main system tools and libraries for GNU/Linux are sourced from the GNU Project, hence the nomenclature GNU/Linux (GNU Toolchain over Linux Kernel). The Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL v2 license.

There are many different Linux Distributions (sometimes shortened to distro), which consist of software applications packaged and provided with the Linux kernel, being Slackware the oldest active distro and Debian, Red Hat and CentOS among the most used on Internet servers¹.

The Linux kernel is commonly run on servers but is highly portable and is used in a variety of applications, from wireless routers and cell phones to clusters and super computers with thousands of nodes and processors.

External Resources:

38271 questions
130
votes
4 answers

Why do we use a OS Base Image with Docker if containers have no Guest OS?

I've just started to study Docker and there's something that's being quite confusing for me. As I've read on Docker's website a container is different from a virtual machine. As I understood a container is just a sandbox inside of which an entire…
user1620696
  • 1,413
  • 2
  • 11
  • 9
130
votes
9 answers

How to copy file preserving directory path in Linux?

I have Eclipse projects and ".project" file in them, the directory structure looks like 'myProject/.project'. I want to copy these '.project' files to another directory, but I want the enclosing directory name to be preserved. Let's say I have…
dhblah
  • 1,403
  • 2
  • 10
  • 7
128
votes
9 answers

How can I monitor hard disk load on Linux?

Is there a good command line utility to monitor hard disk load on linux? Something like top but then monitoring disk activity i.s.o. cpu usage. More specifically, I suspect that for some (heavy load) servers after several optimizations on various…
Pieter
  • 1,409
  • 3
  • 12
  • 9
128
votes
2 answers

Colors in bash after piping through less?

When I have dircolors defined life is full of... color. When I pipe ls through less to scroll around I lose the colors. Any suggestions?
MathewC
  • 6,957
  • 9
  • 39
  • 53
127
votes
15 answers

Mount CIFS Host is down

I have an issue with a mount point that was previously configured. It shows the folder, but the mount is missing and holds "?" values for size, permissions, etc. So I tried to remount using cifs and the same command from before: mount -t cifs…
Kevin
  • 1,403
  • 2
  • 11
  • 9
126
votes
6 answers

Postfix - how to retry delivery of mail in queue?

I have a backup mail server in case of a failure on the main one. In that case of failure, mails come on the backup server and stay there until the main one is back. If I wait some times, the delivery will be done automatically as soon as the main…
Nicolas
  • 1,269
  • 2
  • 8
  • 3
124
votes
3 answers

How can I rename a Unix user?

I have a user named hedgehog and I want him to be named squirrel, but I don't want to change his numeric user ID. How can I accomplish this?
Szymon Jeż
  • 3,377
  • 3
  • 17
  • 17
124
votes
8 answers

How can I kill all stopped jobs?

When I try to exit from my Linux server I get the message: There are stopped jobs. : Is there a single command to kill these?
yazz.com
  • 7,193
  • 15
  • 38
  • 39
122
votes
8 answers

How to get pid of just started process

I want to start process (eg. myCommand) and get its pid (to allow to kill it later). I tried ps and filter by name, but I can not distinguish process by names myCommand ps ux | awk '// {print $2}' Because processes names are not…
rafalmag
  • 1,331
  • 2
  • 9
  • 9
122
votes
28 answers

How to copy a large number of files quickly between two servers

I need to transfer a huge amount of mp3s between two serves (Ubuntu). By huge I mean about a million files which are on average 300K. I tried with scp but it would have taken about a week. (about 500 KB/s) If I transfer a single file by HTTP, I get…
nicudotro
  • 1,551
  • 2
  • 13
  • 14
121
votes
17 answers

Why does sudo command take long to execute?

I've been picking up Linux (Fedora 10, then 11) over the past few months (and enjoying it immensely-- it's like discovering computers all over again, so many things to learn). I've added my user to the last line of the /etc/sudoers file as shown…
Cuga
  • 101
  • 3
  • 4
  • 11
121
votes
7 answers

REJECT vs DROP when using iptables

Is there any reason why I would want to have iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT instead of iptables -A INPUT -j DROP
Mike B
  • 11,871
  • 42
  • 107
  • 168
119
votes
6 answers

What Linux distribution is the Amazon Linux AMI based on?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers an officially supported Amazon Machine Image (AMI), but it doesn't indicate which Linux distribution it's based upon. Is the official Amazon Linux AMI based on another Linux distribution, and if so, which one?
Trevor Sullivan
  • 2,063
  • 3
  • 14
  • 19
118
votes
14 answers

What's the reverse DNS command line utility?

What's the command to find the name of a computer given its IP address? I always forget what this command is, but I know it exists in Windows and I assume it exists on the *nix command-line.
Peter Turner
  • 2,178
  • 9
  • 33
  • 45
115
votes
7 answers

How do I list loaded Linux module parameter values?

Is there a standard way to list the parameter values of a loaded Linux module? I'm essentially probing for another answer to this Linux kernel module parameters question, because the module I'm interested in doesn't have a…
cdleary
  • 1,735
  • 5
  • 17
  • 11
1 2 3
…
99 100