Expert Shell Scripting

Ron Peters spent more than ten years administering Linux and Unix systems while building a very large library of shell scripts. He realized that the world is full of how-to documents, but not many seem to read them, nor can many system administrators lay claim to being shell scripting experts. He apologizes that it took him so long to make his efforts known to the world. He is married with two children and very happy that he found the time to write this book.

Basic Scripting Techniques.- Shell Script Debugging.- Standard Function Library.- Date and Time Manipulation.- Comparisons and Tests.- Accepting Command-Line Options, Switches, and Parameters.- Testing Variables and Assigning Defaults.- Indirect Reference Variables.- Shell Process Tree.- Data Redirection.- Piping Input to read.- System Interaction and Advanced Techniques.- Math from the Shell.- cron.- Self-Linked Scripts.- Throttling Parallel Processes.- Command-Line Editing and History.- Scripting from the Command Line.- Automating User Input with expect.- User Input Timeout.- Instant Keyboard Response.- Directory Copying.- A Brief Tour of the X Display Environment.- X Navigation Window.- Command-Line E-mail Attachments.- Text-Processing One-Liners.- Editing Files in Place.- Evaluating Variables in a Flat File.- Read Piped Input.- Free-Format Output Using cat.- Automating Interactive Processes.- Useful Scripts.- Automating E-mail with procmail.- Process-Management Monitor.- Managing File Counts.- Processes Running from inittab.- Automatic RCS.- Colorful /proc Reporting.- Password-Aging Notification.- A Pseudo-shadow File.- Linux Gold-System Build.- System Snapshots.- Removing Large Files and Log Rolling.- Core Finder.- Network Adapter Failover.