The Linux Cookbook

The Linux Cookbook

Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Michael Stutz

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stutz, Michael.
The Linux cookbook / Michael Stutz.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-886411-48-4 (pbk.)
1. Linux. 2. Operating systems (Computers) I. Title.

QA76.76.O63 S788 2000

005.4’32--dc21 00-046057
A note on the type
in which this book is set
The name of the font family used in this book is Computer Modern. These are free fonts designed by
Donald E. Knuth for his TEX typesetting system, and are described in Volume E of the Computers &
Typesetting series, Computer Modern Typefaces (Addison–Wesley, 1986).
This book was written and produced using the free software tools it describes. It was prepared with
Texinfo, a system for generating both hardcopy and electronic output from a single source document.
The Texinfo input files were composed in GNU Emacs, and the screen shots were taken and processed
with the Image Magick suite of tools. The output was converted to PostScript for printing using Tomas
Rokicki’s Dvips, GNU Ghostscript, and Angus Duggan’s PostScript Utilities. The system was a 100MHz
586 personal computer running Debian GNU/Linux 2.2.
Preface
Because of its robust and stable nature, the Linux-based system is the choice of millions today. But
what some may not know is that the free software movement, of which Linux is a part, is very much
a counter-cultural phenomenon: the design by which it is produced and published is contrary to the
notions of proprietary, intellectual “property” that have dominated mainstream culture so long. While
some programmers turn their research into corporate-backed software that you cannot openly change,
share, or examine (but only purchase and run on your system), Linux and other free software is the
product of many individuals who courageously published and shared their research and work openly, for
everyone to benefit from.
I wrote this book because I want everyone to know how to use this software, because I think every-
one deserves the freedom that comes with it. I don’t willingly use proprietary software—not because
it is always inferior to free software but because its use precludes freedoms that I find I cannot exist
without . . . freedoms that should be everyone’s right by default in a free, open society. (See Chapter 1
[Introduction], page 9.)
I know that Linux isn’t difficult to use, especially when compared with other software and operating
systems, but what was needed was a guide to show people how to use it to get things done: “Oh, you
want to do that? Here, type this.”
That explains the premise of the book—it’s a hands-on guide to getting things done on a Linux system,
designed for the everyday user who is not necessarily a computer programmer.
The traditional approach to the subject is to either provide laundry lists of all available commands and
applications, or focus on their use in a programming or otherwise technical environment. This book takes
a different approach, showing how everyday users—be they artists, designers, businessmen, scholars, or
scientists—can use these tools and applications to get things done. When I speak of “things,” I mean
(hopefully) the kind of things that you—the sort of person possibly and partially described above—
might want to do with a modern computer system: view text and images, play and record sounds, perform
mathematic operations, print to your printer, format text, access the Internet, check your grammar, and
so forth.
Like a culinary cookbook, this book presents “recipes” for preparing or accomplishing a particular,
specific thing. I’ve selected what I consider to be the easiest and most effective methods for accomplish-
ing particular tasks, and have arranged these recipes in general sections according to subject matter—the
first part of the book is all about getting started, and contains the most essential information you need
to know about using Linux; the remaining chapters deal with general categories of usage: Files, Text,
Images, Sound, Productivity, and Networking.

Format of Recipes
Each recipe is numbered with at least two figures. These figures are constructed as follows: the first
number always corresponds to the chapter number, and the second to the section of the recipe. For
example, Chapter 3 is The Shell, and Recipe No. 3.5 is the fifth recipe on shells, Section 3.5 [Recording
a Shell Session], page 41.
Sometimes recipes are divided into subsections, with a third number specifying the specific recipe—
for example, Recipe No. 3.4 is on the subject of command history in the shell, and is divided further
into subsections; Recipe No. 3.4.2 is the second recipe on command history, Section 3.4.2 [Specifying a
Command from Your History], page 41.
Each recipe describes a method for completing a specific task on the system; these tasks require at
least one software program. The software programs or files a recipe calls for are its ingredients.
The recipes are structured as follows:
1. Recipe number and title of the recipe.
2. Special ingredients, if any. The Debian package(s) and/or or URLs where the program(s) can be
obtained are listed, if they are available.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Debian classifies packages in varying level of importance, from ‘required’ packages that all
systems must have in order to run, to ‘optional’ and ‘extra’ packages that you only install if
you want them. If a described software package is in the first two given categories—‘required’
and ‘important’—then I assume you have it installed, and the package name isn’t listed here.
In the rare case that a software package I describe is not yet available as a Debian package, I just
give the URL where to obtain the source packages for that software; have your system administrator
install it.
3. Special preparation methods or description, if any. When a configurable program is described, the
standard setup as provided by the Debian distribution is assumed, unless otherwise specified here.
4. Description of the recipe and “cooking” method proper.
5. Remarks concerning the results and use.
6. Bulleted example of the method in a specific context.
7. Extra commands or actions you might want to do next.
8. Variations on the recipe, with additional examples.
9. Special notes or references to further information.
Not all of these items may be present in a given recipe.

Assumptions, Scope, and Exclusions

There a few assumptions that this book makes about you, the reader, and about your Linux system.
The Cookbook assumes that you have at least minimal understanding of your computer hardware—
you don’t have to know how to take it apart or anything like that, but you ought to know how to operate
the mouse, where the power button is on your computer and monitor, how to load paper in your printer,
and so forth. If you need help with any of these tasks or concepts, ask your dealer or the party who set
up your computer.
This book also assumes that you have Linux installed and properly set up, and that you have your
own user account set up on your system. If you need help with this, please see Section 1.3 [If You Need
More Help], page 14.
While this book can and should be used by the newcomer to Linux, I like to think that I’ve presented
broad enough coverage of the Linux-based system, and have included enough interesting or obscure
material, so that wizards, hackers, and members of the Linux Cabal may find some of it useful—and that
said users will not feel ashamed to have a copy of this book on their desk or as part of their library.
Finally, a note about what isn’t covered in the Cookbook.
This book describes only free software (sometimes called “open source” software) that runs on Linux
systems.
Proprietary software is omitted, as are most software packages that are currently in a “beta” or
some other unstable release not yet intended for general use.
Some programs take a number of options that modify the way they work. Sometimes, various options
that a tool takes are listed in a table. These lists are not exhaustive; rather, they contain the most popular
or useful options, or those options that are relevant to the discussion at hand. Consult the online manual
page of a particular tool for the complete listing (see Section 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System
Manual], page 28).
This is a user manual; no computer programming activities, such as program compilation, are dis-
cussed. Topics related to system administration are also omitted—so you won’t find anything in this
text on matters such as managing accounts, system maintenance, setting up hardware, and configuring
networks.
As with any rule, you can find an exception to this—if you look hard enough for it. If you are running
Linux on your home computer as a single-user system, you are also the administrator of this system,

The word “free” in this context refers to freedom or liberty, and not price; this distinction is explained in Chapter 1 [Intro-
duction], page 9.
and are the responsible party for ensuring that any administrative tasks be completed; Appendix A [Ad-
ministrative Issues], page 315 exists as a reference for those users who will be administrating their own
systems.

Typographical Conventions
All recipes have at least one example that demonstrates it.
¯ The text that describes what the example does appears just before the example itself, and is offset
from the text with a bullet, like this.
¯ A given recipe may have several variations; each is offset with its own bullet.
¯ The names of documents or users that are used in some recipes may not always reference actual
documents or users on your system, but demonstrate the general principles involved. So when I
show how to print a file called ‘resume’, you might not necessarily have a file with that name on
your system, but you should understand the idea which the recipe demonstrates.

« ¨
Sometimes, a terminal screen is shown to illustrate an interactive session:

$ Text that you actually type is displayed in a slanted font, like

this. If it is a command to be typed at a shell prompt, the command is
preceded with a ‘$’ character.

Text that denotes program output is displayed in a monospaced Courier

font like this.

ª$ ©
In examples where a shell prompt is displayed, the default current working directory is omitted in the
prompt and just a ‘$’ is used; when a command outputs text and then exits, the last line of an example
contains a ‘$’ character to denote the return to a shell prompt. Don’t worry if this sounds strange to you
now; all of this “shell” business is explained in Chapter 3 [The Shell], page 33.
When a command exits and returns to the shell prompt without outputting text, the final shell prompt
character is omitted, and a cartouche border is not drawn around the example; this was purely an aesthetic
decision.
The names of files or directories appear in the text as ‘file’; commands appear as command, and
strings of text are typeset like ‘some text’.
Text you type is written like this, just as in the examples, and when a specific key on the keyboard
is mentioned, its conventional name is displayed in a box. For example,
RET denotes the ‘Return’ key
on the keyboard.
In examples where keys are meant to be pressed and held down together, the keys are separated by
hyphens; the hyphens are not meant to be literally pressed. For example, pressing the
CTRL,
ALT, and

DEL keys and holding them down at the same time is a combination that has meaning in some operating
systems (including Linux, where this keystroke means to shut down the system and reboot the computer);
it is represented like this:

CTRL-
ALT-
DEL

The
CTRL (‘Control’) key is always used in combination with another key; these combinations are
denoted by C-x , where x is the second key. These combinations are read as ‘control-x ’, where x is
the name of the second key. To type one of these combinations, press and hold
CTRL, press the second
key, and then release both keys.
 This key is labelled ‘Enter’ on some keyboards.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ For example, to type C-d (pronounced ‘control d’), press and hold
CTRL, type the
D key, and
then release both keys.
In some applications (notably, the Emacs editor; see Section 10.2 [Emacs], page 108), the
META key
is used with another key, in the same way as
SHIFT; these combinations are denoted by M-x , where x
is the second key. Most keyboards today don’t have a
META key, even though the term is still in use;
instead, press and release
ESC, and then type the second key.
¯ To type M-c, press and release
ESC, and then press and release the
C key.
You can sometimes also use the
ALT key for the
META key. This often does not work in the X
Window System, but in the console you can press and hold
ALT and then type the second key just as you
would with a CTRL key sequence.
¯ So to type M-c with the
ALT key, press and hold
ALT, press the
C key, and then release both keys.
Both
CTRL and
META sequences are not case-sensitive; that is, pressing X in the last example is the
same as pressing x (although x is certainly easier to type). By convention, the C- or M- prefix is always
given as an uppercase letter, and the key which follows is always given as a lowercase letter.
Menu items in an application are written like Menu Item; the names of command functions are
written as Function.
For aesthetic purposes, a physical space appears in the text between commands and the final
RET that
ends a command line, and should not be literally typed (although nothing bad will happen should you
actually type this space). Where explicitly pressing the space bar is called for, that key is represented in
examples by
SPC.

Versions, Latest Edition, and Errata

WWW: http://dsl.org/cookbook/

The Linux Cookbook is available in both hardcopy and as a machine-readable file. The latest
edition of this book in etext (“electronic text”) form is always available from its distribution site
(http://dsl.org/cookbook/) on the World Wide Web. This site includes the most up-to-date
complete text (in both HTML and GNU Info formats), and provides a method for purchasing the latest
edition of the hardcopy book at a discount.
Every effort has been made to include only the best free software recipes for accomplishing tasks in
the easiest and most efficient manner, and they are believed to be correct. Suggestions, comments, and
bug reports are always welcome; you can contact the author via email at stutz@dsl.org.

Acknowledgments
This is not a book that was borne easily. Conception, took but an idle moment—but once the idea
had been implanted, I found resistance and setbacks at every turn. It was only through the help of the
following individuals that this book with my name on its cover was finally brought forth, and has now
found its way to you.
Everyone involved with this book at No Starch Press (http://www.nostarch.com/) deserves
a hearty round of thanks. Bill Pollock has published this book precisely according to its author’s vision,
and had the discernment and foresight to allow that a copylefted edition (with corresponding source
data) be made available in conjunction with the hardcopy book. Project manager Karol Jurado worked
ceaselessly to keep the production flowing, while dealing with my input files, and giving opinion and
advice on all manners of obtuse esoterica whenever the sudden need to know came over me. Both
Elisabeth Beller and Andy Carroll contributed improvements to the text.
Steve Turner and the National Writers Union (http://www.nwu.org/) played a major role in
helping to ensure that this book could be completed, copylefted, and in the hands of Linux users like
yourself. Carol Criccow gave invaluable legal assistance, and various advice and assistance came from
the NWU’s JoAnn Kawell, Philip Mattera, Judy Helm, and Bonnie Britt.
Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
(http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/) assisted with the conception of the Design Science License
(DSL), which is used in this book. She gave an initial review of the license draft and provided her exper-
tise and advice throughout the entire process.
Thanks to David Sims, Chris Coleman, and Terrie Schweitzer, who’ve all been great folks to work
with at the O’Reilly Network (http://oreillynet.com/), where my “Living Linux” column runs.
I am indebted to Buwei Yang Chao, whose How To Cook and Eat In Chinese (John Day Company,
1945) served as much of the inspiration behind the tone and structure of this book. I feel the same
regard for two other authors who have come before me, and whose work has had a direct influence in the
writing of this book—Dr. Lee Su Jan (The Fine Art of Chinese Cooking, Gramercy Publishing 1962)
and Andrew Walker (The UNIX Environment, Wiley 1984).
Thanks also go out to Kenneth W. Melvin, and to the members of the “Byline” forum on the WELL;
both were sources of advice and feedback early in the project. The art-hackers of the linart mailing
list (http://linart.net/) entertained initial discussion of the idea of this book as it first occurred,
and the “elders” Ann and Walt gave various support for which I am grateful.
Finally, I must thank Jack Angelotta, Jon Konrath, Steven Snedker, and mrs (Marie Stutz), who all
listened to the unbelievable as it happened, and stood by—even in moments of terror.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
PART ONE: Working with Linux
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
1 Introduction

Before we get into “cooking” and the recipes proper, this first part of the book deals with preliminaries,
explaining the general techniques and methods for working with Linux—including how to get the system
ready for use, and how to run commands on the system.
The rest of the book is all recipes, which are sorted in sections by the tasks they perform or the objects
they work on—such as text, files, images, and so forth.

1.1 Background and History

In order to understand what Linux is all about, it helps to know a bit about how it all began. So the
following is a historical overview, giving a concise background of the software that is the subject of this
book.

1.1.1 What’s Unix?

WWW: http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/
WWW: http://internet-history.org/archives/early.history.of.unix.html

Unix, the original ancestor of Linux, is an operating system. Or at least it was an operating system; the
original system known as Unix proper is not the “Unix” we know and use today; there are now many
“flavors” of Unix, of which Linux has become the most popular.
A product of the 1960s, Unix and its related software was invented by Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson,
Brian Kernighan, and other hackers at Bell Labs in 1969; its name was a play on “Multics,” another
operating system of the time.

In the early days of Unix, any interested party who had the hardware to run it on could get a tape
of the software from Bell Labs, with printed manuals, for a very nominal charge. (This was before the
era of personal computing, and in practice, mostly only universities and research laboratories did this).
Local sites played with the software’s source code, extending and customizing the system to their needs
and liking.
Beginning in the late 1970s, computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, a licensee
of the Unix source code, had been making their own improvements and enhancements to the Unix source
during the course of their research, which included the development of TCP/IP networking. Their work
became known as the BSD (“Berkeley Systems Distribution”) flavor of Unix.
The source code of their work was made publicly available under licensing that permitted redistribu-
tion, with source or without, provided that Berkeley was credited for their portions of the code. There
are many modern variants of the original BSD still actively developed today, and some of them—such as
NetBSD and OpenBSD—can run on personal computers.
NOTE: The uppercase word ‘UNIX’ became a trademark of AT&T (since transferred to other organiza-
tions), to mean their particular operating system. But today, when people say “Unix,” they usually mean
“a Unix-like operating system,” a generalization that includes Linux.
If you’d like further information on this topic, you might be interested in consulting A Quarter Cen-
tury of UNIX by Peter H. Salus (Addison-Wesley 1994), which has become the standard text on the
subject.

The name “Unix” was first written as “Unics,” which stood for “Uniplex Information and Computing System.”
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

1.1.2 What’s Free Software?

WWW: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Over the years, Unix’s popularity grew. After the divestiture of AT&T, the tapes of the source code that
Bell Labs provided became a proprietary, commercial product: AT&T UNIX. But it was expensive, and
didn’t come with the source code that made it tick. Even if you paid extra for a copy of the sources, you
couldn’t share with your programmer colleagues any improvements or discoveries you made.
By the early 1980s, proprietary software development, by only-for-profit corporations, was quickly
becoming the norm—even at universities. More software was being distributed without source code than
ever before.
In 1984, while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hacker
Richard Stallman saw his colleagues gradually accept and move to this proprietary development model.
He did not accept the kind of world such proprietism would offer: no sharing your findings with your
fellow man, no freedom for anyone to improve a published work.
So instead of giving in to the world of non-free computing, Stallman decided to start a project to build
and assemble a new Unix-like operating system from scratch, and make its source code free for anyone
to copy and modify. This was the GNU Project (“GNU’s Not Unix”).
The GNU Project’s software would be licensed in such a way so that everyone was given the freedom
to copy, distribute, and modify their copy of the software; as a result, this kind of software became known
as free software.
Individuals and businesses may charge for free software, but anyone is free to share copies with their
neighbors, change it, or look at its source code to see how it works. There are no secrets in free software;
it’s software that gives all of its users the freedom they deserve.
Proprietary software strictly limits these freedoms—in accordance with copyright law, which was
formulated in an age when works were normally set and manipulated in physical form, and not as non-
physical data, which is what computers copy and modify.
Free software licensing was developed as a way to work around the failings of copyright law, by
permitting anyone to copy and modify a work, though under certain strict terms and conditions. The GNU
Project’s GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.txt), or GNU
GPL, is the most widely used of all free software licenses. Popularly called a “copyleft,” it permits anyone
to copy or modify any software released under its terms—provided all derivatives or modifications are
released under the same terms, and all changes are documented.

1.1.3 What’s Open Source?

WWW: http://www.opensource.org/
WWW: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

The term open source was first introduced by some free software hackers in 1998 to be a marketing term
for “free software.” They felt that some people unfamiliar with the free software movement—namely,
large corporations, who’d suddenly taken an interest in the more than ten years’ worth of work that had
been put into it—might be scared by the word “free.” They were concerned that decision-makers in these
corporations might confuse free software with things like freeware, which is software provided free of
charge, and in executable form only. (Free software means nothing of the sort, of course; the “free” in
“free software” has always referred to freedom, not price.)
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded to promote software that conforms with their public
“Open Source Definition,” which was derived from the “Debian Free Software Guidelines” (DFSG), orig-
 No such “official GNU” operating system has yet been released in its entirety, but most people today consider Linux-based
free software systems to be the effective realization of their goals—hence the “GNU” in “Debian GNU/Linux.”
inally written by Bruce Perens as a set of software inclusion guidelines for Debian. All free software—
including software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License—conforms with this
definition.
But some free software advocates and organizations, including the GNU Project, do not endorse the
term “open source” at all, believing that it obscures the importance of “freedom” in this movement.
Whether you call it free software, open source software, or something else, there is one fundamental
difference between this kind of software and proprietary, non-free software—and that is that free software
always ensures that everyone is granted certain fundamental freedoms with respect to that software.

1.1.4 What’s Linux?

In the early 1990s, Finnish computer science student Linus Torvalds began hacking on Minix, a small,
Unix-like operating system for personal computers then used in college operating systems courses. He
decided to improve the main software component underlying Minix, called the kernel, by writing his
own. (The kernel is the central component of any Unix-like operating system.)
In late 1991, Torvalds published the first version of this kernel on the Internet, calling it “Linux” (a
play on both Minix and his own name).
When Torvalds published Linux, he used the copyleft software license published by the GNU Project,
the GNU General Public License. Doing so made his software free to use, copy, and modify by anyone—
provided any copies or variations were kept equally free. Torvalds also invited contributions by other
programmers, and these contributions came; slowly at first but, as the Internet grew, thousands of hackers
and programmers from around the globe contributed to his free software project. The Linux software
was immensely extended and improved so that the Linux-based system of today is a complete, modern
operating system, which can be used by programmers and non-programmers alike; hence this book.

1.1.5 What’s Debian?

WWW: http://debian.org/

It takes more than individual software programs to make something that we can use on our computers—
someone has to put it all together. It takes time to assemble the pieces into a cohesive, usable collection,
and test it all, and then keep up to date with the new developments of each piece of software (a small
change in any one of which may introduce a new software dependency problem or conflict with the rest).
A Linux distribution is such an assemblage. You can do it yourself, of course, and “roll your own”
distribution—since it’s all free software, anyone can add to it or remove from it and call the resulting
concoction their own. Most people, however, choose to leave the distribution business to the experts.
For the purposes of this book, I will assume that you are using the Debian GNU/Linux distribution,
which, of all the major distributions, is the only one designed and assembled in the same manner that the
Linux kernel and most other free software is written—by individuals.
And when I say “Linux” anywhere in this book (including in the title), unless noted, I am not referring
to the bare kernel itself, but to the entire working free software system as a whole. This is often called
“GNU/Linux.”
There are many other distributions, and some of them are quite acceptable—many users swear by Red
Hat Linux, for example, which is certainly popular, and reportedly easy to install. The SuSE distribution
 You can extend this “free software movement” to be part of a greater “free information” or “free speech” movement, to
include all other kinds of free works—including works of literature and music.
 Presumably, many of these courses use Linux now.
 This was not the original name, however. Torvalds had originally called it freax, for “‘free’ + ‘freak’ + the obligatory
‘-x’”; while the 1990s were fast becoming the “freaky” alterna decade (at least in fashion), more people seemed to favor
“Linux,” and the name stuck.
 The GNU Project’s own kernel is called Hurd, and is still in development; Debian’s experimental distribution of a Hurd-
based free softare system, not yet publicly released, is called Debian GNU/Hurd.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

is very well-received in Europe. So when people speak of Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, and the like in terms
of Linux, they’re talking about the specific distribution of Linux and related software, as assembled
and repackaged by these companies or organizations (see Appendix B [Linux Resources on the Web],
page 321). The core of the distributions are the same—they’re all the Linux kernel, the GNU Project
software, and various other free software—but each distribution has its own packaging schemes, defaults,
and configuration methods. It is by no means wrong to install and use any of these other distributions,
and every recipe in this book should work with all of them (with the exception of variations that are
specific to Debian systems, and are labelled as such in the text).
In Debian’s early days, it was referred to as the “hacker’s distro,” because it could be very difficult
for a newbie to install and manage. However, that has changed—any Linux newbie can install and use
today’s Debian painlessly.
NOTE: I recommend Debian because it is non-corporate, openly developed, robust (the standard Debian
CD-ROM set comes with more than 2,500 different software packages!), and it is entirely committed to
free software by design (yes, there are distributions which are not).

1.1.6 Unix and the Tools Philosophy

WWW: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/upe/
WWW: http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/

To understand the way tasks are performed on Linux, some discussion on the philosophy behind the
software that Linux is built upon is in order. A dip in these inviting waters will help clarify the rôle of
this book as “cookbook.”
The fact that the Unix operating system has survived for more than thirty years should tell us some-
thing about the temerity of its design considerations. One of these considerations—perhaps its most
endearing—is the “tools” philosophy.
Most operating systems are designed with a concept of files, come with a set of utility programs
for handling these files, and then leave it to the large applications to do the interesting work: a word
processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation designer, a Web browser. (When a few of these applications
recognize each other’s file formats, or share a common interface, the group of applications is called a
“suite.”)
Each of these monolithic applications presumably has an “open file” command to read a file from
disk and open it in the application; most of them, too, come with commands for searching and replacing
text, checking spelling, printing the current document, and so on. The program source code for handling
all of these tasks must be accounted for separately, inside each application—taking up extra space both
in memory and on disk. This is the anti-Unix approach.
And in the case of proprietary software, all of the actual program source code is kept from the public—
so other programmers can’t use, build on, or learn from any of it. This kind of closed-source software is
presented to the world as a kind of magic trick: if you buy a copy of the program, you may use it, but
you can never learn how the program actually works.
The result of this is that the code to handle essentially the same function inside all of these different
applications must be developed by programmers from scratch, separately and independently of the others
each time—so the progress of society as a whole is set back by the countless man-hours of time and
energy programmers must waste by inefficiently reinventing all the same software functions to perform
the same tasks, over and over again.
Unix-like operating systems don’t put so much weight on application programs. Instead, they come
with many small programs called tools. Each tool is generally capable of performing a very simple,
specific task, and performing it well—one tool does nothing but output the file(s) or data passed to it, one
tool spools its input to the print queue, one tool sorts the lines of its input, and so on.
An important early development in Unix was the invention of “pipes,” a way to pass the output of one
tool to the input of another. By knowing what the individual tools do and how they are combined, a user
could now build powerful “strings” of commands.
 Just as the tensile strength of steel is greater than the added strength of its components—nickel, cad-
mium, and iron—multiple tools could then be combined to perform a task unpredicted by the function of
the individual tools. This is the concept of synergy, and it forms the basis of the Unix tools philosophy.
Here’s an example, using two tools. The first tool, called who, outputs a list of users currently logged
on to the system (see Section 2.6.2 [Listing Who Is on the System], page 23). The second tool is called
wc, which stands for “word count”; it outputs a count of the number of words (or lines or characters) of
the input you give it (see Section 12.1 [Counting Text], page 133).
By combining these two tools, giving the wc command the output of who, you can build a new

« ¨
command to list the number of users currently on the system:

$ who | wc -l
RET
4

ª$
©
The output of who is piped—via a “pipeline,” specified by the vertical bar (‘|’) character—to the
input of wc, which through use of the ‘-l’ option outputs the number of lines of its input.
In this example, the number 4 is shown, indicating that four users are currently logged on the system.
(Incidentally, piping the output of who to wc in this fashion is a classic tools example, and was called
“the most quoted pipe in the world” by Andrew Walker in The UNIX Environment, a book that was
published in 1984.)
Another famous pipeline from the days before spell-check tools goes something like this:
$ tr -cs A-Za-z ’\012’ | tr A-Z a-z | sort -u |
comm -23 - /usr/dict/words
RET
This command (typed all on one line) uses the tr, sort, and comm tools to make a spelling
checker—after you type this command, the lines of text you type (until you interrupt it) are converted
to a single-column list of lowercase words with two calls of tr, sorted in alphabetical order while fer-
reting out all duplicates, the resultant list which is then compared with ‘/usr/dict/words’, which
is the system “dictionary,” a list of properly-spelled words kept in alphabetical order (see Section 11.1
[Spelling], page 121).
Collective sets of tools designed around a certain kind of field or concept were called “workbenches”
on older Unix systems; for example, the tools for checking the spelling, writing style and grammar of
their text input were part of the “Writer’s Workbench” package (see Section 11.3 [Checking Grammar],
page 127).
Today the GNU Project publishes collections of tools under certain general themes, such as the “GNU
text utilities” and “GNU file utilities,” but the idea of “workbenches” is generally not part of the idiom
of today’s Unix-based systems. Needless to say, we still use all kinds of tools for all kinds of purposes;
the great bulk of this book details various combinations of tools to obtain the desired results for various
common tasks.
You’ll find that there’s usually one tool or command sequence that works perfectly for a given task,
but sometimes a satisfactory or even identical result can be had by different combinations of different
tools—especially at the hands of a Unix expert. (Traditionally, such an expert was called a wizard.)
Some tasks require more than one tool or command sequence. And yes, there are tasks that require
more than what these simple craft or hand tools can provide. Some tasks need more industrial production
techniques, which are currently provided for by the application programs. So we still haven’t avoided
applications entirely; at the turn of the millennium, Linux-based systems still have them, from editors to
browsers. But our applications use open file formats, and we can use all of our tools on these data files.
 Because of this approach, and because of its free and open nature, I have come to call Linux a “synergetic” operating system,
in honor of the late R. Buckminster Fuller, who invented a new mathematical system based on these same principles.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

The invention of new tools has been on the rise along with the increased popularity of Linux-based
systems. At the time of this writing, there were a total of 1,190 tools in the two primary tool directories
(‘/bin’ and ‘/usr/bin’) on my Linux system. These tools, combined with necessary applications,
make free, open source software—for perhaps the first time in its history—a complete, robust system for
general use.

1.2 What to Try First

The first four chapters of this book contain all of the introductory matter you need to begin working with
Linux. These are the basics.
Beginning Linux users should start with the concepts described in these first chapters. Once you’ve
learned how to start power to the system and log in, you should look over the chapter on the shell, so that
you are familiar with typing at the command prompt, and then read the chapter on the graphical windows
interface called the X Window System, so that you can start X and run programs from there if you like.
If you are a Linux beginner and are anxious to get up to speed, you might want to skip ahead and read
the chapter on files and directories next, to get a sense of what the system looks like and how to maneuver
through it. Then, go on to learning how to view text, and how to edit it in an editor (respectively described
in the chapters on viewing text and text editing). After this, explore the rest of the book as your needs
and interests dictate.
So, to recapitulate, here is what I consider to be the essential material to absorb for familiarizing
yourself with the basic usage of a Linux system:
1. Chapter 1 [Introduction], page 9 (this current chapter).
2. Chapter 2 [What Every Linux User Knows], page 17.
3. Chapter 3 [The Shell], page 33 (ignoring the section on customization for now).
4. Chapter 4 [The X Window System], page 47 (ignoring the section on configuration for now).
5. Chapter 5 [Files and Directories], page 59.
6. Chapter 9 [Viewing Text], page 99 (mostly the first section, Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).
7. Chapter 10 [Text Editing], page 107 (enough to select a text editor and begin using it).
If you have a question about a tool or application in particular, look it up in the program index (see
[Program Index], page 327). The index proper, listing recipe names and the general concepts involved,
is called the concept index (see [Concept Index], page 333).

1.3 If You Need More Help

If you need more help than this book can give, remember that you do have other options. Try these steps
for getting help:
¯ Chances are good that you are not alone in your question, and that someone else has asked it
before; therefore, the compendiums of “Frequently Asked Questions” just might have the an-
swer you need: the Debian FAQ (http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/) and the Linux FAQ
(http://mainmatter.com/).
¯ The Linux Documentation Project (http://linuxdoc.org/) is the center of the most com-
plete and up-to-date Linux-related documentation available; see if there is a document related to the
topic you need help with.
¯ The Usenet newsgroups news:comp.os.linux.help and news:linux.debian.user
are often an excellent place to discuss issues with other Linux users. (Usenet is described in Sec-
tion 32.3 [Reading Usenet], page 303).
¯ Check http://linux.com/lug/ to find the Linux User Group (“LUG”) nearest you—people
involved with LUGs can be great sources of hands-on help, and it can be fun and rewarding to get
involved with other Linux and free software enthusiasts in your local area.
¯ Finally, you can hire a consultant. This may be a good option if you need work done right away and
are willing to pay for it.
The Linux Consultants HOWTO is a list of consultants around the world who provide various
support services for Linux and open source software in general (see Section 2.8.6 [Reading System
Documentation and Help Files], page 31). Consultants have various interests and areas of expertise,
and they are listed in that document with contact information.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
2 What Every Linux User Knows
This chapter concerns those concepts and commands that every Linux user knows—how to start and stop
the system, log in and out from it, change your password, see what is happening on the system, and use
the system help facilities. Mastery of these basic concepts is essential for using Linux with any degree
of success.
Some of these recipes make reference to files and directories; these concepts are explained in Chap-
ter 5 [Files and Directories], page 59.

2.1 Controlling Power to the System

These recipes show how to start and stop power to the system—how to turn it on and turn it off. It’s more
than just pressing the button on the case; in particular, there is a right way to turn off the system, and
doing it wrong can result in losing some of your work. Fortunately, there isn’t any black magic involved,
as we soon shall see—properly shutting down the system is easy!

2.1.1 Powering Up the System

The first thing you do to begin using the system is start power to it. To power up the system, just turn it
on. This is called booting the system.
As the Linux kernel boots there will be many messages on the screen. After a while, the system will
display a login: prompt. You can now log in. See Section 2.2.1 [Logging In to the System], page 18.
Some systems are configured to start xdm at boot time (see Section 4.1.1 [Starting X], page 48).
If your system is configured like this, instead of the login: prompt described above, you’ll see a
graphical screen with a box in the middle containing both login: and Password: prompts. Type

CTRL-
ALT-
F1 to switch to the first virtual console, where you can log in to the system in the usual
way (see Section 2.3 [Console Basics], page 20).

2.1.2 Shutting Down the System

You can’t just flip the power switch when you are done using the computer, because Linux is constantly
writing data to disk. (It also keeps data in memory, even when it may have appeared to have written that
data to disk.) Simply turning off the power could result in the loss or corruption of some of your work.
To turn off a single user system, first log out of all consoles (discussed in Section 2.3 [Console Basics],
page 20). Then, type
CTRL-
ALT-
DEL (press and hold these three keys at once).

The system will print some messages as it shuts down, and when you see the line, ‘Rebooting...’,
it’s safe to turn the power to machine off.
NOTE: You don’t want to wait too long after you see this message; if left untouched, the system will
reboot and you’ll be back to the beginning!

2.2 Accounts and Privileges

Linux is a multi-user system, meaning that many users can use one Linux system simultaneously,
from different terminals. So to avoid confusion (and to maintain a semblance of privacy), each user’s
workspace must be kept separate from the others.
Even if a particular Linux system is a stand-alone personal computer with no other terminals physi-
cally connected to it, it can be shared by different people at different times, making the separation of user
workspace still a valid issue.

If you keyboard has two
ALT and
CTRL keys, use the left set of these keys.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This separation is accomplished by giving each individual user an account on the system. You need
an account in order to use the system; with an account you are issued an individual workspace to use,
and a unique username that identifies you to the system and to other users. It is the name that the system
(and those who use it) will then forever know you as; it’s a single word, in all lowercase letters.
During the installation process, the system administrator should have created an account for you.
(The system administrator has a special account whose username is root; this account has total access
to the entire system, so it is often called the superuser.)
Until the mid-1990s it was widely common for usernames to be the first letter of your first name
followed by your entire surname, up to 12 characters total. So for example, user Samuel Clemens would
have a username of sclemens by this convention; this, however, is not a hard and fast rule, espe-
cially on home systems where you may be the only user. Sometimes, a middle initial may be used
(“dkjohnson”), or sometimes even nicknames or initials are used (“zenboy,” “xibo”). But what-
ever username you pick for yourself, make sure it’s one you can live with, and one you can stand being
called by both the system and other users (your username also becomes part of your email address, as
we’ll see in Chapter 30 [Email], page 275).
In addition to your username, you should also have a password that you can keep secret so that only
you can use your account. Good passwords are strings of text that nobody else is likely to guess (i.e., not
obvious words like ‘secret’, or identifying names like ‘Ruski’, if that happens to be your pet cat).
A good password is one that is highly memorable to you so that you don’t have to write it down, but
is complex enough in construction so that anyone else couldn’t ever guess it. For example, ‘t39sAH’
might be a fine password for someone whose first date was to see the movie The 39 Steps directed by
Alfred Hitchcock.
NOTE: While usernames are always in lowercase, passwords are case sensitive; the passwords
‘Secret’, ‘secret’, and ‘SECRET’ are all considered different.

2.2.1 Logging In to the System

To begin a session on a Linux system, you need to log in. Do this by entering your username at the
login: prompt on your terminal, and then entering your password when asked.
The login: prompt appears on the terminal after the system boots. If your system is configured
to start the X Window System at boot time, you’ll be presented with an X login screen instead of the
standard login prompt. If that happens, press
CTRL-
ALT-
F1 to switch to the text login screen; this is
explained further in Section 2.3 [Console Basics], page 20.

« ¨
A typical login: prompt looks like this:

Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 bardo tty1

ªbardo login: ©
Every Linux system has its own name, called the system’s hostname ; a Linux system is sometimes
called a host, and it identifies itself with its hostname at the login: prompt. It’s important to name your
system—like a username for a user account, a hostname gives name to the system you are using (and it
becomes especially important when putting the system on a network). The system administrator usually
names the system when it is being initially configured (the hostname can always be changed later; its
name is kept in the file ‘/etc/hostname’). Like usernames, hostnames are one word in all lowercase
letters. People usually give their system a name they like, such as darkstar or shiva.
In this example, ‘bardo’ is the hostname of this particular Linux system.
The name of the terminal you are connecting from is displayed just after the hostname. In this
example, the terminal is ‘tty1’, which means that this is the first terminal on this particular system.
(Incidentally, ‘tty’ is short for “teletype,” which historically was the kind of terminal hardware that
most Unix-based systems used by default.)
To log in to the system, type your username (followed by
RET) at the login: prompt, and then
type your password when asked (also followed by
RET); for security purposes, your password is not
displayed on the screen when you type it.
¯ To log in to the system with a username of ‘kurt’ and a password of ‘empathy’, type:
« ¨
Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 bardo tty1

bardo login: kurt
RET

Password: empathy
RET
Linux bardo 2.0.30 #1 Tue Jul 29 10:01:26 EDT 1997 i586 unknown

Copyright (C) 1993-1998 Software in the Public Interest, and others

Most of the programs included with the Debian Linux system are
freely redistributable; the exact distribution terms for each
program are described in the individual files in
/usr/doc/*/copyright

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent

permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Tue Apr 5 12:03:47 on tty1.
No mail.

ª˜ $
©
Once you’ve entered your username and password, you are “logged in” to the system. You can then
use the system and run commands.
As soon as you log in, the system displays the contents of ‘/etc/motd’, the “Message of the Day”
file. The system then displays the time and date of your last login, and reports whether or not you have
electronic mail waiting for you (see Chapter 30 [Email], page 275). Finally, the system puts you in a
shell—the environment in which you interact with the system and give it commands. Use of the default
shell on most Linux systems, bash, is discussed in Chapter 3 [The Shell], page 33.
The dollar sign (‘$’) displayed to the left of the cursor is called the shell prompt ; it means that the
system is ready and waiting for input. (You can change this prompt to any text of your liking; to learn
how, see Section 3.6.1 [Changing the Shell Prompt], page 42.) By default, the shell prompt includes the
name of the current directory, which it places to the left of the ‘$’ character. The tilde character (‘˜’), is
a shell symbol that denotes the user’s home directory—when you log in, you are in your home directory
(these terms are defined in Chapter 5 [Files and Directories], page 59).

2.2.2 Logging Out of the System

To end your session on the system, type logout at the shell prompt. This command logs you out of the
system, and a new login: prompt appears on your terminal.
¯ To log out of the system, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ logout
RET

Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 bardo tty1

ªbardo login: ©
What works equally well to typing the logout command is to just type C-d (hold down
CTRL and
press
D). You don’t even have to type
RET afterwards. Many users prefer this quick shortcut.
Logging out of the system frees the terminal you were using—and ensures that nobody can access
your account from this terminal.
If you are the only person using your system and have just ended a session by logging out, you might
want to power down the system. See Section 2.1.2 [Shutting Down the System], page 17, earlier in this
chapter.

2.3 Console Basics

A Linux terminal is a place to put input and get output from the system, and usually has at least a
keyboard and monitor.
When you access a Linux system by the keyboard and monitor that are directly connected to it, you
are said to be using the console terminal. (Linux systems can be accessed in other ways, such as through a
network or via another terminal connected to a serial line; see Chapter 29 [Communications], page 269).
Linux systems feature virtual consoles, which act as separate console displays that can run separate
login sessions, but are accessed from the same physical console terminal. Linux systems are configured
to have seven virtual consoles by default. When you are at the console terminal, you can switch between
virtual consoles at any time, and you can log in and use the system from several virtual consoles at once.
The following recipes explain the basic things you will need to do with virtual consoles.

2.3.1 Switching between Consoles

To switch to a different virtual console, press
ALT-
Fn , where n is the number of the console to switch
to.
¯ To switch to the fourth virtual console, press
ALT-
F4.

« ¨
This command switches to the fourth virtual console, denoted by ‘tty4’:

Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 bardo tty4

ªbardo login: ©
You can also cycle through the different virtual consoles with the left and right arrow keys. To switch
to the next-lowest virtual console (or wrap around to the highest virtual console, if you’re at the first
virtual console), press
ALT-
. To switch to the next-highest virtual console, press
ALT-
.
¯ To switch from the fourth to the third virtual console, press:

ALT-


This keystroke switches to the third virtual console, ‘tty3’:

 « ¨
Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 bardo tty3

ªbardo login: ©
The seventh virtual console is reserved for the X Window System. If X is installed, this virtual
terminal will never show a login: prompt, but when you are using X, this is where your X session
appears. If your system is configured to start X immediately, this virtual console will show an X login
screen.
You can switch to a virtual console from the X Window System using
CTRL in conjunction with the
usual
ALT and function keys. This is the only console manipulation keystroke that works in X.
¯ To switch from X to the first virtual console, press:

CTRL-
ALT-
F1

2.3.2 Scrolling the Console Text

When you are logged in at a virtual console, new lines of text appear at the bottom of the console screen,
while older lines of text scroll off the top of the screen.
¯ To view this older text, press
SHIFT-
PgUp to scroll back through it.
¯ Once you have scrolled back, press
SHIFT-
PgDn to scroll forward through the text toward the most
recent text displayed on the console.
The amount of text you can scroll back through depends on system memory.
NOTE: This technique is for scrolling through text displayed in your shell session (see Chapter 3 [The
Shell], page 33). It does not work for scrolling through text in a tool or application in the console—in
other words, you can’t use this technique to scroll through text that is displayed by a tool for perusing
text files. To scroll through text in an application, use its own facilities for scrolling, if it has any.

2.3.3 Keys for Console Manipulation

Some keystrokes for manipulating the console display, including those for switching between virtual con-
soles, are described below. It’s a good idea to experiment with these commands until you are comfortable
with them, because knowing how to use virtual consoles is basic to using Linux.
K EYSTROKE D ESCRIPTION

ALT-
Fn  Switch to virtual console n, where n is a number from 1 to 7 (the
default maximum).

CTRL-
ALT-
Fn  When in X, switch to virtual console n, where n is a number from 1 to

6.

ALT-
 Switch to the next-lowest virtual console. For example, typing this
while in virtual console 4 switches to virtual console 3. Pressing this
keystroke in the lowest console wraps around to the highest console.

ALT-
 Switch to the next-highest virtual console. For example, typing this
while in virtual console 4 switches to virtual console 5. Pressing this
keystroke in the highest console wraps around to the lowest console.

SHIFT-
PgUp Scroll back one screen to view previously displayed text.

SHIFT-
PgDn When viewing previously displayed text, scroll forward one screen.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

2.4 Running a Command

A tool is a software program that performs a certain function—usually a specialized, simple task. For
example, the hostname tool outputs the system’s hostname, and the who tool outputs a listing of
the users who are currently logged in. An application is the name given to larger, usually interactive,
programs for completing broader kinds of tasks—such as programs for image editing or word processing.
A tool or application may take any number of options (sometimes called “flags”), which specify a
change in its default behavior. It may also take arguments, which specify a file or some other text to
operate on. Arguments are usually specified after any options.
A command is the name of a tool or application along with the options and arguments you want to
use, if any. Since typing the name of a tool itself is often sufficient to accomplish a desired task, tools
alone are often called commands.
Commands are case sensitive; the names of tools and applications are usually in all lowercase letters.
To run (or “execute”) a tool or application without giving any options or arguments, type its name at
a shell prompt followed by
RET.
¯
« ¨
To run the hostname tool, type:

$ hostname
RET
bardo

ª
$
©
The hostname of the system in the example is ‘bardo’.
Options always begin with a hyphen character, ‘-’, which is usually followed by one alphanumeric
character. To include an option in a command, follow the name of the tool or application with the option.
Always separate the tool name, each option, and each argument with a space character.
Long-style options (sometimes called “GNU-style” options) begin with two hyphen characters (‘--’)
and are usually one English word.
For example, many tools have an option, ‘--version’, to output the version number of the tool.
(Many tools also have a ‘--help’ option, which outputs a list of options the tool takes; see Section 2.8.3
[Listing the Usage of a Tool], page 27.)
¯
« ¨
To output the version of the hostname tool, type:

$ hostname --version
RET

hostname 2.10

ª
$
©
This command outputs the text ‘hostname 2.10’, indicating that this is version 2.10 of the
hostname tool.
Sometimes, an option itself may may take an argument. For example, hostname has an option for
specifying a file name to use to read the hostname from, ‘-F’; it takes as an argument the name of the
file that hostname should read from.
¯ To run hostname and specify that the file ‘host.info’ is the file to read from, type:
$ hostname -F host.info
RET
2.5 Changing Your Password
To change your password, use the passwd tool. It prompts you for your current password and a new
password to replace it with. For security purposes, neither the old nor the new password is echoed to
the screen as you type it. To make sure that you type the new password correctly, passwd prompts you
for your new password twice. You must type it exactly the same way both times, or passwd will not
change your password.
¯
« ¨
To change your password, type:

$ passwd
RET
Changing password for kurt
Old password: your current password
RET
Enter the new password (minimum of 5, maximum of 8 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
New password: your new password
RET
Re-enter new password: your new password
RET
Password changed.

ª
$
©
NOTE: Passwords can contain uppercase and lowercase letters, the digits 0 through 9, and punctuation
marks; they should be between five and eight characters long. See Section 2.2 [Accounts and Privileges],
page 17, for suggestions on choosing a good password.

2.6 Listing User Activity

The recipes in this section describe some of the simple commands for finding out who you are currently
sharing the system with and what they are doing.

2.6.1 Listing Your Username

Use whoami to output the username of the user that is logged in at your terminal. This is not as inutile a
command as one might first think—if you’re at a shared terminal, it’s useful to determine whether or not
it is your account that you’re messing in, and for those with multiple accounts on a system, it’s useful to
see which of them you’re currently logged in with.
¯
« ¨
To output your username, type:

$ whoami
RET
kurt

ª
$
©
In this example, the username of the user logged in at this terminal is ‘kurt’.

2.6.2 Listing Who Is on the System

Use who to output a list of all the users currently logged in to the system. It outputs a minimum of three
columns, listing the username, terminal location, and time of login for all users on the system. A fourth
column is displayed if a user is using the X Window System; it lists the window location of the user’s
session (see Chapter 4 [The X Window System], page 47).
¯ To see who is currently logged in, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ who
RET
murky tty1 Oct 20 20:09
dave tty2 Oct 21 14:37
kurt tty3 Oct 21 15:04
kurt ttyp1 Oct 21 15:04 (:0.0)

ª
$
©
The output in this example shows that the user murky is logged in on tty1 (the first virtual console
on the system), and has been on since 20:09 on 20 October. The user dave is logged in on tty2
(the second virtual console), and has been on since 14:37 on 21 October. The user kurt is logged in
twice—on tty3 (the third virtual console), and ttyp1, which is an X session with a window location
of ‘(:0.0)’.
NOTE: This command is for listing the users on the local system; to list the users connected to a different
system on the network, or to see more detailed information that a user may have made public about
himself, see Section 32.4.2 [Checking Whether a User Is Online], page 306.

2.6.3 Listing Who Is on and What They’re Doing

The w tool is similar to who, but it displays more detail. It outputs a header line that contains information
about the current system status, including the current time, the amount of time the system has been up
and running, and the number of users on the system. It then outputs a list of users currently logged in
to the system, giving eight columns of information for each. These columns include username, terminal
location, X session (if any), the time of login, the amount of time the user has been idle, and what
command the user is running. (It also gives two columns showing the amount of time the system’s CPU
has spent on all of the user’s current jobs (“JCPU”) and foreground process (“PCPU”); processes are
discussed in Section 2.7 [Listing System Activity], page 25, and jobs in Section 3.3 [Managing Jobs],
page 37.)
¯
« ¨
To see who is currently logged in and what they are doing, type:

$ w
RET
5:27pm up 17:53, 4 users, load average: 0.12, 0.06, 0.01
USER TTY FROM LOGIN IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
murky tty1 Oct 20 20:09 17:22m 0.32s 0.32s -bash
dave tty2 14:37 13.00s 2:35 0.07s less foo
kurt tty3 15:04 1:00m 0.41s 0.09s startx
kurt ttyp1 :0.0 15:04 0:00s 21.65s 20.96s emacs

ª$
©
In this example, the command’s output shows that the current system time is 5:27 p.m., the system
has been up for 17 hours and 53 minutes, and there are four users currently logged in: murky is logged
in at tty1, has been idle for 17 hours and 22 minutes, and is at a bash shell prompt; dave is logged in
at tty2, has been idle for 13 seconds, and is using less to peruse a file called ‘foo’ (see Section 9.1
[Perusing Text], page 99); and kurt is logged in at two terminals—tty3 and ttyp1, which is an X
session. He ran the startx command on tty3 to start his X session, and within his X session, he is
currently using Emacs.

2.6.4 Listing the Last Times a User Logged In

Use last to find out who has recently used the system, which terminals they used, and when they logged
in and out.
¯ To output a list of recent system use, type:
$ last
RET
 To find out when a particular user last logged in to the system, give his username as an argument.
¯ To find out when user kurt last logged in, type:
$ last kurt
RET
NOTE: The last tool gets its data from the system file ‘/var/log/wtmp’; the last line of output
tells how far this file goes back. Sometimes, the output will go back for several weeks or more.

2.7 Listing System Activity

When you run a command, you are starting a process on the system, which is a program that is currently
executing. Every process is given a unique number, called its process ID, or “PID.”
Use ps to list processes on the system. Some of the information it can display about a process
includes process ID, name of command being run, username running the command, and how long the
process has been running. By default, ps outputs 5 columns: process ID, the name of the terminal from
which the process was started, the current status of the process (including ‘S’ for sleeping, meaning that
it is on hold at the moment, ‘R’ meaning that it is running, and ‘Z’ meaning that it is a zombie process, or
a process whose parent processes have died), the total amount of time the CPU has spent on the process
since the process started, and finally the name of the command being run.
The following recipes describe popular usage of ps.

2.7.1 Listing Your Current Processes

Type ps with no arguments to list the processes you have running in your current shell session.
¯
« ¨
To list the processes in your current shell session, type:

$ ps
RET
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
193 1 S 0:01 -bash
204 1 S 0:00 ps

ª
$
©
In this example, ps shows that two processes are running: the bash and ps commands.

2.7.2 Listing All of a User’s Processes

To list all the processes of a specific user, use ps and give the username to list as an argument to the ‘-u’
option. While you can’t snoop on the actual activities of other users, you can list the commands they are
running at a given moment.
¯ To list all the processes that user hst has running on the system, type:
$ ps -u hst
RET
NOTE: This command is useful for listing all of your own processes, across all terminals and shell
sessions; give your own username as an argument.

2.7.3 Listing All Processes on the System

To list all processes by all users on the system, use the ‘aux’ options.
¯ To list all of the processes and give their usernames, type:
$ ps aux
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: There could be a lot of output—even single-user Linux systems typically have fifty or more
processes running at one time—so you may want to pipe the output of this command through less for
perusal (see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).
Additionally, use top to show a display of all processes on the system, sorted by their demand on
the system resources. The display is continually updated with current process information; press Q to
stop the display and exit the program. This tool also displays the information about system runtime and
memory that can be output with the uptime and free commands.
¯ To display a continually updated display of the current system processes, type:
$ top
RET

2.7.4 Listing Processes by Name or Number

To list processes whose output contains a name or other text to match, list all processes and pipe the
output to grep. This is useful for when you want to see which users are running a particular program or
command.
¯ To list all the processes whose commands contain reference to an ‘sbin’ directory in them, type:
$ ps aux | grep sbin
RET
¯ To list any processes whose process IDs contain a 13 in them, type:
$ ps aux | grep 13
RET
To list the process (if any) which corresponds to a process ID, give that PID as an argument to the
‘-p’ option.
¯ To list the process whose PID is 344, type:
$ ps -p 344
RET

2.8 Help Facilities

Linux systems come with a lot of help facilities, including complete manuals in etext form. In fact, the
foremost trouble with Linux documentation isn’t that there is not enough of it, but that you have to sift
through the mounds of it, trying to find the precise information you’re looking for!
I describe the help facilities in the following sections; their relative usefulness for the particular kind
of information you’re looking for is noted.
If you find that you need more help, don’t panic—other options are available. They’re described in
Section 1.3 [If You Need More Help], page 14.

2.8.1 Finding the Right Tool for the Job

When you know what a particular tool or application does, but you can’t remember it’s name, use
apropos. This tool takes a keyword as an argument, and it outputs a list of installed software whose
one-line descriptions contain that keyword. This is also useful for finding software on your system related
to, say, “audio” or “sound” or “sort” or some other such general concept.
¯
« ¨
To output a list of programs that pertain to consoles, type:

$ apropos consoles
RET

console (4) - console terminal and virtual consoles
gpm (1) - a cut and paste utility and mouse server for
virtual consoles

ª$ ©
NOTE: The apropos tool only finds exact matches, so a search for the keyword ‘console’ might not
list the programs that a search for the keyword ‘consoles’ would yield, and vice versa.
Another way to find tools by keyword is to search the system manual pages (see Section 2.8.4 [Read-
ing a Page from the System Manual], page 28). To do this, use man and give the text to search for as an
argument to the ‘-k’ option. This searches the short descriptions and manual page names for the given
text, and outputs a list of those tools that match in the same format as the apropos tool.
¯ To output a list of all tools whose pages in the system manual contain a reference to consoles, type:
$ man -k consoles
RET

On Debian systems, yet another way to find installed software by keyword is to use dpkg, the Debian
package tool. Use the ‘-l’ option to list all of the installed packages, which are each output on a line of
their own with their package name and a brief description.
You can output a list of packages that match a keyword by piping the output to grep. Use the ‘-i’
option with grep to match keywords regardless of case (grep is discussed in Chapter 14 [Searching
Text], page 147).
Additionally, you can directly peruse the file ‘/var/lib/dpkg/available’; it lists all available
packages and gives a description of them.
¯ To list all of the packages on the system, type:
$ dpkg -l
RET

¯ To list all of the packages whose name or description contains the text “edit,” regardless of case,
type:
$ dpkg -l | grep -i edit
RET

¯ To peruse descriptions of the packages that are available, type:

$ less /var/lib/dpkg/available
RET

2.8.2 Listing a Description of a Program

Use whatis to list a one-line description of a program. Give the name of the tool or application to list
as an argument.
¯ To get a description of the who tool, type:
$ whatis who
RET

NOTE: The whatis tool gets its descriptions from the manual page of a given program; manual pages
are described later in this section, in Section 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System Manual], page 28.

2.8.3 Listing the Usage of a Tool

Many tools have a long-style option, ‘--help’, that outputs usage information about the tool, including
the options and arguments the tool takes.
¯ To list the possible options for whoami, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ whoami --help
RET
Usage: whoami [OPTION]...
Print the user name associated with the current effective user id.
Same as id -un.

--help display this help and exit

--version output version information and exit

Report bugs to sh-utils-bugs@gnu.ai.mit.edu

ª$
©

This command outputs some usage information about the whoami tool, including a short description
and a list of possible options.

NOTE: Not all tools take the ‘--help’ option; some tools take a ‘-h’ or ‘-?’ option instead, which
performs the same function.

2.8.4 Reading a Page from the System Manual

In the olden days, the hardcopy reference manual that came with most Unix systems also existed elec-
tronically on the system itself; each software program that came with the system had its own manual page
(often called a “man page”) that described it. This is still true on Linux-based systems today, except they
don’t always come with a hardcopy manual.

Use the man tool to view a page in the system manual. As an argument to man, give the name of
the program whose manual page you want to view (so to view the manual page for man, you would type
man man).

¯ To view the manual page for w, type:

$ man w
RET

This command displays the manual page for w:

« ¨

ª ©
Use the up and down arrow keys to move through the text. Press
Q to stop viewing the manual
page and exit man. Since man uses less to display the text, you can use any of the less keyboard
commands to peruse the manual page (see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).
Despite its name, a manual page does not always contain the complete documentation to a program,
but it’s more like a quick reference. It usually gives a short description of the program, and lists the
options and arguments it takes; some manual pages also include an example or a list of related commands.
(Sometimes, commands have very complete, extensive manual pages, but more often, their complete
documentation is found either in other help files that come with it or in its Info documentation; these are
subjects of the following two recipes.)
To prepare a man page for printing, see Section 25.3.4 [Preparing a Man Page for Printing], page 243.

2.8.5 Using the GNU Info System

The GNU Info System is an online hypertext reference system for documentation prepared in the Info
format. This documentation tends to be more complete than a typical man page, and often, the Info
documentation for a given software package will be an entire book or manual. All of the manuals
published by the Free Software Foundation are released in Info format; these manuals contain the same
text (sans illustrations) as the paper manuals that you can purchase directly from the Free Software
Foundation.
There are different ways to peruse the Info documentation: you can use the standalone info tool,
read Info files in the Emacs editor (see Section 10.2 [Emacs], page 108), or use one of the other tools
designed for this purpose. Additionally, tools exist for converting Info documentation to HTML that you
can read in a Web browser (see Section 5.9 [Browsing Files], page 73).
To read the Info manual for a tool or application with the info tool, give its name as an argument.
With no arguments, info opens your system’s Top Info menu, which lists all of the available manuals
that are installed on the system.
¯ To view all of the Info manuals on the system, type:
$ info
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This command starts info at the system’s Top menu, which shows some of the info key commands
«
and displays a list of available manuals:
¨

ª ©
Use the arrow keys to move through each “page” of information, called an Info node. Nodes are the
base unit of information in Info, and are arranged hierarchically—a manual’s Top node will contain an
Info menu containing links to its various chapters, and a chapter node will contain a menu with links for
its sections, and so on. Links also appear as cross references in the text.
Links look the same in both menu items and cross references: an asterisk (‘*’), the name of the node
it links to, and either one or two colon characters (‘:’). To follow a link to the node it points to, move
the cursor over any part of the node name in the link and press
RET.
To run a tutorial that describes how to use info, press the
H key. Press
Q at any time to stop
reading the documentation and exit info.
To read Info documentation for a tool or application, give its name as an argument to info; if no
Info manual exists for that tool, info displays the man page for that tool instead.
¯ To read the Info documentation for the tar tool, type:
$ info tar
RET
This command opens a copy of The GNU tar Manual in info.
To read the contents of a file written in Info format, give the name of the file to read with the
‘-f’ option. This is useful for reading an Info file that you have obtained elsewhere, and is not in
the ‘/usr/info’ directory with the rest of the installed Info files. Info can automatically recognize and
expand Info files that are compressed and have a ‘.gz’ file name extension (see Section 8.5 [Compressed
Files], page 92).
¯ To read ‘faq.info’, an Info file in the current directory, type:
$ info -f faq.info
RET
This command starts info and opens the Info file ‘faq.info’, beginning at the top node in the
file.
To read a specific node in an Info file, give the name of the node to use in quotes as an argument to
the ‘-n’ option.
¯ To read ‘faq.info’, an Info file in the current directory, beginning with the node Text, type:
 $ info -n ’Text’ -f faq.info
RET

NOTE: You can also read Info documentation directly from the Emacs editor; you type C-h i from
Emacs to start the Info reader, and then use the same commands as in the standalone info tool (see
Section 10.2.1 [Getting Acquainted with Emacs], page 109).
The Emacs “incremental” search command, C-s, also works in info; it’s a very fast, efficient way
to search for a word or phrase in an entire Info text (like this entire book); see Section 14.6.1 [Searching
Incrementally in Emacs], page 154.

2.8.6 Reading System Documentation and Help Files

Debian: ‘doc-linux-text’
WWW: http://linuxdoc.org/

The ‘/usr/doc’ directory is for miscellaneous documentation: HOWTOs, FAQs, Debian-specific doc-
umentation files and documentation files that come with commands. (To learn more about files and
directories, see Chapter 5 [Files and Directories], page 59.) To peruse any of these files, use less,
described in full in Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99.
When a software package is installed, any additional documentation files it might have beyond a
manual page and Info manual are placed here, in a subdirectory with the name of that package. For
example, additional documentation for the hostname package is in ‘/usr/doc/hostname’, and
documentation for the passwd package is in ‘/usr/doc/passwd’. Most packages have a file called
‘README’, which usually contains relevant information. Often this file is compressed as ‘README.gz’,
in which case you can use zless instead of less.
The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) has overseen the creation of more than 100 “HOWTO”
files, each of which covers a particular aspect of the installation or use of Linux-based systems.
The LDP HOWTOs are compressed text files stored in the ‘/usr/doc/HOWTO’ directory; to view
them, use zless. The file ‘/usr/doc/HOWTO/HOWTO-Index.gz’ contains an annotated index of
all the HOWTO documents installed on the system.
Finally, the ‘/usr/doc/FAQ’ directory contains a number of FAQ (“Frequently Asked
Questions”) files on various subjects, and the files that make up the Debian FAQ are in the
‘/usr/doc/debian/FAQ’ directory. The Debian FAQ is available both in HTML format, which you
can view in a Web browser (see Section 5.9 [Browsing Files], page 73), and as a compressed text file,
which you can view in zless.
¯ To view the HTML version of the Debian FAQ in the lynx Web browser, type:
$ lynx /usr/doc/debian/FAQ/debian-faq.html
RET
¯ To view the compressed text version of the Debian FAQ in zless, type:
$ zless /usr/doc/debian/FAQ/debian-faq.txt.gz
RET
NOTE: It’s often very useful to use a Web browser to browse through the documentation files in these
directories—see Section 5.9 [Browsing Files], page 73.
On some systems, ‘/usr/doc’ is superseded by the ‘/usr/share/doc’ directory.

 LDP documents are available in other formats as well, including HTML and DVI.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
3 The Shell
The subject of this chapter is the shell, the program that reads your command input and runs the specified
commands. The shell environment is the most fundamental way to interact with the system—you are
said to be “in” a shell from the very moment you’ve successfully logged in to the system.
The ‘$’ character preceding the cursor is called the shell prompt ; it tells you that the system is ready
and waiting for input. On Debian systems, the default shell prompt also includes the name of the current
directory (see Chapter 5 [Files and Directories], page 59). A tilde character (‘˜’) denotes your home
directory, which is where you’ll find yourself when you log in.

« ¨
For example, a typical user’s shell prompt might look like this:

ª˜ $ _ ©
If your shell prompt shows a number sign (‘#’) instead of a ‘$’, this means that you’re logged in
with the superuser, or root, account. Beware: the root account has complete control over the system;
one wrong keystroke and you might accidentally break it something awful. You need to have a different
user account for yourself, and use that account for your regular use (see Section A.3.1 [Making a User
Account], page 318).
Every Linux system has at least one shell program, and most have several. We’ll cover bash, which
is the standard shell on most Linux systems. (Its name stands for “Bourne again shell”—a pun on the
name of Steve Bourne, who was author of the traditional Unix shell, the Bourne shell.)
NOTE: See Info file ‘bashref.info’, node ‘Top’, for more information on using bash.

3.1 Keys for Command Line Editing

In Section 2.4 [Running a Command], page 22, you learned how to run commands by typing them in at
the shell prompt. The text you type at a shell prompt is called the command line (it’s also called the input
line ).
The following table describes the keystrokes used for typing command lines.
K EYSTROKES D ESCRIPTION
text Insert text at the point where the cursor is at; if there is text to the right
of the cursor, it is shifted over to the right.

BKSP Delete the character to the left of the cursor.

DEL Delete the character the cursor is underneath.

RET Send the command line to bash for execution (in other words, it runs
the command typed at the shell prompt). You don’t have to be at the
far right end of the command line to type
RET; you can type it when
the cursor is anywhere on the command line.
C-a Move the cursor to the beginning of the input line.
C-d Same as
DEL (this is the Emacs equivalent).
C-e Move the cursor to the end of the input line.
C-k Kill, or “cut,” all text on the input line, from the character the cursor is
underneath to the end of the line.
C-l Clear the terminal screen.
C-u Kill the entire input line.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

C-y Yank, or “paste,” the text that was last killed. Text is inserted at the
point where the cursor is.
C-_ Undo the last thing typed on this command line.

 Move the cursor to the left one character.

 Move the cursor to the right one character.

 and
 Cycle through the command history (see Section 3.4 [Command His-
tory], page 40).
NOTE: These keyboard commands are the same as those used by the Emacs editor (see Section 10.2
[Emacs], page 108). Many other Emacs keyboard commands also work on the command line (see Sec-
tion 10.2.2 [Basic Emacs Editing Keys], page 111). And, for Vi aficionados, it is possible to configure
bash to recognize Vi-style bindings instead.
The following sections describe some important features of command line editing, such as quoting
special characters and strings, letting the shell complete your typing, re-running commands, and running
multiple commands. See Info file ‘bashref.info’, node ‘Command Line Editing’ for more in-
formation on bash’s command line editing features.

3.1.1 Passing Special Characters to Commands

Some characters are reserved and have special meaning to the shell on their own. Before you can pass
one of these characters to a command, you must quote it by enclosing the entire argument in single
quotes (‘’’).
For example, here’s how to pass ‘Please Stop!’ to a command:
’Please Stop!’
When the argument you want to pass has one or more single quote characters in it, enclose it in double
quotes, like so:
"Please Don’t Stop!"
To pass special characters as a string, give them as:
$’string ’
where string is the string of characters to be passed. Special backslash escape sequences for certain
characters are commonly included in a string, as listed in the following table.
E SCAPE S EQUENCE D ESCRIPTION
\a Alert (rings the system bell).
\b Backspace.
\e Escape.
\f Form feed.
\n Newline.
\r Carriage return.
\t Horizontal tab.
\v Vertical tab.
\\ Backslash.
\NNN Character whose ASCII code is NNN in octal (base 8).
To demonstrate the passing of special character sequences to tool, the following examples will use
the figlet tool, which displays the text you give as an argument in a “font” made up of text characters
(see Section 16.3.1 [Horizontal Text Fonts], page 178).
 ¯ To pass a backslash character as an argument to figlet, type:
$ figlet $’\\’
RET
¯ To pass a form feed character followed by a pilcrow sign character (octal character code 266) to
figlet, type:
$ echo $’\f\266’
RET

3.1.2 Letting the Shell Complete What You Type

Completion is where bash does its best to finish your typing. To use it, press
TAB on the input line and
the shell will complete the word to the left of the cursor to the best of its ability. Completion is one of
those things that, once you begin to use it, you will wonder how you ever managed to get by without.
Completion works on both file names and command names, depending on the context of the cursor
when you type
TAB.
For example, suppose you want to specify, as an argument to the ls command, the
‘/usr/lib/emacs/20.4/i386-debian-linux-gnu/’ directory—that’s a lot to type. So
instead of typing out the whole directory name, you can type
TAB to complete it for you. Notice how
our first attempt, typing only the letter ‘e’ in ‘/e’, brings up a series of files—while the second attempt,
typing ‘em’, further refines our search:
$ ls /usr/lib/e
TAB
elm-me+ emacs emacsen-common entity-map expect5.30
$ ls /usr/lib/em
TAB
At this point, the system beeps
and the shell completes the word ‘emacs’, since all options in this
directory beginning with the letters ‘em’ complete to at least that word. Press /
TAB to access this word
and go on, and the shell completes the subdirectory ‘20.4’ since that is the only file or directory in the
‘emacs’ subdirectory:
$ ls /usr/lib/emacs/
TAB20.4/
Press
TAB again to have the shell complete the only subdirectory in ‘20.4’:
$ ls /usr/lib/emacs/20.4/
TABi386-debian-linux-gnu/
NOTE: Many applications also support command and/or file name completion; the most famous example
of this is the Emacs text editor (see Section 10.2 [Emacs], page 108).

3.1.3 Repeating the Last Command You Typed

Type
 to put the last command you typed back on the input line. You can then type
RET to run the
command again, or you can edit the command first.
¯ To repeat the last command entered, type:
$

RET

The
 key moves the last command you typed back to the input line, and
RET executes it.
By typing
 more than once, you can go back to earlier commands you’ve typed; this is a function
of your command history, which is explained in full in Section 3.4 [Command History], page 40.
Additionally, you can use the bash reverse-incremental search feature, C-r, to search, in reverse,
through your command history. You’ll find this useful if you remember typing a command line with
‘foo’ in it recently, and you wish to repeat the command without having to retype it. Type C-r followed
by the text foo, and the last command you typed containing ‘foo’ appears on the input line.
Like the Emacs command of the same name (see Section 14.6.1 [Searching Incrementally in Emacs],
page 154), this is called an incremental search because it builds the search string in character increments

The Unix way of saying it is that the command “rings the system bell.”
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

as you type. Typing the string ‘cat’ will first search for (and display) the last input line containing a
‘c’, then ‘ca’, and finally ‘cat’, as you type the individual characters of the search string. Typing C-r
again retrieves the next previous command line that has a match for the search string.
¯ To put the last command you entered containing the string ‘grep’ back on the input line, type:
$ C-r
(reverse-i-search)‘’: grep
¯ To put the third-to-the-last command you entered containing the string grep back on the input line,
type:
$ C-r
(reverse-i-search)‘’: grep
C-r C-r
When a command is displayed on the input line, type
RET to run it. You can also edit the command
line as usual.

3.1.4 Running a List of Commands

To run more than one command on the input line, type each command in the order you want them to run,
separating each command from the next with a semicolon (‘;’). You’ll sometimes find this useful when
you want to run several non-interactive commands in sequence.
¯ To clear the screen and then log out of the system, type:
$ clear; logout
RET
¯
« ¨
To run the hostname command three times, type:

$ hostname; hostname; hostname
RET

figaro
figaro
figaro

ª$
©
3.2 Redirecting Input and Output
The shell moves text in designated “streams.” The standard output is where the shell streams the text out-
put of commands—the screen on your terminal, by default. The standard input, typically the keyboard, is
where you input data for commands. When a command reads the standard input, it usually keeps reading
text until you type C-d on a new line by itself.
When a command runs and exits with an error, the error message is usually output to your screen, but
as a separate stream called the standard error.
You redirect these streams—to a file, or even another command—with redirection. The following
sections describe the shell redirection operators that you can use to redirect standard input and output.

3.2.1 Redirecting Input to a File

To redirect standard input to a file, use the ‘<’ operator. To do so, follow a command with < and the
name of the file it should take input from. For example, instead of giving a list of keywords as arguments
to apropos (see Section 2.8.1 [Finding the Right Tool for the Job], page 26), you can redirect standard
input to a file containing a list of keywords to use.
¯ To redirect standard input for apropos to file ‘keywords’, type:
$ apropos < keywords
RET
3.2.2 Redirecting Output to a File
Use the ‘>’ operator to redirect standard output to a file. To use it, follow a command with > and the
name of the file the output should be written to.
¯ To redirect standard output of the command apropos shell bash to the file ‘commands’, type:
$ apropos shell bash > commands
RET
If you redirect standard output to an existing file, it will overwrite the file, unless you use the ‘>>’
operator to append the standard output to the contents of the existing file.
¯ To append the standard output of apropos shells to an existing file ‘commands’, type:
$ apropos shells >> commands
RET

3.2.3 Redirecting Error Messages to a File

To redirect the standard error stream to a file, use the ‘>’ operator preceded by a ‘2’. Follow a command
with 2> and the name of the file the error stream should be written to.
¯ To redirect the standard error of apropos shell bash to the file ‘command.error’, type:
$ apropos shell bash 2> command.error
RET
As with the standard output, use the ‘>>’ operator instead of ‘>’ to append the standard error to the
contents of an existing file.
¯ To append the standard error of apropos shells to an existing file ‘command.error’, type:
$ apropos shells 2>> command.error
RET
To redirect both standard output and standard error to the same file, use ‘&>’ instead.
¯ To redirect the standard output and the standard error of apropos shells to the file
‘commands’, type:
$ apropos shells &> commands
RET

3.2.4 Redirecting Output to Another Command’s Input

Piping is when you connect the standard output of one command to the standard input of another. You
do this by specifying the two commands in order, separated by a vertical bar character, ‘|’ (sometimes
called a “pipe”). Commands built in this fashion are called pipelines.
For example, it’s often useful to pipe commands that display a lot of text output to less, a tool for
perusing text (see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).
¯ To pipe the output of apropos bash shell shells to less, type:
$ apropos bash shell shells | less
RET
This redirects the standard output of the command apropos bash shell shells to the standard
input of the command less, which displays it on the screen.

3.3 Managing Jobs

The processes you have running in a particular shell are called your jobs. You can have more than one
job running from a shell at once, but only one job can be active at the terminal, reading standard input
and writing standard output. This job is the foreground job, while any other jobs are said to be running
in the background.
The shell assigns each job a unique job number. Use the job number as an argument to specify the
job to commands. Do this by giving the job number preceded by a ‘%’ character.
To find the job number of a job you have running, list your jobs (see Section 3.3.4 [Listing Your Jobs],
page 39).
The following sections describe the various commands for managing jobs.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

3.3.1 Suspending a Job

Type C-z to suspend or stop the foreground job—useful for when you want to do something else in the
shell and return to the current job later. The job stops until you either bring it back to the foreground
or make it run in the background (see Section 3.3.3 [Putting a Job in the Foreground], page 39 and see
Section 3.3.2 [Putting a Job in the Background], page 38).
For example, if you are reading a document in info, typing C-z will suspend the info program
and return you to a shell prompt where you can do something else (see Section 2.8.5 [Using the GNU
Info System], page 29). The shell outputs a line giving the job number (in brackets) of the suspended
job, the text ‘Stopped’ to indicate that the job has stopped, and the command line itself, as shown here:
[1]+ Stopped info -f cookbook.info
In this example, the job number is 1 and the command that has stopped is ‘info -f
cookbook.info’. The ‘+’ character next to the job number indicates that this is the most recent job.
If you have any stopped jobs when you log out, the shell will tell you this instead of logging you out:
« ¨
$ logout
RET
There are stopped jobs.

ª$
©
At this point you can list your jobs (see Section 3.3.4 [Listing Your Jobs], page 39), stop any jobs you
have running (see Section 3.3.5 [Stopping a Job], page 39), and then log out.

3.3.2 Putting a Job in the Background

New jobs run in the foreground unless you specify otherwise. To run a job in the background, end the
input line with an ampersand (‘&’). This is useful for running non-interactive programs that perform a
lot of calculations.
¯ To run the command apropos shell > shell-commands as a background job, type:
« ¨
$ apropos shell > shell-commands &
RET
[1] 6575

ª$
©
The shell outputs the job number (in this case, 1) and process ID (in this case, 6575), and then returns
to a shell prompt. When the background job finishes, the shell will list the job number, the command,
and the text ‘Done’, indicating that the job has completed successfully:
[1]+ Done apropos shell >shell-commands
To move a job from the foreground to the background, first suspend it (see Section 3.3.1 [Suspending
a Job], page 38) and then type bg (for “background”).
¯ For example, to start the command apropos shell > shell-commands in the foreground,
suspend it, and then specify that it finish in the background, you would type:
 « ¨
$ apropos shell > shell-commands
RET
C-z

[1]+ Stopped apropos shell >shell-commands

$ bg
RET
[1]+ apropos shell &

ª
$
©
If you have suspended multiple jobs, specify the job to be put in the background by giving its job
number as an argument.
¯ To run job 4 in the background, type:
$ bg %4
RET

NOTE: Running a job in the background is sometimes called “backgrounding” or “amping off” a job.

3.3.3 Putting a Job in the Foreground

Type fg to move a background job to the foreground. By default, fg works on the most recent back-
ground job.
¯ To bring the most recent background job to the foreground, type:
$ fg
RET
To move a specific job to the foreground when you have multiple jobs in the background, specify the
job number as an option to fg.
¯ To bring job 3 to the foreground, type:
$ fg %3
RET

3.3.4 Listing Your Jobs

To list the jobs running in the current shell, type jobs.
¯
« ¨
To list your jobs, type:

$ jobs
RET
[1]- Stopped apropos shell >shell-commands
[2]+ Stopped apropos bash >bash-commands

ª
$
©
This example shows two jobs—apropos shell > shell-commands and apropos bash >
bash-commands. The ‘+’ character next to a job number indicates that it’s the most recent job, and
the ‘-’ character indicates that it’s the job previous to the most recent job. If you have no current jobs,
jobs returns nothing.
To list all of the processes you have running on the system, use ps instead of jobs—see Section 2.7
[Listing System Activity], page 25.

3.3.5 Stopping a Job

Typing C-c interrupts the foreground job before it completes, exiting the program.
¯ To interrupt cat, a job running in the foreground, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ cat
RET
C-c
RET

ª$
©
Use kill to interrupt (“kill”) a background job, specifying the job number as an argument.
¯ To kill job number 2, type:
$ kill %2
RET

3.4 Command History

Your command history is the sequential list of commands you have typed, in the current or previous shell
sessions. The commands in this history list are called events.
By default, bash remembers the last 500 events, but this number is configurable (see Section 3.6.4
[Customizing Future Shells], page 43).
Your command history is stored in a text file in your home directory called ‘.bash_history’; you
can view this file or edit it like you would any other text file.
Two very useful things that having a command history lets you do is to repeat the last command you
typed, and (as explained earlier in this chapter) to do an incremental backwards search through your
history.
The following sections explain how to view your history and specify events from it on the command
line. See Info file ‘bashref.info’, node ‘Bash History Facilities’, for more information on
command history.

3.4.1 Viewing Your Command History

Use history to view your command history.
¯
« ¨
To view your command history, type:

$ history
RET
1 who
2 apropos shell >shell-commands
3 apropos bash >bash-commands
4 history

ª$
©
This command shows the contents of your command history file, listing one command per line pref-
aced by its event number. Use an event number to specify that event in your history (see Section 3.4.2
[Specifying a Command from Your History], page 41).
If your history is a long one, this list will scroll off the screen, in which case you may want to pipe the
output to less in order to peruse it. It’s also common to search for a past command by piping the output
to grep (see Section 3.2.4 [Redirecting Output to Another Command’s Input], page 37 and Section 14.1
[Searching for a Word or Phrase], page 147).
¯
« ¨
To search your history for the text ‘apropos’, type:

$ history | grep apropos
RET

2 apropos shell >shell-commands
3 apropos bash >bash-commands
5 history | grep apropos

ª$
©
 This command will show the events from your history containing the text ‘apropos’. (The last line
of output is the command you just typed.)

3.4.2 Specifying a Command from Your History

You can specify a past event from your history on the input line, in order to run it again.
The simplest way to specify a history event is to use the up and down arrow keys at the shell prompt
to browse your history. The up arrow key (
) takes you back through past events, and the down arrow
key (
) moves you forward into recent history. When a history event is on the input line, you can edit it
as normal, and type
RET to run it as a command; it will then become the newest event in your history.
¯ To specify the second-to-the-last command in your history, type:
$



To run a history event by its event number, enter an exclamation point (‘!’, sometimes called “bang”)
followed by the event number. (Get the event number by viewing your history; see Section 3.4.1 [Viewing
Your Command History], page 40).
¯ To run history event number 1, type:
$ !1
RET

3.5 Recording a Shell Session

Use script to create a typescript, or “capture log,” of a shell session—it writes a verbatim copy of
your session to a file, including commands you type and their output. The first and last lines of the file
show the beginning and ending time and date of the capture session. To stop recording the typescript,
type exit at a shell prompt. By default, typescripts are saved to a file called ‘typescript’ in the
current directory; specify the file name to use as an argument.
¯
« ¨
To create a typescript of a shell session and save it to the file ‘log.19990817’, type:

$ script log.19990817
RET

Script started, output file is log.19990817
$ hostname
RET
erie
$ apropos bash > bash.commands
RET
$ exit
RET
exit
Script done, output file is log.19990817

ª$
©
In this example, the typescript records a shell session consisting of two commands (hostname and
apropos) to a file called ‘log.19990817’. The typescript looks like this:
Script started on Tue May 25 14:21:52 1999
$ hostname
erie
$ apropos bash > bash.commands
$ exit
exit

Script done on Tue May 25 14:22:30 1999

 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: It’s possible, but usually not desirable, to run script from within another script session.
This usually happens when you’ve forgotten that you are running it, and you run it again inside the
current typescript, even multiple times—as a result, you may end up with multiple sessions “nested”
inside each other like a set of Russian dolls.

3.6 Customizing Your Shell

The following sections describe the most common ways to customize the shell—including changing the
text of the shell prompt and creating aliases for other commands. These customizations will apply to the
rest of your current shell session, unless you change them again. Eventually, you will want to make them
work all the time, like whenever you log in or start a new shell—and how to do this is discussed below.

3.6.1 Changing the Shell Prompt

A shell variable is a symbol that stores a text string, and is referenced by a unique name. bash keeps
one special variable, named PS1, for the text of the shell prompt. To change the text of the shell prompt,
you need to change the contents of the PS1 variable.
To change a variable’s contents, type its name followed by an equal sign (‘=’) character and the string
that should replace the variable’s existing contents.
¯
« ¨
To change your shell prompt to ‘Your wish is my command: ’, type:

$ PS1=’Your wish is my command: ’
RET

ªYour wish is my command:

©
Since the replacement text has spaces in it, we’ve quoted it (see Section 3.1.1 [Passing Special Char-
acters to Commands], page 34).
You can put special characters in the prompt variable in order to output special text. For example,
the characters ‘\w’ in the value of PS1 will list the current working directory at that place in the shell
prompt text.
¯ To change your prompt to the default bash prompt—the current working directory followed by a

« ¨
‘$’ character—type:

$ PS1=’\w $ ’
RET

ª˜ $
©
The following table lists some special characters and their text output at the shell prompt.
S PECIAL C HARACTER T EXT O UTPUT
\a Inserts a C-g character, which makes the internal speaker beep. (It
“rings the system bell”; C-g is sometimes called the bell character.)
\d The current date.
\h The hostname of the system.
\n A newline character.
\t The current system time, in 24-hour format.
\@ The current system time, in 12-hour a.m./p.m. format.
\w The current working directory.
\u Your username.
\! The history number of this command.
You can combine any number of these special characters with regular characters when creating a
value for PS1.
¯ To change the prompt to the current date followed by a space character, the hostname of the system
in parenthesis, and a greater-than character, type:
$ PS1=’\d (\h)>’
RET
14 Dec 1999 (ithaca)>

3.6.2 Making a Command Alias

Use alias to assign an alias, a name that represents another command or commands. Aliases are useful
for creating short command names for lengthy and frequently used commands.
¯ To make an alias of bye for the exit command, type:
$ alias bye="exit"
RET
This command makes ‘bye’ an alias for ‘exit’ in the current shell, so typing bye would then run
exit.
You can also include options and arguments in an alias.
¯To make an alias of ‘ap’ for the command apropos shell bash shells, type:
$ alias ap="apropos shell bash shells"
RET
This command makes ‘ap’ an alias for ‘apropos shell bash shells’ in the current shell, so
typing ap would run apropos shell bash shells.

3.6.3 Adding to Your Path

To add or remove a directory in your path, use a text editor to change the shell variable ‘PATH’ in the
‘.bashrc’ file in your home directory (see Chapter 10 [Text Editing], page 107).
For example, suppose the line that defines the ‘PATH’ variable in your ‘.bashrc’ file looks like
this:
PATH="/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games"
You can add the directory ‘/home/nancy/bin’ to this path, by editing this line like so:
PATH="/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:/home/nancy/bin"
NOTE: See Chapter 5 [Files and Directories], page 59 for a complete description of directories and the
path.

3.6.4 Customizing Future Shells

There are a number of configuration startup files in your home directory that you can edit to make your
configurations permanent. You can also edit these files to specify commands to be run whenever you first
log in, log out, or start a new shell. These configuration files are text files that can be edited with any text
editor (see Chapter 10 [Text Editing], page 107).
When you log in, bash first checks to see if the file ‘/etc/profile’ exists, and if so, it executes
the commands in this file. This is a generic, system-wide startup file that is run for all users; only the
system administrator can add or delete commands to this file.
Next, bash reads and executes the commands in ‘.bash_profile’, a “hidden” file in your home
directory (see Section 5.3.4 [Listing Hidden Files], page 65). Thus, to make a command run every time
you log in, add the command to this file.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

For all new shells after you’ve logged in (that is, all but the “login shell”), bash reads and executes
the commands in the ‘.bashrc’ file in your home directory. Commands in this file run whenever a new
shell is started except for the login shell.
There are separate configuration files for login and all other shells so that you can put specific cus-
tomizations in your ‘.bash_profile’ that only run when you first log in to the system. To avoid
having to put commands in both files when you want to run the same ones for all shells, append the
following to the end of your ‘.bash_profile’ file:
if [ -f ˜/.bashrc ]; then . ˜/.bashrc; fi
This makes bash run the ‘.bashrc’ file in your home directory when you log in. In this way, you
can put all of your customizations in your ‘.bashrc’ file, and they will be run both at log in and for all
subsequent shells. Any customizations before this line in ‘.bash_profile’ run only when you log
in.
For example, a simple ‘.bash_profile’ might look like this:
# "Comment" lines in shell scripts begin with a # character.
# They are not executed by bash, but exist so that you may
# document your file.

# You can insert blank lines in your file to increase readability;

# bash will not mind.

# Generate a welcome message when you log in.

figlet ’Good day, ’$USER’!’

# Now run the commands in .bashrc

if [ -f ˜/.bashrc ]; then . ˜/.bashrc; fi
This ‘.bash_profile’ prints a welcome message with the figlet text font tool (see Sec-
tion 16.3.1 [Horizonal Text Fonts], page 178), and then runs the commands in the ‘.bashrc’ file.
A simple .bashrc file might look like this:
# Make color directory listings the default.
alias ls="ls --color=auto"

# Make "l" give a verbose directory listing.

alias l="ls -l"

# Set a custom path.

PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:˜/bin:."

# Set a custom shell prompt.

PS1="[\w] $ "

# Make a long history list and history file.

HISTSIZE=20000
HISTFILESIZE=20000

# Export the path and prompt variables for all

# variables you define.
export HISTSIZE HISTFILESIZE PATH PS1
This ‘.bashrc’ sets a few useful command aliases and uses a custom path and shell prompt when-
ever a new shell is run; with the preceding ‘.bash_profile’, this ‘.bashrc’ is also run at login.
 When you log out, bash reads and executes the commands in the ‘.bash_logout’ file in your
home directory, if it exists. To run commands when you log out, put them in this file.
¯ To clear the screen every time you log out, your ‘.bash_logout’ would contain the following
line:
clear
This executes the clear command, which clears the screen of the current terminal, such as in the
xterm window where you type it, or in a virtual console.
NOTE: Some distributions come with default shell startup files filled with all kinds of
interesting stuff. Debian users might want to look at the example startup files in
‘/usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files’.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
4 The X Window System
Debian: ‘xserver-common’
WWW: http://www.xfree86.org/

The X Window System, commonly called “X,”
is a graphical windowing interface that comes with all
popular Linux distributions. X is available for many Unix-based operating systems; the version of X
that runs on Linux systems with x86-based CPUs is called “XFree86.” The current version of X is 11,
Revision 6—or “X11R6.”
All the command-line tools and most of the applications that you can run in the console can run in X;
also available are numerous applications written specifically for X.
This chapter shows you how to get around in X: how to start it and stop it, run programs within it,
manipulate windows, and customize X to your liking. See The Linux XFree86 HOWTO for information
on installing X (see Section 2.8.6 [Reading System Documentation and Help Files], page 31).

4.1 Running X
WWW: http://www.afterstep.org/
WWW: http://www.fvwm.org/
WWW: http://www.windowmaker.org/
WWW: http://www.gnome.org/
WWW: http://www.kde.org/

When you start X, you should see a mouse pointer appear on the screen as a large, black “X.” If your X
is configured to start any tools or applications, they should each start and appear in individual windows.
A typical X session looks like this:

The root window is the background behind all of the other windows. It is usually set to a color, but
you can change it (see Section 4.6.3 [Changing the Root Window Parameters], page 55). Each program
or application in X runs in its own window. Each window has a decorative border on all four sides,

Sometimes you might see it referred to as “X Windows,” but this term is incorrect.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

called the window border ; L-shaped corners, called frames ; a top window bar, called the title bar, which
displays the name of the window; and several title bar buttons on the left and right sides of the title bar
(described in Section 4.3 [Manipulating X Client Windows], page 52).
The entire visible work area, including the root window and any other windows, is called the desktop.
The box in the lower right-hand corner, called the pager, allows you to move about a large desktop (see
Section 4.4 [Moving around the Desktop], page 53).
A window manager controls the way windows look and are displayed—the window dressing, as it
were—and can provide some additional menu or program management capabilities. There are many
different window managers to choose from, with a variety of features and capabilities. (See Section 4.6.4
[Choosing a Window Manager], page 56, for help in choosing a window manager that’s right for you.)
Window managers typically allow you to customize the colors and borders that are used to display a
window, as well as the type and location of buttons that appear on the window (see Section 4.2 [Running
a Program in X], page 49). For example, in the image above, the clock image itself is the oclock
program; the blue outline around it is the window border, as drawn by the fvwm2 window manager.
With the afterstep window manager, the window border would look quite different:

There are many window managers you can choose from, all different; instead of describing only one,
or describing all of them only superficially, this chapter shows the basics of X, which are common to all
window managers. I try to make no assumptions as to which window manager you are using; while the
fvwm family of window managers has long been a popular choice on most Linux-based systems, today
other window managers—including WindowMaker (the binary itself is called wmaker), Enlightenment,
AfterStep, and others—have all gained in popularity.
And recently, desktop environments have become popular. These are a collection of applications that
run on top of the window manager (and X), with the purpose of giving your X session a standardized
“look and feel”; these suites normally come with a few basic tools such as clocks and file managers. The
two popular ones are GNOME and KDE, and while they generate a lot of press these days because of
their graphical nature, both are changing very quickly and at the time of this writing are not yet ready for
widespread, general use (and they can cause your system to crash).
If you have a recent Linux distribution and chose the default install, chances are good that you have
either GNOME or KDE installed, with either the fvwm2 or wmaker window manager assigned as the
default. (While you can have more than one window manager installed on your system, you can only run
one at a time.)

4.1.1 Starting X
There are two ways to start X. Some systems run the X Display Manager, xdm, when the system boots, at
which point a graphical xdm login screen appears; you can use this to log in directly to an X session. On
systems not running xdm, the virtual console reserved for X will be blank until you start X by running
the startx command.
¯ To start X from a virtual console, type:
$ startx
RET
¯ To run startx and redirect its output to a log file, type:
$ startx >$HOME/startx.log 2>&1
RET
Both of these examples start X on the seventh virtual console, regardless of which console you are
at when you run the command—your console switches to X automatically. You can always switch to
another console during your X session (see Section 2.3 [Console Basics], page 20). The second example
writes any error messages or output of startx to a file called ‘startx.log’ in your home directory.
On some systems, X starts with 8-bit color depth by default. Use startx with the special ‘-bpp’
option to specify the color depth. Follow the option with a number indicating the color depth to use, and
precede the option with two hyphen characters (‘--’), which tells startx to pass the options which
follow it to the X server itself.
¯ To start X from a virtual console, and specify 16-bit color depth, type:
$ startx -- -bpp 16
RET
NOTE: If your system runs xdm, you can always switch to the seventh virtual console (or whichever
console xdm is running on), and then log in at the xdm login screen.

4.1.2 Stopping X
To end an X session, you normally choose an exit X option from a menu in your window manager.
¯ To end your X session if you are running the fvwm2 window manager, click the left mouse button in
the root window to pull up the start menu, and then choose Really quit? from the Exit Fvwm
submenu.
¯ To end your X session if you are running the afterstep window manager, click the left mouse
button in the root window to pull up the start menu, and then choose Really quit? from the
Exit Fvwm submenu.
If you started your X session with startx, these commands will return you to a shell prompt in
the virtual console where the command was typed. If, on the other hand, you started your X session by
logging in to xdm on the seventh virtual console, you will be logged out of the X session and the xdm
login screen will appear; you can then switch to another virtual console or log in to X again.
To exit X immediately and terminate all X processes, press the
CTRL-
ALT-
BKSP combination (if
your keyboard has two
ALT and
CTRL keys, press the left ones). You’ll lose any unsaved application
data, but this is useful when you cannot exit your X session normally—in the case of a system freeze or
other problem.
¯ To exit X immediately, type:

CTRL-
ALT-
BKSP

4.2 Running a Program in X

Programs running in an X session are called X clients. (The X Window System itself is called the X
server ). To run a program in X, you start it as an X client—either by selecting it from a menu, or by
typing the command to run in an xterm shell window (see Section 4.5 [Running a Shell in X], page 54).
Most window managers have a “start menu” of some kind; it’s usually accessed by clicking the left
mouse button anywhere on the root window. To run an X client from the start menu, click the left mouse
button to select the client’s name from the submenus.
For example, to start a square-shaped, analog-face clock from the start menu, click the left mouse but-
ton on the root window to make the menu appear, and click the left mouse button through the application
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

menus and on ‘Xclock (analog)’. This starts the xclock client, specifying the option to display
an analog face:

You can also start a client by running it from a shell window—useful for starting a client that isn’t on
the menu, or for when you want to specify options or arguments. When you run an X client from a shell
window, it opens in its own window; run the client in the background to free the shell prompt in the shell
window (see Section 3.3.2 [Putting a Job in the Background], page 38).
¯ To run a digital clock from a shell window, type:
$ xclock -digital &
RET
This command runs xclock in the background from a shell window; the ‘digital’ option speci-
fies a digital clock.
The following sections explain how to specify certain command-line options common to most X
clients—such as window layout, colors, and fonts.

4.2.1 Specifying Window Size and Location

Specify a window’s size and location by giving its window geometry with the ‘geometry’ option. Four
fields control the width and height of the windows, and the window’s distance (“offset”) from the edge
of the screen. It is specified in the form:
-geometry WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFF+YOFF
The values in these four fields are usually given in pixels, although some applications measure WIDTH
and HEIGHT in characters. While you must give these values in order, you can omit either pair. For
example, to specify just the size of the window, give values for WIDTH and HEIGHT only.
¯ To start a small xclock, 48 pixels wide and 48 pixels high, type:
$ xclock -geometry 48x48
RET
¯ To start a large xclock, 480 pixels wide and 500 pixels high, type:
$ xclock -geometry 480x500
RET
¯ To start an xclock with a width of 48 pixels and the default height, type:
$ xclock -geometry 48
RET
¯ To start an xclock with a height of 48 pixels and the default width, type:
$ xclock -geometry x48
RET
 You can give positive or negative numbers for the XOFF and YOFF fields. Positive XOFF values
specify a position from the left of the screen; negative values specify a position from the right. If YOFF
is positive, it specifies a position from the top of the screen; if negative, it specifies a position from the
bottom of the screen. When giving these offsets, you must specify values for both XOFF and YOFF.
To place the window in one of the four corners of the desktop, use zeroes for the appropriate XOFF
and YOFF values, as follows:
XOFF AND YOFF VALUES W INDOW P OSITION
+0+0 Upper left corner.
+0-0 Lower left corner.
-0+0 Upper right corner.
-0-0 Lower right corner.
¯ To start a default size xclock in the lower left-hand corner, type:
$ xclock -geometry +0-0
RET

Or, to put it all together, you can specify the size and location of a window with one geometry line
that includes all four values.
¯ To start an xclock with a width of 120 pixels, a height of 100 pixels, an x offset of 250 pixels from
the right side of the screen, and a y offset of 25 pixels from the top of the screen, type:
$ xclock -geometry 120x100-250+25
RET

4.2.2 Specifying Window Colors

The window colors available in your X session depend on your display hardware and the X server that
is running. The xcolors tool will show all colors available on your X server and the names used to
specify them. (Color names are not case sensitive.)
¯ To list the available colors, type:
$ xcolors
RET

Press
Q to exit xcolors.

To specify a color to use for the window background, window border, and text or graphics in the
window itself, give the color name as an argument to the appropriate option: ‘-bg’ for background
color, ‘-bd’ for window border color, and ‘-fg’ for foreground color.
¯ To start an xclock with a light blue window background, type:
$ xclock -bg lightblue
RET

You can specify any combination of these attributes.

¯ To start an xclock with a sea green window background and a turquoise window foreground, type:
$ xclock -bg seagreen -fg turquoise
RET

4.2.3 Specifying Window Font

To get an X font name, use xfontsel (see Section 16.1 [X Fonts], page 175). To specify a font for use
in a window, use the ‘-fn’ option followed by the X font name to use.
¯ To start an xclock with a digital display, and specify that it use a 17-point Helvetica font for text,
type:
$ xclock -digital -fn -*-helvetica-*-r-*-*-17-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This command starts an xclock that looks like this:

NOTE: If you specify the font for a shell window, you can resize it after it’s running, as described in
Section 16.1.4 [Resizing the Xterm Font], page 177.

4.2.4 Specifying Additional Window Attributes

X applications often have up to three special menus with options for changing certain attributes. To
see these menus, hold
CTRL and click one of the three mouse buttons. The following table lists and
describes various window attributes common to most X-aware applications.
W INDOW O PTIONS D ESCRIPTION
-bd color
-bordercolor color Use color for the window border color.
-bg color
-background color Use color for the window background color.
-bw number
-borderwidth number Specify the window border width in pixels.
-fg color
-foreground color Use color for the window foreground text or graphics.
-fn font
-font font Use font for the font to use.
-geometry geometry Specify window geometry.
-iconic Immediately iconify the program (see Section 4.3.4
[Minimizing a Window], page 53).
-title string Use string for the window title.

4.3 Manipulating X Client Windows

Only one X client can accept keyboard and mouse input at a time, and that client is called the active
client. To make a client active, move the mouse over the client’s window. When a client is the active
client, it is said to be “in focus.” Depending on the window manager, the shape of the mouse pointer
may change, or the window border and title bar of the active client may be different (a common default
is steel blue for the active client color and gray for all other windows).
Each window has its own set of controls to manipulate that window. Here’s how to perform basic
window operations with the mouse.

4.3.1 Moving a Window

To move a window, click and hold the left mouse button on the window’s title bar, then drag its window
outline to a new position. When the outline is in place, release the left mouse button, and the window
will move to the position held by the window outline.
 If you have a mouse with only two buttons, click both buttons simultaneously to emulate the middle button.
4.3.2 Resizing a Window
To resize a window, click and hold the left mouse button on any one of the window’s four frames, and
move the mouse to shrink or grow the window outline. Release the left mouse button to resize the window
to the size of the window outline.

4.3.3 Destroying a Window

To destroy a window and stop the program it displays, click the left mouse button on the ‘X’ button in
the upper right-hand corner of the title bar. This is useful for when the program running in the window
has stopped responding. (Of course, if a program in a window has an option to stop it normally, you can
always use it to stop the program and close its window.)

4.3.4 Minimizing a Window

To minimize a window, so that it disappears and an icon representing the running program is placed on
the desktop, click the left mouse button on the ‘_’ button in the upper right-hand corner of the title bar.
This is also called iconifying a window.

4.3.5 Maximizing a Window

To maximize an icon to a window (or “deiconify” it), double-click the left mouse button on the icon
name, directly beneath the icon itself. The icon will disappear and the window will return to its prior
position.

4.4 Moving around the Desktop

Many window managers (including afterstep and fvwm2) allow you to use a virtual desktop, which
lets you use more screen space than your monitor can display at one time. A virtual desktop can be larger
than the display, in which case you can scroll though it with the mouse. The view which fills the display
is called the viewport. When you move the mouse off the screen in a direction where the current (virtual)
desktop extends, the view scrolls in that direction. Virtual desktops are useful for running many clients
full screen at once, each in its own separate desktop.
Some configurations disallow scrolling between desktops; in that case, switch between them with a
pager, which shows a miniature view of your virtual desktop, and allows you to switch between desktops.
It is a sticky window (it “sticks to the glass” above all other windows), and is always in the lower right-
hand corner of your screen, even when you scroll across a virtual desktop. Both your current desktop
and active X client are highlighted in the pager.
The default fvwm2 virtual desktop size is nine desktops in a 3x3 grid:

In the preceding illustration, the current desktop is the second one in the top row. The first desktop
contains two X client windows—a small one and a large one—but there are no windows in any other
desktop (including the current one).
To switch to another desktop, click the left mouse button on its corresponding view in the pager, or use
a keyboard shortcut. In fvwm2, the default keys for switching between desktops are
ALT in conjunction
with the arrow keys; in afterstep, use the
CTRL key in place of
ALT.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To switch to the desktop to the left of the current one while running fvw2, type
ALT-
.
¯ To switch to the desktop directly to the left of the current one while running afterstep, type

CTRL-
.

4.5 Running a Shell in X

Use xterm to run a shell in a window. You can run commands in an xterm window just as you would
in a virtual console; a shell in an xterm acts the same as a shell in a virtual console (see Chapter 3 [The
Shell], page 33).
Unlike a shell in a console, you can cut and paste text from an xterm to another X client (see
Section 10.4 [Selecting Text], page 115).
To scroll through text that has scrolled past the top of the screen, type
Shift-
PgUp. The number
of lines you can scroll back to depends on the value of the scrollback buffer, specified with the ‘-sl’
option; its default value is 64.
There are many options for controlling xterm’s emulation characteristics; consult the xterm man
page for a complete listing (see Section 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System Manual], page 28).
NOTE: xterm is probably the most popular terminal emulator X client, but it is not the only one; others
to choose from include wterm and rxvt, all with their own special features—try them all to find one
you like.

4.6 Configuring X
There are some aspects of X that people usually want to configure right away. This section discusses some
of the most popular, including changing the video mode, automatically running clients at startup, and
choosing a window manager. You’ll find more information on this subject in both The X Window User
HOWTO and The Configuration HOWTO (for how to read them, see Section 2.8.6 [Reading System
Documentation and Help Files], page 31).

4.6.1 Switching between Video Modes

A video mode is a display resolution, given in pixels, such as 640x480. An X server can switch between
the video modes allowed by your hardware and set up by the administrator; it is not uncommon for
a machine running X to offer several video modes, so that 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 display
resolutions are possible.
To switch to another video mode, use the
+ and
- keys on the numeric keypad with the left
CTRL
and
ALT keys. The
+ key switches to the next mode with a lower resolution, and the
- key switches to
the next mode with a higher resolution.
¯ To switch to the next-lowest video mode, type:

CTRL-
ALT-
+

¯ To switch to the next-highest video mode, type:

CTRL-
ALT-
-

Type either of the above key combinations repeatedly to cycle through all available modes.
NOTE: For more information on video modes, see The XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO (see Sec-
tion 2.8.6 [Reading System Documentation and Help Files], page 31).
4.6.2 Running X Clients Automatically
The ‘.xsession’ file, a hidden file in your home directory, specifies the clients that are automati-
cally run when your X session first starts (“hidden” files are explained in Chapter 5 [Files and Direc-
tories], page 59). It is just a shell script, usually containing a list of clients to run. You can edit your
‘.xsession’ file in a text editor, and if this file doesn’t exist, you can create it.
Clients start in the order in which they are listed, and the last line should specify the window manager
to use. The following example ‘.xsession’ file starts an xterm with a black background and white
text, puts an ‘oclock’ (a round clock) window in the upper left-hand corner, starts the Emacs text editor,
and then starts the fvwm2 window manager:
#! /bin/sh
#
# A sample .xsession file.

xterm -bg black -fg white &

oclock -geometry +0+0 &
emacs &
exec /usr/bin/X11/fvwm2
All clients start as background jobs, with the exception of the window manager on the last line,
because when this file runs, the X session is running in the foreground (see Section 3.3 [Managing Jobs],
page 37). Always put an ampersand (‘&’) character at the end of any command line you put in your
‘.xsession’ file, except for the line giving the window manager on the last line.

4.6.3 Changing the Root Window Parameters

By default, the root window background is painted gray with a weaved pattern. To draw these patterns,
X tiles the root window with a bitmap, which is a black-and-white image stored in a special file format.
X comes with some bitmaps installed in the ‘/usr/X11R6/include/bitmaps/’ directory; the
default bitmap file is ‘root_weave’ (you can make your own patterns with the bitmap tool; see
Section 18.4 [Interactive Image Editors and Tools], page 199).
Use xsetroot to change the color and bitmap pattern in the root window.
To change the color, use the ‘-solid’ option, and give the name of the color to use as an argument.
(Use xcolors to get a list of possible color names; see Section 4.2.2 [Specifying Window Colors],
page 51.)
¯ To change the root window color to blue violet, type:
$ xsetroot -solid blueviolet
RET
To change the root window pattern, use the ‘-bitmap’ option, and give the name of the bitmap file
to use.
¯ To tile the root window with a star pattern, type:
$ xsetroot -bitmap /usr/X11R6/include/bitmaps/star
RET
When specifying a pattern, use the ‘-fg’ and ‘-bg’ options to specify the foreground and back-
ground colors.
¯ To tile the root window with a light slate gray star pattern on a black background, type (all on one
line):
$ xsetroot -fg slategray2 -bg black -bitmap
/usr/X11R6/include/bitmaps/star
RET
Use xsetroot with the special ‘-gray’ option to change the root window to a shade of gray
designed to be easy on the eyes, with no pattern.
¯ To make the root window a gray color with no pattern, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

$ xsetroot -gray
RET

NOTE: You can also put an image in the window (although this consumes memory that could be spared
for a memory-hogging Web browser instead; but see Section 17.2.2 [Putting an Image in the Root Win-
dow], page 186, for how to do it).

4.6.4 Choosing a Window Manager

Yes, there are many window managers to choose from. Some people like the flashiness of Enlightenment,
running with KDE or GNOME, while others prefer the spartan wm2—the choice is yours.
The following table describes some of the more popular window managers currently available.
W INDOW M ANAGER D ESCRIPTION
9wm 9wm is a simple window manager inspired by AT&T’s Plan 9 window
manager—it does not use title bars or icons. It should appeal to those
who like the wily text editor (see Section 10.1 [Choosing the Perfect
Text Editor], page 107).
Debian: ‘9wm’
WWW: ftp://ftp.cs.su.oz.au/dhog/9wm/
afterstep AfterStep is inspired by the look and feel of the NeXTSTEP interface.
Debian: ‘afterstep’
WWW: http://www.afterstep.org/
enlightenment Enlightenment is a graphics-intensive window manager that uses desk-
top “themes” for decorating the various controls of the X session.
Debian: ‘enlightenment’
WWW: http://www.enlightenment.org/
fvwm95 fvwm95 makes X look like a certain proprietary, corporate OS from
circa 1995.
Debian: ‘fvwm95’
WWW:
http://www.foxproject.org/xclass/fvwm95.html
twm The Tab Window Manager is an older, simple window manager that is
available on almost every system. (It’s also sometimes called Tom’s
Window Manager, named after its primary author, Tom LaStrange.)
Debian: ‘twm’
wm2 wm2 is a minimalist, configuration-free window manager.
Debian: ‘wm2’
WWW: http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/wm2/
PART TWO: Files
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
5 Files and Directories
This chapter discusses the basic tools for manipulating files and directories—tools that are among the
most essential on a Linux system.
A file is a collection of data that is stored on disk and that can be manipulated as a single unit by its
name.
A directory is a file that acts as a folder for other files. A directory can also contain other directories
(subdirectories ); a directory that contains another directory is called the parent directory of the directory
it contains.
A directory tree includes a directory and all of its files, including the contents of all subdirectories.
(Each directory is a “branch” in the “tree.”) A slash character alone (‘/’) is the name of the root directory
at the base of the directory tree hierarchy; it is the trunk from which all other files or directories branch.
The following image shows an abridged version of the directory hierarchy.

dict

bin

usr

jon

play

work

joe

home

bin

etc

(root)

To represent a directory’s place in the file hierarchy, specify all of the directories between it and the
root directory, using a slash (‘/’) as the delimiter to separate directories. So the directory ‘dict’ as it
appears in the preceding illustration would be represented as ‘/usr/dict’.
Each user has a branch in the ‘/home’ directory for their own files, called their home directory. The
hierarchy in the previous illustration has two home directories: ‘joe’ and ‘jon’, both subdirectories of
‘/home’.
When you are in a shell, you are always in a directory on the system, and that directory is called
the current working directory. When you first log in to the system, your home directory is the current
working directory.
Whenever specifying a file name as an argument to a tool or application, you can give the slash-
delimited path name relative to the current working directory. For example, if ‘/home/joe’ is
the current working directory, you can use work to specify the directory ‘/home/joe/work’, and
work/schedule to specify ‘schedule’, a file in the ‘/home/joe/work’ directory.
Every directory has two special files whose names consist of one and two periods: ‘..’ refers to
the parent of the current working directory, and ‘.’ refers to the current working directory itself. If
the current working directory is ‘/home/joe’, you can use ‘.’ to specify ‘/home/joe’ and ‘..’ to
specify ‘/home’. Furthermore, you can specify the ‘/home/jon’ directory as ../jon.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Another way to specify a file name is to specify a slash-delimited list of all of the directory branches
from the root directory (‘/’) down to the file to specify. This unique, specific path from the root directory
to a file is called the file’s full path name. (When referring to a file that is not a directory, this is sometimes
called the absolute file name ).
You can specify any file or directory on the system by giving its full path name. A file can have the
same name as other files in different directories on the system, but no two files or directories can share
a full path name. For example, user joe can have a file ‘schedule’ in his ‘/home/joe/work’
directory and a file ‘schedule’ in his ‘/home/joe/play’ directory. While both files have the same
name (‘schedule’), they are contained in different directories, and each has a unique full path name—
‘/home/joe/work/schedule’ and ‘/home/joe/play/schedule’.
However, you don’t have to type the full path name of a tool or application in order to start it. The
shell keeps a list of directories, called the path, where it searches for programs. If a program is “in your
path,” or in one of these directories, you can run it simply by typing its name.
By default, the path includes ‘/bin’ and ‘/usr/bin’. For example, the who command is in the
‘/usr/bin’ directory, so its full path name is /usr/bin/who. Since the ‘/usr/bin’ directory is
in the path, you can type who to run /usr/bin/who, no matter what the current working directory is.
The following table describes some of the standard directories on Linux systems.
D IRECTORY D ESCRIPTION
/ The ancestor of all directories on the system; all other directories are
subdirectories of this directory, either directly or through other subdi-
rectories.
/bin Essential tools and other programs (or binaries).
/dev Files representing the system’s various hardware devices. For example,
you use the file ‘/dev/cdrom’ to access the CD-ROM drive.
/etc Miscellaneous system configuration files, startup files, etcetera.
/home The home directories for all of the system’s users.
/lib Essential system library files used by tools in ‘/bin’.
/proc Files that give information about current system processes.
/root The superuser’s home directory, whose username is root. (In the
past, the home directory for the superuser was simply ‘/’; later,
‘/root’ was adopted for this purpose to reduce clutter in ‘/’.)
/sbin Essential system administrator tools, or system binaries.
/tmp Temporary files.
/usr Subdirectories with files related to user tools and applications.
/usr/X11R6 Files relating to the X Window System, including those programs (in
‘/usr/X11R6/bin’) that run only under X.
/usr/bin Tools and applications for users.
/usr/dict Dictionaries and word lists (slowly being outmoded by
‘/usr/share/dict’).
/usr/doc Miscellaneous system documentation.
/usr/games Games and amusements.
/usr/info Files for the GNU Info hypertext system.
/usr/lib Libraries used by tools in ‘/usr/bin’.
/usr/local Local files—files unique to the individual system—including lo-
cal documentation (in ‘/usr/local/doc’) and programs (in
‘/usr/local/bin’).
/usr/man The online manuals, which are read with the man command (see Sec-
tion 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System Manual], page 28).
/usr/share Data for installed applications that is architecture-independent and can
be shared between systems. A number of subdirectories with equiv-
alents in ‘/usr’ also appear here, including ‘/usr/share/doc’,
‘/usr/share/info’, and ‘/usr/share/icons’.
/usr/src Program source code for software compiled on the system.
/usr/tmp Another directory for temporary files.
/var Variable data files, such as spool queues and log files.
NOTE: For more information on the directory structure of Linux-based systems, view the compressed
files in the ‘/usr/doc/debian-policy/fsstnd/’ directory (see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text],
page 99).

5.1 Naming Files and Directories

File names can consist of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, periods (‘.’), hyphens (‘-’), and under-
scores (‘_’).
File names are also case sensitive—‘foo’, ‘Foo’ and ‘FOO’ are all different file names.
File names are almost always all lowercase letters.
Linux does not force you to use file extensions, but it is convenient and useful to give files proper
extensions, since they will help you to identify file types at a glance. You can have files with multiple
extensions, such as ‘long.file.with.many.extensions’, and you can have files with none at
all, such as ‘myfile’. A JPEG image file, for example, does not have to have a ‘.jpg’ or ‘.jpeg’
extension, and program files do not need a special extension to make them work.
The file name before any file extensions is called the base file name. For example, the base file name
of ‘house.jpeg’ is ‘house’.
Some commonly used file extensions are shown in the following table, including extensions for text
and graphics files. (See Section 18.2 [Converting Images between Formats], page 196, for more exten-
sions used with image files, and see Section 21.3 [Playing a Sound File], page 215, for extensions used
with sound files.)
E XTENSION D ESCRIPTION
.txt or .text Plain, unformatted text.
.tex Text formatted in the TEX or LaTeX formatting language.
.ltx or .latex Text formatted in the LaTeX formatting language (neither are as com-
mon as just using ‘.tex’).
.gz A compressed file.
.sgml SGML (“Standardized General Markup Language”) format.
.html HTML (“Hypertext Markup Language”) format.
.xml XML (“Extended Markup Language”) format.
The following sections show how to make new files; to rename an existing file, move it to a file with
the new name—see Section 5.5 [Moving Files and Directories], page 68.

Technically, there are other characters that you can use—but doing so may get you into trouble later on.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

5.1.1 Making an Empty File

You may sometimes want to create a new, empty file as a kind of “placeholder.” To do so, give the name
that you want to use for the file as an argument to touch.
¯ To create the file ‘a_fresh_start’ in the current directory, type:
$ touch a_fresh_start
RET
¯ To create the file ‘another_empty_file’ in the ‘work/completed’ subdirectory of the cur-
rent directory, type:
$ touch work/completed/another_empty_file
RET
This tool “touches” the files you give as arguments. If a file does not exist, it creates it; if the file
already exists, it changes the modification timestamp on the file to the current date and time, just as if
you had used the file.
NOTE: Often, you make a file when you edit it, such as when in a text or image or sound editor; in that
case, you don’t need to make the file first.

5.1.2 Making a Directory

Use mkdir (“make directory”) to make a new directory, giving the path name of the new directory as
an argument. Directory names follow the same conventions as used with other files—that is, no spaces,
slashes, or other unusual characters are recommended.
¯ To make a new directory called ‘work’ in the current working directory, type:
$ mkdir work
RET
¯ To make a new directory called ‘work’ in the ‘/tmp’ directory, type:
$ mkdir /tmp/work
RET

5.1.3 Making a Directory Tree

Use mkdir with the ‘-p’ option to make a subdirectory and any of its parents that do not already exist.
This is useful when you want to make a fairly complex directory tree from scratch, and don’t want to
have to make each directory individually.
¯ To make the ‘work/completed/2001’ directory—a subdirectory of the ‘completed’ direc-
tory, which in turn is a subdirectory of the ‘work’ directory in the current directory, type:
$ mkdir -p work/completed/2001
RET
This makes a ‘2001’ subdirectory in the directory called ‘completed’, which in turn is in a di-
rectory called ‘work’ in the current directory; if the ‘completed’ or the ‘work’ directories do not
already exist, they are made as well (if you know that ‘work’ and ‘completed’ both exist, the above
command works fine without the ‘-p’ option).

5.2 Changing Directories

Use cd to change the current working directory; give the name of the new directory as an argument.
¯ To change the current working directory to ‘work’, a subdirectory in the current directory, type:
$ cd work
RET
¯ To change to the current directory’s parent directory, type:
$ cd ..
RET
You can also give the full path name of a directory.
¯ To change the current working directory to ‘/usr/doc’, type:
$ cd /usr/doc
RET
This command makes ‘/usr/doc’ the current working directory.
5.2.1 Changing to Your Home Directory
With no arguments, cd makes your home directory the current working directory.
¯ To make your home directory the current working directory, type:
$ cd
RET

5.2.2 Changing to the Last Directory You Visited

To return to the last directory you were in, use cd and give ‘-’ as the directory name. For example,
if you are in the ‘/home/mrs/work/samples’ directory, and you use cd to change to some other
directory, then at any point while you are in this other directory you can type cd - to return the current
working directory to ‘/home/mrs/work/samples’.
¯ To return to the directory you were last in, type:
$ cd -
RET

5.2.3 Getting the Name of the Current Directory

To determine what the current working directory is, use pwd (“print working directory”), which lists the
full path name of the current working directory.
¯
« ¨
To determine what the current working directory is, type:

$ pwd
RET
/home/mrs

ª$
©
In this example, pwd output the text ‘/home/mrs’, indicating that the current working directory is
‘/home/mrs’.

5.3 Listing Directories

Debian: ‘mc’
Debian: ‘mozilla’
WWW: http://www.gnome.org/mc/
WWW: http://www.mozilla.org/

Use ls to list the contents of a directory. It takes as arguments the names of the directories to list. With
no arguments, ls lists the contents of the current working directory.
¯
« ¨
To list the contents of the current working directory, type:

$ ls
RET
apple cherry orange

ª$
©
In this example, the current working directory contains three files: ‘apple’, ‘cherry’, and
‘orange’.
¯ To list the contents of ‘work’, a subdirectory in the current directory, type:
$ ls work
RET
¯ To list the contents of the ‘/usr/doc’ directory, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

$ ls /usr/doc
RET

You cannot discern file types from the default listing; directories and executables are indistinguishable
from all other files. Using the ‘-F’ option, however, tells ls to place a ‘/’ character after the names of
subdirectories and a ‘*’ character after the names of executable files.
¯ To list the contents of the directory so that directories and executables are distinguished from other

« ¨
files, type:

$ ls -F
RET
repeat* test1 test2 words/

ª
$
©
In this example, the current directory contains an executable file named ‘repeat’, a directory named
‘words’, and some other files named ‘test1’ and ‘test2’.
Another way to list the contents of directories—and one I use all the time, when I’m in X and when
I also want to look at image files in those directories—is to use Mozilla or some other Web browser
as a local file browser. Use the prefix file:/ to view local files. Alone, it opens a directory list-
ing of the root directory; file:/home/joe opens a directory listing of user joe’s home directory,
file:/usr/local/src opens the local source code directory, and so on. Directory listings will be
rendered in HTML on the fly in almost all browsers, so you can click on subdirectories to traverse to
them, and click on files to open them in the browser.
Yet another way to list the contents of directories is to use a “file manager” tool, of which there are at
least a few on Linux; the most popular of these is probably the “Midnight Commander,” or mc.
The following subsections describe some commonly used options for controlling which files ls lists
and what information about those files ls outputs. It is one of the most often used file commands on
Unix-like systems.

5.3.1 Listing File Attributes

Use ls with the ‘-l’ (“long”) option to output a more extensive directory listing—one that contains
each file’s size in bytes, last modification time, file type, and ownership and permissions (see Section 6.2
[File Ownership], page 76).
¯
« ¨
To output a verbose listing of the ‘/usr/doc/bash’ directory, type:

$ ls -l /usr/doc/bash
RET
total 72
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13744 Oct 19 22:57 CHANGES.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1816 Oct 19 22:57 COMPAT.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16398 Oct 19 22:57 FAQ.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2928 Oct 19 22:57 INTRO.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4751 Oct 19 22:57 NEWS.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1588 Oct 19 22:57 POSIX.NOTES.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2718 Oct 19 22:57 README.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 19596 Oct 19 22:57 changelog.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1446 Oct 19 22:57 copyright
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 1024 Jul 25 1997 examples

ª$
©
 Called a URN, or “Uniform Resource Name.”
 This command outputs a verbose listing of the files in ‘/usr/doc/bash’. The first line of output
gives the total amount of disk space, in 1024-byte blocks, that the files take up (in this example, 72).
Each subsequent line displays several columns of information about one file.
The first column displays the file’s type and permissions. The first character in this column specifies
the file type; the hyphen (‘-’) is the default and means that the file is a regular file. Directories are denoted
by ‘d’, and symbolic links (see Section 5.7 [Giving a File More than One Name], page 71) are denoted
by ‘l’. The remaining nine characters of the first column show the file permissions (see Section 6.3
[Controlling Access to Files], page 76). The second column lists the number of hard links to the file. The
third and fourth columns give the names of the user and group that the file belongs to. The fifth column
gives the size of the file in bytes, the sixth column gives the date and time of last modification, and the
last column gives the file name.

5.3.2 Listing Directories Recursively

Use the ‘-R’ option to list a directory recursively, which outputs a listing of that directory and all of its
subdirectories.
¯
« ¨
To output a recursive directory listing of the current directory, type:

$ ls -R
RET
play work

play:
notes

work:
notes

ª$
©
In this example, the current working directory contains two subdirectories, ‘work’ and ‘play’, and
no other files. Each subdirectory contains a file called ‘notes’.
¯ To list all of the files on the system, type:
$ ls -R /
RET
This command recursively lists the contents of the root directory, ‘/’, and all of its subdirectories. It
is common to combine this with the attribute option, ‘-l’, to output a verbose listing of all the files on
the system:
$ ls -lR /
RET
NOTE: You can’t list the contents of some directories on the system if you don’t have permission to do
so (see Section 6.3 [Controlling Access to Files], page 76).

5.3.3 Listing Newest Files First

Use the ‘-t’ option with ls to sort a directory listing so that the newest files are listed first.
¯ To list all of the files in the ‘/usr/tmp’ directory sorted with newest first, type:
$ ls -t /usr/tmp
RET

5.3.4 Listing Hidden Files

By default, ls does not output files that begin with a period character (‘.’). To reduce clutter, many
applications “hide” configuration files in your home directory by giving them names that begin with a
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

period; these are called dot files, or sometimes “hidden” files. As mentioned earlier, every directory has
two special dot files: ‘..’, the parent directory, and ‘.’, the directory itself.

To list all contents of a directory, including these dot files, use the ‘-a’ option.

¯ To list all files in the current directory, type:

$ ls -a
RET

Use the ‘-A’ option to list almost all files in the directory: it lists all files, including dot files, with the
exception of ‘..’ and ‘.’.

¯ To list all files in the current directory except for ‘..’ and ‘.’, type:
$ ls -A
RET

5.3.5 Listing Directories in Color

Use ls with the ‘--color’ option to list the directory contents in color; files appear in different colors
depending on their content. Some of the default color settings include displaying directory names in
blue, text files in white, executable files in green, and links in turquoise.

¯ To
« list the files in the root directory in color, type: ¨

ª ©
NOTE: It’s common practice to create a command alias that substitutes ‘ls --color’ for ‘ls’, so that
typing just ls outputs a color listing. To learn more about making aliases, see Section 3.6.2 [Making a
Command Alias], page 43.

5.3.6 Listing Directory Tree Graphs

Debian: ‘tree’
WWW: ftp://mama.indstate.edu/linux/tree/

Use tree to output an ASCII text tree graph of a given directory tree.

¯ To output a tree graph of the current directory and all its subdirectories, type:
 « ¨
$ tree
RET
.
|-- projects
| |-- current
| ‘-- old
| |-- 1
| ‘-- 2
‘-- trip
‘-- schedule.txt

4 directories, 3 files

ª$
©
In the preceding example, a tree graph is drawn showing the current directory, which contains the
two directories ‘projects’ and ‘trip’; the ‘projects’ directory in turn contains the directories
‘current’ and ‘old’.
To output a tree graph of a specific directory tree, give the name of that directory tree as an argument.
¯ To output a tree graph of your home directory and all its subdirectories, type:
$ tree ˜
RET
To output a graph of a directory tree containing directory names only, use the ‘-d’ option. This is
useful for outputting a directory tree of the entire system, or for getting a picture of a particular directory
tree.
¯ To output a tree graph of the entire system to the file ‘tree’, type:
$ tree -d / > tree
RET
¯ To peruse a tree graph of the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree, type:
$ tree -d /usr/local |less
RET

NOTE: Another tool for outputting directory trees is described in Section 24.2 [Listing a File’s Disk
Usage], page 233.

5.3.7 Additional Directory Listing Options

The ls tool has many options to control the files listed and the information given for each file; the
following table describes some of them. (The options are case sensitive.)
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
--color Colorize the names of files depending on their type.
-R Produce a recursive listing.
-a List all files in a directory, including hidden, or “dot,” files.
-d List directories by name instead of listing their contents.
-f Do not sort directory contents; list them in the order they are written
on the disk.
-l Produce a verbose listing.
-r Sort directory contents in reverse order.
-s Output the size—as an integer in 1K blocks—of each file to the left of
the file name.
-t Sort output by timestamp instead of alphabetically, so the newest files
are listed first.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: You can combine any of these options; for example, to list the contents of a directory sorted
newest first, and display all attributes, use ‘-lt’. To recursively list all hidden files and display all
attributes, use ‘-lRa’. It doesn’t matter what order you put the options in—so ‘-lRa’ is the same as,
say, ‘-alR’.

5.4 Copying Files and Directories

Use cp (“copy”) to copy files. It takes two arguments: the source file, which is the existing file to copy,
and the target file, which is the file name for the new copy. cp then makes an identical copy of the source
file, giving it the specified target name. If a file with the target name already exists, cp overwrites it. It
does not alter the source file.
¯ To copy the file ‘my-copy’ to the file ‘neighbor-copy’, type:
$ cp my-copy neighbor-copy
RET
This command creates a new file called ‘neighbor-copy’ that is identical to ‘my-copy’ in every
respect except for its name, owner, group, and timestamp—the new file has a timestamp that shows the
time when it was copied. The file ‘my-copy’ is not altered.
Use the ‘-p’ (“preserve”) option to preserve all attributes of the original file, including its timestamp,
owner, group, and permissions.
¯ To copy the file ‘my-copy’ to the file ‘neighbor-copy’, preserving all of the attributes of the
source file in the target file, type:
$ cp -p my-copy neighbor-copy
RET
This command copies the file ‘my-copy’ to a new file called ‘neighbor-copy’ that is identical
to ‘my-copy’ in every respect except for its name.
To copy a directory along with the files and subdirectories it contains, use the -R option—it makes a
recursive copy of the specified directory and its entire contents.
¯ To copy the directory ‘public_html’, and all of its files and subdirectories, to a new directory
called ‘private_html’, type:
$ cp -R public_html private_html
RET
The ‘-R’ option does not copy files that are symbolic links (see Section 5.7 [Giving a File More than
One Name], page 71), and it does not retain all original permissions. To recursively copy a directory
including links, and retain all of its permissions, use the ‘-a’ (“archive”) option. This is useful for
making a backup copy of a large directory tree.
¯ To make an archive copy of the directory tree ‘public_html’ to the directory ‘private_html’,
type:
$ cp -a public_html private_html
RET

5.5 Moving Files and Directories

Use the mv (“move”) tool to move, or rename, a file or directory to a different location. It takes two
arguments: the name of the file or directory to move followed by the path name to move it to. If you
move a file to a directory that contains a file of the same name, the file is overwritten.
¯ To move the file ‘notes’ in the current working directory to ‘../play’, type:
$ mv notes ../play
RET
This command moves the file ‘notes’ in the current directory to ‘play’, a subdirectory of the
current working directory’s parent. If a file ‘notes’ already exists in ‘play’, that file is overwritten.
If the subdirectory ‘play’ does not exist, this command moves ‘notes’ to its parent directory and
renames it ‘play’.
To move a file or directory that is not in the current directory, give its full path name as an argument.
 ¯ To move the file ‘/usr/tmp/notes’ to the current working directory, type:
$ mv /usr/tmp/notes .
RET
This command moves the file ‘/usr/tmp/notes’ to the current working directory.
To move a directory, give the path name of the directory you want to move and the path name to move
it to as arguments.
¯ To move the directory ‘work’ in the current working directory to ‘play’, type:
$ mv work play
RET
This command moves the directory ‘work’ in the current directory to the directory ‘play’. If the
directory ‘play’ already exists, mv puts ‘work’ inside ‘play’—it does not overwrite directories.
Renaming a file is the same as moving it; just specify as arguments the file to rename followed by the
new file name.
¯ To rename the file ‘notes’ to ‘notes.old’, type:
$ mv notes notes.old
RET

5.5.1 Changing File Names to Lowercase

WWW: http://eternity.2y.net/chcase

To change the uppercase letters in a file name to lowercase (or vice versa), use chcase. It takes as
arguments the files whose names it should change.
¯ To change the file names of all of the files in the current directory to lowercase letters, type:
$ chcase *
RET
Use the ‘-u’ option to change file names to all uppercase letters.
¯ To change file names of all of the files with a ‘.dos’ extension in the ‘˜/tmp’ directory to all
uppercase letters, type:
$ chcase -u ˜/tmp/*.dos
RET
By default, chcase does not rename directories; use the ‘-d’ option to rename directories as well
as other files. The ‘-r’ option recursively descends into any subdirectories and renames those files, too.
¯ To change all of the files and subdirectory names in the current directory to all lowercase letters,
type:
$ chcase -d *
RET
¯ To change all of the files and subdirectory names in the current directory to all uppercase letters,
and descend recursively into all subdirectories, type:
$ chcase -d -r -u *
RET
¯ To change all of the files in the current directory to all lowercase letters, and descend recursively
into all subdirectories (but do not change any directory names), type:
$ chcase -r *
RET

5.5.2 Renaming Multiple Files with the Same Extension

WWW: http://eternity.2y.net/chcase

To give a different file name extension to a group of files that share the same file name extension, use
chcase with the ‘-x’ option for specifying a Perl expression; give the patterns to match the source and
target files as a quoted argument.
For example, you can rename all file names ending in ‘.htm’ to end in ‘.html’ by giving
‘s/htm/html/’ as the expression to use.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To rename all of the files in the current directory with a ‘.htm’ extension to ‘.html’, type:
$ chcase -x ’s/htm/html/’ ’*.htm’
RET
By default, chcase will not overwrite files; so if you want to rename ‘index.htm’ to
‘index.html’, and both files already exist in the current directory, the above example will do nothing.
Use the ‘-o’ option to specify that existing files may be overwritten.
¯ To rename all of the files in the current directory with a ‘.htm’ extension to ‘.html’ and overwrite
any existing files, type:
$ chcase -o -x ’s/htm/html/’ ’*.htm’
RET

NOTE: Renaming multiple files at once is a common request.

5.6 Removing Files and Directories

Use rm (“remove”) to delete a file and remove it from the system. Give the name of the file to remove as
an argument.
¯ To remove the file ‘notes’ in the current working directory, type:
$ rm notes
RET
To remove a directory and all of the files and subdirectories it contains, use the ‘-R’ (“recursive”)
option.
¯ To remove the directory ‘waste’ and all of its contents, type:
$ rm -R waste
RET
To remove an empty directory, use rmdir; it removes the empty directories you specify. If you
specify a directory that contains files or subdirectories, rmdir reports an error.
¯ To remove the directory ‘empty’, type:
$ rmdir empty
RET

5.6.1 Removing a File with a Strange Name

Files with strange characters in their names (like spaces, control characters, beginning hyphens, and so
on) pose a problem when you want to remove them. There are a few solutions to this problem.
One way is to use tab completion to complete the name of the file (see Section 3.1.2 [Letting the
Shell Complete What You Type], page 35). This works when the name of the file you want to remove
has enough characters to uniquely identify it so that completion can work.
¯ To use tab completion to remove the file ‘No Way’ in the current directory, type:
$ rm No
TAB Way
RET
In the above example, after
TAB was typed, the shell filled in the rest of the file name (‘ Way’).
When a file name begins with a control character or other strange character, specify the file name
with a file name pattern that uniquely identifies it (see Section 5.8 [Specifying File Names with Patterns],
page 72, for tips on building file name patterns). Use the ‘-i’ option to verify the deletion.
¯
« ¨
To delete the file ‘ˆAcat’ in a directory that also contains the files ‘cat’ and ‘dog’, type:

$ rm -i ?cat
RET
rm: remove ‘ˆAcat’? y
RET

ª$
©
 In the above example, the expansion pattern ‘?cat’ matches the file ‘ˆAcat’ and no other files in
the directory. The ‘-i’ option was used because, in some cases, no unique pattern can be made for a
file—for example, if this directory also contained a file called ‘1cat’, the above rm command would
also attempt to remove it; with the ‘-i’ option, you can answer n to it.
These first two methods will not work with files that begin with a hyphen character, because rm will
interpret such a file name as an option; to remove such a file, use the ‘--’ option—it specifies that what
follows are arguments and not options.
¯ To remove the file ‘-cat’ from the current directory, type:
$ rm -- -cat
RET

5.6.2 A Safe Way to Remove a File

WWW: ftp://ftp.wg.omron.co.jp/pub/unix-faq/docs
WWW: http://dsl.org/comp/tinyutils/

Once a file is removed, it is permanently deleted and there is no command you can use to restore it; you
cannot “undelete” it. (Although if you can unmount the filesystem that contained the file immediately
after you deleted the file, a wizard might be able to help reconstruct the lost file by using grep to search
the filesystem device file.)
A safer way to remove files is to use del, which is simply an alias to rm with the ‘-i’ option. This
specifies for rm to run in interactive mode and confirm the deletion of each file. It may be good practice
to get in the habit of using del all the time, so that you don’t make an accidental slip and rm an important
file.
NOTE: Question 3.6 in the Unix FAQ (see ‘/usr/doc/FAQ/unix-faq-part3’) discusses this
issue, and gives a shell script called can that you can use in place of rm—it puts files in a “trashcan”
directory instead of removing them; you then periodically empty out the trashcan with rm.

5.7 Giving a File More than One Name

Links are special files that point to other files; when you act on a file that is a link, you act on the file it
points to. There are two kinds of links: hard links and symbolic links. A hard link is another name for an
existing file; there is no difference between the link and the original file. So if you make a hard link from
file ‘foo’ to file ‘bar’, and then remove file ‘bar’, file ‘foo’ is also removed. Each file has at least
one hard link, which is the original file name itself. Directories always have at least two hard links—the
directory name itself (which appears in its parent directory) and the special file ‘.’ inside the directory.
Likewise, when you make a new subdirectory, the parent directory gains a new hard link for the special
file ‘..’ inside the new subdirectory.
A symbolic link (sometimes called a “symlink” or “soft link”) passes most operations—such as
reading and writing—to the file it points to, just as a hard link does. However, if you remove a symlink,
you remove only the symlink itself, and not the original file.
Use ln (“link”) to make links between files. Give as arguments the name of the source file to link
from and the name of the new file to link to. By default, ln makes hard links.
¯ To create a hard link from ‘seattle’ to ‘emerald-city’, type:
$ ln seattle emerald-city
RET
This command makes a hard link from an existing file, ‘seattle’, to a new file, ‘emerald-city’.
You can read and edit file ‘emerald-city’ just as you would ‘seattle’; any changes you
make to ‘emerald-city’ are also written to ‘seattle’ (and vice versa). If you remove the file
‘emerald-city’, file ‘seattle’ is also removed.
To create a symlink instead of a hard link, use the ‘-s’ option.
¯ To create a symbolic link from ‘seattle’ to ‘emerald-city’, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

$ ln -s seattle emerald-city
RET

After running this command, you can read and edit ‘emerald-city’; any changes you make
to ‘emerald-city’ will be written to ‘seattle’ (and vice versa). But if you remove the file
‘emerald-city’, the file ‘seattle’ will not be removed.

5.8 Specifying File Names with Patterns

The shell provides a way to construct patterns, called file name expansions, that specify a group of files.
You can use them when specifying file and directory names as arguments to any tool or application.
The following table lists the various file expansion characters and their meaning.
C HARACTER D ESCRIPTION
* The asterisk matches a series of zero or more characters, and is some-
times called the “wildcard” character. For example, * alone matches
all file names, a* matches all file names that consist of an ‘a’ character
followed by zero or more characters, and a*b matches all file names
that begin with an ‘a’ character and end with a ‘b’ character, with any
(or no) characters in between.
? The question mark matches exactly one character. Therefore, ? alone
matches all file names with exactly one character, ?? matches all file
names with exactly two characters, and a? matches any file name that
begins with an ‘a’ character and has exactly one character following
it.
[list ] Square brackets match one character in list. For example, [ab]
matches exactly two file names: ‘a’ and ‘b’. The pattern c[io]
matches ‘ci’ and ‘co’, but no other file names.
˜ The tilde character expands to your home directory. For exam-
ple, if your username is joe and therefore your home directory is
‘/home/joe’, then ‘˜’ expands to ‘/home/joe’. You can follow
the tilde with a path to specify a file in your home directory—for ex-
ample, ‘˜/work’ expands to ‘/home/joe/work’.
Brackets also have special meaning when used in conjunction with other characters, as described by
the following table.
C HARACTER D ESCRIPTION
- A hyphen as part of a bracketed list denotes a range of characters
to match—so [a-m] matches any of the lowercase letters from ‘a’
through ‘m’. To match a literal hyphen character, use it as the first
or last character in the list. For example, a[-b]c matches the files
‘a-c’ and ‘abc’.
! Put an exclamation point at the beginning of a bracketed list to match
all characters except those listed. For example, a[!b]c matches all
files that begin with an ‘a’ character, end with a ‘c’ character, and
have any one character, except a ‘b’ character, in between; it matches
‘aac’, ‘a-c’, ‘adc’, and so on.
You can combine these special expansion characters in any combination, and you can specify more
than one pattern as multiple arguments. The following examples show file expansion in action using
commands described in this chapter.
¯To list all files in the ‘/usr/bin’ directory that have the text ‘tex’ anywhere in their name, type:
$ ls /usr/bin/*tex*
RET
¯To copy all files whose names end with ‘.txt’ to the ‘doc’ subdirectory, type:
 $ cp *.txt doc
RET
¯ To output a verbose listing of all files whose names end with either a ‘.txt’ or ‘.text’ extension,
sorting the list so that newer files are listed first, type:
$ ls -lt *.txt *.text
RET
¯ To move all files in the ‘/usr/tmp’ directory whose names consist of the text ‘song’ followed by
an integer from 0 to 9 and a ‘.cdda’ extension, placing them in a directory ‘music’ in your home
directory, type:
$ mv /usr/tmp/song[0-9].cdda ˜/music
RET
¯ To remove all files in the current working directory that begin with a hyphen and have the text ‘out’
somewhere else in their file name, type:
$ rm -- -*out*
RET
¯ To concatenate all files whose names consist of an ‘a’ character followed by two or more characters,
type:
$ cat a??*
RET

5.9 Browsing Files

You can view and peruse local files in a Web browser, such as the text-only browser lynx or the graphical
Mozilla browser for X.
The lynx tool is very good for browsing files on the system—give the name of the directory to
browse, and lynx will display a listing of available files and directories in that directory.
You can use the cursor keys to browse and press
RET on a subdirectory to traverse to that direc-
tory; lynx can display plain text files, compressed text files, and files written in HTML; it’s useful for
browsing system documentation in the ‘/usr/doc’ and ‘/usr/share/doc’ directories, where many
software packages come with help files and manuals written in HTML.
¯ To browse the system documentation files in the ‘/usr/doc’ directory, type:
$ lynx /usr/doc
RET
For more about using lynx, see Section 31.3 [Reading Text from the Web], page 288.
With Mozilla and some other browsers you must precede the full path name with the ‘file:/’
URN—so the ‘/usr/doc’ directory would be ‘file://usr/doc’. With lynx, just give a local
path name as an argument.
¯ To browse the system documentation files in the ‘/usr/doc’ directory in Mozilla, type the fol-
lowing in Mozilla’s Location window:
file://usr/doc
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
6 Sharing Files
Groups, file ownership, and access permissions are Linux features that enable users to share files with
one another. But even if you don’t plan on sharing files with other users on your system, familiarity with
these concepts will help you understand how file access and security work in Linux.

6.1 Groups and How to Work in Them

A group is a set of users, created to share files and to facilitate collaboration. Each member of a group can
work with the group’s files and make new files that belong to the group. The system administrator can
add new groups and give users membership to the different groups, according to the users’ organizational
needs. For example, a system used by the crew of a ship might have groups such as galley, deck,
bridge, and crew; the user captain might be a member of all the groups, but user steward might
be a member of only the galley and crew groups.
On a Linux system, you’re always a member of at least one group: your login group. You are the only
member of this group, and its group name is the same as your username.
Let’s look at how to manage your group memberships.

6.1.1 Listing the Groups a User Belongs To

To list a user’s group memberships, use the groups tool. Give a username as an argument, and groups
outputs a line containing that username followed by all of the groups the user is a member of. With no
arguments, groups lists your own username and group memberships.
¯
« ¨
To list your group memberships, type:

$ groups
RET
steward galley crew

ª$
©
In this example, three groups are output: steward (the user’s login group), galley, and crew.
¯
« ¨
To list the group memberships of user blackbeard, type:

$ groups blackbeard
RET

blackbeard : blackbeard

ª$
©
In this example, the command outputs the given username, blackbeard, followed by the name
of one group, blackbeard, indicating that user blackbeard belongs to only one group: his login
group.

6.1.2 Listing the Members of a Group

Debian: ‘members’

To list the members of a particular group, use the members tool, giving the name of the particular group
as an argument.
¯ To output a list of the members of the galley group, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ members galley
RET
captain steward pete

ª$
©
In this example, three usernames are output, indicating that these three users are the members of the
galley group.

6.2 File Ownership

Every file belongs to both a user and a group—usually to the user who created it and to the group the user
was working in at the time (which is almost always the user’s login group). File ownership determines
the type of access users have to particular files (see Section 6.3 [Controlling Access to Files], page 76).

6.2.1 Determining the Ownership of a File

To find out which user and group own a particular file, use ls with the ‘-l’ option to list the file’s
attributes (see Section 5.3.1 [Listing File Attributes], page 64). The name of the user who owns the file
appears in the third column of the output, and the name of the group that owns the file appears in the
fourth column.
For example, suppose the verbose listing for a file called ‘cruise’ looks like this:
-rwxrw-r-- 1 captain crew 8,420 Jan 12 21:42 cruise
The user who owns this file is captain, and the group that owns it is crew.
NOTE: When you create a file, it normally belongs to you and to your login group, but you can change
its ownership, as described in the next recipe. You normally own all of the files in your home directory.

6.2.2 Changing the Ownership of a File

You can’t give away a file to another user, but other users can make copies of a file that belongs to you,
provided they have read permission for that file (see Section 6.3 [Controlling Access to Files], page 76).
When you make a copy of another user’s file, you own the copy.
You can also change the group ownership of any file you own. To do this, use chgrp; it takes as
arguments the name of the group to transfer ownership to and the names of the files to work on. You
must be a member of the group you want to give ownership to.
¯ To change the group ownership of file ‘cruise’ to bridge, type:
$ chgrp bridge cruise
RET
This command transfers group ownership of ‘cruise’ to bridge; the file’s group access permis-
sions (see Section 6.3 [Controlling Access to Files], page 76) now apply to the members of the bridge
group.
Use the ‘-R’ option to recursively change the group ownership of directories and all of their contents.
¯ To give group ownership of the ‘maps’ directory and all the files it contains to the bridge group,
type:
$ chgrp -R bridge maps
RET

6.3 Controlling Access to Files

Each file has permissions that specify what type of access to the file users have. There are three kinds
of permissions: read, write, and execute. You need read permission for a file to read its contents, write
permission to write changes to or remove it, and execute permission to run it as a program.
Normally, users have write permission only for files in their own home directories. Only the superuser
has write permission for the files in important directories, such as ‘/bin’ and ‘/etc’—so as a regular
user, you never have to worry about accidentally writing to or removing an important system file.
 Permissions work differently for directories than for other kinds of files. Read permission for a
directory means that you can see the files in the directory; write permission lets you create, move, or
remove files in the directory; and execute permission lets you use the directory name in a path (see
Chapter 5 [Files and Directories], page 59).
If you have read permission but not execute permission for a directory, you can only read the names
of files in that directory—you can’t read their other attributes, examine their contents, write to them, or
execute them. With execute but not read permission for a directory, you can read, write to, or execute
any file in the directory, provided that you know its name and that you have the appropriate permissions
for that file.
Each file has separate permissions for three categories of users: the user who owns the file, all other
members of the group that owns the file, and all other users on the system. If you are a member of the
group that owns a file, the file’s group permissions apply to you (unless you are the owner of the file, in
which case the user permissions apply to you).
When you create a new file, it has a default set of permissions—usually read and write for the user,
and read for the group and all other users. (On some systems, the default permissions are read and write
for both the user and group, and read for all other users.)
The file access permissions for a file are collectively called its access mode. The following sections
describe how to list and change file access modes, including how to set the most commonly used access
modes.
NOTE: The superuser, root, can always access any file on the system, regardless of its access permis-
sions.
See Info file ‘fileutils.info’, node ‘File permissions’, for more information on file per-
missions and access modes.

6.3.1 Listing the Permissions of a File

To list a file’s access permissions, use ls with the ‘-l’ option (see Section 5.3.1 [Listing File Attributes],
page 64). File access permissions appear in the first column of the output, after the character for file type.
For example, consider the verbose listing of the file ‘cruise’:
-rwxrw-r-- 1 captain crew 8,420 Jan 12 21:42 cruise
The first character (‘-’) is the file type; the next three characters (‘rwx’) specify permissions for the
user who owns the file; and the next three (‘rw-’) specify permissions for all members of the group that
owns the file except for the user who owns it. The last three characters in the column (‘r--’) specify
permissions for all other users on the system.
All three permissions sections have the same format, indicating from left to right, read, write, and
execute permission with ‘r’, ‘w’, and ‘x’ characters. A hyphen (‘-’) in place of one of these letters
indicates that permission is not given.
In this example, the listing indicates that the user who owns the file, captain, has read, write, and
execute permission, and the group that owns the file, crew, has read and write permission. All other
users on the system have only read permission.

6.3.2 Changing the Permissions of a File

To change the access mode of any file you own, use the chmod (“change mode”) tool. It takes two
arguments: an operation, which specifies the permissions to grant or revoke for certain users, and the
names of the files to work on.
To build an operation, first specify the category or categories of users as a combination of the follow-
ing characters:
C HARACTER C ATEGORY
u The user who owns the file.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

g All other members of the file’s group.

o All other users on the system.
a All users on the system; this is the same as ‘ugo’.
Follow this with the operator denoting the action to take:
O PERATOR ACTION
+ Add permissions to the user’s existing permissions.
- Remove permissions from the user’s existing permissions.
= Make these the only permissions the user has for this file.
Finally, specify the permissions themselves:
C HARACTER P ERMISSION
r Set read permission.
w Set write permission.
x Set execute permission.
For example, use ‘u+w’ to add write permission to the existing permissions for the user who owns
the file, and use ‘a+rw’ to add both read and write permissions to the existing permissions of all users.
(You could also use ‘ugo+rw’ instead of ‘a+rw’.)

6.3.3 Write-Protecting a File

If you revoke users’ write permissions for a file, they can no longer write to or remove the file. This
effectively “write-protects” a file, preventing accidental changes to it. A write-protected file is sometimes
called a “read only” file.
To write-protect a file so that no users other than yourself can write to it, use chmod with ‘go-w’ as
the operation.
¯To write-protect the file ‘cruise’ so that no other users can change it, type:
$ chmod go-w cruise
RET

6.3.4 Making a File Private

To make a file private from all other users on the system, use chmod with ‘go=’ as the operation. This
revokes all group and other access permissions.
¯To make the file ‘cruise’ private from all users but yourself, type:
$ chmod go= cruise
RET

6.3.5 Making a File Public

To allow anyone with an account on the system to read and make changes to a file, use chmod with
‘a+rw’ as the operation. This grants read and write permission to all users, making the file “public.”
When a file has read permission set for all users, it is called world readable, and when a file has write
permission set for all users, it is called world writable.
¯To make the file ‘cruise’ both world readable and world writable, type:
$ chmod a+rw cruise
RET

6.3.6 Making a File Executable

An executable file is a file that you can run as a program. To change the permissions of a file so that all
users can run it as a program, use chmod with ‘a+x’ as the operation.
 ¯ To give execute permission to all users for the file ‘myscript’, type:
$ chmod a+x myscript
RET
NOTE: Often, shell scripts that you obtain or write yourself do not have execute permission set, and
you’ll have to do this yourself.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
7 Finding Files
Sometimes you will need to find files on the system that match given criteria, such as name and file size.
This chapter will show you how to find a file when you know only part of the file name, and how to find
a file whose name matches a given pattern. You will also learn how to list files and directories by their
size and to find the locations of commands.
NOTE: When you want to find files in a directory whose contents match a particular pattern, search
through the files with grep—see Chapter 14 [Searching Text], page 147. A method of searching for a
given pattern in the contents of files in different directories is given in Section 7.2.5 [Running Commands
on the Files You Find], page 84.
See Info file ‘find.info’, node ‘Top’, for more information on finding files.

7.1 Finding All Files That Match a Pattern

The simplest way to find files is with GNU locate. Use it when you want to list all files on the
system whose full path name matches a particular pattern—for example, all files with the text ‘audio’
somewhere in their full path name, or all files ending with ‘ogg’; locate outputs a list of all files on the
system that match the pattern, giving their full path name. When specifying a pattern, you can use any
of the file name expansion characters (see Section 5.8 [Specifying File Names with Patterns], page 72).
¯ To find all the files on the system that have the text ‘audio’ anywhere in their name, type:
$ locate audio
RET
¯ To find all the files on the system whose file names end with the text ‘ogg’, type:
$ locate *ogg
RET
¯ To find all hidden “dotfiles” on the system, type:
$ locate /.
RET
NOTE: locate searches are not case sensitive.
Sometimes, a locate search will generate a lot of output. Pipe the output to less to peruse it (see
Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).

7.2 Finding Files in a Directory Tree

Use find to find specific files in a particular directory tree, specifying the name of the directory tree to
search, the criteria to match, and—optionally—the action to perform on the found files. (Unlike most
other tools, you must specify the directory tree argument before any other options.)
You can specify a number of search criteria, and format the output in various ways; the following
sections include recipes for the most commonly used find commands, as well as a list of find’s most
popular options.

7.2.1 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Name

Use find to find files in a directory tree by name. Give the name of the directory tree to search through,
and use the ‘-name’ option followed by the name you want to find.
¯ To list all files on the system whose file name is ‘top’, type:
$ find / -name top
RET
This command will search all directories on the system to which you have access; if you don’t have
execute permission for a directory, find will report that permission is denied to search the directory.
The ‘-name’ option is case sensitive; use the similar ‘-iname’ option to find name regardless of
case.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To list all files on the system whose file name is ‘top’, regardless of case, type:
$ find / -iname top
RET
This command would match any files whose name consisted of the letters ‘top’, regardless of case—
including ‘Top’, ‘top’, and ‘TOP’.
Use file expansion characters (see Section 5.8 [Specifying File Names with Patterns], page 72) to find
files whose names match a pattern. Give these file name patterns between single quotes.
¯ To list all files on the system whose names begin with the characters ‘top’, type:
$ find / -name ’top*’
RET
¯ To list all files whose names begin with the three characters ‘top’ followed by exactly three more
characters, type:
$ find / -name ’top???’
RET
¯ To list all files whose names begin with the three characters ‘top’ followed by five or more charac-
ters, type:
$ find / -name ’top?????*’
RET
¯ To list all files in your home directory tree that end in ‘.tex’, regardless of case, type:
$ find ˜ -iname ’*.tex’
RET
¯ To list all files in the ‘/usr/share’ directory tree with the text ‘farm’ somewhere in their name,
type:
$ find /usr/share -name ’*farm*’
RET
Use ‘-regex’ in place of ‘-name’ to search for files whose names match a regular expression, or
a pattern describing a set of strings (see Section 14.2 [Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns],
page 148).
¯ To list all files in the current directory tree whose names have either the string ‘net’ or ‘comm’
anywhere in their file names, type:
$ find . -regex ’.*\(net\|comm\).*’
RET
NOTE: The ‘-regex’ option matches the whole path name, relative to the directory tree you specify,
and not just file names.

7.2.2 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Size

To find files of a certain size, use the ‘-size’ option, following it with the file size to match. The file
size takes one of three forms: when preceded with a plus sign (‘+’), it matches all files greater than the
given size; when preceded with a hyphen or minus sign (‘-’), it matches all files less than the given size;
with neither prefix, it matches all files whose size is exactly as specified. (The default unit is 512-byte
blocks; follow the size with ‘k’ to denote kilobytes or ‘b’ to denote bytes.)
¯ To list all files in the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree that are greater than 10,000 kilobytes in size,
type:
$ find /usr/local -size +10000k
RET
¯ To list all files in your home directory tree less than 300 bytes in size, type:
$ find ˜ -size -300b
RET
¯ To list all files on the system whose size is exactly 42 512-byte blocks, type:
$ find / -size 42
RET
Use the ‘-empty’ option to find empty files—files whose size is 0 bytes. This is useful for finding
files that you might not need, and can remove.
¯ To find all empty files in your home directory tree, type:
$ find ˜ -empty
RET
NOTE: To find the largest or smallest files in a given directory, output a sorted listing of that directory
(see Section 7.3 [Finding Files in Directory Listings], page 86).

7.2.3 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Modification Time

To find files last modified during a specified time, use find with the ‘-mtime’ or ‘-mmin’ options;
the argument you give with ‘-mtime’ specifies the number of 24-hour periods, and with ‘-mmin’ it
specifies the number of minutes.
¯ To list the files in the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree that were modified exactly 24 hours ago, type:
$ find /usr/local -mtime 1
RET
¯ To list the files in the ‘/usr’ directory tree that were modified exactly five minutes ago, type:
$ find /usr -mmin 5
RET
To specify a range of time, precede the number you give with either a plus sign (‘+’) to match times
that are equal to or greater than the given argument, or a hyphen or minus sign (‘-’) to match times that
are equal to or less than the given argument.
¯ To list the files in the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree that were modified within the past 24 hours,
type:
$ find /usr/local -mtime -1
RET
¯ To list the files in the ‘/usr’ directory tree that were modified within the past five minutes, type:
$ find /usr -mmin -5
RET
Include the ‘-daystart’ option to measure time from the beginning of the current day instead of
24 hours ago.
¯ To list all of the files in your home directory tree that were modified yesterday, type:
$ find ˜ -mtime 1 -daystart
RET
¯ To list all of the files in the ‘/usr’ directory tree that were modified one year or longer ago, type:
$ find /usr -mtime +356 -daystart
RET
¯ To list all of the files in your home directory tree that were modified from two to four days ago,
type:
$ find ˜ -mtime 2 -mtime -4 -daystart
RET
In the preceding example, the combined options ‘-mtime 2’ and ‘-mtime -4’ matched files that
were modified between two and four days ago.
To find files newer than a given file, give the name of that file as an argument to the ‘-newer’ option.
¯ To find files in the ‘/etc’ directory tree that are newer than the file ‘/etc/motd’, type:
$ find /etc -newer /etc/motd
RET
To find files newer than a given date, use the trick described in the find Info documentation: create
a temporary file in ‘/tmp’ with touch whose timestamp is set to the date you want to search for, and
then specify that temporary file as the argument to ‘-newer’.
¯ To list all files in your home directory tree that were modified after May 4 of the current year, type:
$ touch -t 05040000 /tmp/timestamp
RET
$ find ˜ -newer /tmp/timestamp
RET
In this example, a temporary file called ‘/tmp/timestamp’ is written; after the search, you can
remove it (see Section 5.6 [Removing Files and Directories], page 70).
NOTE: You can also find files that were last accessed a number of days after they were modified by
giving that number as an argument to the ‘-used’ option. This is useful for finding files that get little
use—files matching ‘-used +100’, say, were accessed 100 or more days after they were last modified.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

7.2.4 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Owner

To find files owned by a particular user, give the username to search for as an argument to the ‘-user’
option.
¯ To list all files in the ‘/usr/local/fonts’ directory tree owned by the user warwick, type:
$ find /usr/local/fonts -user warwick
RET
The ‘-group’ option is similar, but it matches group ownership instead of user ownership.
¯ To list all files in the ‘/dev’ directory tree owned by the audio group, type:
$ find /dev -group audio
RET

7.2.5 Running Commands on the Files You Find

You can also use find to execute a command you specify on each found file, by giving the command as
an argument to the ‘-exec’ option. If you use the string ‘’{}’’ in the command, this string is replaced
with the file name of the current found file when the command executes. Mark the end of the command
with the string ‘’;’’.
¯ To find all files in the ‘˜/html/’ directory tree with an ‘.html’ extension, and output lines from
these files that contain the string ‘organic’, type:
$ find ˜/html/ -name ’*.html’ -exec grep organic ’{}’ ’;’
RET
In this example, the command grep organic file is executed for each file that find finds, with
file being the name of each file in turn.
To have find pause and confirm execution for each file it finds, use ‘-ok’ instead of ‘-exec’.
¯ To remove files from your home directory tree that were accessed more than one year after they
were last modified, pausing to confirm before each removal, type:
$ find ˜ -used +365 -ok rm ’{}’ ’;’
RET

7.2.6 Finding Files by Multiple Criteria

You can combine many of find’s options to find files that match multiple criteria.
¯ To list files in your home directory tree whose names begin with the string ‘top’, and that are newer
than the file ‘/etc/motd’, type:
$ find ˜ -name ’top*’ -newer /etc/motd
RET
¯ To compress all the files in your home directory tree that are two megabytes or larger, and that are
not already compressed with gzip (having a ‘.gz’ file name extension), type:
$ find ˜ -size +2000000c -regex ’.*[ˆgz]’ -exec gzip ’{}’ ’;’
RET
The following tables describe many other options you can use with find. The first table lists and
describes find’s general options for specifying its behavior. As you will see, find can take many
different options; see its man page or its info documentation for all of them.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-daystart Use the beginning of today rather than 24 hours previous for time cri-
teria.
-depth Search the subdirectories before each directory.
-help Output a help message and exit.
-maxdepth levels Specify the maximum number of directory levels to descend in the
specified directory tree.
-mount or -xdev Do not descend directories that have another disk mounted on them.
-version Output the version number and exit.
The following table lists and describes find’s options for specifying which files to find.
Specify the numeric arguments to these options in one of three ways: preceded with a plus sign (‘+’)
to match values equal to or greater than the given argument; preceded with a hyphen or minus sign (‘-’)
to match values equal to or less than the given argument; or give the number alone to match exactly that
value.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-amin minutes Time in minutes since the file was last accessed.
-anewer file File was accessed more recently than file.
-atime days Time in days since the file was last accessed.
-cmin minutes Time in minutes since the file was last changed.
-cnewer file File was changed more recently than file.
-ctime days Days since the file was last changed.
-empty File is empty.
-group group Name of the group that owns file.
-iname pattern Case-insensitive file name pattern to match (‘report’ matches the
files ‘Report’, ‘report’, ‘REPORT’, etc.).
-ipath pattern Full path name of file matches the pattern pattern, regard-
less of case (‘./r*rt’ matches ‘./records/report’ and
‘./Record-Labels/ART’.
-iregex regexp Path name of file, relative to specified directory tree, matches the reg-
ular expression regexp, regardless of case (‘t?p’ matches ‘TIP’ and
‘top’).
-links links Number of links to the file (see Section 5.7 [Giving a File More than
One Name], page 71).
-mmin minutes Number of minutes since the file’s data was last changed.
-mtime days Number of days since the file’s data was last changed.
-name pattern Base name of the file matches the pattern pattern.
-newer file File was modified more recently than file.
-path pattern Full path name of file matches the pattern pattern (‘./r*rt’ matches
‘./records/report’).
-perm access mode File’s permissions are exactly access mode (see Section 6.3 [Control-
ling Access to Files], page 76).
-regex regexp Path name of file, relative to specified directory tree, matches the reg-
ular expression regexp.
-size size File uses size space, in 512-byte blocks. Append size with ‘b’ for
bytes or ‘k’ for kilobytes.
-type type File is type type, where type can be ‘d’ for directory, ‘f’ for regular
file, or ‘l’ for symbolic link.
-user user File is owned by user.
The following table lists and describes find’s options for specifying what to do with the files it finds.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

-exec commands Specifies commands, separated by semicolons, to be executed on

matching files. To specify the current file name as an argument to a
command, use ‘{}’.
-ok commands Like ‘-exec’ but prompts for confirmation before executing com-
mands.
-print Outputs the name of found files to the standard output, each followed
by a newline character so that each is displayed on a line of its own.
On by default.
-printf format Use “C-style” output (the same as used by the printf function in the
C programming language), as specified by string format.
The following table describes the variables may be used in the format string used by the ‘-printf’
option.
VARIABLE D ESCRIPTION
\a Ring the system bell (called the “alarm” on older systems).
\b Output a backspace character.
\f Output a form feed character.
\n Output a newline character.
\r Output a carriage return.
\t Output a horizontal tab character.
\\ Output a backslash character.
%% Output a percent sign character.
%b Output file’s size, rounded up in 512-byte blocks.
%f Output base file name.
%h Output the leading directories of file’s name.
%k Output file’s size, rounded up in 1K blocks.
%s Output file’s size in bytes.

7.3 Finding Files in Directory Listings

The following recipes show how to find the largest and smallest files and directories in a given directory
or tree by listing them by size. They also show how to find the number of files in a given directory.

7.3.1 Finding the Largest Files in a Directory

To find the largest files in a given directory, use ls to list its contents with the ‘-S’ option, which sorts
files in descending order by their size (normally, ls outputs files sorted alphabetically). Include the ‘-l’
option to output the size and other file attributes.
¯ To list the files in the current directory, with their attributes, sorted with the largest files first, type:
$ ls -lS
RET
NOTE: Pipe the output to less to peruse it (see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).

7.3.2 Finding the Smallest Files in a Directory

To list the contents of a directory with the smallest files first, use ls with both the ‘-S’ and ‘-r’ options,
which reverses the sorting order of the listing.
 ¯ To list the files in the current directory and their attributes, sorted from smallest to largest, type:
$ ls -lSr
RET

7.3.3 Finding the Smallest Directories

To output a list of directories sorted by their size—the size of all the files they contain—use du and
sort. The du tool outputs directories in ascending order with the smallest first; the ‘-S’ option puts
the size in kilobytes of each directory in the first column of output. Give the directory tree you want to
output as an option, and pipe the output to sort with the ‘-n’ option, which sorts its input numerically.
¯ To output a list of the subdirectories of the current directory tree, sorted in ascending order by size,
type:
$ du -S . | sort -n
RET

7.3.4 Finding the Largest Directories

Use the ‘-r’ option with sort to reverse the listing and output the largest directories first.
¯ To output a list of the subdirectories in the current directory tree, sorted in descending order by size,
type:
$ du -S . | sort -nr
RET
¯ To output a list of the subdirectories in the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree, sorted in descending
order by size, type:
$ du -S /usr/local | sort -nr
RET

7.3.5 Finding the Number of Files in a Listing

To find the number of files in a directory, use ls and pipe the output to ‘wc -l’, which outputs the
number of lines in its input (see Section 12.1 [Counting Text], page 133).
¯
« ¨
To output the number of files in the current directory, type:

$ ls | wc -l
RET
19

ª
$
©
In this example, the command outputs the text ‘19’, indicating that there are 19 files in the current
directory.
Since ls does not list hidden files by default (see Section 5.3.4 [Listing Hidden Files], page 65), the
preceding command does not count them. Use ls’s ‘-A’ option to count dot files as well.
¯
« ¨
To count the number of files—including dot files—in the current directory, type:

$ ls -A | wc -l
RET
81

ª
$
©
This command outputs the text ‘81’, indicating that there are 81 files, including hidden files, in the
current directory.
To list the number of files in a given directory tree, and not just a single directory, use find instead
of ls, giving the special find predicate ‘\! -type d’ to exclude the listing (and therefore, counting)
of directories.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To list the number of files in the ‘/usr/share’ directory tree, type:

$ find /usr/share \! -type d | wc -l
RET
¯ To list the number of files and directories in the ‘/usr/share’ directory tree, type:
$ find /usr/share | wc -l
RET
¯ To list the number of directories in the ‘/usr/share’ directory tree, type:
$ find /usr/share \! -type f | wc -l
RET

7.4 Finding Where a Command Is Located

Use which to find the full path name of a tool or application from its base file name; when you give the
base file name as an option, which outputs the absolute file name of the command that would have run
had you typed it. This is useful when you are not sure whether or not a particular command is installed
on the system.
¯
« ¨
To find out whether perl is installed on your system, and, if so, where it resides, type:

$ which perl
RET

ª/usr/bin/perl
©
In this example, which output ‘/usr/bin/perl’, indicating that the perl binary is installed in
the ‘/usr/bin’ directory.
NOTE: This is also useful for determining “which” binary would execute, should you type the name,
since some systems may have different binaries of the same file name located in different directories. In
that case, you can use which to find which one would execute.
8 Managing Files
File management tools include those for splitting, comparing, and compressing files, making backup
archives, and tracking file revisions. Other management tools exist for determining the contents of a file,
and for changing its timestamp.

8.1 Determining File Type and Format

When we speak of a file’s type, we are referring to the kind of data it contains, which may include text,
executable commands, or some other data; this data is organized in a particular way in the file, and
this organization is called its format. For example, an image file might contain data in the JPEG image
format, or a text file might contain unformatted text in the English language or text formatted in the TEX
markup language.
The file tool analyzes files and indicates their type and—if known—the format of the data they
contain. Supply the name of a file as an argument to file and it outputs the name of the file, followed
by a description of its format and type.
¯
« ¨
To determine the format of the file ‘/usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz’, type:

$ file /usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz
RET

/usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz: gzip compressed data, deflated, original
filename, last modified: Sun Apr 26 02:51:48 1998, os: Unix

ª$
©
This command reports that the file ‘/usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz’ contains data that has been
compressed with the gzip tool.
To determine the original format of the data in a compressed file, use the ‘-z’ option.
¯ To determine the format of the compressed data contained in the file

« ¨
‘/usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz’, type:

$ file -z /usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz
RET

/usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz: English text (gzip compressed data, deflated,
original filename, last modified: Sun Apr 26 02:51:48 1998, os: Unix)

ª$
©
This command reports that the data in ‘/usr/doc/HOWTO/README.gz’, a compressed file, is
English text.
NOTE: Currently, file differentiates among more than 100 different data formats, including several
human languages, many sound and graphics formats, and executable files for many different operating
systems.

8.2 Changing File Modification Time

Use touch to change a file’s timestamp without modifying its contents. Give the name of the file to be
changed as an argument. The default action is to change the timestamp to the current time.
¯ To change the timestamp of file ‘pizzicato’ to the current date and time, type:
$ touch pizzicato
RET
To specify a timestamp other than the current system time, use the ‘-d’ option, followed by the date
and time that should be used enclosed in quote characters. You can specify just the date, just the time, or
both.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To change the timestamp of file ‘pizzicato’ to ‘17 May 1999 14:16’, type:
$ touch -d ’17 May 1999 14:16’ pizzicato
RET
¯ To change the timestamp of file ‘pizzicato’ to ‘14 May’, type:
$ touch -d ’14 May’ pizzicato
RET
¯ To change the timestamp of file ‘pizzicato’ to ‘14:16’, type:
$ touch -d ’14:16’ pizzicato
RET
NOTE: When only the date is given, the time is set to ‘0:00’; when no year is given, the current year is
used.
See Info file ‘fileutils.info’, node ‘Date input formats’, for more information on date
input formats.

8.3 Splitting a File into Smaller Ones

It’s sometimes necessary to split one file into a number of smaller ones. For example, suppose you have a
very large sound file in the near-CD-quality MPEG2, level 3 (“MP3”) format. Your file, ‘large.mp3’,
is 4,394,422 bytes in size, and you want to transfer it from your desktop to your laptop, but your laptop
and desktop are not connected on a network—the only way to transfer files between them is by floppy
disk. Because this file is much too large to fit on one floppy, you use split.
The split tool copies a file, chopping up the copy into separate files of a specified size. It takes as
optional arguments the name of the input file (using standard input if none is given) and the file name
prefix to use when writing the output files (using ‘x’ if none is given). The output files’ names will
consist of the file prefix followed by a group of letters: ‘aa’, ‘ab’, ‘ac’, and so on—the default output
file names would be ‘xaa’, ‘xab’, and so on.
Specify the number of lines to put in each output file with the ‘-l’ option, or use the ‘-b’ option to
specify the number of bytes to put in each output file. To specify the output files’ sizes in kilobytes or
megabytes, use the ‘-b’ option and append ‘k’ or ‘m’, respectively, to the value you supply. If neither
‘-l’ nor ‘-b’ is used, split defaults to using 1,000 lines per output file.
¯ To split ‘large.mp3’ into separate files of one megabyte each, whose names begin with
‘large.mp3.’, type:
$ split -b1m large.mp3 large.mp3.
RET
This command creates five new files whose names begin with ‘large.mp3.’. The first four files
are one megabyte in size, while the last file is 200,118 bytes—the remaining portion of the original file.
No alteration is made to ‘large.mp3’.
You could then copy these five files onto four floppies (the last file fits on a floppy with one of the
larger files), copy them all to your laptop, and then reconstruct the original file with cat (see Section 10.6
[Concatenating Text], page 116).
¯ To reconstruct the original file from the split files, type:
$ cat large.mp3.* > large.mp3
RET
$ rm large.mp3.*
RET
In this example, the rm tool is used to delete all of the split files after the original file has been
reconstructed.

8.4 Comparing Files

There are a number of tools for comparing the contents of files in different ways; these recipes show how
to use some of them. These tools are especially useful for comparing passages of text in files, but that’s
not the only way you can use them.
8.4.1 Determining Whether Two Files Differ
Use cmp to determine whether or not two text files differ. It takes the names of two files as arguments,
and if the files contain the same data, cmp outputs nothing. If, however, the files differ, cmp outputs the
byte position and line number in the files where the first difference occurs.
¯ To determine whether the files ‘master’ and ‘backup’ differ, type:
$ cmp master backup
RET

8.4.2 Finding the Differences between Files

Use diff to compare two files and output a difference report (sometimes called a “diff”) containing
the text that differs between two files. The difference report is formatted so that other tools (namely,
patch—see Section 8.4.3 [Patching a File with a Difference Report], page 91) can use it to make a file
identical to the one it was compared with.
To compare two files and output a difference report, give their names as arguments to diff.
¯ To compare the files ‘manuscript.old’ and ‘manuscript.new’, type:
$ diff manuscript.old manuscript.new
RET

The difference report is output to standard output; to save it to a file, redirect the output to the file to
save to:
$ diff manuscript.old manuscript.new > manuscript.diff
RET

In the preceding example, the difference report is saved to a file called ‘manuscript.diff’.
The difference report is meant to be used with commands such as patch, in order to apply the
differences to a file. See Info file ‘diff.info’, node ‘Top’, for more information on diff and the
format of its output.
To better see the difference between two files, use sdiff instead of diff; instead of giving a
difference report, it outputs the files in two columns, side by side, separated by spaces. Lines that differ
in the files are separated by ‘|’; lines that appear only in the first file end with a ‘<’, and lines that appear
only in the second file are preceded with a ‘>’.
¯ To peruse the files ‘laurel’ and ‘hardy’ side by side on the screen, with any differences indicated
between columns, type:
$ sdiff laurel hardy | less
RET

To output the difference between three separate files, use diff3.

¯ To output a difference report for files ‘larry’, ‘curly’, and ‘moe’, and output it in a file called
‘stooges’, type:
$ diff3 larry curly moe > stooges
RET

8.4.3 Patching a File with a Difference Report

To apply the differences in a difference report to the original file compared in the report, use patch.
It takes as arguments the name of the file to be patched and the name of the difference report file (or
“patchfile”). It then applies the changes specified in the patchfile to the original file. This is especially
useful for distributing different versions of a file—small patchfiles may be sent across networks easier
than large source files.
¯ To update the original file ‘manuscript.new’ with the patchfile ‘manuscript.diff’, type:
$ patch manuscript.new manuscript.diff
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

8.5 Compressed Files

File compression is useful for storing or transferring large files. When you compress a file, you shrink it
and save disk space. File compression uses an algorithm to change the data in the file; to use the data in
a compressed file, you must first uncompress it to restore the original data (and original file size).
The following recipes explain how to compress and uncompress files.

8.5.1 Compressing a File

Use the gzip (“GNU zip”) tool to compress files. It takes as an argument the name of the file or files to
be compressed; it writes a compressed version of the specified files, appends a ‘.gz’ extension to their
file names, and then deletes the original files.
¯ To compress the file ‘war-and-peace’, type:
$ gzip war-and-peace
RET
This command compresses the file ‘war-and-peace’, putting it in a new file named
‘war-and-peace.gz’; gzip then deletes the original file, ‘war-and-peace’.

8.5.2 Decompressing a File

To access the contents of a compressed file, use gunzip to decompress (or “uncompress”) it.
Like gzip, gunzip takes as an argument the name of the file or files to work on. It expands
the specified files, writing the output to new files without the ‘.gz’ extensions, and then deletes the
compressed files.
¯ To expand the file ‘war-and-peace.gz’, type:
$ gunzip war-and-peace.gz
RET
This command expands the file ‘war-and-peace.gz’ and puts it in a new file called
‘war-and-peace’; gunzip then deletes the compressed file, ‘war-and-peace.gz’.
NOTE: You can view a compressed text file without uncompressing it by using zless. This is useful
when you want to view a compressed file but do not want to write changes to it. (For more information
about zless, see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).

8.6 File Archives

An archive is a single file that contains a collection of other files, and often directories. Archives are
usually used to transfer or make a backup copy of a collection of files and directories—this way, you can
work with only one file instead of many. This single file can be easily compressed as explained in the
previous section, and the files in the archive retain the structure and permissions of the original files.
Use the tar tool to create, list, and extract files from archives. Archives made with tar are some-
times called “tar files,” “tar archives,” or—because all the archived files are rolled into one—“tarballs.”
The following recipes show how to use tar to create an archive, list the contents of an archive,
and extract the files from an archive. Two common options used with all three of these operations are
‘-f’ and ‘-v’: to specify the name of the archive file, use ‘-f’ followed by the file name; use the ‘-v’
(“verbose”) option to have tar output the names of files as they are processed. While the ‘-v’ option is
not necessary, it lets you observe the progress of your tar operation.
NOTE: The name of this tool comes from “tape archive,” because it was originally made to write the
archives directly to a magnetic tape device. It is still used for this purpose, but today, archives are almost
always saved to a file on disk.
See Info file ‘tar.info’, node ‘Top’, for more information about managing archives with tar.
8.6.1 Creating a File Archive
To create an archive with tar, use the ‘-c’ (“create”) option, and specify the name of the archive file
to create with the ‘-f’ option. It’s common practice to use a name with a ‘.tar’ extension, such as
‘my-backup.tar’.
Give as arguments the names of the files to be archived; to create an archive of a directory and all of
the files and subdirectories it contains, give the directory’s name as an argument.
¯ To create an archive called ‘project.tar’ from the contents of the ‘project’ directory, type:
$ tar -cvf project.tar project
RET
This command creates an archive file called ‘project.tar’ containing the ‘project’ directory
and all of its contents. The original ‘project’ directory remains unchanged.
Use the ‘-z’ option to compress the archive as it is being written. This yields the same output as
creating an uncompressed archive and then using gzip to compress it, but it eliminates the extra step.
¯ To create a compressed archive called ‘project.tar.gz’ from the contents of the ‘project’
directory, type:
$ tar -zcvf project.tar.gz project
RET
This command creates a compressed archive file, ‘project.tar.gz’, containing the ‘project’
directory and all of its contents. The original ‘project’ directory remains unchanged.
NOTE: When you use the ‘-z’ option, you should specify the archive name with a ‘.tar.gz’ exten-
sion and not a ‘.tar’ extension, so the file name shows that the archive is compressed. This is not a
requirement, but it serves as a reminder and is the standard practice.

8.6.2 Listing the Contents of an Archive

To list the contents of a tar archive without extracting them, use tar with the ‘-t’ option.
¯ To list the contents of an archive called ‘project.tar’, type:
$ tar -tvf project.tar
RET
This command lists the contents of the ‘project.tar’ archive. Using the ‘-v’ option along with
the ‘-t’ option causes tar to output the permissions and modification time of each file, along with its
file name—the same format used by the ls command with the ‘-l’ option (see Section 5.3.1 [Listing
File Attributes], page 64).
Include the ‘-z’ option to list the contents of a compressed archive.
¯ To list the contents of a compressed archive called ‘project.tar.gz’, type:
$ tar -ztvf project.tar
RET

8.6.3 Extracting Files from an Archive

To extract (or unpack) the contents of a tar archive, use tar with the ‘-x’ (“extract”) option.
¯ To extract the contents of an archive called ‘project.tar’, type:
$ tar -xvf project.tar
RET
This command extracts the contents of the ‘project.tar’ archive into the current directory.
If an archive is compressed, which usually means it will have a ‘.tar.gz’ or ‘.tgz’ extension,
include the ‘-z’ option.
¯ To extract the contents of a compressed archive called ‘project.tar.gz’, type:
$ tar -zxvf project.tar.gz
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: If there are files or subdirectories in the current directory with the same name as any of those in
the archive, those files will be overwritten when the archive is extracted. If you don’t know what files
are included in an archive, consider listing the contents of the archive first (see Section 8.6.2 [Listing the
Contents of an Archive], page 93).
Another reason to list the contents of an archive before extracting them is to determine whether the
files in the archive are contained in a directory. If not, and the current directory contains many unrelated
files, you might confuse them with the files extracted from the archive.
To extract the files into a directory of their own, make a new directory, move the archive to that
directory, and change to that directory, where you can then extract the files from the archive.

8.7 Tracking Revisions to a File

The Revision Control System (RCS) is a set of tools for managing multiple revisions of a single file.
To store a revision of a file so that RCS can keep track of it, you check in the file with RCS. This
deposits the revision of the file in an RCS repository—a file that RCS uses to store all changes to that
file. RCS makes a repository file with the same file name as the file you are checking in, but with a ‘,v’
extension appended to the name. For example, checking in the file ‘foo.text’ with RCS creates a
repository file called ‘foo.text,v’.
Each time you want RCS to remember a revision of a file, you check in the file, and RCS writes to
that file’s RCS repository the differences between the file and the last revision on record in the repository.
To access a revision of a file, you check out the revision from RCS. The revision is obtained from the
file’s repository and is written to the current directory.
Although RCS is most often used with text files, you can also use it to keep track of revisions made
to other kinds of files, such as image files and sound files.
Another revision control system, Concurrent Versions System (CVS), is used for tracking collections
of multiple files whose revisions are made concurrently by multiple authors. While much less simple than
RCS, it is very popular for managing free software projects on the Internet. See Info file ‘cvs.info’,
node ‘Top’, for information on using CVS.

8.7.1 Checking In a File Revision

When you have a version of a file that you want to keep track of, use ci to check in that file with RCS.
Type ci followed by the name of a file to deposit that file into the RCS repository. If the file has
never before been checked in, ci prompts for a description to use for that file; each subsequent time the
file is checked in, ci prompts for text to include in the file’s revision log (see Section 8.7.3 [Viewing a
File’s Revision Log], page 96). Log messages may contain more than one line of text; type a period (‘.’)
on a line by itself to end the entry.
For example, suppose the file ‘novel’ contains this text:
This is a tale about many things, including a long voyage across
America.
¯
« ¨
To check in the file ‘novel’ with RCS, type:

$ ci novel
RET
novel,v <-- novel
enter description, terminated with single ’.’ or end of file:
NOTE: This is NOT the log message!
>> The Great American Novel.
RET
>> .
RET

ª
$
©
 This command deposits the file in an RCS repository file called ‘novel,v’, and the original file,
‘novel’, is removed. To edit or access the file again, you must check out a revision of the file from RCS
with which to work (see Section 8.7.2 [Checking Out a File Revision], page 95).
Whenever you have a new revision that you want to save, use ci as before to check in the file. This
begins the process all over again.
For example, suppose you have checked out the first revision of ‘novel’ and changed the file so that
it now looks like this:
This is a very long tale about a great many things, including my long
voyage across America, and back home again.
¯
« ¨
To deposit this revision in RCS, type:

$ ci novel
RET
novel,v <-- novel
new revision: 1.2; previous revision: 1.1
enter log message, terminated with single ’.’ or end of file:
>> Second draft.
RET
>> .
RET

ª$
©
If you create a subdirectory called ‘RCS’ (in all uppercase letters) in the current directory, RCS
recognizes this specially named directory instead of the current directory as the place to store the ‘,v’
revision files. This helps reduce clutter in the directory you are working in.
If the file you are depositing is a text file, you can have RCS insert a line of text, every time the
file is checked out, containing the name of the file, the revision number, the date and time in the UTC
(Coordinated Universal Time) time zone, and the user ID of the author. To do this, put the text ‘$Id$’
at a place in the file where you want this text to be written. You only need to do this once; each time you
check the file out, RCS replaces this string in the file with the header text.
For example, this chapter was written to a file, ‘managing-files.texinfo’, whose revisions
were tracked with RCS; the ‘$Id$’ string in this file currently reads:
$Id: managing-files.texinfo,v 1.32 2001/05/16 16:57:58 m Exp m $

8.7.2 Checking Out a File Revision

Use co to check out a revision of a file from an RCS repository.
To check out the latest revision of a file that you intend to edit (and to check in later as a new revision),
use the -l (for “lock”) option. Locking a revision in this fashion prevents overlapping changes being
made to the file should another revision be accidentally checked out before this revision is checked in.
¯ To check out the latest revision of the file ‘novel’ for editing, type:
$ co -l novel
RET
This command checks out the latest revision of file ‘novel’ from the ‘novel,v’ repository, writing
it to a file called ‘novel’ in the current directory. (If a file with that name already exists in the current
directory, co asks whether or not to overwrite the file.) You can make changes to this file and then check
it in as a new revision (see Section 8.7.1 [Checking In a File Revision], page 94).
You can also check out a version of a file as read only, where changes cannot be written to it. Do this
to check out a version to view only and not to edit.
To check out the current version of a file for examination, type co followed by the name of the file.
¯ To check out the current revision of file ‘novel’, but not permit changes to it, type:
$ co novel
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This command checks out the latest revision of the file ‘novel’ from the RCS repository ‘novel,v’
(either from the current directory or in a subdirectory named ‘RCS’).
To check out a version other than the most recent version, specify the version number to check out
with the ‘-r’ option. Again, use the ‘-l’ option to allow the revision to be edited.
¯ To check out revision 1.14 of file ‘novel’, type:
$ co -l -r1.14 novel
RET
NOTE: Before checking out an old revision of a file, remember to check in the latest changes first, or
they may be lost.

8.7.3 Viewing a File’s Revision Log

Use rlog to view the RCS revision log for a file—type rlog followed by the name of a file to list all
of the revisions of that file.
¯ To view the revision log for file ‘novel’, type:
« ¨
$ rlog novel
RET

RCS file: novel,v

Working file: novel
head: 1.2
branch:
locks: strict
access list:
symbolic names:
keyword substitution: kv
total revisions: 2; selected revisions: 2
description:
The Great American Novel.
----------------------------
revision 1.2
date: 1991/06/20 15:31:44; author: leo; state: Exp; lines: +2 -
2
Second draft.
----------------------------
revision 1.1
date: 1991/06/21 19:03:58; author: leo; state: Exp;
Initial revision
====================================================================

ª$
©
This command outputs the revision log for the file ‘novel’; it lists information about the RCS
repository, including its name (‘novel,v’) and the name of the actual file (‘novel’). It also shows that
there are two revisions—the first, which was checked in to RCS on 20 June 1991, and the second, which
was checked in to RCS the next day, on 21 June 1991.
PART THREE: Text
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
9 Viewing Text
Dealing with textual matter is the meat of Linux (and of most computing), so there are going to be many
chapters about the various aspects of text. This first chapter in this part of the book shows how to view
text on your display screen.
There are many ways to view or otherwise output text. When your intention is to edit the text of a
file, open it in a text editor, as described in Chapter 10 [Text Editing], page 107.
Some kinds of files—such as PostScript, DVI, and PDF files—often contain text in them, but they
are technically not text files. These are image format files, and I describe methods for viewing them in
Section 17.1 [Previewing Print Files], page 183.
NOTE: To learn how to browse files and their contents in a Web browser, see Section 5.9 [Browsing
Files], page 73.

9.1 Perusing Text

Use less to peruse text, viewing it one screen (or “page”) at a time. The less tool works on either files
or standard output—it is popularly used as the last command on a pipeline so that you can page through
the text output of some commands. For an example, see Section 3.2.4 [Redirecting Output to Another
Command’s Input], page 37.
zless is identical to less, but you use it to view compressed text files; it allows you to read a
compressed text file’s contents without having to uncompress it first (see Section 8.5 [Compressed Files],
page 92). Most of the system documentation in the ‘/usr/doc’ and ‘/usr/share/doc’ directories,
for example, consists of compressed text files.
You may, on occasion, be confronted with a reference to a command for paging text called more.
It was the standard tool for paging text until it gave way to less in the early to mid-1990s; less
comes with many more options—its most notable advantage being the ability to scroll backward through
a file—but at the expense of being almost exactly three times the size of more. Hence there are two
meanings to the saying, “less is more.”

9.1.1 Perusing a Text File

To peruse or page through a text file, give the name of the file as an argument to less.
¯ To page through the text file ‘README’, type:
$ less README
RET
This command starts less and displays the file ‘README’ on the screen.
You can more forward through the document a line at a time by typing
, and you can move forward
through the document a screenful at a time by typing
PgDn. To move backward by a line, type
, and
type
PgUp to move backward by a screenful.
You can also search through the text you are currently perusing—this is described in Section 14.7
[Searching Text in Less], page 155.
To stop viewing and exit less, press
Q.

9.1.2 Perusing Multiple Text Files

You can specify more than one file to page through with less, and you can specify file patterns in order
to open all of the files that match that pattern.
¯ To page through all of the Unix FAQ files in ‘/usr/doc/FAQ’, type:
$ less /usr/doc/FAQ/unix-faq-part*
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This command starts less, opens in it all of the files that match the given pattern
«
‘/usr/doc/FAQ/unix-faq-part*’, and begins displaying the first one:
¨

ª ©
NOTE: When you specify more than one file to page, less displays each file in turn, beginning with
the first file you specify or the first file that matches the given pattern. To move to the next file, press
N;
to move to the previous file, press
P.

9.1.3 Commands Available While Perusing Text

The following table gives a summary of the keyboard commands that you can use while paging through
text in less. It lists the keystrokes and describes the commands.

K EYSTROKE C OMMAND

 Scroll back through the text (“up”) one line.

 Scroll forward through the text (“down”) one line.

 or
 Scroll horizontally (left or right) one tab stop; useful for perusing files
that contain long lines.

PgUp or
SPC Scroll forward through the text by one screenful.

PgDn Scroll backward through the text by one screenful.
C-l Redraw the screen.
/pattern Search forward through the file for lines containing pattern.
?pattern Search backward through the file for lines containing pattern.
< Move to beginning of the file.
> Move to end of the file.
h Display a help screen.
q Quit viewing the file and exit less.
9.2 Outputting Text
The simplest way to view text is to output it to standard output. This is useful for quickly looking at part
of a text, or for passing part of a text to other tools in a command line.
Many people still use cat to view a text file, especially if it is a very small file. To output all of a
file’s contents on the screen, use cat and give the file name as an argument.
This isn’t always the best way to peruse or read text—a very large text will scroll off the top of the
screen, for example—but sometimes the simple outputting of text is quite appropriate, such as when you
just want to output one line of a file, or when you want to output several files into one new file.
This section describes the tools used for such purposes. These tools are best used as filters, often at
the end of a pipeline, outputting the standard input from other commands.
NOTE: Tools and methods for outputting text for printing, such as outputting text in a font, are described
in Section 15.2 [Converting Plain Text for Output], page 159.

9.2.1 Showing Non-printing Characters

Use cat with the ‘-v’ option to output non-printing characters, such as control characters, in such a
way so that you can see them. With this option, cat outputs those characters in hat notation, where they
are represented by a ‘ˆ’ and the character corresponding to the actual control character (for example, a
bell character would be output as ‘ˆG’).
¯ To peruse the file ‘translation’ with non-printing characters displayed in hat notation, type:
$ cat -v translation | less
RET
In this example, the output of cat is piped to less for viewing on the screen; you could have piped
it to another command, or redirected it to a file instead.
To visually display the end of each line, use the ‘-E’ option; it specifies that a ‘$’ should be output
after the end of each line. This is useful for determining whether lines contain trailing space characters.
Also useful is the ‘-T’ option, which outputs tab characters as ‘ˆI’.
The ‘-A’ option combines all three of these options—it is the same as specifying ‘-vET’.

9.2.2 Outputting a Beginning Part of a Text

Use head to output the beginning of a text. By default, it outputs the first ten lines of its input.
¯ To output the first ten lines of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ head placement-list
RET
You can specify as a numeric option the number of lines to output. If you specify more lines than a
file contains, head just outputs the entire text.
¯ To output the first line of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ head -1 placement-list
RET
¯ To output the first sixty-six lines of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ head -66 placement-list
RET
To output a given number of characters instead of lines, give the number of characters to output as
an argument to the ‘-c’ option.
¯ To output the first character in the file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ head -c1 placement-list
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

9.2.3 Outputting an Ending Part of a Text

The tail tool works like head, but outputs the last part of its input. Like head, it outputs ten lines by
default.
¯ To output the last ten lines of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ tail placement-list
RET
¯ To output the last fourteen lines of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ tail -14 placement-list
RET

It is sometimes useful to view the end of a file on a continuing basis; this can be useful for a “growing”
file, a file that is being written to by another process. To keep viewing the end of such a file, use tail
with the ‘-f’ (“follow”) option. Type C-c to stop viewing the file.
¯ To follow the end of the file ‘access_log’, type:
$ tail -f access_log
RET

NOTE: You can achieve the same result with less; to do this, type F while perusing the text (see
Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).

9.2.4 Outputting a Middle Part of a Text

There are a few ways to output only a middle portion of a text.
To output a particular line of a file, use the sed tool (see Section 10.5 [Editing Streams of Text],
page 116). Give as a quoted argument the line number to output followed by ‘!d’. Give the file name as
the second argument.
¯ To output line 47 of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ sed ’47!d’ placement-list
RET

To output a region of more than one line, give the starting and ending line numbers, separated by a
comma.
¯ To output lines 47 to 108 of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ sed ’47,108!d’ placement-list
RET

You can also combine multiple head or tail commands on a pipeline to get the desired result (see
Section 3.2.4 [Redirecting Output to Another Command’s Input], page 37).
¯ To output the tenth line in the file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ head placement-list | tail -1
RET
¯ To output the fifth and fourth lines from the bottom of file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ tail -5 placement-list | head -2
RET
¯ To output the 500th character in ‘placement-list’, type:
$ head -c500 placement-list | tail -c1
RET
¯ To output the first character on the fifth line of the file ‘placement-list’, type:
$ head -5 placement-list | tail -1 | head -c1
RET

In the preceding example, three commands were used: the first five lines of the file
‘placement-list’ are passed to tail, which outputs the last line in the output (the fifth line in the
file); then, the last head command outputs the first character in that last line, which achieves the desired
result.
9.2.5 Outputting the Text between Strings
Use sed to select lines of text between strings and output either just that section of text, or all of the
lines of text except that section. The strings can be words or even regular expressions (see Section 14.2
[Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns], page 148).
Use the ‘-n’ option followed by ‘’/first /,/last /p’’ to output just the text between the strings first
and last, inclusive. This is useful for outputting, say, just one chapter or section of a text file when you
know the text used to begin the sections with.
¯ To output all the text from file ‘book-draft’ between ‘Chapter 3’ and ‘Chapter 4’, type:
$ sed -n ’/Chapter 3/,/Chapter 4/p’ book-draft
RET
To output all of the lines of text except those between two patterns, omit the ‘-n’ option.
¯ To output all the text from file ‘book-draft’, except that which lies between the text ‘Chapter
3’ and ‘Chapter 4’, type:
$ sed ’/Chapter 3/,/Chapter 4/p’ book-draft
RET
NOTE: For a more thorough introduction to sed, see Section 10.5 [Editing Streams of Text], page 116.

9.2.6 Outputting Text in a Dialect

Debian: ‘filters’
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/˜mkporwit/pub_links/davido/slang/
WWW: http://www.mathlab.sunysb.edu/˜elijah/src.html

There are all kinds of tools that work as filters on text; this recipe describes a specific group of filters—
those that filter their standard input to give the text an accent or dialect, and are intended to be humorous.
Generally speaking, a filter is a tool that works on standard input, changing it in some way, and then
passing it to standard output.
¯ To apply the kraut filter to the text in the file ‘/etc/motd’, type:
$ cat /etc/motd | kraut
RET
These commands pass the contents of the file ‘/etc/motd’ to the kraut filter, whose output is
then sent to standard output. The contents of ‘/etc/motd’ are not changed.
Some of the dialect filters available include nyc, which gives a “New Yawker” dialect to text, and
newspeak, which translates text into the approved language of the thought police, as described in
George Orwell’s novel, 1984. Hail Big Brother!

9.3 Streaming Text

WWW: http://www.maurer-it.com/open-source/sview/

It’s been demonstrated that people read and comprehend printed text faster than they read and com-
prehend text displayed on a computer display screen. Rapid serial visual presentation, or RSVP, is
a technique that aims to increase reading speed and comprehension with the use of computer display
screens. With this technique, text is displayed streamed on the screen, one word at a time, with pauses
between words and punctuation. The average reading time is lowered and comprehension is increased
significantly with this technique.
GNOME sview is a “streaming viewer” for X; it streams text a word at a time on the screen, at a
default rate of 450 words per minute. Use it to read text files and the X selection, which is text you have
selected with the mouse (see Section 10.4 [Selecting Text], page 115).
To open a file in sview, either specify it as an argument to the command, or choose Open from the
File menu in sview, and select the file from there.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To view the contents of the text file ‘alice-in-wonderland’ in sview, type:

$ sview alice-in-wonderland
RET
To start streaming the text, either press
S once, or left-click on the button marked RSVP. Both
S
and the RSVP button toggle the streaming; the left and right arrow keys control the speed.
Text being streamed with sview looks like this:

The large area with the word ‘beginning’ in it is where the text is being streamed. The text in the
lower-left window is a shrunken view of the entire file, the text in the lower-right window is the paragraph
from which the current word comes from.
To open another file, choose it from the menu; you can have many files open in sview at once.
sview places each file in its own buffer. You can also paste the X selection into a buffer of its own—to
switch to a different buffer, choose its name from the Buffer menu.
Type
Q to quit reading and exit sview.
The following table lists the keyboard commands used in sview and describes their meaning.
K EYSTROKE D ESCRIPTION

 Decrease the stream speed.

 Increase the stream speed.
C-o Open a file.
C-q Quit viewing text and exit sview.
C-w Erase the current text buffer.
M-n Move forward to the next word.
M-p Move backward to the previous word.

S Toggle the streaming of text.

X Display the X selection in its own buffer.

N Move forward to the next paragraph.

P Move backward to the previous paragraph.

9.4 Viewing a Character Chart

To view a character chart containing a list of all the valid characters in the ASCII character set and the
character codes to use to type them, view the ascii man page.
¯ To view an ASCII character set, type:
 $ man ascii
RET

You can use the octal codes listed for each character to type them in Emacs—see Section 10.2.5
[Inserting Special Characters in Emacs], page 113.
The default Linux character set, the ISO 8859-1 (“Latin 1”) character set, contains all of the standard
ASCII character set plus an additional 128 characters.
To view the ISO 8859-1 character set, which contains an extended set of characters above the standard
127 ASCII characters, view the iso_8859_1 man page.
¯ To view the ISO 8859-1 character set, type:
$ man iso_8859_1
RET
You can use this page to see all of the characters in this character set and how to input them.
NOTE: There’s a special way to “quote” these characters in Emacs; this technique is described in Sec-
tion 10.2.5 [Inserting Special Characters in Emacs], page 113.
The ‘miscfiles’ package also contains charts for these character sets, as explained in Section 11.4
[Word Lists and Reference Files], page 130.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
10 Text Editing

Text editing is one of the most fundamental activities of computing on Linux-based systems, or most any
computer for that matter. We edit text when writing a document, sending email, making a Web page,
posting an article for Usenet, programming—and the list goes on. Most people spend a good deal of their
computing time editing text with a text editor application.
There are a lot of text editors to choose from on Linux systems, as the first recipe in this chapter
shows, but the majority of editors fit in one of two families of editor: Emacs and Vi. Most users prefer
one or the other; rarely is one adept at both. I give more coverage to Emacs, and not only because it’s
my preferred editor—its keystroke commands are used by default in many other tools and applications,
including the bash shell (see Chapter 3 [The Shell], page 33).

10.1 Choosing the Perfect Text Editor

The following table describes some of the more interesting text editors available, and includes informa-
tion about their special traits and characteristics.
T EXT E DITOR D ESCRIPTION
ae Anthony’s Editor, ae, is a simple, easy-to-use text editor. It has modes to emulate
the behavior of other text editors.
Debian: ‘ae’
WWW: http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Editors/Vi/
cooledit Cooledit is a popular, fast text editor for use in X; its features include anti-aliased
fonts, Unicode support, and extensibility via the Python programming language.
Debian: ‘cooledit’
WWW: http://cooledit.sourceforge.net/
dedit DEdit is a simple editor for use in X with GNOME installed. It can read com-
pressed files and display Japanese characters.
Debian: ‘dedit’
ee Intended to be an editor that novices can begin using immediately, the Easy Editor
features pop-up menus.
Debian: ‘ee’
WWW: http://mahon.cwx.net/
elvis Elvis is a modern implementation of Vi that comes with many new features and
extensions.
Debian: ‘elvis’
WWW: http://www.fh-wedel.de/elvis/
emacs Emacs is one of the two most-popular text editors. I’ve devoted an entire section
to it in this book: Section 10.2 [Emacs], page 108.
Debian: ‘emacsen-common’
Debian: ‘emacs20’
WWW: ‘http://www.emacs.org/’
jed John E. Davis’s jed offers many of the conveniences of Emacs and is geared
specifically toward programmers. It loads quickly, and makes editing files at a
shell prompt easy and fast.
Debian: ‘jed’
WWW: http://space.mit.edu/˜davis/jed.html
joe Joe’s Own Editor, joe, is a full-screen editor with a look and feel reminiscent of
old DOS text editors like EDIT.
Debian: ‘joe’
WWW: ftp://ftp.std.com/src/editors/
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

nano Nano is a free software editor inspired by Pico, the editor that is included with
the University of Washington’s proprietary Pine email program. It’s also faster
than Pico, and comes with more features.
Debian: ‘nano’
WWW: http://www.nano-editor.org/
ted Ted is a WYSIWYG text editor for use in X which reads and writes ‘.rtf’ files
in Microsoft’s “Rich Text Format.”
Debian: ‘ted’
WWW: http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/
the The Hessling Editor is a configurable editor that uses the Rexx macro language.
It was inspired by the XEDIT editor for VM/CMS and the Kedit editor for DOS.
Debian: ‘the’
Debian: ‘the-doc’
WWW: http://www.lightlink.com/hessling/THE/
vi Vi (pronounced “vye,” or sometimes “vee-eye”) is a visual, or full-screen, editor.
Touch typists often find its keystroke commands enable very fast editing.
Together with Emacs, Vi shares the spotlight for most popular editor on Linux
and Unix-based systems in general. Both were initially written in the same pe-
riod, and both have their staunch adherents. To run a hands-on tutorial, see Sec-
tion 10.3 [Running a Vi Tutorial], page 114.
Debian: ‘nvi’
WWW: ftp://mongoose.bostic.com/pub/nvi.tar.gz
vim Like the Elvis editor, Vim (“Vi improved”) is a modern implementation of Vi
whose new features include syntax coloring, scrollbars and menus, mouse sup-
port, and built-in help.
Debian: ‘vim’
WWW: http://www.vim.org/
wily Wily, an interesting mouse-centric editor, is inspired by the Acme editor from
AT&T’s Plan 9 experimental operating system. Wily commands consist of vari-
ous combinations of the three mouse buttons, called chords, which can be tricky
to master.
Debian: ‘wily’
WWW: http://www.cs.su.oz.au/˜gary/wily/
xedit Xedit is a simple text editor that comes with, and works in, X. It lets you insert,
delete, copy and paste text as well as open and save files—the very basics.
Debian: ‘xcontrib’
xemacs XEmacs is a version of Emacs with advanced capabilities for use in X, including
the ability to display images.
Debian: ‘emacsen-common’
Debian: ‘xemacs’
WWW: http://www.xemacs.org/

10.2 Emacs
Debian: ‘emacsen-common’
WWW: ‘http://www.emacs.org/’

To call Emacs a text editor does not do it justice—it’s a large application capable of performing many
functions, including reading email and Usenet news, browsing the World Wide Web, and even perfunc-
tory psychoanalysis.
There is more than one version of Emacs. GNU Emacs is the Emacs released under the auspices of
Richard Stallman, who wrote the original Emacs predecessor in the 1970s. XEmacs (formerly Lucid
Emacs) offers essentially the same features GNU Emacs does, but also contains its own features for use
with the X Window System (it also behaves differently from GNU Emacs in some minor ways).
GNU Emacs and XEmacs are by far the most popular emacsen (as they are referred to in number);
other flavors include jed (described in the previous section) and Chet’s Emacs, ce, developed by a
programmer at Case Western Reserve University.
Following is a brief introduction to using Emacs, interspersed with the necessary Emacs jargon;
following that are recipes that describe how to use some of Emacs’s advanced editing features.

10.2.1 Getting Acquainted with Emacs

Start Emacs in the usual way, either by choosing it from the menu supplied by your window manager in
X, or by typing its name (in lowercase letters) at a shell prompt.
¯ To start GNU Emacs at a shell prompt, type:
$ emacs
RET
¯ To start XEmacs at a shell prompt, type:
$ xemacs
RET
Upon startup in X, a typical GNU Emacs window looks like this (the window frame will differ
depending on your window manager):

The welcome message appears when Emacs first starts, and it tells you, among other things, how to
run a tutorial (which we’ll look at in just a minute).
The top bar is called the menu bar, and you can pull down its menus with the mouse (or, in the
console, with C-
F10).
A file or other text open in Emacs is held in its own area called a buffer. By default, the current buffer
appears in the large area underneath the menu bar. To write text in the buffer, just type it. The place in
the buffer where the cursor is at is called point, and is referenced by many Emacs commands.
The horizontal bar near the bottom of the Emacs window and directly underneath the current buffer is
called the mode line ; it gives information about the current buffer, including its name, what percentage
of the buffer fits on the screen, what line point is on, and whether or not the buffer is saved to a file.
The mode line also lists the modes active in the buffer. Emacs modes are general states that control the
way Emacs behaves—for example, when Overwrite mode is set, text you type overwrites the text at
point; in Insert mode (the default), text you type is inserted at point. Usually, either Fundamental
mode (the default) or Text mode will be listed.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

The echo area is where Emacs writes brief status messages, such as error messages; it is the last line
in the Emacs window. When you type a command that requires input, that input is requested in this area
(and when that happens, the place you type your input, in the echo area, is then called the minibuffer ).
Emacs commands usually begin with a Control or Meta (Escape) key sequence; many commands
begin with the C-x sequence, which you type by pressing and holding the
CTRL key and then pressing
the
X key (see [Typographical Conventions], page 3).
Because Emacs is different in culture from the editors and approach of the Microsoft Windows and
Apple MacOS world, it has gotten a rather unfounded reputation in those corners that it is odd and
difficult to use. This is not so. The keyboard commands to run its various functions are designed for ease
of use and easy recall.
For example, the find-file function prompts for the name of a file and opens a copy of the file in
a new buffer; its keyboard accelerator is C-x C-f (you can keep
CTRL depressed while you press and
release the
X and
F keys).
You can run any Emacs function by typing M-x followed by the function name and pressing
RET.
¯ To run the find-file function, type:
M-x find-file
RET

This command runs the find-file function, which prompts for the name of a file and opens a
copy of the file in a new buffer.
Type C-g in Emacs to quit a function or command; if you make a mistake when typing a command,
this is useful to cancel and abort the keyboard input.
Now that we have run through the essential Emacs terminology, I’ll show you how to exit the
program—just type C-x C-c.
Emacs can have more than one buffer open at once. To switch between buffers, type C-x C-b. Then,
give the name of the buffer to switch to, followed by
RET; alternatively, type
RET without a buffer name
to switch to the last buffer you had visited. (Viewing a buffer in Emacs is called visiting the buffer.)
¯ To switch to a buffer called ‘rolo’, type:
C-x C-b rolo
RET

A special buffer called ‘*scratch*’ is for notes and things you don’t want to save; it always exists
in Emacs.
¯ To switch to the ‘*scratch*’ buffer, type:
C-x C-b *scratch*
RET

Any file names you give as an argument to emacs will open in separate buffers:
$ emacs todo rolo /usr/local/src/nirvarna/README
RET

(You can also make new buffers and open files in buffers later, of course.)
Emacs comes with an interactive, self-paced tutorial that teaches you how to use the basics. In my
experience, setting aside 25 minutes to go through the tutorial is one of the best things you can do in
your computing career—even if you decide that you don’t like Emacs very much, a great many other
applications use Emacs-like keyboard commands and heuristics, so familiarizing yourself with them will
always pay off.
To start the tutorial at any time when you are in Emacs, type C-h t.
Incidentally, C-h is the Emacs help key; all help-related commands begin with this key. For example,
to read the Emacs FAQ, type C-h F, and to run the Info documentation browser (which contains The
GNU Emacs Manual ), type C-h i.
10.2.2 Basic Emacs Editing Keys
The following table lists basic editing keys and describes their function. Where two common keystrokes
are available for a function, both are given.
K EYS D ESCRIPTION

or C-p Move point up to the previous line.

 or C-n Move point down to the next line.

 or C-b Move point back through the buffer one character to the left.

 or C-f Move point forward through the buffer one character to the right.

PgUp or C-v Move point forward through the buffer one screenful.

PgDn or M-v Move point backward through the buffer one screenful.

BKSP or C-h Delete character to the left of point.

DEL or C-d Delete character to the right of point.

INS Toggles between Insert mode and Overwrite mode.

Shift-
INS or C-y Yank text in the kill ring at point (see Section 10.4.2 [Pasting Text],
page 115).
C-
SPC Set mark (see Section 10.4.1 [Cutting Text], page 115).
C-_ Undo the last action (control-underscore).
C-a Move point to the beginning of the current line.
C-e Move point to the end of the current line.
C-g Cancel the current command.
C-h F Open a copy of the Emacs FAQ in a new buffer.
C-h a function
RET List all Emacs commands related to function.
C-h i Start Info.
C-h k key Describe key.
C-h t Start the Emacs tutorial.
C-k Kill text from point to end of line.
C-l Re-center the text in the Emacs window, placing the line where point
is in the middle of the screen.
C-t Transpose the character at point with the character to the left of point.
C-u number Repeat the next command or keystroke you type number times.
C-w Kill text from mark to point.
C-x C-c Save all buffers open in Emacs, and then exit the program.
C-x C-f file
RET Open file in a new buffer for editing. To create a new file that does
not yet exist, just specify the file name you want to give it. To browse
through your files, type
TAB instead of a file name.
C-left-click Display a menu of all open buffers, sorted by major mode (works in X
only).

SHIFT-left-click Display a font selection menu (works in X only).
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

10.2.3 Making Abbreviations in Emacs

An abbrev is a word that is an abbreviation of a (usually) longer word or phrase. Abbrevs exist as a
convenience to you—you can define abbrevs to expand to a long phrase that is inconvenient to type, or
you can define a misspelling that you tend to make to expand to its correct spelling. Abbrevs only expand
when you have Abbrev mode enabled.
¯ To turn on Abbrev mode, type:
M-x abbrev-mode
RET
To define an abbrev, type the abbrev you want to use and then type C-x aig. Emacs will prompt in
the minibuffer for the text you want the abbrev to expand to; type that text and then type
RET.
¯ To define ‘rbf’ as an abbrev for ‘R. Buckminster Fuller’, do the following:
¯ First, type the abbrev itself:
rbf
¯ Next, specify that this text is to be an abbrev; type:
C-x aig
¯ Now type the text to expand it to:
Global expansion for "rbf": R. Buckminster Fuller
RET
Now, whenever you type ‘rbf’ followed by a whitespace or punctuation character in the current
buffer, that text will expand to the text ‘R. Buckminster Fuller’.
To save the abbrevs you have defined so that you can use them later, use the write-abbrev-
file function. This saves all of the abbrevs currently defined to a file that you can read in a future
Emacs session. (You can also open the file in a buffer and edit the abbrevs if you like.)
¯ To save the abbrevs you have currently defined to a file ‘˜/.misspelling-abbrevs’, type:
M-x write-abbrev-file
RET ˜/.misspelling-abbrevs
RET
Then, in a future Emacs session, you can use the read-abbrev-file function to define those
abbrevs for that session.
¯ To read the abbrevs from the file ‘˜/.misspelling-abbrevs’, and define them for the current
session, type:
M-x read-abbrev-file
RET ˜/.misspelling-abbrevs
RET
NOTE: Emacs mode commands are toggles. So to turn off Abbrev mode in a buffer, just type M-x
abbrev-mode
RET again. If you turn Abbrev mode on in that buffer later on during the Emacs
session, the abbrevs will be remembered and will expand again.

10.2.4 Recording and Running Macros in Emacs

A macro is like a recording of a sequence of keystrokes—when you run a macro, Emacs executes that
key sequence as if you had typed them.
To begin recording a macro, type C-x (. Then, everything you type is recorded as the macro until
you stop recording by typing C-x ). After you have recorded a macro, you can play it back at any
time during the Emacs session by typing C-x e. You can precede it with the universal-argument
command, C-u, to specify a number of times to play it back.
¯ To record a macro that capitalizes the first word of the current line (M-c capitalizes the word to the
right of point) and then advances to the next line, type:
C-x ( C-a M-c C-n C-x )
¯ To play the macro back 20 times, type:
C-u 20 C-x e
Macros are primary to how Emacs works—in fact, the name Emacs is derived from ‘Editing
MACroS’, because the first version of Emacs in 1976 was actually a collection of such macros written
for another text editor.
10.2.5 Inserting Special Characters in Emacs
There are some characters that you cannot normally type into an Emacs buffer. For example, in a text
file, you can specify a page break by inserting the formfeed character, ASCII C-l or octal code 014;
when you print a file with formfeeds, the current page is ejected at this character and printing is resumed
on a new page.
However, C-l has meaning as an Emacs command. To insert a character like this, use the quoted-
insert function, C-q. It takes either a literal keystroke to insert, or the octal code of the character to
insert. It inserts that character at point.
¯ To insert a formfeed character at point by specifying its actual keystroke (C-l), type:
C-q C-l
¯ To insert a formfeed character at point by specifying its octal character code, type:
C-q 014
RET
The preceding examples both do the same thing: they insert a formfeed character at point.
An interesting use of C-q is to underline text. To do this, insert a literal C-h character followed by
an underscore (‘_’) after each character you want to underline.
¯To underline the character before point, type:
C-q C-h _
You can then use ul to output the text to the screen (see Section 13.3 [Underlining Text], page 143).
Another kind of special character insert you might want to make is for accented characters and other
characters used in various languages.
To insert an accented character, use ISO Accents mode. When this mode is active, you can type a
special accent character followed by the character to be accented, and the proper accented character will
be inserted at point.
The following table shows the special accent characters and the key combinations to use.
P REFIX . . . P LUS T HIS L ETTER Y IELDS T HIS R ESULT
" a ä
" e ë
" i ï
" o ö
" u ü
" s ß
’ a á
’ e é
’ i í
’ o ó
’ u ú
‘ a à
‘ e è
‘ i ì
‘ o ò
‘ u ù
˜ a ã
˜ c ç
˜ d d̃
˜ n ñ
˜ t t̃
˜ u ũ
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

˜ < <<
˜ > >>
˜ ! ¡
˜ ? ¿
ˆ a â
ˆ e ê
ˆ i î
ˆ o ô
ˆ u û
/ a å
/ e æ
/ o ø
When a buffer contains accented characters, it can no longer be saved as plain ASCII text, but must
instead be saved as text in the ISO-8859-1 character set (see Section 9.4 [Viewing a Character Chart],
page 104). When you save a buffer, Emacs will notify you that it must do this.
¯ To type the line ‘Emacs ist spaß!’ in the current buffer, type:
M-x iso-accents-mode
RET
Emacs ist spa"ss!

In the event that you want to type the literal key combinations that make up an accented character in
a buffer where you have ISO Accents mode on, type the prefix character twice.
¯ To type the text ‘’o’ (and not the accent character ó) in a buffer while ISO Accents mode is on,
type:
’’o

NOTE: GNU Emacs has recently added a number of internationalization functions. A complete dis-
cussion of their use is out of the scope of this book; for more information on this topic, see section
“International Character Set Support” in The GNU Emacs Manual .

10.3 Running a Vi Tutorial

Debian: ‘nvi’
WWW: ftp://mongoose.bostic.com/pub/nvi.tar.gz
WWW: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/˜vaschelp/Editors/Vi/

The Vi editor comes with a hands-on, self-paced tutorial, which you can use in vi to learn how to use it.
It’s stored as a compressed file in the ‘/usr/doc/nvi’ directory; copy this file to your home directory,
uncompress it, and open it with vi to start the tutorial.
¯
« ¨
To run the vi tutorial, type the following from your home directory:

$ cp /usr/doc/nvi/vi.beginner.gz .
RET
$ gunzip vi.beginner
RET

ª$ vi vi.beginner
RET
©
NOTE: An advanced tutorial is also available in ‘/usr/doc/nvi’.
10.4 Selecting Text
In X, you can cut and paste text between other windows, including xterm and Emacs windows. The
most recently selected text is called the X selection.
In the console, you can cut and paste text in the same virtual console or into a different virtual console.
To do this, you need the gpm package installed and set up for your mouse (it’s a default, recommended
package).
The operations described in this section work the same both in X and in virtual consoles. You cannot
presently cut and paste text between X and a virtual console.
Three buttons on the mouse are used for cutting and pasting. If you have a two-button mouse, your
administrator can set it to emulate three buttons—to specify the middle button, press the left and right
buttons simultaneously.
Click the left mouse button and drag the mouse over text to select it. You can also double-click the
left mouse button on a word to select that word, and triple-click the left mouse button on a line to select
that line. Furthermore, you can click the left mouse button at one end of a portion of text you want to
select, and then click the right mouse button at the other end to select all of the text between the points.
NOTE: In an xterm window, when you’re running a tool or application locally in a shell (such as the
lynx Web browser), the left mouse button alone won’t work. When this happens, press and hold the

SHIFT key while using the mouse to select text.

10.4.1 Cutting Text

You don’t have to select text to cut it. At a shell prompt or in Emacs, type C-k to cut the text from the
cursor to the end of the line.
In Emacs parlance, cutting text is known as killing text. Emacs has additional commands for killing
text:
¯ When you have selected an area of text with the mouse as described previously, you can type
Shift-

DEL to delete it.

¯ You can also click the left mouse button at one end of an area of text and then double-click the right
mouse button at the other end of the area to kill the area of text.
¯ Finally, to kill a large portion of text in an Emacs buffer, set the mark at one end of the text by
moving point to that end and typing C-
SPC. Then, move point to the other end of the text, and type
C-w to kill it.

10.4.2 Pasting Text

Debian: ‘xpaste’

To paste the text that was last selected with the mouse, click the middle mouse button at the place you
want to paste to. You can also use the keyboard by moving the cursor to where you want to paste and
then typing
Shift-
INS. These commands work both in X and in the console.
In X, to display the contents of the X selection in its own window, run the xpaste X client; its only
purpose in life is to display this text in its window.
In Emacs, pasting text is called yanking the text. Emacs offers the additional key, C-y (“yank”), to
yank the text that was last selected or killed. This key also works in the bash shell, where it pastes the
last text that was killed with C-k in that shell session, if any.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

10.5 Editing Streams of Text

Some of the recipes in this book that work on text use sed, the “stream editor.” It is not a text editor
in the usual sense—you don’t open a file in sed and interactively edit it; instead, it performs editing
operations on a stream of text sent to its standard input, and it writes the results to the standard output.
This is more like a filter than an editor, and sed is a useful tool for formatting and searching through
text.
“The seder’s grab-bag” (http://seders.icheme.org/) is a useful collection of sed informa-
tion including a FAQ and many example scripts.
The sed “one-liners” (http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/unix/sed.html)
are useful commands for editing and processing text.
See Info file ‘sed.info’, node ‘Top’, for more information on sed usage.
Other tools that are good for stream editing include the AWK and Perl programming languages; to
learn more about using these powerful languages, I recommend the following books:
¯ The GNU Awk User’s Guide (http://www.gnu.org/manual/gawk-3.0.3/gawk.html)
¯ Picking Up Perl (http://www.ebb.org/PickingUpPerl/)

10.6 Concatenating Text

The cat tool gets its name because it concatenates all of the text given to it, outputting the result to the
standard output. It is useful for concatenating files of text together.
For example, suppose you have two files, ‘early’ and ‘later’. The file ‘early’ contains this
text:
This Side of Paradise
The Beautiful and Damned
And the file ‘later’ contains this text:
The Great Gatsby
Tender is the Night
The Last Tycoon
¯ To concatenate these files into a new file, ‘novels’, type:
$ cat early later > novels
RET
This command redirects the standard output to a new file, ‘novels’, which would then contain the
following text:
This Side of Paradise
The Beautiful and Damned
The Great Gatsby
Tender is the Night
The Last Tycoon
The files ‘early’ and ‘later’ are not altered.
Had you typed cat later early > novels instead, the files would be concatenated in that re-
versed order instead, beginning with ‘later’; so the file ‘novels’ would contain the following:
The Great Gatsby
Tender is the Night
The Last Tycoon
This Side of Paradise
The Beautiful and Damned
The following sections give other recipes for concatenating text.
NOTE: You can also use cat to concatenate files that are not text, but its most popular usage is with
text files. Another way to concatenate files of text in an automated way is to use file inclusion—see
Section 10.7 [Including Text Files], page 118.
A similar tool, zcat, reads the contents of compressed files.

10.6.1 Writing Text to Files

Sometimes, it’s too much trouble to call up a text editor for a particular job—you just want to write a text
file with two lines in it, say, or you just want to append a text file with one line. There are ways of doing
these kind of micro-editing jobs without a text editor.
To write a text file without using a text editor, redirect the standard output of cat to the file to write.
You can then type your text, typing C-d on a line of its own to end the file. This is useful when you
want to quickly create a small text file, but that is about it; usually, you open or create a text file in a text
editor, as described in the previous sections in this chapter.
¯
« ¨
To make a file, ‘novels’, with some text in it, type:

$ cat > novels
RET

This Side of Paradise
RET
The Beautiful and Damned
RET
The Great Gatsby
RET
Tender is the Night
RET
C-d

ª
$
©
In this example, the text file ‘novels’ was created and contains four lines of text (the last line with
the C-d is never part of the file).
Typing text like this without an editor will sometimes do in a pinch but, if you make a mistake, there
is not much recourse besides starting over—you can type C-u to erase the current line, and C-c to abort
the whole thing and not write the text to a file at all, but that’s about it.

10.6.2 Appending Text to a File

To add text to a text file without opening the file in a text editor, use cat with the append operator, ‘>>’.
(Using ‘>’ instead would overwrite the file.)
¯ To add a line of text to the bottom of file ‘novels’, type:
$ cat >> novels
RET
The Last Tycoon
RET
C-d
In this example, no files were specified to cat for input, so cat used the standard input; then, one
line of text was typed, and this text was appended to file ‘novels’, the file used in the example of the
previous recipe. So now this file would contain the following:
This Side of Paradise
The Beautiful and Damned
The Great Gatsby
Tender is the Night
The Last Tycoon
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

10.6.3 Inserting Text at the Beginning of a File

WWW: http://dsl.org/comp/tinyutils/

Inserting text at the beginning of a text file without calling up a text editor is a bit trickier than appending
text to a file’s end—but it is possible.
To insert one or more lines of text at the beginning of a file, use ins. Give the name of the file in
which to insert text as an argument; ins will read lines of text from the standard input and insert them
at the beginning of the file. (It works by opening the file in ed, a simple line editor.)
Give the EOF—that is, type C-d on a line by itself—to signify the end of the lines of text to insert.
¯
« ¨
To insert several lines of text at the beginning of the file ‘novels’, type:

$ ins novels
RET

The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald
RET
---------------------------------
RET
C-d

ª$
©
This command inserts two lines of text at the beginning of novels, the file used in the previous
examples in this section. This file would now contain the following:
The Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald
---------------------------------
This Side of Paradise
The Beautiful and Damned
The Great Gatsby
Tender is the Night
The Last Tycoon

10.7 Including Text Files

Debian: ‘m4’

File inclusion is where the contents of a file can be included at a particular place within some other file,
just by specifying the file’s name at that place in the other file.
This is useful if you want or need to frequently rearrange divisions or sections of a document, if you
need to keep a document in more than one arrangement, or if you have some sections of text that you
frequently insert in more than one document. For these situations, you can keep each section in a separate
file and build an include file that contains the file names for the various sections in the order you want to
generate that file.
To include a file in a text file, specify the file to be included on a line of its own, like this:
include(file )
When you process this file for inclusion, the line with the ‘include’ statement is replaced with the
contents of the file file (whose path is relative to the current directory of the include file).
Use the m4 tool, the GNU macro processor, to process an include file. It takes as an argument the
name of the include file, and it outputs the inclusion to the standard output. You can use redirection to
redirect the output to a file.
For example, suppose the file ‘soups’ contains this text:
 « ¨
Clam Chowder
Lobster Bisque

ª Vegetable
©
« ¨
And suppose the file ‘sandwiches’ contains this text:

BLT
Ham on Rye
ª Roast Beef
©
« ¨
And finally, suppose the file ‘menu’ contains this text:

Diner Menu For Today

Soups
-----

include(soups)

Sandwiches
----------

ªinclude(sandwiches) ©
¯ To process the file and write to the file ‘monday.txt’, type:
$ m4 menu > monday.txt
RET

«
This command writes a new file, ‘monday.txt’, which looks like this:
¨
Diner Menu For Today

Soups
-----

Clam Chowder
Lobster Bisque
Vegetable

Sandwiches
----------

BLT
Ham on Rye
Roast Beef
ª ©
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: You can write more than one include file that will use your files—and the files themselves can
have include files of their own.
This is a fairly simple use of m4; it can do much more, including run commands, manipulate text, and
run custom macros. See Info file ‘m4.info’, node ‘Top’ for more information on this tool.
11 Grammar and Reference
The tools and resources for writing and editing on Linux-based systems include spell checkers, dictio-
naries, and reference files. This chapter shows methods for using them.

11.1 Spelling
There are several ways to spell check text and files on Linux; the following recipes show how to find
the correct spellings of particular words and how to perform batch, interactive, and Emacs-based spell
checks.
The system dictionary file, ‘/usr/dict/words’,
is nothing more than a word list (albeit a very
large one), sorted in alphabetical order and containing one word per line. Words that are correct regard-
less of case are listed in lowercase letters, and words that rely on some form of capitalization in order to
be correct (such as proper nouns) appear in that form. All of the Linux spelling tools use this text file to
check spelling; if a word does not appear in the dictionary file, it is considered to be misspelled.
NOTE: None of the computerized spell-check tools will correct your writing if you are using the wrong
word to begin with—for example, if you have ‘there’ when you mean ‘their’, the computer will not
catch it (yet!).

11.1.1 Finding the Correct Spelling of a Word

If you’re unsure whether or not you’re using the correct spelling of a word, use spell to find out.
spell reads from the standard input and outputs any words not found in the system dictionary—so if a
word is misspelled, it will be echoed back on the screen after you type it.
¯
«
For example, to check whether the word ‘occurance’ is misspelled, type:
¨
$ spell
RET
occurance
RET
occurance
C-d

ª$
©
In the example, spell echoed the word ‘occurance’, meaning that this word was not in the
system dictionary and therefore was quite likely a misspelling. Then, C-d was typed to exit spell.

11.1.2 Listing the Misspellings in a Text

To output a list of misspelled words in a file, give the name of the file to check as an argument to spell.
Any misspelled words in the file are output, each on a line of its own and in the order that they appear in
the file.
¯
«
To spell check the file ‘fall-lecture.draft’, type:
¨
$ spell fall-lecture.draft
RET
occurance
willl
occurance

ª$
©

On an increasing number of systems, this file is being replaced with ‘/usr/share/dict/words’; administrators should
make a symbolic link from this to the shorter, preferred form.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

In this example, three words are output: ‘occurance’, ‘willl’ and ‘occurance’ again, meaning
that these three words were found in ‘fall-lecture.draft’, in that order, and were not in the
system dictionary (and so were probably misspelled). Note that the misspelling ‘occurance’ appears
twice in the file.
To correct the misspellings, you could then open the file in your preferred text editor and edit it. Later
in this section I’ll describe an interactive spell checker that allows you to correct misspellings as they are
found. Still another option is to use a text editor with spell-checking facilities built in, such as Emacs.
¯ To spell check the file ‘fall-lecture.draft’, and output any possibly misspelled words to a
file ‘fall-lecture.spelling’, type:
$ spell fall-lecture.draft > fall-lecture.spelling
RET
In this example, the standard output redirection character, ‘>’, is used to redirect the output to a file
(see Section 3.2.2 [Redirecting Output to a File], page 37).
To output an alphabetical list of the misspelled words, pipe the output to sort; then pipe the sorted
output to the uniq filter to remove duplicates from the list (uniq removes duplicate adjacent lines from
its input, outputting the “unique” lines).
¯ To output a sorted list of the misspelled words that are in the file ‘fall-lecture.draft’, type:
$ spell fall-lecture.draft | sort | uniq
RET

11.1.3 Keeping a Spelling Word List

The stock American English dictionary installed with Linux-based systems includes over 45,000 words.
However large that number may seem, a lot of words are invariably left out—including slang, jargon,
and some proper names.
You can view the system dictionary as you would any other text file, but users never edit this file to
add words to it. Instead, you add new words to your own personal dictionary, a file in the same format
as the system dictionary, but kept in your home directory as the file ‘˜/.ispell_default’.
Users can have their own personal dictionary; the spelling commands discussed in this chapter auto-
matically use your personal dictionary, if you have one, in addition to the system dictionary.
You build your personal dictionary using the i and u options of ispell, which insert words into
your personal dictionary. Use these options either with the stand-alone tool or with the various ispell
Emacs functions (see Section 11.1.4 [Interactive Spell Checking], page 122 and Section 11.1.5 [Spell
Checking in Emacs], page 124).
NOTE: You can also add (or remove) words by manually editing the file with a text editor, but take
care so that the list is kept in alphabetical order!
Over time, personal dictionaries begin to look very personal, as a reflection of their
owners; Gregory Cosmo made a work of art by photographing the portraits of a
dozen users superimposed with listings of their personal dictionaries (accessible online at
http://www.reed.edu/˜cosmo/art/DictPort.html).

11.1.4 Interactive Spell Checking

Use ispell to spell check a file interactively, so that every time a misspelling is found, you’re given a
chance to replace it then and there.
¯ To interactively spell check ‘fall-lecture.notes’, type:
$ ispell fall-lecture.notes
RET
 If a word is reasonably universal, you may, of course, contact the global maintainers of wenglish or other appropriate
packages and try to convince them that said word ought to be included.
« When you type this, ispell begins checking the file. It stops at the first misspelling it finds: ¨

ª ©
On the top line of the screen, ispell displays the misspelled word, followed by the name of the file.
Underneath this is the sentence in which the misspelling appears, with the word in question highlighted.
Following this is a list of suggested words, each offset by a number—in this example, ispell has only
one suggestion: ‘lectures’.
To replace a misspelling with a suggested word, type the number that corresponds to the suggested
word (in this example, you would type 0 to replace the misspelling with ‘lectures’). You only need
to type the number of your selection—a
RET is not required.
You can also type a correction yourself; this is useful when ispell either offers no suggestions, or
when it does and the word you want is not one of them. To do this, type r (for “replace”) and then type
the replacement word, followed by
RET.
Sometimes, ispell will question a word that you may not want to count as a misspelling, such as
proper names and the like—words that don’t appear in the system dictionary. There are a few things you
can do in such cases, as follows.
To accept a misspelled word as correct for the current ispell session only, type a; from then on
during the current session, this word will be considered correct.
If, however, you want ispell (and spell, and all other tools that access the system dictionary) to
remember this word as being correct for this and all future sessions, insert the word in your own personal
dictionary. Type u to insert a copy of the word uncapitalized, in all lowercase letters—this way, even if
the word is capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, the lowercase version of the word is saved. From
then on, in the current ispell session and in future sessions, this word, regardless of case, will be
considered correct.
When case is important to the spelling—for example, in a word that is a proper name such as
‘Seattle’, or a word with mixed case, such as ‘LaTeX’—type i to insert a copy of the word in
your personal dictionary with its case just as it appears; this way, words spelled with the same letters but
with different case will be considered misspellings.
When ispell finishes spell checking a file, it saves its changes to the file and then exits. It
also makes a copy of the original file, without the changes applied; this file has the same name
as the original but with ‘.bak’ added to the end—so in our example, the backup file is called
‘fall-lecture.notes.bak’. This is useful if you regret the changes you’ve made and want to
restore the file to how it was before you mucked it up—just remove the spell-checked file and then
rename the ‘.bak’ file to its original name.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

The following table is a reference to the ispell key commands.

K EY C OMMAND

SPC Accept misspelled word as correct, but only for this particular instance.
number Replace the misspelled word with the suggestion that corresponds to
the given number.
? Display a help screen.
a Accept misspelled word as correct for the remainder of this ispell
session.
i Accept misspelled word as correct and add it to your private dictionary
with the capitalization as it appears.
l Look up words in the system dictionary according to a pattern you then
give.
q Quit checking and restore the file to how it was before this session.
r Replace misspelled word with a word you type.
u Accept misspelled word as correct and add it to your private dictionary
in all lowercase letters.
x Save the changes thus made, and then stop checking this file.

11.1.5 Spell Checking in Emacs

Emacs has several useful commands for spell checking. The ispell-word, ispell-region, and
ispell-buffer functions, as you might guess from their names, use the ispell command inside
Emacs to check portions of the current buffer.
The first command, ispell-word, checks the spelling of the word at point; if there is no word at
point, it checks the first word to the left of point. This command has a keyboard shortcut, M-$. The
second command, ispell-region, checks the spelling of all words in the currently selected region
of text. The third command, ispell-buffer, checks the spelling of the entire buffer.
¯To check the spelling of the word at point, type:
M-x ispell-word
RET
¯To check the spelling of all words in the currently selected region of text, type:
M-x ispell-region
RET
¯To check the spelling of all words in the current buffer, type:
M-x ispell-buffer
RET
Flyspell mode is another useful Emacs spelling command that, when set in a buffer, highlights
misspelled words. This function is useful when you are writing a first draft in a buffer, because it lets
you catch misspellings as you type them.
¯
To turn on Flyspell mode in a buffer, type:
M-x flyspell-mode
RET
NOTE: This command is a toggle; run it again to turn it off.
To correct a word in Flyspell mode, click and release the middle mouse button on the word to
pull up a menu of suggestions; you then use the mouse to select the replacement word or add it to your
personal dictionary.
If there are words you frequently misspell, you can define abbrevs for them (see Section 10.2.3
[Making Abbreviations in Emacs], page 112). Then, when you type the misspelled word, Emacs will
automatically replace it with the correct spelling.
 Finally, if you prefer the sparse, non-interactive interface of spell, you can use the Emacs inter-
faces to that command instead: Spell word, Spell region, and Spell buffer. When any of
these commands find a misspelling, they prompt for a replacement in the minibuffer but do not offer
suggestions or provide any of ispell’s other features.

11.2 Dictionaries
Debian: ‘wordnet-dev’
WWW: http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/˜wn/

The term dictionary on Linux systems generally refers to one of two things: the traditional Unix-style
dictionary, which is an alphabetically sorted word list containing no actual definitions, and the newer
database-style dictionary that contains the headwords as well as their definitions. The latter is the kind of
thing most people mean when they talk about dictionaries. (When most Unix folk talk about dictionaries,
however, they almost always mean the former.)
WordNet is a lexical reference system in the form of a database containing thousands of words ar-
ranged in synonym sets. You can search the database and output the results in text with the wn tool or
the wnb X client (the “WordNet browser”).
Use of the X client is fairly straightforward—type a word in the dialog box near the top of the screen,
followed by
RET, to get its definition(s), which are displayed in the large output window underneath the
dialog box.
For example, this is what appears when you do a search for the definition of the word ‘browse’:

Between the dialog box and the output window, there are menus for searching for synonyms and
other word senses. A separate menu is given for each part of speech a word may have; in the preceding
example, the word ‘browse’ can be either a noun or a verb, so two menus are shown.
To get a list of all word sense information available for a given word, run wn with the name of the
word as an argument. This outputs a list of all word sense information available for the word, with each
possible sense preceded with the name of the option to use to output it.
¯ To output a list of word senses available for the word ‘browse’, type:
$ wn browse
RET

The following sections show how to use wn on the command line.

NOTE: For more information on WordNet, consult the wnintro man page (see Section 2.8.4 [Reading
a Page from the System Manual], page 28).
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

11.2.1 Listing Words that Match a Pattern

There are several ways to search for and output words from the system dictionary.
Use look to output a list of words in the system dictionary that begin with a given string—this is
useful for finding words that begin with a particular phrase or prefix. Give the string as an argument; it
is not case sensitive.
¯ To output a list of words from the dictionary that begin with the string ‘homew’, type:
$ look homew
RET
This command outputs words like ‘homeward’ and ‘homework’.
Since the system dictionary is an ordinary text file, you can also use grep to search it for words
that match a given pattern or regular expression (see Section 14.2 [Regular Expressions—Matching Text
Patterns], page 148).
¯ To list all words in the dictionary that contain the string ‘dont’, regardless of case, type:
$ grep -i dont /usr/dict/words
RET
¯ To list all words in the dictionary that end with ‘ing’, type:
$ grep ingˆ /usr/dict/words
RET
¯ To list all of the words that are composed only of vowels, type:
$ grep -i ’ˆ[aeiou]*$’ /usr/dict/words
RET
To find some words that rhyme with a given word, use grep to search ‘/usr/dict/words’ for
words ending in the same last few characters as the word they should rhyme with (see Section 14.2.2
[Matching Lines Ending with Certain Text], page 150).
¯ To output a list of words that rhyme with ‘friend’, search ‘/usr/dict/words’ for lines ending
with ‘end’:
$ grep ’end$’ /usr/dict/words
RET
Finally, to do a search on the WordNet dictionary, use wn with one of the ‘-grep’ options. When you
give some text to search for as an argument, this command does the equivalent search as look, except
only the particular kind of word sense you specify is searched: ‘-grepn’ searches nouns, ‘-grepv’
searches verbs, ‘-grepa’ searches adjectives, and ‘-grepr’ searches adverbs. You can combine op-
tions to search multiple word senses.
¯ To search the WordNet dictionary for nouns that begin with ‘homew’, type:
$ wn homew -grepn
RET
¯ To search the WordNet dictionary for both nouns and adjectives that begin with ‘homew’, type:
$ wn homew -grepn -grepa
RET

11.2.2 Listing the Definitions of a Word

To list the definitions of a word, give the word as an argument to wn, followed by the ‘-over’ option.
¯ To list the definitions of the word ‘slope’, type:
$ wn slope -over
RET

11.2.3 Listing the Synonyms of a Word

A synonym of a word is a different word with a similar meaning that can be used in place of the first
word in some context. To output synonyms for a word with wn, give the word as an argument, followed
by one of the following options: ‘-synsn’ for nouns, ‘-synsv’ for verbs, ‘-synsa’ for adjectives,
and ‘-sysnr’ for adverbs.
¯ To output all of the synonyms for the noun ‘break’, type:
 $ wn break -synsn
RET
¯ To output all of the synonyms for the verb ‘break’, type:
$ wn break -synsv
RET

11.2.4 Listing the Antonyms of a Word

An antonym of a word is a different word that has the opposite meaning of the first in some context.
To output antonyms for a word with wn, give the word as an argument, followed by one the following
options: ‘-antsv’ for verbs, ‘-antsa’ for adjectives, and ‘-antsr’ for adverbs.
¯ To output all of the antonyms for the adjective ‘sad’, type:
$ wn sad -antsa
RET

11.2.5 Listing the Hypernyms of a Word

A hypernym of a word is a related term whose meaning is more general than the given word. (For
example, the words ‘mammal’ and ‘animal’ are hypernyms of the word ‘cat’.)
To output hypernyms for a word with wn, use one of the following options: ‘-hypen’ for nouns and
‘-hypev’ for verbs.
¯ To output all of the hypernyms for the noun ‘cat’, type:
$ wn cat -hypen
RET

11.2.6 Online Dictionaries

Debian ‘dict’
WWW: http://www.dict.org/

The DICT Development Group has a number of free dictionaries on their Web site at
http://www.dict.org/. On that page, you can look up the definitions of words (including
thesaurus and other searches) from a dictionary that contains over 300,000 headwords, or make a copy
of their dictionary for use on your own system. A dict client exists for accessing DICT servers and
outputting definitions locally; this tool is available in the ‘dict’ package.
DICT also has a number of specialized dictionaries that are plain text files (including the author’s Free
Journalism Dictionary, containing jargon and terms used in the journalism and publishing professions).
Their FILE project, The Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia, is an effort to build a free, open source
collection of modern-word, idiom, and jargon dictionaries. FILE is a volunteer effort and depends on the
support of scholars and lexicographers; the DICT pages contain information on how to help contribute
to this worthy project.

11.3 Checking Grammar

WWW: http://www.gnu.org/software/diction/diction.html

Two venerable Unix tools for checking writing have recently been made available for Linux-based sys-
tems: style and diction.
Old-timers probably remember these names—the originals came with AT&T UNIX as part of the
much-loved “Writer’s Workbench” (WWB) suite of tools back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
 There was also a set of tools for formatting text called the “Documenter’s Workbench” (DWB), and there was a planned
“Reader’s Workbench”; we can only guess at what that might have been, but today we do have Project Gutenbook
(http://www.gutenbook.org/), a new etext reader.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

AT&T “unbundled” the Writer’s Workbench from their UNIX version 7 product, and as the many
flavors of Unix blossomed over the years, these tools were lost by the wayside—eventually becoming
the stuff of Unix lore.
In 1997, Michael Haardt wrote new Linux versions of these tools from scratch. They support both
the English and German languages, and they’re now part of the GNU Project.
Two additional commands that were part of the Writer’s Workbench have long been standard on
Linux: look and spell, described previously in this chapter.

11.3.1 Checking Text for Misused Phrases

Use diction to check for wordy, trite, clichéd, or misused phrases in a text. It checks
for all the kind of expressions William Strunk warned us about in his Elements of Style
(http://coba.shsu.edu/help/strunk/).
According to The UNIX Environment, by Andrew Walker, the diction tool that came with the
old Writer’s Workbench just found the phrases, and a separate command called suggest would output
suggestions. In the GNU version that works for Linux systems, both functions have been combined in
the single diction command.
In GNU diction, the words or phrases are enclosed in brackets ‘[like this]’. If diction
has any suggested replacements, it gives them preceded by a right arrow, ‘-> like this’.
When checking more than just a screenful of text, you’ll want to pipe the output to less so that you
can peruse it on the screen (see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99), or pipe the output to a file for later
examination.
¯ To check file ‘dissertation’ for clichés or other misused phrases, type:
$ diction dissertation | less
RET
¯ To check file ‘dissertation’ for clichés or other misused phrases, and write the output to a file
called ‘dissertation.diction’, type:
$ diction dissertation > dissertation.diction
RET
If you don’t specify a file name, diction reads text from the standard input until you type C-d on

« ¨
a line by itself. This is especially useful when you want to check a single sentence:

$ diction
RET
Let us ask the question we wish to state.
RET
(stdin):1: Let us [ask the question -> ask]
[we wish to state -> (cliche, avoid)].
C-d

ª$
©
To check the text of a Web page, use the text-only Web browser lynx with the ‘-dump’ and
‘-nolist’ options to output the plain text of a given URL, and pipe this output to diction. (If
you expect there to be a lot of output, add another pipe at the end to less so you can peruse it.)
To peruse a copy of the text of http://example.org/1.html with markings for possible
wordy and misused phrases, type:
$ lynx -dump -nolist http://example.org/1.html | diction | less
RET

11.3.2 Checking Text for Doubled Words

One of the things that diction looks for is doubled words—words repeated twice in a row. If it finds
such a sequence, it encloses the second member of the doubled pair in brackets, followed by a right arrow
and the text ‘Double word’, like ‘this [<i>this -> Double word.]’.
 To check a text file for doubled words only, and not for any of the other things diction checks, use
grep to find only those lines in diction’s output that contain the text ‘Double word’, if any.
¯To output all lines containing double words in the file ‘dissertation’, type:
$ diction dissertation | grep ’Double word’
RET

11.3.3 Checking Text for Readability

The style command analyzes the writing style of a given text. It performs a number of readability tests
on the text and outputs their results, and it gives some statistical information about the sentences of the
text. Give as an argument the name of the text file to check.
¯ To check the readability of the file ‘dissertation’, type:
$ style dissertation
RET
Like diction, style reads text from the standard input if no text is given—this is useful for the
end of a pipeline, or for checking the writing style of a particular sentence or other text you type.
The sentence characteristics of the text that style outputs are as follows:
¯ Number of characters
¯ Number of words, their average length, and their average number of syllables
¯ Number of sentences and average length in words
¯ Number of short and long sentences
¯ Number of paragraphs and average length in sentences
¯ Number of questions and imperatives
The various readability formulas that style uses and outputs are as follows:
¯ Kincaid formula, originally developed for Navy training manuals; a good readability for technical
documentation
¯ Automated Readability Index (ARI)
¯ Coleman-Liau formula
¯ Flesch Reading Ease Score, which gives an approximation of readability from 0 (difficult) to 100
(easy)
¯ Fog Index, which gives a school-grade reading level
¯ WSTF Index, a readability indicator for German documents
¯ Wheeler-Smith Index, Lix formula, and SMOG-Grading tests, all readability indicators that give a
school-grade reading level

11.3.4 Checking Text for Difficult Sentences

To output just the “difficult” sentences of a text, use style with the ‘-r’ option followed by a number;
style will output only those sentences whose Automated Readability Index (ARI) is greater than the
number you give.
¯ To output all sentences in the file ‘dissertation’ whose ARI is greater than a value of 20, type:
$ style -r 20 dissertation
RET

11.3.5 Checking Text for Long Sentences

Use style to output sentences longer than a certain length by giving the minimum number of words as
an argument to the ‘-l’ option.
¯ To output all sentences longer than 14 words in the file ‘dissertation’, type:
$ style -l 14 dissertation
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

11.4 Word Lists and Reference Files

Debian: ‘miscfiles’
WWW: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/miscfiles/miscfiles-1.1.tar.gz

The GNU Miscfiles are a collection of text files containing various facts and reference material, such as
common abbreviations, telephone area codes, and English connective phrases.
The files are stored in the ‘/usr/share/misc’ directory, and they are all compressed; use zless
to peruse them (see Section 9.1 [Perusing Text], page 99).
The following table lists the files in ‘/usr/share/misc’ and describes their contents.
F ILE D ESCRIPTION
GNU-manifesto.gz The GNU Manifesto.
abbrevs.talk.gz Collections of common abbreviations used in electronic communica-
abbrevs.gen.gz tion. (This is the place to look to find the secrets of ‘TTYL’ and ‘LOL’.)
airport.gz List of three-letter city codes for some of the major airports. The city
code is useful for querying the National Weather Service computers to
get the latest weather report for your region.
ascii.gz A chart of the ASCII character set.
birthtoken.gz The traditional stone and flower tokens for each month.
cities.dat.gz The population, political coordinates (nation, region), and geographic
coordinates (latitude, longitude) of many major cities.
inter.phone.gz International country and city telephone codes.
languages.gz Two-letter codes for languages, from ISO 639.
latin1.gz A chart of the extended ASCII character set, also known as the ISO
8859 (“Latin-1”) character set.
mailinglists.gz Description of all the public Project GNU-related mailing lists.
na.phone.gz North American (+1) telephone area codes.
operator.gz Precedence table for operators in the C language.
postal.codes.gz Postal codes for U.S. and Mexican states and Canadian provinces.
us-constitution.gz The Constitution of the United States of America (no Bill of
Rights, though). (On Debian systems, this file is placed in
‘/usr/share/state’.)
us-declaration.gz The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies. (On De-
bian systems, this file is placed in ‘/usr/share/state’.)
rfc-index.txt Indexes of Internet standardization Request For Comments
(RFC) documents. (On Debian systems, this file is placed in
‘/usr/share/rfc’).
zipcodes.gz U.S. five-digit Zip codes.
‘miscfiles’ is not the only reference package available for Debian systems, though; other related
packages include the following:
PACKAGE D ESCRIPTION
doc-iana Internet protocol parameter registry documents, as published by the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
doc-rfc A collection of important RFCs, stored in ‘/usr/share/rfc’.
jargon The “Jargon file,” which is the definitive dictionary of hacker slang.
vera List of computer acronyms.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: The official GNU miscfiles distribution also includes the Jargon file and the
‘/usr/dict/words’ dictionary file, which are available in separate packages for Debian, and
are removed from the Debian ‘miscfiles’ distribution. ‘/usr/dict/words’ is part of the
standard spelling packages, and the Jargon file comes in the optional ‘jargon’ package, and installs in
‘/usr/share/jargon’.
12 Analyzing Text
There are many ways to use command-line tools to analyze text in various ways, such as counting the
number of words in a text, creating a concordance, and comparing texts to see if (and where) they differ.
There are also other tricks you can do with text that count as analysis, such as finding anagrams and
palindromes, or cutting up text to generate unexpected combinations of words. This chapter covers all
these topics.

12.1 Counting Text

Use the “word count” tool, wc, to count characters, words, and lines in text.
Give the name of a file as an argument; if none is given, wc works on standard input. By default, wc
outputs three columns, displaying the counts for lines, words, and characters in the text.
¯ To output the number of lines, words, and characters in file ‘outline’, type:
$ wc outline
RET

The following subsections describe how to specify just one kind of count with wc, and how to count
text in Emacs.
NOTE: You can get a count of how many different words are in a text, too—see Section 12.2 [Making a
Concordance of a Text], page 134. To count the average length of words, sentences, and paragraphs, use
style (see Section 11.3.3 [Checking Text for Readability], page 129).

12.1.1 Counting the Characters in a Text

Use wc with the ‘-c’ option to specify that just the number of characters be counted and output.
¯ To output the number of characters in file ‘classified.ad’, type:
$ wc -c classified.ad
RET

12.1.2 Counting the Words in a Text

Use wc with the ‘-w’ option to specify that just the number of words be counted and output.
¯ To output the number of words in the file ‘story’, type:
$ wc -w story
RET

To output counts for several files, first concatenate the files with cat, and then pipe the output to wc.
¯ To output the combined number of words for all the files with a ‘.txt’ file name extension in the
current directory, type:
$ cat *.txt | wc -w
RET

NOTE: To read more about concatenation with cat, see Section 10.6 [Concatenating Text], page 116.

12.1.3 Counting the Lines in a Text

Use wc with the ‘-l’ option to specify that just the number of lines be counted and output.
¯ To output the number of lines in the file ‘outline’, type:
$ wc -l outline
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

12.1.4 Counting the Occurrences of Something

To find the number of occurrences of some text string or pattern in a file or files, use grep to search the
file(s) for the text string, and pipe the output to wc with the ‘-l’ option.
¯ To find the number of lines in the file ‘outline’ that contain the string ‘chapter’, type:
$ grep chapter outline | wc -l
RET
NOTE: For more recipes for searching text, and more about grep, see Chapter 14 [Searching Text],
page 147.

12.1.5 Counting Lines per Page in Emacs

The count-lines-page function in Emacs outputs in the minibuffer the number of lines on the cur-
rent page (as delimited by pagebreak characters, if any—see Section 13.2 [Paginating Text], page 142),
followed by the number of lines in the buffer before the line that point is on, and the number of lines in
the buffer after point.
¯ To count the number of lines per page in the current buffer in Emacs, type:
C-x l
Emacs outputs the number of lines per page of the current buffer in the echo area.
For example, if the output in the minibuffer is
Page has 351 lines (69 + 283)
this means that the current page contains 351 lines, and point is on line number 70—there are 69 lines
before this line, and 283 lines after this line.

12.2 Making a Concordance of a Text

A concordance is an index of all the words in a text, along with their contexts. A concordance-like
functionality—an alphabetical listing of all words in a text and their frequency—can be made fairly
easily with some basic shell tools: tr, sort, and uniq.
¯ To output a word-frequency list of the text file ‘naked_lunch’, type:
$ tr ’ ’ ’
RET
> ’ < naked_lunch | sort | uniq -c
RET
These commands translate all space characters to newline characters, outputting the text with each
word on its own line; this is then sorted alphabetically, and that output is passed to uniq, which outputs
only the unique lines—that is, all non-duplicate lines—while the ‘-c’ option precedes each line with its
count (the number of times it occurs in the text).
To get a word frequency count—that is, the total number of different words in a text—just pipe the
output of the frequency list to wc with the ‘-l’ option. This counts all the lines of its input, which in this
case will be the list of unique words, one per line.
¯ To output a count of the number of unique words in the text file ‘naked_lunch’, type:
$ tr ’ ’ ’
RET
> ’ < naked_lunch | sort | uniq -c | wc -l
RET

12.3 Text Relevance

The following recipes show how to analyze a given text for its relevancy to other text, either to keywords
or to whole files of text.
You can also use the diff family of tools to analyze differences in text; those tools are especially
good for comparing different revisions of the same file (see Section 8.4 [Comparing Files], page 90).
12.3.1 Sorting Text in Order of Relevance
Debian: ‘rel’
WWW: http://www.johncon.com/

Use rel to analyze text files for relevance to a given set of keywords. It outputs the names of those files
that are relevant to the given keywords, ranked in order of relevance; if a file does not meet the criteria,
it is not output in the relevance listing.
rel takes as an option the keyword to search for in quotes; you can build a boolean expression by
grouping multiple keywords in parentheses and using any of the following operators between them:
O PERATOR D ESCRIPTION
| Logical “or.”
& Logical “and.”
! Logical “not.”
Give as arguments the names of the files to rank.
¯ To rank the files ‘report.a’, ‘report.b’, and ‘report.c’ in order of relevance to the key-
words ‘saving’ and ‘profit’, type:
$ rel "(saving & profit)" report.a report.b report.c
RET
Give the name of a directory tree to analyze all files in the directory tree.
¯ To output a list of any files containing either ‘invitation’ or ‘request’ in the ‘˜/mail’
directory, ranked in order of relevancy, type:
$ rel "(invitation | request)" ˜/mail
RET
¯ To output a list of any files containing ‘invitation’ and not ‘wedding’ in the ‘˜/mail’ di-
rectory, ranked in order of relevancy, type:
$ rel "(invitation ! wedding)" ˜/mail
RET
¯ To output a list of any files containing ‘invitation’ and ‘party’ in the ‘˜/mail’ directory,
ranked in order of relevancy, type:
$ rel "(invitation & party)" ˜/mail
RET

12.3.2 Listing Relevant Files in Emacs

Debian: ‘remembrance-agent’
WWW: http://www.media.mit.edu/˜rhodes/RA/

The purpose of the Remembrance Agent is to analyze the text you type in an Emacs session and, in the
background, find similar or relevant passages of text within your other files. It then outputs in a smaller
window a list of suggestions—those files that it has found—which you can open in a new buffer.
When installing the Remembrance Agent, you create three databases of the files to use when making
relevance suggestions; when remembrance-agent is running, it searches these three databases in
parallel, looking for relevant text. You could create, for example, one database of saved email, one of
your own writings, and one of saved documents.
¯To toggle the Remembrance Agent in the current buffer, type:
C-c r t
When remembrance-agent is running, suggested buffers will be displayed in the small
‘*Remembrance*’ buffer at the bottom of the screen. To open a suggestion in a new buffer, type C-c
r number , where number is the number of the suggestion.
¯
To open the second suggested file in a new buffer, type:
C-c r 2
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

12.4 Finding Anagrams in Text

Debian: ‘an’

An anagram is a word or phrase whose characters consist entirely of all the characters of a given word
or phrase—for example, ‘stop’ and ‘tops’ are both anagrams of ‘pots’.
Use an to find and output anagrams. Give as an argument the word or quoted phrase to use; an writes
its results to the standard output.
¯ To output all anagrams of the word ‘lake’, type:
$ an lake
RET
¯ To output all anagrams of the phrase ‘lakes and oceans’, type:
$ an ’lakes and oceans’
RET
To limit the anagrams output to those containing a given string, specify that string with the ‘-c’
option.
¯ To output only anagrams of the phrase ‘lakes and oceans’ which contain the string ‘seas’,
type:
$ an -c seas ’lakes and oceans’
RET
To print all of the words that some or all letters in a given word or phrase can make, use the ‘-w’
option. This outputs words that are not anagrams, since anagrams must contain all of the letters of the
other word or phrase.
¯ To output all of the words that can be made from the letters of the word ‘seas’, type:
$ an -w seas
RET
This command outputs all of the words that can be formed from all or some of the characters in
‘seas’, including ‘see’ and ‘as’.

12.5 Finding Palindromes in Text

A palindrome is a word that reads the same both forwards and backwards; for example, “Mom,”
“madam,” and “nun” are all palindromes.
To find palindromes in a file, use this simple Perl “one-liner,” and substitute file for the name of the
file to check:
perl -lne ’print if $_ eq reverse’ file
To check for palindromes in the standard input, specify ‘-’ as the file name to check. This is useful
for putting at the end of a pipeline.
¯ To output all of the palindromes in the system dictionary, type:
$ perl -lne ’print if $_ eq reverse’ /usr/dict/words
RET

12.6 Text Cut-Ups

A cut-up is a random rearrangement of a physical layout of text, made with the intention of finding
unique or interesting phrases in the rearrangement. Software for rearranging text in random ways has
existed since the earliest text-processing tools; the popularity of these tools will never die.
The cut-up technique in literature was discovered by painter Brion Gysin and American writer
William S. Burroughs in 1959; they believed it brought the montage technique of painting to the written
word.
“All writing is in fact cut-ups,” Burroughs wrote.
“A collage of words read heard overheard . . .
[u]se of scissors renders the process explicit and subject to extension and variation.”

In The Third Mind, by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
 These recipes describe a few of the common ways to make text cut-ups; more free software tools for
making cut-ups are listed at http://dsl.org/comp/cutups.shtml.

12.6.1 Making Simple Text Cut-Ups

WWW: http://dsl.org/comp/tinyutils/

To perform a simple cut-up of a text, use cutup. It takes the name of a file as input and cuts it both
horizontally and vertically along the middle, rearranges the four sections to their diagonally opposite
corners, and then writes that cut-up to the standard output. The original file is not modified.
¯ To make a cut-up from a file called ‘nova’, type:
$ cutup nova
RET

12.6.2 Making Random Word Cut-Ups

Debian: ‘dadadodo’
WWW: http://www.jwz.org/dadadodo/

No simple cut-up filter, Jamie Zawinski’s dadadodo uses the computer to go one step beyond—it
generates passages of random text whose structure and characters are similar to the text input you give
it. The program works better on larger texts, where more subtleties can be analyzed and hence more
realistic-looking text is output.
Give as an argument the name of the text file to be used; by default, dadadodo outputs text to
standard output until you interrupt it by typing C-c.
¯ To output random text based on the text in the file ‘nova’, type:
$ dadadodo nova
RET
This command will output passages of random text based on the text in the file ‘nova’ until it is
interrupted by the user.
You can analyze a text and save the analysis to a file of compiled data; this analysis can then be used
to generate random text when the original input text is not present. The following table describes this
and other dadadodo options.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-c integer Generate integer sentences (default is 0, meaning “generate an infinite
amount until interrupted”).
-l file Load compiled data in file and use it to generate text.
-o file Output compiled data to file file for later use.
-p integer Pause for integer seconds between paragraphs.

12.6.3 Making Cut-Ups in Emacs

The dissociated-press function in Emacs makes random cut-ups of the current buffer in a new
buffer called ‘*Dissociation*’; the original buffer is not modified. The text in the new buffer is
generated by combining random portions of the buffer by overlapping characters or words, thus (usu-
ally) creating plausible-sounding sentences. It pauses occasionally and asks whether or not you want to
continue the dissociation.
¯ To generate a Dissociated Press cut-up from the current buffer, type:
M-x dissociated-press
RET
Give a positive argument to the dissociated-press function to specify the number of characters
to use for overlap; give a negative argument to specify the number of words for overlap.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To generate a Dissociated Press cut-up from the current buffer, always overlapping by three charac-
ters, type:
C-u 3 M-x dissociated-press
RET
¯ To generate a Dissociated Press cut-up from the current buffer, always overlapping by one word,
type:
C-u -1 M-x dissociated-press
RET
13 Formatting Text
Methods and tools for changing the arrangement or presentation of text are often useful for preparing
text for printing. This chapter discusses ways of changing the spacing of text and setting up pages, of
underlining and sorting and reversing text, and of numbering lines of text.

13.1 Spacing Text

These recipes are for changing the spacing of text—the whitespace that exists between words, lines, and
paragraphs.
The filters described in this section send output to standard output by default; to save their output to
a file, use shell redirection (see Section 3.2.2 [Redirecting Output to a File], page 37).

13.1.1 Eliminating Extra Spaces in Text

To eliminate extra whitespaces within lines of text, use the fmt filter; to eliminate extra whitespace
between lines of text, use cat.
Use fmt with the ‘-u’ option to output text with “uniform spacing,” where the space between words
is reduced to one space character and the space between sentences is reduced to two space characters.
¯ To output the file ‘term-paper’ with uniform spacing, type:
$ fmt -u term-paper
RET
Use cat with the ‘-s’ option to “squeeze” multiple adjacent blank lines into one.
¯ To output the file ‘term-paper’ with multiple blank lines output as only one blank line, type:
$ cat -s term-paper
RET
You can combine both of these commands to output text with multiple adjacent lines removed and
give it a unified spacing between words. The following example shows how the output of the combined
commands is sent to less so that it can be perused on the screen.
¯ To peruse the text file ‘term-paper’ with multiple blank lines removed and giving the text unified
spacing between words, type:
$ cat -s term-paper | fmt -u | less
RET
Notice that in this example, both fmt and less worked on their standard input instead of on a file—
the standard output of cat (the contents of ‘term-paper’ with extra blank lines squeezed out) was
passed to the standard input of fmt, and its standard output (the space-squeezed ‘term-paper’, now
with uniform spacing) was sent to the standard input of less, which displayed it on the screen.

13.1.2 Single-Spacing Text

There are many methods for single-spacing text. To remove all empty lines from text output, use grep
with the regular expression ‘.’, which matches any character, and therefore matches any line that isn’t
empty (see Section 14.2 [Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns], page 148). You can then redi-
rect this output to a file, or pipe it to other commands; the original file is not altered.
¯ To output all non-empty lines from the file ‘term-paper’, type:
$ grep . term-paper
RET
This command outputs all lines that are not empty—so lines containing only non-printing characters,
such as spaces and tabs, will still be output.
To remove from the output all empty lines, and all lines that consist of only space characters, use ‘[ˆ
].’ as the regexp to search for. But this regexp will still output lines that contain only tab characters; to
remove from the output all empty lines and lines that contain only a combination of tab or space charac-
ters, use ‘[ˆ[:space:]].’ as the regexp to search for. It uses the special predefined ‘[:space:]’
regexp class, which matches any kind of space character at all, including tabs.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To output only the lines from the file ‘term-paper’ that contain more than just space characters,
type:
$ grep ’[ˆ ].’ term-paper
RET
To output only the lines from the file ‘term-paper’ that contain more than just space or tab
characters, type:
$ grep ’[ˆ[:space:]].’ term-paper
RET
If a file is already double-spaced, where all even lines are blank, you can remove those lines from the
output by using sed with the ‘n;d’ expression.
¯ To output only the odd lines from file ‘term-paper’, type:
$ sed ’n;d’ term-paper
RET

13.1.3 Double-Spacing Text

To double-space text, where one blank line is inserted between each line in the original text, use the pr
tool with the ‘-d’ option. By default, pr paginates text and puts a header at the top of each page with
the current date, time, and page number; give the ‘-t’ option to omit this header.
¯ To double-space the file ‘term-paper’ and write the output to the file ‘term-paper.print’,
type:
$ pr -d -t term-paper > term-paper.print
RET
To send the output directly to the printer for printing, you would pipe the output to lpr:
$ pr -d -t term-paper | lpr
RET
NOTE: The pr (“print”) tool is a text pre-formatter, often used to paginate and otherwise prepare text
files for printing; there is more discussion on the use of this tool in Section 13.2 [Paginating Text],
page 142.

13.1.4 Triple-Spacing Text

To triple-space text, where two blank lines are inserted between each line of the original text, use sed
with the ‘’G;G’’ expression.
¯ To triple-space the file ‘term-paper’ and write the output to the file ‘term-paper.print’,
type:
$ sed ’G;G’ term-paper > term-paper.print
RET
The ‘G’ expression appends one blank line to each line of sed’s output; using ‘;’ you can specify
more than one blank line to append (but you must quote this command, because the semicolon (‘;’) has
meaning to the shell—see Section 3.1.1 [Passing Special Characters to Commands], page 34). You can
use multiple ‘G’ characters to output text with more than double or triple spaces.
¯ To quadruple-space the file ‘term-paper’, and write the output to the file
‘term-paper.print’, type:
$ sed ’G;G;G’ term-paper > term-paper.print
RET
The usage of sed is described in Section 10.5 [Editing Streams of Text], page 116.

13.1.5 Adding Line Breaks to Text

Sometimes a file will not have line breaks at the end of each line (this commonly happens during file
conversions between operating systems). To add line breaks to a file that does not have them, use the
text formatter fmt. It outputs text with lines arranged up to a specified width; if no length is specified, it
formats text up to a width of 75 characters per line.
¯ To output the file ‘term-paper’ with lines up to 75 characters long, type:
 $ fmt term-paper
RET

Use the ‘-w’ option to specify the maximum line width.

¯ To output the file ‘term-paper’ with lines up to 80 characters long, type:
$ fmt -w 80 term-paper
RET

13.1.6 Adding Margins to Text

Giving text an extra left margin is especially good when you want to print a copy and punch holes in it
for use with a three-ring binder.
To output a text file with a larger left margin, use pr with the file name as an argument; give the ‘-t’
option (to disable headers and footers), and, as an argument to the ‘-o’ option, give the number of spaces
to offset the text. Add the number of spaces to the page width (whose default is 72) and specify this new
width as an argument to the ‘-w’ option.
¯ To output the file ‘owners-manual’ with a five-space (or five-column) margin to a new file,
‘owners-manual.pr’, type:
$ pr -t -o 5 -w 77 owners-manual > owners-manual.pr
RET
This command is almost always used for printing, so the output is usually just piped to lpr instead
of saved to a file. Many text documents have a width of 80 and not 72 columns; if you are printing such
a document and need to keep the 80 columns across the page, specify a new width of 85. If your printer
can only print 80 columns of text, specify a width of 80; the text will be reformatted to 75 columns after
the 5-column margin.
¯ To print the file ‘owners-manual’ with a 5-column margin and 80 columns of text, type:
$ pr -t -o 5 -w 85 owners-manual | lpr
RET
¯ To print the file ‘owners-manual’ with a 5-column margin and 75 columns of text, type:
$ pr -t -o 5 -w 80 owners-manual | lpr
RET

13.1.7 Swapping Tab and Space Characters

Use the expand and unexpand tools to swap tab characters for space characters, and to swap space
characters with tabs, respectively.
Both tools take a file name as an argument and write changes to the standard output; if no files are
specified, they work on the standard input.
To convert tab characters to spaces, use expand. To convert only the initial or leading tabs on each
line, give the ‘-i’ option; the default action is to convert all tabs.
¯ To convert all tab characters to spaces in file ‘list’, and write the output to ‘list2’, type:
$ expand list > list2
RET
¯ To convert only initial tab characters to spaces in file ‘list’, and write the output to the standard
output, type:
$ expand -i list
RET
To convert multiple space characters to tabs, use unexpand. By default, it only converts leading
spaces into tabs, counting eight space characters for each tab. Use the ‘-a’ option to specify that all
instances of eight space characters be converted to tabs.
¯ To convert every eight leading space characters to tabs in file ‘list2’, and write the output to
‘list’, type:
$ unexpand list2 > list
RET
¯ To convert all occurrences of eight space characters to tabs in file ‘list2’, and write the output to
the standard output, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

$ unexpand -a list2
RET

To specify the number of spaces to convert to a tab, give that number as an argument to the ‘-t’
option.
¯ To convert every leading space character to a tab character in ‘list2’, and write the output to the
standard output, type:
$ unexpand -t 1 list2
RET

13.2 Paginating Text

The formfeed character, ASCII C-l or octal code 014, is the delimiter used to paginate text. When you
send text with a formfeed character to the printer, the current page being printed is ejected and a new
page begins—thus, you can paginate a text file by inserting formfeed characters at a place where you
want a page break to occur.
To insert formfeed characters in a text file, use the pr filter.
Give the ‘-f’ option to omit the footer and separate pages of output with the formfeed character, and
use ‘-h ""’ to output a blank header (otherwise, the current date and time, file name, and current page
number are output at the top of each page).
¯ To paginate the file ‘listings’ and write the output to a file called ‘listings.page’, type:
$ pr -f -h "" listings > listings.page
RET

By default, pr outputs pages of 66 lines each. You can specify the page length as an argument to the
‘-l’ option.
¯ To paginate the file ‘listings’ with 43-line pages, and write the output to a file called
‘listings.page’, type:
$ pr -f -h "" -l 43 listings > listings.page
RET

NOTE: If a page has more lines than a printer can fit on a physical sheet of paper, it will automatically
break the text at that line as well as at the places in the text where there are formfeed characters.
You can paginate text in Emacs by manually inserting formfeed characters where you want them—see
Section 10.2.5 [Inserting Special Characters in Emacs], page 113.

13.2.1 Placing Headers on Each Page

The pr tool is a general-purpose page formatter and print-preparation utility. By default, pr outputs text
in pages of 66 lines each, with headers at the top of each page containing the date and time, file name,
and page number, and footers containing five blank lines.
¯ To print the file ‘duchess’ with the default pr preparation, type:
$ pr duchess | lpr
RET

13.2.2 Placing Text in Columns

You can also use pr to put text in columns—give the number of columns to output as an argument. Use
the ‘-t’ option to omit the printing of the default headers and footers.
¯ To print the file ‘news.update’ in four columns with no headers or footers, type:
$ pr -4 -t news.update | lpr
RET
13.2.3 Options Available When Paginating Text
The following table describes some of pr’s options; see the pr info for a complete description of its
capabilities (see Section 2.8.5 [Using the GNU Info System], page 29).
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
+first :last Specify the first and last page to process; the last page can be omitted,
so +7 begins processing with the seventh page and continues until the
end of the file is reached.
-column Specify the number of columns to output text in, making all columns
fit the page width.
-a Print columns across instead of down.
-c Output control characters in hat notation and print all other unprintable
characters in “octal backslash” notation.
-d Specify double-spaced output.
-f Separate pages of output with a formfeed character instead of a footer
of blank lines (63 lines of text per 66-line page instead of 53).
-h header Specify the header to use instead of the default; specify -h "" for a
blank header.
-l length Specify the page length to be length lines (default 66). If page length
is less than 11, headers and footers are omitted and existing form feeds
are ignored.
-m Use when specifying multiple files; this option merges and outputs
them in parallel, one per column.
-o spaces Set the number of spaces to use in the left margin (default 0).
-t Omit the header and footer on each page, but retain existing formfeeds.
-T Omit the header and footer on each page, as well as existing formfeeds.
-v Output non-printing characters in “octal backslash” notation.
-w width Specify the page width to use, in characters (default 72).
NOTE: It’s also common to use pr to change the spacing of text (see Section 13.1 [Spacing Text],
page 139).

13.3 Underlining Text

In the days of typewriters, text that was meant to be set in an italicized font was denoted by underlining
the text with underscore characters; now, it’s common practice to denote an italicized word in plain text
by typing an underscore character, ‘_’, just before and after a word in a text file, like ‘_this_’.
Some text markup languages use different methods for denoting italics; for example, in TEX or LaTeX
files, italicized text is often denoted with brackets and the ‘\it’ command, like ‘{\it this}’. (LaTeX
files use the same format, but ‘\emph’ is often used in place of ‘\it’.)
You can convert one form to the other by using the Emacs replace-regular-expression
function and specifying the text to be replaced as a regexp (see Section 14.2 [Regular Expressions—
Matching Text Patterns], page 148).
¯ To replace plaintext-style italics with TEX ‘\it’ commands, type:
M-x replace-regular-expression
RET
_\([ˆ_]+\)_
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

\{\\it \1}
RET

¯ To replace TEX-style italics with plaintext underscores , type:
M-x replace-regular-expression
RET
\{\\it \{\([ˆ\}]+\)\}
RET
_\1_
RET
Both examples above used the special regexp symbol ‘\1’, which matches the same text matched
by the first ‘\( ... \)’ construct in the previous regexp. See Info file ‘emacs-e20.info’, node
‘Regexps’ for more information on regexp syntax in Emacs.
To put a literal underline under text, you need to use a text editor to insert a C-h character followed
by an underscore (‘_’) immediately after each character you want to underline; you can insert the C-h
in Emacs with the C-q function (see Section 10.2.5 [Inserting Special Characters in Emacs], page 113).
When a text file contains these literal underlines, use the ul tool to output the file so that it is viewable
by the terminal you are using; this is also useful for printing (pipe the output of ul to lpr).
¯ To output the file ‘term-paper’ so that you can view underbars, type:
$ ul term-paper
RET

To output such text without the backspace character, C-h, in the output, use col with the ‘-u’ option.
¯ To output the file ‘term-paper’ with all backspace characters stripped out, type:
$ col -u term-paper
RET

13.4 Sorting Text

You can sort a list in a text file with sort. By default, it outputs text in ascending alphabetical order;
use the ‘-r’ option to reverse the sort and output text in descending alphabetical order.
For example, suppose a file ‘provinces’ contains the following:
Shantung
Honan
Szechwan
Hunan
Kiangsu
Kwangtung
Fukien
¯
« ¨
To sort the file ‘provinces’ and output all lines in ascending order, type:

$ sort provinces
RET

Fukien
Honan
Hunan
Kiangsu
Kwangtung
Shantung
Szechwan

ª
$
©
¯ To sort the file ‘provinces’ and output all lines in descending order, type:
 « ¨
$ sort -r provinces
RET
Szechwan
Shantung
Kwangtung
Kiangsu
Hunan
Honan
Fukien

ª$
©
The following table describes some of sort’s options.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-b Ignore leading blanks on each line when sorting.
-d Sort in “phone directory” order, with only letters, digits, and blanks being sorted.
-f When sorting, fold lowercase letters into their uppercase equivalent, so that dif-
ferences in case are ignored.
-i Ignore all spaces and all non-typewriter characters when sorting.
-n Sort numerically instead of by character value.
-o file Write output to file instead of standard output.

13.5 Numbering Lines of Text

There are several ways to number lines of text.
One way to do it is to use the nl (“number lines”) tool. Its default action is to write its input (either
the file names given as an argument, or the standard input) to the standard output, with an indentation
and all non-empty lines preceded with line numbers.
¯ To peruse the file ‘report’ with each line of the file preceded by line numbers, type:
$ nl report | less
RET
You can set the numbering style with the ‘-b’ option followed by an argument. The following table
lists the possible arguments and describes the numbering style they select.
A RGUMENT N UMBERING S TYLE
a Number all lines.
t Number only non-blank lines. This is the default.
n Do not number lines.
pregexp Only number lines that contain the regular expression regexp (see Sec-
tion 14.2 [Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns], page 148).
The default is for line numbers to start with one, and increment by one. Set the initial line number by
giving an argument to the ‘-v’ option, and set the increment by giving an argument to the ‘-i’ option.
¯To output the file ‘report’ with each line of the file preceded by line numbers, starting with the
number two and counting by fours, type:
$ nl -v 2 -i 4 report
RET
¯To number only the lines of the file ‘cantos’ that begin with a period (‘.’), starting numbering at
zero and using a numbering increment of five, and to write the output to ‘cantos.numbered’,
type:
$ nl -i 5 -v 0 -b p’ˆ\.’ cantos > cantos.numbered
RET
The other way to number lines is to use cat with one of the following two options: the ‘-n’ option
numbers each line of its input text, while the ‘-b’ option only numbers non-blank lines.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To peruse the text file ‘report’ with each line of the file numbered, type:
$ cat -n report | less
RET
¯ To peruse the text file ‘report’ with each non-blank line of the file numbered, type:
$ cat -b report | less
RET
In the preceding examples, output from cat is piped to less for perusal; the original file is not
altered.
To take an input file, number its lines, and then write the line-numbered version to a new file, send
the standard output of the cat command to the new file to write.
¯ To write a line-numbered version of file ‘report’ to file ‘report.lines’, type:
$ cat -n report > report.lines
RET

13.6 Reversing Text

The tac command is similar to cat, but it outputs text in reverse order. There is another difference—
tac works on records, sections of text with separator strings, instead of lines of text. Its default separator
string is the linebreak character, so by default tac outputs files in line-for-line reverse order.
¯ To output the file ‘prizes’ in line-for-line reverse order, type:
$ tac prizes
RET
Specify a different separator with the ‘-s’ option. This is often useful when specifying non-printing
characters such as formfeeds. To specify such a character, use the ANSI-C method of quoting (see
Section 3.1.1 [Passing Special Characters to Commands], page 34).
¯ To output ‘prizes’ in page-for-page reverse order, type:
$ tac -s $’\f’ prizes
RET
The preceding example uses the formfeed, or page break, character as the delimiter, and so it outputs
the file ‘prizes’ in page-for-page reverse order, with the last page output first.
Use the ‘-r’ option to use a regular expression for the separator string (see Section 14.2 [Regular
Expressions—Matching Text Patterns], page 148). You can build regular expressions to output text in
word-for-word and character-for-character reverse order:
¯ To output ‘prizes’ in word-for-word reverse order, type:
$ tac -r -s ’[ˆa-zA-z0-9\-]’ prizes
RET
¯ To output ‘prizes’ in character-for-character reverse order, type:
$ tac -r -s ’.\|
RET
’ prizes
RET
To reverse the characters on each line, use rev.
¯ To output ‘prizes’ with the characters on each line reversed, type:
$ rev prizes
RET
14 Searching Text
It’s quite common to search through text for a given sequence of characters (such as a word or phrase),
called a string, or even for a pattern describing a set of such strings; this chapter contains recipes for
doing these kind of things.

14.1 Searching for a Word or Phrase

The primary command used for searching through text is the rather froglike-sounding tool called grep
(the origin of its name is explained in Section 14.2 [Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns],
page 148, where its advanced usage is discussed). It outputs lines of its input that contain a given string
or pattern.
To search for a word, give that word as the first argument. By default, grep searches standard input;
give the name of a file to search as the second argument.
¯ To output lines in the file ‘catalog’ containing the word ‘CD’, type:
$ grep CD catalog
RET
To search for a phrase, specify it in quotes.
¯ To output lines in the file ‘catalog’ containing the word ‘Compact Disc’, type:
$ grep ’Compact Disc’ catalog
RET
The preceding example outputs all lines in the file ‘catalog’ that contain the exact string
‘Compact Disc’; it will not match, however, lines containing ‘compact disc’ or any other vari-
ation on the case of letters in the search pattern. Use the ‘-i’ option to specify that matches are to be
made regardless of case.
¯ To output lines in the file ‘catalog’ containing the string ‘compact disc’ regardless of the case
of its letters, type:
$ grep -i ’compact disc’ catalog
RET
This command outputs lines in the file ‘catalog’ containing any variation of the pattern ‘compact
disc’, including ‘Compact Disc’, ‘COMPACT DISC’, and ‘comPact dIsC’.
One thing to keep in mind is that grep only matches patterns that appear on a single line, so in the
preceding example, if one line in ‘catalog’ ends with the word ‘compact’ and the next begins with
‘disc’, grep will not match either line. There is a way around this with grep (see Section 14.2.8
[Finding Phrases Regardless of Spacing], page 151), or you can search the text in Emacs (see Sec-
tion 14.6.2 [Searching for a Phrase in Emacs], page 154).
You can specify more than one file to search. When you specify multiple files, each match that grep
outputs is preceded by the name of the file it’s in (and you can suppress this with the ‘-h’ option.)
¯ To output lines in all of the files in the current directory containing the word ‘CD’, type:
$ grep CD *
RET
¯ To output lines in all of the ‘.txt’ files in the ‘˜/doc’ directory containing the word ‘CD’, sup-
pressing the listing of file names in the output, type:
$ grep -h CD ˜/doc/*.txt
RET
Use the ‘-r’ option to search a given directory recursively, searching all subdirectories it contains.
¯ To output lines containing the word ‘CD’ in all of the ‘.txt’ files in the ‘˜/doc’ directory and in
all of its subdirectories, type:
$ grep -r CD ˜/doc/*.txt
RET
NOTE: There are more complex things you can search for than simple strings, as will be explained in
the next section.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

14.2 Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns

In addition to word and phrase searches, you can use grep to search for complex text patterns called reg-
ular expressions. A regular expression—or “regexp”—is a text string of special characters that specifies
a set of patterns to match.
Technically speaking, the word or phrase patterns described in the previous section are regular
expressions—just very simple ones. In a regular expression, most characters—including letters and
numbers—represent themselves. For example, the regexp pattern 1 matches the string ‘1’, and the pat-
tern bee matches the string ‘bee’.
There are a number of reserved characters called metacharacters that don’t represent themselves in a
regular expression, but have a special meaning that is used to build complex patterns. These metachar-
acters are as follows: ., *, [, ], ˆ, $, and \.
To specify one of these literal characters in a regular expression, precede the character with a ‘\’.
¯ To output lines in the file ‘catalog’ that contain a ‘$’ character, type:
$ grep ’\$’ catalog
RET
¯ To output lines in the file ‘catalog’ that contain the string ‘$1.99’, type:
$ grep ’\$1\.99’ catalog
RET
¯ To output lines in the file ‘catalog’ that contain a ‘\’ character, type:
$ grep ’\\’ catalog
RET
The following table describes the special meanings of the metacharacters and gives examples of their
usage.
M ETACHARACTER M EANING
. Matches any one character, with the exception of the newline character.
For example, . matches ‘a’, ‘1’, ‘?’, ‘.’ (a literal period character),
and so forth.
* Matches the preceding regexp zero or more times. For example, -*
matches ‘-’, ‘--’, ‘---’, ‘---------’, and so forth. Now imag-
ine a line of text with a million ‘-’ characters somewhere in it, all
marching off across the horizon, up into the blue sky, and through the
clouds. A million ‘-’ characters in a row. This pattern would match
it. Now think of the same long parade, but it’s a million and one ‘-’
characters—it matches that, too.
[] Encloses a character set, and matches any member of the set—for ex-
ample, [abc] matches either ‘a’, ‘b’, or ‘c’. In addition, the hyphen
(‘-’) and caret (‘ˆ’) characters have special meanings when used in-
side brackets:
- The hyphen specifies a range of characters, ordered according to their
ASCII value (see Section 9.4 [Viewing a Character Chart], page 104).
For example, [0-9] is synonymous with [0123456789]; [A-Za-
z] matches one uppercase or lowercase letter. To include a literal ‘-’
in a list, specify it as the last character in a list: so [0-9-] matches
either a single digit character or a ‘-’.x
ˆ As the first character of a list, the caret means that any character ex-
cept those in the list should be matched. For example, [ˆa] matches
any character except ‘a’, and [ˆ0-9] matches any character except a
numeric digit.
ˆ Matches the beginning of the line. So ˆa matches ‘a’ only when it is
the first character on a line.
$ Matches the end of the line. So a$ matches ‘a’ only when it is the last
character on a line.
\ Use \ before a metacharacter when you want to specify that literal
character. So \$ matches a dollar sign character (‘$’), and \\ matches
a single backslash character (‘\’).
In addition, use \ to build new metacharacters, by using it before a
number of other characters:
\| Called the ‘alternation operator’; it matches either regexp it
is between—use it to join two separate regexps to match either of them.
For example, a\|b matches either ‘a’ or ‘b’.
\+ Matches the preceding regexp as many times as possible, but at least
once. So a\+ matches one or more ‘a’ adjacent characters, such as
‘aaa’, ‘aa’, and ‘a’.
\? Matches the regexp preceding it either zero or one times. So a\?
matches ‘a’ or an empty string—which matches every line.
\{number \} Matches the previous regexp (one specified to the left of this con-
struction) that number of times—so a\{4\} matches ‘aaaa’. Use
\{number,\} to match the preceding regexp number or more times,
\{,number \} to match the preceding regexp zero to number times,
and \{number1,number2 \} to match the preceding regexp from
number1 to number2 times.
\(regexp \) Group regexp together for an alternative ; useful for combination
regexps. For example, while moo\? matches ‘mo’ or ‘moo’,
\(moo\)\? matches ‘moo’ or the empty set.
NOTE: The name ‘grep’ derives from a command in the now-obsolete Unix ed line editor tool—the
ed command for searching globally through a file for a regular expression and then printing those lines
was g/re/p, where re was the regular expression you’d use. Eventually, the grep command was
written to do this search on a file when not using ed.

The following sections describe some regexp recipes for commonly searched-for patterns.

14.2.1 Matching Lines Beginning with Certain Text

Use ‘ˆ’ in a regexp to denote the beginning of a line.
¯ To output all lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ beginning with ‘pre’, type:
$ grep ’ˆpre’ /usr/dict/words
RET

¯ To output all lines in the file ‘book’ that begin with the text ‘in the beginning’, regardless of
case, type:
$ grep -i ’ˆin the beginning’ book
RET

NOTE: These regexps were quoted with ’ characters; this is because some shells otherwise treat the
‘ˆ’ character as a special “metacharacter” (see Section 3.1.1 [Passing Special Characters to Commands],
page 34).

The ed command is still available on virtually all unices, Linux inclusive, and the old ‘g/re/p’ still works.
 The default shell on most Linux systems, bash, doesn’t—but it’s still probably good practice to quote a regexp with a caret
in it.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

14.2.2 Matching Lines Ending with Certain Text

Use ‘$’ as the last character of quoted text to match that text only at the end of a line.
¯ To output lines in the file ‘sayings’ ending with an exclamation point, type:
$ grep ’!$’ sayings
RET

NOTE: To use ‘$’ in a regexp to find words that rhyme with a given word, see Section 11.2.1 [Listing
Words that Match a Pattern], page 126.

14.2.3 Matching Lines of a Certain Length

To match lines of a particular length, use that number of ‘.’ characters between ‘ˆ’ and ‘$’—for ex-
ample, to match all lines that are two characters (or columns) wide, use ‘ˆ..$’ as the regexp to search
for.
¯ To output all lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ that are exactly two characters wide, type:
$ grep ’ˆ..$’ /usr/dict/words
RET

For longer lines, it is more useful to use a different construct: ‘ˆ.\{number \}$’, where number is
the number of lines to match. Use ‘,’ to specify a range of numbers.
¯ To output all lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ that are exactly seventeen characters wide, type:
$ grep ’ˆ.\{17\}$’ /usr/dict/words
RET

¯ To output all lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ that are twenty-five or more characters wide, type:
$ grep ’ˆ.\{25,\}$’ /usr/dict/words
RET

14.2.4 Matching Lines That Contain Any of Some Regexps

To match lines that contain any of a number of regexps, specify each of the regexps to search for between
alternation operators (‘\|’) as the regexp to search for. Lines containing any of the given regexps will
be output.
¯ To output all lines in ‘playlist’ that contain either the patterns ‘the sea’ or ‘cake’, type:
$ grep ’the sea\|cake’ playlist
RET

This command outputs any lines in ‘playlist’ that match the patterns ‘the sea’ or ‘cake’,
including lines matching both patterns.

14.2.5 Matching Lines That Contain All of Some Regexps

To output lines that match all of a number of regexps, use grep to output lines containing the first regexp
you want to match, and pipe the output to a grep with the second regexp as an argument. Continue
adding pipes to grep searches for all the regexps you want to search for.
¯ To output all lines in ‘playlist’ that contain both patterns ‘the sea’ and ‘cake’, regardless of
case, type:
$ grep -i ’the sea’ playlist | grep -i cake
RET

NOTE: To match lines containing some regexps in a particular order, see Section 14.2.11 [Regexps for
Common Situations], page 152.
14.2.6 Matching Lines That Don’t Contain a Regexp
To output all lines in a text that don’t contain a given pattern, use grep with the ‘-v’ option—this option
reverts the sense of matching, selecting all non-matching lines.
¯ To output all lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ that are not three characters wide, type:
$ grep -v ’ˆ...$’
RET
¯ To output all lines in ‘access_log’ that do not contain the string ‘http’, type:
$ grep -v http access_log
RET

14.2.7 Matching Lines That Only Contain Certain Characters

To match lines that only contain certain characters, use the regexp ‘ˆ[characters ]*$’, where characters
are the ones to match.
¯ To output lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ that only contain vowels, type:
$ grep -i ’ˆ[aeiou]*$’ /usr/dict/words
RET
The ‘-i’ option matches characters regardless of case; so, in this example, all vowel characters are
matched regardless of case.

14.2.8 Finding Phrases Regardless of Spacing

One way to search for a phrase that might occur with extra spaces between words, or across a line or
page break, is to remove all linefeeds and extra spaces from the input, and then grep that.
To do this, pipe the input to tr with ‘’\r\n:\>\|-’’ as an argument to the ‘-d’ option (removing
all linebreaks from the input); pipe that to the fmt filter with the ‘-u’ option (outputting the text with
uniform spacing); and pipe that to grep with the pattern to search for.
¯ To search across line breaks for the string ‘at the same time as’ in the file ‘notes’, type:
$ cat notes | tr -d ’\r\n:\>\|-’ | fmt -u | grep ’at the same time
as’
RET
NOTE: The Emacs editor has its own special search for doing this—see Section 14.6.2 [Searching for a
Phrase in Emacs], page 154.

14.2.9 Finding Patterns in Certain Contexts

To search for a pattern that only occurs in a particular context, grep for the context in which it should
occur, and pipe the output to another grep to search for the actual pattern.
For example, this can be useful to search for a given pattern only when it is quoted with an ‘>’
character in an email message.
¯ To list lines from the file ‘email-archive’ that contain the word ‘narrative’ only when it is
quoted, type:
$ grep ’ˆ>’ email-archive | grep narrative
RET
You can also reverse the order and use the ‘-v’ option to output all lines containing a given pattern
that are not in a given context.
¯ To list lines from the file ‘email-archive’ that contain the word ‘narrative’, but not when
it is quoted, type:
$ grep narrative email-archive | grep -v ’ˆ>’
RET
 If the input is a file, use cat to do this, as in the example.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

14.2.10 Using a List of Regexps to Match From

You can keep a list of regexps in a file, and use grep to search text for any of the patterns in the file.
To do this, specify the name of the file containing the regexps to search for as an argument to the ‘-f’
option.
This can be useful, for example, if you need to search a given text for a number of words—keep each
word on its own line in the regexp file.
¯ To output all lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ containing any of the words listed in the file
‘forbidden-words’, type:
$ grep -f forbidden-words /usr/dict/words
RET
¯ To output all lines in ‘/usr/dict/words’ that do not contain any of the words listed in
‘forbidden-words’, regardless of case, type:
$ grep -v -i -f forbidden-words /usr/dict/words
RET

14.2.11 Regexps for Common Situations

The following table lists sample regexps and describes what they match. You can use these regexps as
boilerplate when building your own regular expressions for searching text. Remember to enclose regexps
in quotes.
T O MATCH LINES THAT . . . U SE THIS REGEXP
contain nine zeroes in a row 0\{9\}
are exactly four characters long ˆ....$ or ˆ.\{4\}$
are exactly seventy characters long ˆ.\{70\}$
begin with an asterisk character ˆ\*
begin with ‘tow’ and end with ‘ing’ ˆtow.*ing$
contain a number [0-9]
do not contain a number ˆ[ˆ0-9]*$
contain a year from 1991 through 1995 199[1-5]
contain a year from 1957 through 1969 \(195[7-9]\)\|\(196[0-9]\)
contain either ‘.txt’ or ‘.text’ \.te\?xt
contain ‘cat’ then ‘gory’ in the same word cat\.\+gory
contain ‘cat’ then ‘gory’ in the same line cat\.\+\?gory
contain a ‘q’ not followed by a ‘u’ q[ˆu]
contain any ftp, gopher, or ‘http’ URLs \(ftp\|gopher\|http\|\)://.*\..*
contain ‘N’, ‘T’, and ‘K’, with zero or more charac- N.*T.*K
ters between each

14.3 Searching More than Plain Text Files

The following recipes are for searching data other than in plain text files.

14.3.1 Matching Lines in Compressed Files

Use zgrep to search through text in files that are compressed. These files usually have a ‘.gz’ file
name extension, and can’t be searched or otherwise read by other tools without uncompressing the file
first (for more about compressed files, see Section 8.5 [Compressed Files], page 92).
 The zgrep tool works just like grep, except it searches through the text of compressed files. It
outputs matches to the given pattern as if you’d searched through normal, uncompressed files. It leaves
the files compressed when it exits.
¯ To search through the compressed file ‘README.gz’ for the text ‘Linux’, type:
$ zgrep Linux README.gz
RET

14.3.2 Matching Lines in Web Pages

You can grep a Web page or other URL by giving the URL to lynx with the ‘-dump’ option, and
piping the output to grep.
¯ To search the contents of the URL http://example.com/ for lines containing the text
‘gonzo’ or ‘hunter’, type:
$ lynx -dump http://example.com/ | grep ’gonzo\|hunter’
RET

14.4 Outputting the Context of a Search

It is sometimes useful to see a matched line in its context in the file—that is, to see some of the lines that
surround it.
Use the ‘-C’ option with grep to output results in context—it outputs matched lines with two lines
of “context” both before and after each match. To specify the number of context lines output both before
and after matched lines, use that number as an option instead of ‘-C’.
¯ To search ‘/usr/dict/words’ for lines matching ‘tsch’ and output two lines of context before
and after each line of output, type:
$ grep -C tsch /usr/dict/words
RET
¯ To search ‘/usr/dict/words’ for lines matching ‘tsch’ and output six lines of context before
and after each line of output, type:
$ grep -6 tsch /usr/dict/words
RET
To output matches and the lines before them, use ‘-B’; to output matches and the lines after them,
use ‘-A’. Give a numeric option with either of these options to specify that number of context lines.
¯ To search ‘/usr/dict/words’ for lines matching ‘tsch’ and output two lines of context before
each line of output, type:
$ grep -B tsch /usr/dict/words
RET
¯ To search ‘/usr/dict/words’ for lines matching ‘tsch’ and output six lines of context after
each line of output, type:
$ grep -A6 tsch /usr/dict/words
RET
¯ To search ‘/usr/dict/words’ for lines matching ‘tsch’ and output ten lines of context before
and three lines of context after each line of output, type:
$ grep -B10 -A3 tsch /usr/dict/words
RET

14.5 Searching and Replacing Text

A quick way to search and replace some text in a file is to use the following one-line perl command:
$ perl -pi -e "s/oldstring /newstring /g;" filespec
RET
In this example, oldstring is the string to search, newstring is the string to replace it with, and filespec is
the name of the file or files to work on. You can use this for more than one file.
¯ To replace the string ‘helpless’ with the string ‘helpful’ in all files in the current directory,
type:
$ perl -pi -e "s/helpless/helpful/g;" *
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

You can also search and replace text in an Emacs buffer; to do this, use the replace-regexp
function and give both the expression to search for and the expression to replace it with.
¯ To replace the text ‘helpless’ with the text ‘helpful’ in the current buffer, type:
M-x replace-regexp
RET helpless
RET helpful
RET
NOTE: You can also search and replace text in most text editors, including Emacs; see Section 14.6.4
[Searching and Replacing in Emacs], page 155.

14.6 Searching Text in Emacs

The following sections show ways of searching for text in Emacs—incrementally, for a word or phrase,
or for a pattern—and for searching and then replacing text.

14.6.1 Searching Incrementally in Emacs

Type C-s to use the Emacs incremental search function. It takes text as input in the minibuffer and it
searches for that text from point toward the end of the current buffer. Type C-s again to search for the
next occurrence of the text you’re searching for; this works until no more matches occur. Then, Emacs
reports ‘Failing I-search’ in the minibuffer; type C-s again to wrap to the beginning of the buffer
and continue the search from there.
It gets its name “incremental” because it begins searching immediately when you start to type text, and
so it builds a search string in increments—for example, if you want to search for the word ‘sunflower’
in the current buffer, you start to type
C-s s
At that point Emacs searches forward through the buffer to the first ‘s’ character, and highlights it. Then,
as you type u, it searches forward to the first ‘su’ in the buffer and highlights that (if a ‘u’ appears
immediately after the ‘s’ it first stopped at, it stays where it’s at, and highlights the ‘s’ and the ‘u’). It
continues to do this as long as you type and as long as there is a match in the current buffer. As soon
as what you type does not appear in the buffer, Emacs beeps and a message appears in the minibuffer
stating that the search has failed.
To search for the next instance of the last string you gave, type C-s again; if you keep
CTRL held
down, every time you press the
S key, Emacs will advance to the next match in the buffer.
This is generally the fastest and most common type of search you will use in Emacs.
You can do an incremental search through the buffer in reverse—that is, from point to the beginning
of the buffer—with the isearch-backward function, C-r.
¯ To search for the text ‘moon’ in the current buffer from point in reverse to the beginning of the
buffer, type:
C-r moon

14.6.2 Searching for a Phrase in Emacs

Like grep, the Emacs incremental search only works on lines of text, so it only finds phrases on a single
line. If you search for ‘hello, world’ with the incremental search and the text ‘hello,’ appears at
the end of a line and the text ‘world’ appears at the beginning of the next line, it won’t find it.
To find a multi-word phrase across line breaks, use the word-search-forward function. It
searches for a phrase or words regardless of punctuation or spacing.
¯ To search forward through the current buffer for the phrase ‘join me’, type:
M-x word-search-forward
RET join me
RET
NOTE: The word-search-backward function does the same as word-search-forward, ex-
cept it searches backward through the buffer, from point to the beginning of the buffer.
14.6.3 Searching for a Regexp in Emacs
Use the search-forward-regexp function to search for a regular expression from point to the end
of the current buffer.
¯ To search forward through the current buffer for the regexp ‘@.*\.org’, type:
M-x search-forward-regexp
RET @.*\.org
RET
The keyboard accelerator for this command is M-C-s—on most keyboards, you press and release

ESC and then hold down
CTRL while you type s. To repeat the last regexp search you made, type M-C-
s C-s; then, as long as you have
CTRL held down, you can keep typing s to advance to the next match,
just as you would with an incremental search.
NOTE: There is a search-backward-regexp function that is identical but searches backward,
from point to the top of the buffer.

14.6.4 Searching and Replacing in Emacs

To search for and replace text in Emacs, use the replace-regexp function. When you run this
function, Emacs will ask for both the text or regexp to search for and the text to replace it with.
¯ To replace the text ‘day’ with the text ‘night’ in the current buffer, type:
M-x replace-regexp
RET day
RET night
RET
This function is especially useful for replacing control characters with text, or for replacing text with
control characters, which you can specify with C-q, the quoted-insert function (see Section 10.2.5
[Inserting Special Characters in Emacs], page 113).
¯ To replace all the ‘ˆM’ characters in the current buffer with regular linefeeds, type:
M-x replace-regexp
RET C-q C-m
RET C-q 012
RET
RET

14.7 Searching Text in Less

There are two useful commands in less for searching through text: / and ?. To search forward through
the text, type / followed by a regexp to search for; to search backward through the text, use ?.
When you do a search, the word or other regexp you search for appears highlighted throughout the
text.
¯ To search forward through the text you are perusing for the word ‘cat’, type:
/cat
RET
To search backward through the text you are perusing for the regexp ‘[ch]at’, type:
?[ch]at
RET
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
15 Typesetting and Word Processing
If you’re coming to Linux with a Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS background, or from some other
non-Unix computing environment, you are likely used to one approach to “word processing.” In these
environments, most writing is done in word processors—large programs that offer a vast array of format-
ting options and that store their output in proprietary file formats. Most people use word processors no
matter where the intended output will go (even if it’s just your diary).
Word processors, from complete suites like StarOffice to commercial favorites like WordPerfect, are
available for Linux—and have been for years. However, the standard personal-computing paradigm
known as “word processing” has never really taken off on Linux—or, for that matter, on Unix-like op-
erating systems in general. With Linux, most writing is done in a text editor, and files are kept in plain
text.
When you keep a file in plain text, you can use command-line tools to format the pages and para-
graphs; add page numbers and headers; check the spelling, style, and usage; count the lines, words, and
characters it contains; convert it to HTML and other formats; and even print the text in a font of your
choosing—all of which are described in the recipes in this book. The text can be formatted, analyzed,
cut, chopped, sliced, diced, and otherwise processed by the vast array of Linux command-line tools that
work on text—over 750 in an average installation.
This approach may seem primitive at first—especially to those weaned in a computing environment
that dictates that all writing must be set in a typeface from the moment of creation—but the word-
processing approach can be excessive compared to what Linux provides. You can, if you like, view or
print plain text in a font, with a single command—which is what ninety percent of people want to do
with a word processor ninety percent of the time, anyway; to do this, see Section 15.2 [Converting Plain
Text for Output], page 159.
It’s my opinion that word processing is not a forward-thinking direction for the handling of text,
especially on Linux systems and especially now that text is not always destined for printed output: text
can end up on a Web page, in an “eBook,” in an email message, or possibly in print. The best common
source for these formats is plain text. Word processing programs, and the special file formats they
require, are anathema to the generalized, tools-based and plain-text philosophy of Unix and Linux (see
Section 1.1.6 [Unix and the Tools Philosophy], page 12). “Word processing” itself may be an obsolete
idea of the 1980s personal computing environment, and it may no longer be a necessity in the age of the
Web and email—mediums in which plain text content is more native than proprietary word processor
formats.
If you do need to design a special layout for hardcopy, you can typeset the text. One could write
a book on the subject of Linux typesetting; unfortunately, no such book has yet been written, but this
chapter contains recipes for producing typeset text. They were selected as being the easiest to prepare or
most effective for their purpose.
NOTE: For more information on this subject, I recommend Christopher B. Browne’s excellent overview,
“Word Processors for Linux” (http://www.hex.net/˜cbbrowne/wp.html).

15.1 Choosing the Right Typesetting System for the Job

Choosing the proper typesetting system to use when you are about to begin a project can be daunting:
each has its own drawbacks and abilities, and to the less experienced it may not be immediately clear
which is most appropriate for a particular document or project.
The following table can help you determine which system is best for a particular task. There isn’t
one way of doing such things, of course—these are only my recommendations. The first column lists the
kind of output you intend, the second gives examples of the kind of documents, and the third suggests
the typesetting system(s) to use. These systems are described in the remaining sections of this chapter.
I NTENDED O UTPUT E XAMPLES T YPESETTING S YSTEM
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Printed, typeset output and electronic Internet FAQ, white paper, enscript; Texinfo;
HTML or text file dissertation SGMLtools

Printed, typeset output and text file man page, command refer- groff
ence card
Printed, typeset output Letter or other corre- LaTeX or LyX
spondence, report, book
manuscript
Printed, typeset output Brochure or newsletter with LyX
multiple columns and im-
ages
Printed, typeset output Envelope, mailing label, TEX
other specialized document
Printed text output in a font Grocery list, saved email enscript
message, to-do list
Printed, typeset output Poster, sign enscript; HTML; LyX;
TEX
Large printed text output Long banners for parties or banner
other occasions
NOTE: If you really don’t need a document to be typeset, then don’t bother! Just keep it a plain text
file, and use a text editor to edit it (see Chapter 10 [Text Editing], page 107). Do this for writing notes,
email messages, Web pages, Usenet articles, and so forth. If you ever do need to typeset it later, you will
still be able to do so. And you can, if you like, view or print plain text in nice fonts (see Section 15.2.1
[Outputting Text in a Font], page 159).
15.2 Converting Plain Text for Output
Debian: ‘enscript’
WWW: http://www.iki.fi/˜mtr/genscript/

The simplest way to typeset plain text is to convert it to PostScript. This is often done to prepare text
for printing; the original source text file remains as unformatted text, but the text of the printed output is
formatted in basic ways, such as being set in a font.
The main tool for converting text to PostScript is called enscript; it converts the text file that is
specified as an argument into PostScript, making any number of formatting changes in between. It’s
great for quickly making nice output from a plain text file—you can use it to do things such as output
text in a font of your choosing, or paginate text with graphical headers at the top of each page.
By default, enscript paginates its input, outputs it in a 10-point Courier font, and puts a simple
header at the top of each page containing the file name, date and time, and page number in bold. Use the
‘-B’ option to omit this header.
If you have a PostScript printer connected to your system, enscript can be set up to spool its
output right to the printer. You can verify if your system is set up this way by looking at the enscript
configuration file, ‘/etc/enscript.cfg’. The line
DefaultOutputMethod: printer
specifies that output is spooled directly to the printer; changing it to ‘stdout’ instead of ‘printer’
sends the output to the standard output instead.
Even if your default printer does not natively understand PostScript, it may be able to take enscript
output, anyway. Most Linux installations these days have print filters set up so that PostScript spooled
for printing is automatically converted to a format the printer understands (if your system doesn’t have
this setup for some reason, convert the PostScript to a format recognized by your printer with the gs
tool, and then print that—see Section 20.3 [Converting PostScript], page 209).
¯ To convert the text file ‘saved-mail’ to PostScript, with default formatting, and spool the output
right to the printer, type:
$ enscript saved-mail
RET
To write the output to a file instead of spooling it, give the name of the file you want to output as an
argument to the ‘-p’ option. This is useful when you don’t have a PostScript printer and you need to
convert the output first, or for when you just want to make a PostScript image file from some text, or for
previewing the output before you print it. In the latter case, you can view it on the display screen with
a PostScript viewer application such as ghostview (see Section 17.1.2 [Previewing a PostScript File],
page 183).
¯ To write the text file ‘saved-mail’ to a PostScript file, ‘saved-mail.ps’, and then preview it
in X, type:
$ enscript -p report.ps saved-mail
RET
$ ghostview saved-mail.ps
RET
The following recipes show how to use enscript to output text with different effects and properties.
NOTE: Once you make a PostScript file from text input, you can use any of the tools to format this new
PostScript file, including rearranging and resizing its pages (see Chapter 20 [PostScript], page 205).

15.2.1 Outputting Text in a Font

To output text in a particular PostScript font, use enscript and give the name of the font you want to
use as a quoted argument to the ‘-f’ option.
Specify both the font family and size in points: give the capitalized name of the font family
(with hyphens to indicate spaces between words) followed by the the size in points. For example,
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

‘Courier14’ outputs text in the Courier font at 14 points, and ‘Times-Roman12.2’ outputs text
in the Times Roman font at 12.2 points. Some of the available font names are listed in the file
‘/usr/share/enscript/afm/font.map’; the enscript man page describes how to use addi-
tional fonts that might be installed on your system.
¯ To print the contents of the text file ‘saved-mail’ on a PostScript printer, with text set in the
Helvetica font at 12 points, type:
$ enscript -B -f "Helvetica12" saved-mail
RET
¯ To make a PostScript file called ‘saved-mail.ps’ containing the contents of the text file
‘saved-mail’, with text set in the Helvetica font at 12 points, type:
$ enscript -B -f "Helvetica12" -p saved-mail.ps saved-mail
RET
The ‘-B’ option was used in the preceding examples to omit the output of a header on each page.
When headers are used, they’re normally output in 10-point Courier Bold; to specify a different font for
the text in the header, give its name as an argument to the ‘-F’ option.
¯ To print the contents of the text file ‘saved-mail’ to a PostScript printer, with text set in 10-point
Times Roman and header text set in 18-point Times Bold, type:
$ enscript -f "Times-Roman10" -F "Times-Bold18" saved-mail
RET
¯ To make a PostScript file called ‘saved-mail.ps’ containing the contents of the text file
‘saved-mail’, with text and headers both set in 16-point Palatino Roman, type:
$ enscript -f "Palatino-Roman16" -F "Palatino-Roman16" -p
saved-mail.ps saved-mail
RET

15.2.2 Outputting Text as a Poster or Sign

You can output any text you type directly to the printer (or to a PostScript file) by omitting the name of
the input file; enscript will read the text on the standard input until you type C-d on a new line.
This is especially useful for making a quick-and-dirty sign or poster—to do this, specify a large font
for the text, such as Helvetica Bold at 72 points, and omit the display of default headers.
¯
«
To print a sign in 72-point Helvetica Bold type to a PostScript printer, type:
¨
$ enscript -B -f "Helvetica-Bold72"
RET

RET
CAUTION
RET

RET
WET PAINT!
RET

ªC-d
©
72-point type is very large; use the ‘--word-wrap’ option with longer lines of text to wrap lines
at word boundaries if necessary. You might need this option because at these larger font sizes, you run
the risk of making lines that are longer than could fit on the page. You can also use the ‘-r’ option
to print the text in landscape orientation, as described in Section 15.2.5 [Outputting Text in Landscape
Orientation], page 163.
¯
«
To print a sign in 63-point Helvetica Bold across the long side of the page, type:
¨
$ enscript -B -r --word-wrap -f "Helvetica-Bold63"
RET

RET

RET
CAUTION -- WET PAINT!
RET

ªC-d
©
NOTE: To make a snazzier or more detailed message or sign, you would create a file in a text editor and
justify the words on each line in the file as you want them to print, with blank lines where necessary.
If you’re getting that complicated with it, it would also be wise to use the ‘-p’ option once to output
to a file first, and preview the file before printing it (see Section 17.1.2 [Previewing a PostScript File],
page 183).

15.2.3 Outputting Text with Language Highlighting

The enscript tool currently recognizes the formatting of more than forty languages and formats, from
the Perl and C programming languages to HTML, email, and Usenet news articles; enscript can
highlight portions of the text based on its syntax. In Unix-speak, this is called pretty-printing.
The following table lists the names of some of the language filters that are available at the time of this
writing and describes the languages or formats they’re used for.
F ILTER L ANGUAGE OR F ORMAT
ada Ada95 programming language.
asm Assembler listings.
awk AWK programming language.
bash Bourne-Again shell programming language.
c C programming language.
changelog ChangeLog files.
cpp C++ programming language.
csh C-Shell script language.
delphi Delphi programming language.
diff Normal “difference reports” made from diff.
diffu Unified “difference reports” made from diff.
elisp Emacs Lisp programming language.
fortran Fortran77 programming language.
haskell Haskell programming language.
html HyperText Markup Language (HTML).
idl IDL (CORBA Interface Definition Language).
java Java programming language.
javascript JavaScript programming language.
ksh Korn shell programming language.
m4 M4 macro processor programming language.
mail Electronic mail and Usenet news articles.
makefile Rule files for make.
nroff Manual pages formatted with nroff.
objc Objective-C programming language.
pascal Pascal programming language.
perl Perl programming language.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

postscript PostScript programming language.

python Python programming language.
scheme Scheme programming language.
sh Bourne shell programming language.
skill Cadence Design Systems Lisp-like language.
sql Sybase 11 SQL.
states Definition files for states.
synopsys Synopsys dc shell scripting language.
tcl Tcl programming language.
tcsh TC-Shell script language.
vba Visual Basic (for Applications).
verilog Verilog hardware description language.
vhdl VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL).
vrml Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML97).
zsh Z-shell programming language.
To pretty-print a file, give the name of the filter to use as an argument to the ‘-E’ option, without any
whitespace between the option and argument.
¯ To pretty-print the HTML file ‘index.html’, type:
$ enscript -Ehtml index.html
RET
¯ To pretty-print an email message saved to the file ‘important-mail’, and output it with no
headers to a file named ‘important-mail.ps’, type:
$ enscript -B -Email -p important-mail.ps important-mail
RET
Use the special ‘--help-pretty-print’ option to list the languages supported by the copy of
enscript you have.
¯To peruse a list of currently supported languages, type:
$ enscript --help-pretty-print | less
RET

15.2.4 Outputting Text with Fancy Headers

To output text with fancy graphic headers, where the header text is set in blocks of various shades of
gray, use enscript with the ‘-G’ option.
¯ To print the contents of the text file ‘saved-mail’ with fancy headers on a PostScript printer,
type:
$ enscript -G saved-mail
RET
¯ To make a PostScript file called ‘saved-mail.ps’ containing the contents of the text file
‘saved-mail’, with fancy headers, type:
$ enscript -G -p saved-mail.ps saved-mail
RET
Without the ‘-G’ option, enscript outputs text with a plain header in bold text, printing the file
name and the time it was last modified. The ‘-B’ option, as described earlier, omits all headers.
You can customize the header text by quoting the text you want to use as an argument to the ‘-b’
option. Use the special symbol ‘$%’ to specify the current page number in the header text.
¯ To print the contents of the text file ‘saved-mail’ with a custom header label containing the
current page number, type:
 $ enscript -b "Page $% of the saved email archive" saved-mail
RET

NOTE: You can create your own custom fancy headers, too—this is described in the
‘CUSTOMIZATION’ section of the enscript man page.

15.2.5 Outputting Text in Landscape Orientation

To output text in landscape orientation, where text is rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, use the ‘-r’
option.
¯ To print the contents of the text file ‘saved-mail’ to a PostScript printer, with text set in 28-point
Times Roman and oriented in landscape orientation, type:
$ enscript -f "Times-Roman28" -r saved-mail
RET
The ‘-r’ option is useful for making horizontal banners by passing output of the figlet tool to
enscript (see Section 16.3.1 [Horizontal Text Fonts], page 178).
¯To output the text ‘This is a long banner’ in a figlet font and write it to the default printer
with text set at 18-point Courier and in landscape orientation, type:
$ figlet "A long banner" | enscript -B -r -f "Courier18"
RET

15.2.6 Outputting Multiple Copies of Text

To output multiple copies of text when sending to the printer with enscript, give the number as an
argument to the ‘-#’ option. This option doesn’t work when sending to a file, but note that lpr takes
the same option (see Section 25.1.2 [Printing Multiple Copies of a Job], page 238).
¯ To print three copies of the text file ‘saved-mail’ to a PostScript printer with the default
enscript headers, type:
$ enscript -#3 saved-mail
RET

15.2.7 Selecting the Pages of Text to Output

To specify which pages of a text are output with enscript, give the range of page number(s) as an
argument to the ‘-a’ option.
¯ To print pages two through ten of file ‘saved-mail’ with the default enscript headers, type:
$ enscript -a2-10 saved-mail
RET
To print just the odd or even pages, use the special ‘odd’ and ‘even’ arguments. This is good for
printing double-sided pages: first print the odd-numbered pages, and then feed the output pages back
into the printer and print the even-numbered pages.
¯ To print the odd-numbered pages of the file ‘saved-mail’ with the default headers, type:
$ enscript -a odd saved-mail
RET
¯ To print the even-numbered pages of the file ‘saved-mail’ with the default headers, type:
$ enscript -a even saved-mail
RET

15.2.8 Additional PostScript Output Options

The following table describes some of enscript’s other options.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-number Specify number of columns per page; for example, to specify four
columns per page, use ‘-4’.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

-apages Specify the page numbers to be printed, where pages is a comma-

delineated list of page numbers. Specify individual pages by their
numbers, and specify a range of pages by giving the first and last page
numbers in the range separated by a hyphen (‘-’). The special ‘odd’
prints odd-numbered pages and ‘even’ prints even-numbered pages.
-dprinter Spool output to the printer named printer.
-Elanguage “Pretty-print” the text written in the specified language with context
highlighting.
-Hnumber Specify the height of highlight bars, in lines (without number, the value
of 2 is used).
-inumber Indent lines by number characters, or follow number with a letter de-
noting the unit to use: ‘c’ for centimeters, ‘i’ for inches, or ‘p’ for
PostScript points (1/72 inch).
-Ifilter Pass input files through filter, which can be a tool or quoted command.
-j Print borders around columns.
-Lnumbers Specify the number of lines per page.
-utext Specify a quoted string “underlay” to print underneath every page.
-Unumber Specify the number of logical pages to print on each page of output.
--highlight-bar- Specify the level of gray color to be used in printing the highlight bars,
gray=number from 0.0 (gray) to 1.0 (white).
--margins= Adjust left, right, top, and bottom page margins; the measurements
left :right : are in PostScript points, and, when specifying the values, any can be
top :bottom omitted. (Given on one line all as one long option.)
--rotate-even-pages Rotate each even-numbered page 180 degrees.

15.3 LyX Document Processing

Debian: ‘lyx’
WWW: http://www.lyx.org/

LyX is a relative newcomer to the typesetting and word-processing arena, and it is one of the most
genuinely fresh ideas in the field: it’s a kind of word processor for writing LaTeX input (see Section 15.4
[Typesetting with TEX and Friends], page 167). It’s a visual, graphic editor for X, but it doesn’t emulate
the output paper directly on the display screen. In contrast to specifying exactly how each character in
the document will look (“make this word Helvetica Bold at 18 points”), you specify the structure of the
text you write (“make this word a chapter heading”). And, in contrast to the WYSIWYG paradigm, its
authors call the new approach WYSIWYM—“What you say is what you mean.”
LyX comes with many document classes already defined—such as letter, article,
report, and book—containing definitions for the elements these document types may contain. You
can change the look of each element and the look of the document as a whole, and you can change the
look of individual selections of text, but with these elements available, it’s rarely necessary.
Since LyX uses LaTeX as a back-end to do the actual typesetting, and LyX is capable of exporting
documents to LaTeX input format, you can think of it as a way to write LaTeX input files in a GUI
without having to know the LaTeX language commands.
However, even those who do use LaTeX and related typesetting languages can get some use out of
LyX: many people find it quick and easy to create some documents in LyX that are much harder to do in
LaTeX, such as multi-column newsletter layouts with illustrations.
 You can also import your LaTeX files (and plain text) into LyX for further layout or manipulation.
The following recipes show how to get started using LyX, and where to go to learn more about it.

15.3.1 Features of LyX

When editing in LyX, you’ll see that it has all of the commands you’d expect from a word processor—
for example, some of the commands found on the Edit menu include Cut, Copy, Paste, Find and
Replace, and Spell Check.
Here are some of its major features:
¯ Automatic generation of table of contents, nested lists, and numbering of section headings.
¯ Easy insertion of PostScript figures and illustrations, which can be rotated, scaled, and captioned.
¯ WYSIWYG construction of tables.
¯ Undo and redo of any operation or sequence of operations.
¯ All LyX functions available from both keyboard commands and pull-down menus.
¯ All key-presses used for commands are configurable.

15.3.2 Writing Documents with LyX

LyX runs under X, and you start it in the usual way—either by choosing it from the applications menu
provided by your window manager or by typing lyx in an xterm window. (For more about starting
programs in X, see Section 4.2 [Running a Program in X], page 49).
To start a new document from scratch, choose New from the File menu. You can also make a
document from one of the many templates included with LyX, which have the basic layout and settings
for a particular kind of document all set up for you—just fill in the elements for your actual document.
To make a new document from a template, choose New from template from the File menu, and
then select the name of the template to use.
The following table lists the names of some of the included templates and the kind of documents
they’re usually used for:
T EMPLATE F ILE D OCUMENT F ORMAT
aapaper.lyx Format suitable for papers submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics .
dinbrief.lyx Format for letters typeset according to German conventions.
docbook_template.lyx Format for documents written in the SGML DocBook DTD.
hollywood.lyx Format for movie scripts as they are formatted in the U.S. film industry.
iletter.lyx Format for letters typeset according to Italian conventions.
latex8.lyx Format suitable for article submissions to IEEE conferences.
letter.lyx Basic format for letters and correspondence.
linuxdoctemplate.lyx Format for documents written in the SGML LinuxDoc
DTD, as formerly used by the Linux Documentation Project
(http://linuxdoc.org/).
revtex.lyx Article format suitable for submission to publications of the Ameri-
can Physical Society (APS), American Institute of Physics (AIP), and
Optical Society of America (OSA).
slides.lyx Format for producing slides and transparencies.
To view how the document will look when you print it, choose View DVI from the File menu.
This command starts the xdvi tool, which previews the output on the screen. (For more on using xdvi,
see Section 17.1.1 [Previewing a DVI File], page 183).
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

To print the document, choose Print from the File menu. You can also export it to LaTeX,
PostScript, DVI, or plain text formats; to do this, choose Export from the File menu and then select
the format to export to.
NOTE: If you plan on editing the document again in LyX, be sure to save the actual ‘.lyx’ document
file.

15.3.3 Learning More about LyX

The LyX Documentation Project has overseen the creation of a great deal of free documentation for LyX,
including hands-on tutorials, user manuals, and example documents.
The LyX Graphical Tour (http://www.lyx.org/about/lgt-1.0/lgt.html) is a Web-
based tutorial that shows you how to create and edit a simple LyX file.
LyX has a comprehensive set of built-in manuals, which you can read inside the LyX editor like any
LyX document, or you can print them out. All of the manuals are available from the Help menu.
¯ To run LyX’s built-in tutorial, choose Tutorial from the Help menu.
This command opens the LyX tutorial, which you can then read on the screen or print out by selecting
Print from the File menu.
The following table lists the names of the available manuals as they appear on the Help menu, and
describes what each contains:
M ANUAL D ESCRIPTION
Introduction An introduction to using the LyX manuals, describing their contents
and how to view and print them.
Tutorial A hands-on tutorial to writing documents with LyX.
User’s Guide The main LyX usage manual, describing all of the commonly used
commands, options, and features.
Extended Features This is “Part II” of the User’s Guide, describing advanced features such
as bibliographies, indices, documents with multiple files, and tech-
niques used in special-case situations, such as fax support, SGML-
Tools support, and using version control with LyX documents.
Customization Shows which elements of LyX can be customized and how to go about
doing that.
Reference Manual Describes all of the menu entries and internal functions.
Known Bugs LyX is in active development, and like any large application, bugs have
been found. They are listed and described in this document.
LaTeX Configuration This document is automatically generated by LyX when it is installed
on your system. It is an inventory of your LaTeX configuration, in-
cluding the version of LaTeX in use, available fonts, available docu-
ment classes, and other related packages that may be installed on your
system.
Finally, LyX includes example documents in the ‘/usr/X11R6/share/lyx/examples’ direc-
tory. Here’s a partial listing of these files with a description of what each contains:
D OCUMENT F ILE D ESCRIPTION
Foils.lyx Describes how to make foils—slides or overhead transparencies—with
the FoilTeX package.
ItemizeBullets.lyx Examples of the various bullet styles for itemized lists.
Literate.lyx An example of using LyX as a composition environment for “literate
programming.”
MathLabeling.lyx Techniques for numbering and labeling equations.
Math_macros.lyx Shows how to make macros in Math mode.
Minipage.lyx Shows how to write two-column bilingual documents.
TableExamples.lyx Examples of using tables in LyX.
aa_head.lyx
aa_paper.lyx Files discussing and showing the use of LyX in the field of astronomy.
aas_sample.lyx
amsart-test.lyx Examples of documents written in the format used by the American
amsbook-test.lyx Mathematical Society.
docbook_example.lyx Example of a DocBook document.
multicol.lyx Example of a multi-column format.
scriptone.lyx Example of a Hollywood script.

15.4 Typesetting with TEX and Friends

Debian: ‘tetex-base’
Debian: ‘tetex-bin’
Debian: ‘tetex-doc’
Debian: ‘tetex-extra’
Debian: ‘tetex-lib’
WWW: http://www.tug.org/teTeX/

The most capable typesetting tool for use on Linux-based systems is the TEX typesetting system and
related software. It is the premier computer typesetting system—its output surpasses or rivals all other
systems to date. The advanced line and paragraph breaking, hyphenation, kerning, and other font char-
acteristic policies and algorithms it can perform, and the level of precision at which it can do them, have
yet to be matched in word processors.
The TEX system itself—not a word processor or single program, but a large collection of files and
data—is packaged in distributions; teTEX is the TEX distribution designed for Linux.
TEX input documents are plain text files written in the TEX formatting language, which the TEX tools
can process and write to output files for printing or viewing. This approach has great benefits for the
writer: the plain text input files can be written with and exchanged between many different computer
systems regardless of operating system or editing software, and these input files do not become obsolete
or unusable with new versions of the TEX software.
Donald Knuth, the world’s foremost authority on algorithms, wrote TEX in 1984 as a way to type-
set his books (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/˜knuth/taocp.html), because
he wasn’t satisfied with the quality of available systems. Since its first release, many extensions to
the TEX formatting language have been made—the most notable being Leslie Lamport’s LaTeX, which
is a collection of sophisticated macros written in the TEX formatting language, designed to facilitate
the typesetting of structured documents. (LaTeX probably gets more day-to-day use than the plain TEX
format, but in my experience, both systems are useful for different kinds of documents.)
The collective family of TEX and related programs are sometimes called “TEX and friends,” and
abbreviated as ‘texmf’ in some TEX references
: for example, the supplementary files included with
the bare TEX system are kept in the ‘/usr/lib/texmf’ directory tree.
The following recipes describe how to begin writing input for TEX and how to process these files for
viewing and printing. While not everyone wants or even has a need to write documents with TEX and

The ‘mf’ also stands for “Metafont,” the name of the font language that is part of T X.
E
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

LaTeX, these formats are widely used, especially on Linux systems, so every Linux user has the potential
to encounter one of these files, and ought to know how to process them.
NOTE: “TEX” doesn’t sound like the name of a cowboy, nor “LaTeX” like a kind of paint: the letters ‘T’,
‘E’, and ‘X’ represent the Greek characters tau, epsilon, and chi (from the Greek ‘techne’, meaning art
and science). So the last sound in “TEX” is like the ‘ch’ in ‘Bach’, and “LaTeX,” depending on local
dialect, is pronounced either ‘lay-teck’ or ‘lah-teck’. Those who become highly adept at using
the system, Knuth calls “TEXperts.”

15.4.1 Is It a TEX or LaTeX File?

There are separate commands for processing TEX and LaTeX files, and they’re not interchangeable, so
when you want to process a TEX or LaTeX input file, you should first determine its format.
By convention, TEX files always have a ‘.tex’ file name extension. LaTeX input files sometimes
have a ‘.latex’ or ‘.ltx’ file name extension instead, but not always—one way to tell if a ‘.tex’
file is actually in the LaTeX format is to use grep to search the file for the text ‘\document’, which
every LaTeX (and not TEX) document will have. So if it outputs any lines that match, you have a LaTeX
file. (The regular expression to use with grep is ‘\\document’, since backslash characters must be
specified with two backslashes.)
¯ To determine whether the file ‘gentle.tex’ is a TEX or LaTeX file, type:
$ grep ’\\document’ gentle.tex
RET
$
In this example, grep didn’t return any matches, so it’s safe to assume that ‘gentle.tex’ is a TEX
file and not a LaTeX file.
NOTE: For more on grep and searching for regular expressions, see Section 14.2 [Regular
Expressions—Matching Text Patterns], page 148.

15.4.2 Processing TEX Files

Use tex to process TEX files. It takes as an argument the name of the TEX source file to process, and it
writes an output file in DVI (“DeVice Independent”) format, with the same base file name as the source
file, but with a ‘.dvi’ extension.
¯ To process the file ‘gentle.tex’, type:
$ tex gentle.tex
RET
Once you have produced a DVI output file with this method, you can do the following with it:
¯ Preview it on the screen with xdvi; see Section 17.1.1 [Previewing a DVI File], page 183
¯ Print it with dvips or lpr; see Section 25.2.2 [Printing with Dvips], page 240
¯ Convert it to PostScript with dvips; see Section 25.3.2 [Preparing a DVI File for Printing],
page 241; (then, you can also convert the PostScript output to PDF or plain text)

15.4.3 Processing LaTeX Files

The latex tool works just like tex, but is used to process LaTeX files.
¯ To process the LaTeX file ‘lshort.tex’, type:
$ latex lshort.tex
RET
This command writes a DVI output file called ‘lshort.dvi’.
You may need to run latex on a file several times consecutively. LaTeX documents sometimes have
indices and cross references, which, because of the way that LaTeX works, take two (and in rare cases
three or more) runs through latex to fully by processed. Should you need to run latex through a file
more than once in order to generate the proper references, you’ll see a message in the latex processing
output after you process it the first time instructing you to process it again.
 ¯ To ensure that all of the cross references in ‘lshort.tex’ have been generated properly, run the
input file through latex once more:
$ latex lshort.tex
RET
The ‘lshort.dvi’ file will be rewritten with an updated version containing the proper page num-
bers in the cross reference and index entries. You can then view, print, or convert this DVI file as
described in the previous recipe for processing TEX files.

15.4.4 Writing Documents with TEX and LaTeX

WWW: ftp://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/documentation/gentle.tex
WWW: ftp://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/documentation/lshort/

To create a document with TEX or LaTeX, you generally use your favorite text editor to write an input
file containing the text in TEX or LaTeX formatting. Then, you process this TEX or LaTeX input file to
create an output file in the DVI format, which you can preview, convert, or print.
It’s an old tradition among programmers introducing a programming language to give a simple pro-
gram that just outputs the text ‘Hello, world’ to the screen; such a program is usually just detailed
enough to give those unfamiliar with the language a feel for its basic syntax.
We can do the same with document processing languages like TEX and LaTeX. Here’s the “Hello,
world” for a TEX document:
Hello, world
\end
If you processed this input file with tex, it would output a DVI file that displayed the text ‘Hello,
world’ in the default TEX font, on a default page size, and with default margins.
Here’s the same “Hello, world” for LaTeX:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello, world
\end{document}
Even though the TEX example is much simpler, LaTeX is generally easier to use for making struc-
tured documents. Plain TEX, on the other hand, is better for more experimental layouts or specialized
documents.
The TEX and LaTeX markup languages are worth a book each, and providing an introduction to
their use is well out of the scope of this text. To learn how to write input for them, I suggest two
excellent tutorials, Michael Doob’s A Gentle Introduction to TEX, and Tobias Oetiker’s The Not So
Short Introduction to LaTeX—each available on the WWW at the URLs listed above. These files are
each in the respective format they describe; in order to read them, you must process these files first, as
described in the two previous recipes.
Good LaTeX documentation in HTML format can be found installed on many Linux systems in the
‘/usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/latex2e-html/’ directory; use the lynx browser to view
it (see Section 5.9 [Browsing Files], page 73).
Some other typesetting systems, such as LyX, SGMLtools, and Texinfo (all described elsewhere in
this chapter), write TEX or LaTeX output, too—so you can use those systems to produce said output
without actually learning the TEX and LaTeX input formats. (This book was written in Emacs in Texinfo
format, and the typeset output was later generated by TEX.)
NOTE: The Oetiker text consists of several separate LaTeX files in the ‘lshort’ directory; download
and save all of these files.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

15.4.5 TEX and LaTeX Document Templates

WWW: http://dsl.org/comp/templates/

A collection of sample templates for typesetting certain kinds of documents in TEX and LaTeX can be
found at the URL listed above. These templates include those for creating letters and correspondence,
articles and term papers, envelopes and mailing labels, and fax cover sheets. If you’re interested in
making typeset output with TEX and LaTeX, these templates are well worth exploring.
To write a document with a template, insert the contents of the template file into a new file that has a
‘.tex’ or ‘.ltx’ extension, and edit that. (Use your favorite text editor to do this.)
To make sure that you don’t accidentally overwrite the actual template files, you can write-protect
them (see Section 6.3.3 [Write-Protecting a File], page 78):
$ chmod a-w template-file-names
RET
In the templates themselves, the bracketed, uppercase text explains what kind of text belongs there;
fill in these lines with your own text, and delete the lines you don’t need. Then, process your new file
with either latex or tex as appropriate, and you’ve got a typeset document!
The following table lists the file names of the TEX templates, and describes their use. Use tex to
process files you make with these templates (see Section 15.4.2 [Processing TEX Files], page 168).
T EMPLATE F ILE D ESCRIPTION
fax.tex A cover sheet for sending fax messages.
envelope.tex A No. 10 mailing envelope.
label.tex A single mailing label for printing on standard 15-up sheets.
The following table lists the file names of the LaTeX templates, and describes their use. Use latex
to process files you make with these templates (see Section 15.4.3 [Processing LaTeX Files], page 168).
T EMPLATE F ILE D ESCRIPTION
letter.ltx A letter or other correspondence.
article.ltx An article or a research or term paper.
manuscript.ltx A book manuscript.
There are more complex template packages available on the net that you might want to look at:
¯Rob Rutten has assembled a very nice collection of LaTeX templates,
http://www.astro.uu.nl/˜rutten/rrtex/templates/
¯The largest listing of LaTeX and TeX templates and style files is in the TEX Catalogue Online,
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com:21/pub/tex/ctan/help/Catalogue/hier.html
¯The Midnight Macros are a collection of TEX macros for printing booklets, bulk letters, and outlines,
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/tex/ctan/macros/generic/midnight/
¯Björn Magnusson’s LaTeX templates for folder and register labels,
http://www.ifm.liu.se/˜bjmag/latex.shtml

15.5 Writing Documents with SGMLtools

Debian: ‘sgml-tools’
WWW: http://www.sgmltools.org/
 In addition, a more advanced LaTeX style for printing many different kinds of shipping and package labels is normally
installed at ‘/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/labels/’.
 The manuscript template requires that your system has the LaTeX style file called ‘manuscript.sty’; most T X distri-
E
butions have this installed at ‘/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/misc/manuscript.sty’.
With the SGMLtools package, you can write documents and generate output in many different kinds of
formats—including HTML, plain text, PDF, and PostScript—all from the same plain text input file.
SGML (“Standard Generalized Markup Language”) is not an actual format, but a specification for
writing markup languages; the markup language “formats” themselves are called DTDs (“Document
Type Definition”). When you write a document in an SGML DTD, you write input as a plain text file
with markup tags.
The various SGML packages on Linux are currently in a state of transition. The original
SGML-Tools package (known as LinuxDoc-SGML in another life; now SGMLtools v1) is
considered obsolete and is no longer being developed; however, the newer SGMLtools v2 (a.k.a.
“SGMLtools Next Generation” and “SGMLtools ’98”) is still alpha software, as is SGMLtools-lite
(http://sgmltools-lite.sourceforge.net/), a new subset of SGMLtools.
In the interim, if you want to dive in and get started making documents with the early SGMLtools
and the LinuxDoc DTD, it’s not hard to do. While the newer DocBook DTD has become very popular, it
may be best suited for technical books and other very large projects—for smaller documents written by
individual authors, such as a multi-part essay, FAQ, or white paper, the LinuxDoc DTD still works fine.
And since the Linux HOWTOs are still written in LinuxDoc, the Debian project has decided to
maintain the SGMLtools 1.0 package independently.
The SGML-Tools User’s Guide comes installed with the ‘sgml-tools’ package, and is available
in several formats in the ‘/usr/doc/sgml-tools’ directory. These files are compressed; if you
want to print or convert them, you have to uncompress them first (see Section 8.5 [Compressed Files],
page 92).
To peruse the compressed text version of the SGML-Tools guide, type:
$ zless /usr/doc/sgml-tools/guide.txt.gz
RET
¯ To print a copy of the PostScript version of the SGML-Tools guide to the default printer, type:
$ zcat /usr/doc/sgml-tools/guide.ps.gz | lpr
RET

15.5.1 Elements of an SGML Document

A document written in an SGML DTD looks a lot like HTML—which is no coincidence, since HTML
is a subset of SGML. A very simple “Hello, world” example in the LinuxDoc DTD might look like this:
<!doctype linuxdoc system>
<article>
<title>An Example Document
<author>Ann Author
<date>4 May 2000
<abstract>
This is an example LinuxDoc document.
</abstract>

<sect>Introduction

<p>Hello, world.

</article>
A simple example document and the various output files it generates are on the SGMLtools site at
http://www.sgmltools.org/old-site/example/index.html.
The SGMLtools package also comes with a simple example file, ‘example.sgml.gz’, which is
installed in the ‘/usr/doc/sgml-tools’ directory.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

15.5.2 Checking SGML Document Syntax

Use sgmlcheck to make sure the syntax of an SGML document is correct—it outputs any errors it
finds in the document that is specified as an argument.
¯ To check the SGML file ‘myfile.sgml’, type:
$ sgmlcheck myfile.sgml
RET

15.5.3 Generating Output from SGML

The following table lists the SGML converter tools that come with SGMLtools, and describes the kind
of output they generate. All take the name of the SGML file to work on as an argument, and they write a
new file with the same base file name and the file name extension of their output format.
T OOL D ESCRIPTION
sgml2html Generates HTML files.
sgml2info Generates a GNU Info file.
sgml2lyx Generates a LyX input file.
sgml2latex Generates a LaTeX input file (useful for printing; first process as in
Section 15.4.3 [Processing LaTeX Files], page 168, and then print the
resultant DVI or PostScript output file).
sgml2rtf Generates a file in Microsoft’s “Rich Text Format.”
sgml2txt Generates plain text format.
sgml2xml Generates XML format.
¯ To make a plain text file from ‘myfile.sgml’, type:
$ sgml2txt myfile.sgml
RET

This command writes a plain text file called ‘myfile.txt’.

To make a PostScript or PDF file from an SGML file, first generate a LaTeX input file, run it through
LaTeX to make a DVI output file, and then process that to make the final output.
¯
« ¨
To make a PostScript file from ‘myfile.sgml’, type:

$ sgml2latex myfile.sgml
RET

$ latex myfile.latex
RET
$ dvips -t letter -o myfile.ps myfile.dvi
RET

ª$
©
In this example, sgml2latex writes a LaTeX input file from the SGML source file, and then the
latex tool processes the LaTeX file to make DVI output, which is processed with dvips to get the
final output: a PostScript file called ‘myfile.ps’ with a paper size of US letter.
To make a PDF file from the PostScript file, you need to take one more step and use ps2pdf, part of
the gs or Ghostscript package; this converts the PostScript to PDF.
¯ To make a PDF file from the PostScript file ‘myfile.ps’, type:
$ ps2pdf myfile.ps myfile.pdf
RET
15.6 Other Word Processors and Typesetting Systems
The following table describes other popular word processors and typesetting tools available for Linux.
Those systems not in general use have been silently omitted.
S YSTEM D ESCRIPTION
AbiWord A graphical, WYSIWYG-style word processor for Linux systems. It
can read Microsoft Word files.
WWW: http://www.abisource.com/
groff GROFF is the latest in a line of phototypesetting systems that have
been available on Unix-based systems for years; the original in this
line was roff (“runoff,” meaning that it was for files to be run off
to the printer). groff is used in the typesetting of man pages, but
it’s possible to use it to create other kinds of documents, and it has a
following of staunch adherents.
To output the tutorial file included with the groff distribution to a
DVI file called ‘intro.dvi’, type:
$ zcat /usr/doc/groff/me-intro.me.gz | groff
-me -T dvi > intro.dvi
RET
Debian: ‘groff’
Maxwell A graphical word processor for use in X.
WWW: http://www.eeyore-mule.demon.co.uk/
PostScript The PostScript language is generally considered to be a format gen-
erated by software, but some people write straight PostScript! Sec-
tion 15.2 [Converting Plain Text for Output], page 159, has recipes
on creating PostScript output from text, including outputting text in a
font.
People have written PostScript template files for creating all kinds of
documents—from desktop calendars to mandalas for meditation. The
Debian ‘cdlabelgen’ and ‘cd-circleprint’ packages contain
tools for writing labels for compact discs. Also of interest are Jamie
Zawinski’s templates for printing label inserts for video and audio
tapes; edit the files in a text editor and then view or print them as you
would any PostScript file.
WWW: http://www.jwz.org/audio-tape.ps
WWW: http://www.jwz.org/video-tape.ps
StarWriter A traditional word processor for Linux systems, part of the StarOffice
application suite. It can also read Microsoft Word files.
WWW: http://www.sun.com/staroffice/
Texinfo Texinfo is the GNU Project’s documentation system and is an excellent
system for writing FAQs or technical manuals. It allows for the inclu-
sion of in-line EPS images and can produce both TEX-based, HTML,
and Info output—use it if this matches your needs.
Debian: ‘tetex-base’
WWW: http://www.texinfo.org/
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
16 Fonts
A font is a collection of characters for displaying text, normally in a common typeface and with a
common size, boldness, and slant.
This chapter discusses the most popular kinds of fonts used on Linux systems: display fonts for use
in the X Window System, fonts for use in virtual consoles, and the “fonts” often seen in Usenet and email
composed entirely of ASCII characters.
Omitted are reference of the use of fonts with TEX, which are the kind of fonts you’re most likely
to use when producing typeset output—it is beyond the scope of this book to cover that issue with the
space it needs. However, to print a text file with a font, see Section 15.2.1 [Outputting Text in a Font],
page 159.
For more information on fonts and the tools to use them, see the Font HOWTO (see Section 2.8.6
[Reading System Documentation and Help Files], page 31).

16.1 X Fonts
You can specify a font as an option to most X clients, so that any text in the client is written in the given
font. The recipe that describes how to do this is in Section 4.2.3 [Specifying a Window Font], page 51.
When you specify a font as an option, you have to give the X font name, which is the exact name
used to specify a specific font in X. (An easy way to get the X font name is described in the first recipe
in this section.) X font names consist of 14 fields, delimited by (and beginning with) a hyphen. All fields
must be specified, and empty fields are permitted:
-fndry-fmly-wght-slant-swdth-adstyl-pxlsz
-ptsz-resx-resy-spc-avgwdth-rgstry-encdng
The preceding line was split because of its length, but X font names are always given on one line.
The following table describes the meaning of each field.
F IELD D ESCRIPTION
fndry The type foundry that digitized and supplied the font data.
fmly The name of the typographic style (for example, ‘courier’).
wght The weight of the font, or its nominal blackness, the degree of bold-
ness or thickness of its characters. Values include ‘heavy’, ‘bold’,
‘medium’, ‘light’, and ‘thin’.
slant The posture of the font, usually ‘r’ (for ‘roman’, or upright), ‘i’
(‘italic’, slanted upward to the right and differing in shape from the
roman counterpart), or ‘o’ (‘oblique’, slanted but with the shape of
the roman counterpart).
swdth The proportionate width of the characters in the font, or its nominal
width, such as ‘normal’, ‘condensed’, ‘extended’, ‘narrow’,
and ‘wide’.
adstyl Any additional style descriptions the particular font takes, such as
‘serif’ (fonts that have small strokes drawn on the ends of each line
in the character) or ‘sans serif’ (fonts that omit serifs).
pxlsz The height, in pixels, of the type. Also called body size.
ptsz The height, in points, of the type.
resx The horizontal screen resolution the font was designed for, in dpi
(“dots per inch”).
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

resy The vertical screen resolution the font was designed for, in dpi.
spc The kind of spacing used by the font (its escapement class ); either ‘p’
(a proportional font containing characters with varied spacing), ‘m’ (a
monospaced font containing characters with constant spacing), or ‘c’
(a character cell font containing characters with constant spacing and
constant height).
avgwdth The average width of the characters used in the font, in 1/10th pixel
units.
rgstry The international standards body, or registry, that owns the encoding.
encdng The registered name of this character set, or its encoding.

16.1.1 Selecting an X Font Name

X font names can be long and difficult to type; to make it easier, use the xfontsel client, an interactive
tool for picking X fonts and getting their X font names.
When you start xfontsel, it looks like this (the window frame will differ depending on your win-
dow manager):

The row of buttons are pull-down menus containing options available on your system for each field
in the X font name. Use the mouse to select items from each menu, and the X font you have selected is
shown in the main window. Above it is written its X font name.
¯ To make the X font name the X selection, click the mouse on the button labeled select.
This example makes the X font name the X selection, which makes it possible to paste the X font
name to a command line or into another window (see Section 10.4.2 [Pasting Text], page 115).

16.1.2 Listing Available X Fonts

Use xlsfonts to list the X font families, sizes, and weights available on your system. Supply a pattern
in quotes as an argument, and it outputs the names of all X fonts installed on the system that match that
pattern; by default, it lists all fonts.
¯ To list all the X fonts on the system, type:
$ xlsfonts
RET
¯ To list all the X fonts on the system whose name contains the text ‘rea’, type:
$ xlsfonts ’*rea*’
RET
¯ To list all the bold X fonts on the system, type:
$ xlsfonts ’*bold*’
RET
NOTE: This is not a way to display the characters in a font; for that, use xfd, described next. Further-
more, to browse through available X fonts, you want to use xfontsel, as in the previous recipe.
16.1.3 Displaying the Characters in an X Font
Use the xfd tool (“X font display”) to display all of the characters in a given X font. Give the X font
name you want to display in quotes as an argument to the ‘-fn’ option.
¯ To display the characters in a medium Courier X font, type:
$ xfd -fn ’-*-courier-medium-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1’
RET

16.1.4 Resizing the Xterm Font

See Section 4.2.3 [Specifying Window Font], page 51 for how to specify the font to use in an xterm
window in X. The xterm tool is usually used to run a shell while in X, and many people like to specify
which font is used for this window.
To resize the current font when the xterm is running, press and hold
CTRL and right-click anywhere
in the xterm window. A menu will appear that gives you the size options, from Unreadable and
Tiny to Huge. To resize the font to its original size, choose Default.

16.2 Console Fonts

Console fonts are screen fonts for displaying text on the Linux console (and not in the X Window Sys-
tem).
Console fonts are stored in the ‘/usr/share/consolefonts’ directory as
compressed files; to install new console fonts, have the system administrator make a
‘/usr/local/share/consolefonts’ directory and put the font files in there.
These recipes show how to set the console font, and how to display a table containing all of the
characters in the current font.

16.2.1 Setting the Console Font

Use consolechars to set the current console font; give the base file name of a console font as an
argument to the ‘-f’ option.
¯ To set the console font to the scrawl_w font, type:
$ consolechars -f scrawl_w
RET

Some font files contain more than one height (or size) of the font. If a font contains more than one
encoding for different heights, give the height to use as an argument to the ‘-H’ option. (If you try to do
it without the option anyway, consolechars will output a list of available sizes.)
Common console font heights include 8 (for 8x8 fonts), 14 (for 8x14 fonts), and 16 (for 8x16 fonts).
¯ To set the console font to the 8x8 size sc font, type:
$ consolechars -H 8 -f sc
RET

16.2.2 Displaying the Characters in a Console Font

Use showcfont to display all of the characters in the current console font.
¯ To list all of the characters in the current console font, type:
$ showcfont
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

16.3 Text Fonts

Text fonts are fonts created from the arrangement of ASCII characters on the screen; they are often seen
in Usenet articles and email messages, included as decorative or title elements in text files, and used for
printing simple banners or posters on a printer.
The making of “fonts” (and even pictures) from the arrangement of ASCII characters is known as
ascii art. The following recipes describe methods of outputting text in these kind of fonts.

16.3.1 Horizontal Text Fonts

The figlet filter outputs text in a given text font. Give the text to output as an argument, quoting text
containing shell metacharacters (see Section 3.1.1 [Passing Special Characters to Commands], page 34).
¯ To output the text ‘news alert’ in the default figlet font, type:
$ figlet news alert
RET
This command outputs the following:
_ _
_ __ _____ _____ __ _| | ___ _ __| |_
| ’_ \ / _ \ \ /\ / / __| / _‘ | |/ _ \ ’__| __|
| | | | __/\ V V /\__ \ | (_| | | __/ | | |_
|_| |_|\___| \_/\_/ |___/ \__,_|_|\___|_| \__|
Fonts for figlet are kept in the ‘/usr/lib/figlet’ directory; use the ‘-f’ option followed by
the base name of the font file (without the path or extension) to use that font.
To output the contents of a text file with a figlet font, use cat to output the contents of a file and
pipe the output to figlet.
¯ To output the text of the file ‘poster’ in the figlet ‘bubble’ font, type:
$ cat poster | figlet -f bubble
RET
NOTE: The ‘bubble’ font is installed at ‘/usr/lib/figlet/bubble.flf’.

16.3.2 Making a Text Banner

The easiest way to print a long, vertical banner of text on a Linux system is with the old UNIX banner
tool.
Quote a text message as an argument, and banner sends a large, vertical “banner” of the message to
the standard output. The message itself is output in a “font” composed of ASCII text characters, similar
to those used by figlet, except that the message is output vertically for printing, and you can’t change
the font. To send the output of banner to the printer, pipe it to lpr.
¯ To make a banner saying ‘Happy Birthday Susan’, type:
$ banner ’Happy Birthday Susan’
RET
¯ To print a banner saying ‘Happy Birthday Susan’ to the default printer, type:
$ banner ’Happy Birthday Susan’ | lpr
RET
Unfortunately, the breadth of characters that banner understands is a bit limited—the following
characters can’t be used in a banner message:
< > [ ] \ ˆ _ { } | ˜
To make a banner of the contents of a text file, send its contents to banner by redirecting standard
input (see Section 3.2.1 [Redirecting Input to a File], page 36).
To make a banner of the contents of the file ‘/etc/hostname’, type:
$ banner < /etc/hostname
RET
 The default width of a banner is 132 text columns; you can specify a different width by specifying
the width to use as an argument to the ‘-w’ option. If you give the ‘-w’ option without a number, banner
outputs at 80 text columns.
¯ To make a banner containing the text ‘Happy Birthday Susan’ at a width of 23 text columns,
type:
$ banner -w 23 ’Happy Birthday Susan’
RET
¯ To make a banner containing the text ‘Happy Birthday Susan’ at a width of 80 text columns,
type:
$ banner -w ’Happy Birthday Susan’
RET
NOTE: A method of making a horizontal text banner with figlet is described in Section 15.2.5 [Out-
putting Text in Landscape Orientation], page 163.

16.4 Other Font Tools

The following table describes some of the other font tools available for Linux.
T OOL D ESCRIPTION
cse The Linux Console Font Editor, cse, is an older console font editor.
WWW: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/keyboards/
dtm The Definitive Type Manager is a tool for adding and removing Adobe Type 1
fonts to and from your system.
Debian: ‘dtm’
fonter Fonter is a console font editor; use it to make and edit console fonts.
Debian: ‘fonter’
gfont The gfont tool creates a GIF image of text rendered in a TEX font.
Debian: ‘gfont’
WWW: http://www.engelschall.com/sw/gfont/
gfontview This is a tool for viewing Adobe Type 1 and TrueType fonts.
Debian: ‘gfontview’
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
PART FOUR: Images
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
17 Viewing Images
As with text, there are tools for both viewing and editing images. This chapter describes the various
methods for viewing images; the editing of images is discussed in the next chapter). While you can view
an image with an image editor, it is safer (and faster!) to view with a viewer when you do not intend to
edit it.

17.1 Previewing Print Files

The DVI (“DeVice Independent”), PostScript, and PDF (“Portable Document Format”) file formats can
be generated by a number of applications. They are graphical image formats commonly used for printing;
methods for previewing these files on the display screen are discussed in the following sections.

17.1.1 Previewing a DVI File

Use the xdvi tool to preview a DVI file in X. Give the name of the file to preview as an argument. xdvi
will show how the document will look when printed, and let you view it at different magnifications.
¯ To preview the file ‘gentle.dvi’, type:
$ xdvi gentle.dvi
RET
To magnify the view of the document, left-click any of the buttons labelled with a percentage, such
as 17%; they magnify the view by that percentage.
¯ To magnify the view by 33%, left-click the button marked 33%.
The following table lists some of xdvi’s commands.
C OMMAND D ESCRIPTION

Q Exit xdvi and stop previewing the file.

N Advance to the next page.

P Move to previous page.
C-c Same as
Q.
C-d Same as
Q.

SPC Same as
N.
C-l Redisplay the current page.

R Re-read the DVI file.

17.1.2 Previewing a PostScript File

Debian: ‘ghostview’
Debian: ‘gv’
WWW: http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/˜plass/gv/

To preview a PostScript or EPS image file in X, use ghostview. It takes a file name as an argument,
and it previews the contents of the file in a window, starting with its first page.
¯ To preview the file ‘/usr/doc/gs/examples/tiger.ps’, type:
$ ghostview /usr/doc/gs/examples/tiger.ps
RET
Press
Q to exit and press
SPC to advance to the next page, if there is one.
NOTE: Some people prefer the gv tool as an alternate to ghostview; gv is used in much the same
way, though it has a different interface.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

17.1.3 Previewing a PDF File

Debian: ‘xpdf’
WWW: http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
Debian: ‘gv’
WWW: http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/˜plass/gv/

Use xpdf to preview a PDF file. Give the name of the PDF file to preview as an argument.

¯ To preview the PDF file ‘flyer.pdf’, type:

$ xpdf flyer.pdf
RET

To exit xpdf, press
Q; use the two magnifying-glass buttons to zoom the view closer in (+) or
further out (-), and use the left and right arrow buttons to move to the previous and next pages, if any.

NOTE: You can also use gv to preview PDF files.

17.2 Viewing an Image in X

Debian: ‘imagemagick’
WWW: ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick/

To view an image in X, use display, part of the ImageMagick suite of tools. It can recognize many
image formats, including FlashPix, GIF/GIF87, Group 3 faxes, JPEG, PBM/PNM/PPM, PhotoCD, TGA,
TIFF, TransFig, and XBM.

display takes as an argument the file name of the image to be viewed, and it displays the image in
a new window.

¯ To view the file ‘sailboat.jpeg’, type:

$ display sailboat.jpeg
RET

This command displays the image file in a new window:

 The mouse buttons have special meaning in display. Left-click on the image window to open the
display command menu in a new window. The display command menu looks like this:

Menu items let you change the image size and otherwise change or transform the image display.
Choose Overview from the Help menu for an explanation of the various available display com-
mands.
Middle-click on the image to open a new window with a magnified view of the image centered where
you click. For example, middle-clicking on the sailboat image in the previous example will open a new
window that looks like this:

Finally, right-click on the image window for a pop-up menu containing a few of the most frequently-
used commands; to choose one of these commands, drag the mouse pointer over the command. Com-
mands in the pop-up menu include Quit, which exits display, and the Image Info, which displays
information about the image file itself, including number of colors, image depth, and resolution.
The following table describes some of the keyboard commands that work when displaying an image
in display.
C OMMAND D ESCRIPTION

SPC Display the next image specified on the command line.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

BKSP Display the previous image specified on the command line.

C-q Quit displaying the image and exit display.
C-s Write the image to a file.
< Halve the image size.
> Double the image size.
- Return the image to its original size.
/ Rotate image 90 degrees clockwise.
\ Rotate image 90 degrees counter-clockwise.
? Open a new window with information about the image, including res-
olution, color depth, format, and comments, if any.
h Toggle a horizontal mirror image.
v Toggle a vertical mirror image.
NOTE: display can also be used to view images on the World Wide Web—see Section 31.2 [Viewing
an Image from the Web], page 288.

17.2.1 Browsing Image Collections in X

The display tool offers a feature for browsing a collection of images—give ‘vid:’ as the file argu-
ment, followed by the file names or pattern to match them in quotes. display makes thumbnails of the
specified images, and displays them in a new window, which it calls a visual image directory.
¯To browse through the image files with a ‘.gif’ extension in the
‘/usr/doc/imagemagick/examples’ directory, type:
$ display ’vid:/usr/doc/imagemagick/examples/*.gif’
RET
¯To browse through all image files in the current directory, type:
$ display ’vid:*’
RET
In the preceding example, only those files with image formats supported by display are read and
displayed.
NOTE: To open an image at its normal size, right-click the image and choose Load; the thumbnail will
be replaced by its full-size image. To return to the thumbnail directory, right-click the image and choose
Former.

17.2.2 Putting an Image in the Root Window

One way to put an image in the root window (the background behind all other windows) is to use
display and give ‘root’ as an argument to the ‘-window’ option.
¯
To put the image ‘tetra.jpeg’ in the root window, type:
$ display -window root tetra.jpeg
RET

17.3 Browsing Images in a Console

Use zgv to view images in a virtual console (not in X). You can use zgv to browse through the filesystem
and select images to view, or give as arguments the names of image files to view. It recognizes many
image formats, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, PBM/PNM/PPM, TGA and PCX; one of its nicest features
is that it can fill the entire screen with an image.
 When you run zgv with no options, it displays image icons of any images in the current directory,
listing any subdirectories as folder icons. You can also give the name of a directory as an argument in
order to browse the images in that directory.
¯ To browse the images in the current directory, type:
$ zgv
RET
¯ To browse the images in the ‘/usr/share/gimp/scripts’ directory, type:
$ zgv /usr/share/gimp/scripts
RET
Use the arrow keys to navigate through the file display; the red border around a image or directory
icon indicates which image or subdirectory is selected. Type
RET to view the selected image or to change
to the selected directory.
You can manipulate the images you view in a number of ways—zoom the image magnification in and
out, change the brightness and color, and even make automatic “slide shows” of images. The following
table describes some of zgv’s options.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-c Toggle image centering. Images are centered on screen by default;
specifying this option turns off centering.
-i Ignore errors due to corrupted files, and display whatever portion of
the file is displayable.
-l Start zgv in slide-show mode, where it loops through all images spec-
ified as arguments, continuously, until you interrupt it.
-M Toggle mouse support. Mouse support is off by default; this option
turns it on.
-r integer Reread and redisplay every image after every integer seconds. Useful
for viewing webcam images or other image files that are continuously
changing.

17.4 Viewing an Image in a Web Browser

If you have a graphical Web browser, such as mozilla, you can use it to view a graphic image. While
viewing images in a browser doesn’t offer much flexibility (you can’t zoom in on a portion of the image,
or get information about the image resolution and other details), if you simply want to quickly view an
image file while you are in X, and you have a Web browser running, it can be a quick and easy way to do
it.
To view an image file in a Web browser, specify a file: URL pointing to the file name of the image
in the Location field of the browser.
¯ To view the file ‘/usr/share/images/mondrian-15.jpeg’, type:
file:/usr/share/images/mondrian-15.jpeg
RET
Notice that the given file: URL only has one preceding slash, pointing to the root directory, and
not two, as in http://.

17.5 Browsing PhotoCD Archives

Debian: ‘xpcd’
Debian: ‘xpcd-gimp’
WWW: http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/˜kraxel/linux/xpcd/

The xpcd tool is an X client for viewing and browsing collections of Kodak PhotoCD images. To
browse the images on a Kodak PhotoCD, mount the CD-ROM (see Section 24.4.1 [Mounting a CD-
ROM], page 236), and then give the mount point as an argument to xpcd.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To browse the images on the PhotoCD disc mounted on ‘/cdrom’, type:

$ xpcd /cdrom
RET
The preceding example will open two new windows—a small xpcd command bar window, and a
larger window containing thumbnails of all PhotoCD images on the disc.
To open a copy of an image in a new window, left-click its thumbnail image. When you do, xpcd
will open the image at the second-smallest PhotoCD resolution, 256x384; to view it at a another size,
right-click the image and choose the size to view. Once the new window is drawn, you can right-click on
this new image to save it as a JPEG, PPM, or TIFF format image.
To view an individual ‘.pcd’ file with xpcd, give the name of the file as an argument.
¯ To view the PhotoCD file ‘driveby-001.pcd’, type:
$ xpcd driveby-001.pcd
RET
NOTE: You can also use display to view a ‘.pcd’ PhotoCD image file (see Section 17.2 [Viewing
an Image in X], page 184).
See Section 19.3 [Extracting PhotoCD images], page 203 for another recipe for extracting PhotoCD
images.

17.6 Additional Image Viewers

The following table lists other tools for viewing images.
T OOL D ESCRIPTION
animate Part of the ImageMagick suite; use animate to display an animated slide-show
sequence of images in X.
Debian: ‘imagemagick’
WWW: ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick/
xwud Displays files in the special X Window Dump file format, as created by xwd.
Debian: ‘xbase-clients’
WWW: http://www.xfree86.org/
showpicture Views an image sent as an email attachment; requires xloadimage.
Debian: ‘metamail’
WWW: ftp://ftp.bellcore.com:/pub/nsb/mm2.7.tar.Z
xli Basic image viewer for X.
Debian: ‘xli’
xloadimage Nice graphics viewer for X that contains tools for viewing images in the root
window.
Debian: ‘xloadimage’
aview View graphics as “ASCII art.” This tool can view any image format supported
by the pbmplus utility suite, and has fluid zoom in/out and all the rendering
options you’d expect from a world-class viewer.
Debian: ‘aview’
WWW: ftp://ftp.ta.jcu.cz://pub/aa
18 Editing Images

When you take an image file—such as one containing a digitized photograph or a picture drawn with a
graphics program—and you make changes to it, you are editing an image.
This chapter contains recipes for editing and modifying images, including how to convert between
image file formats. It also gives an overview of other image applications you might find useful, including
the featuresome GIMP image editor.

18.1 Transforming Images

Debian: ‘imagemagick’
WWW: ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick/

Many Linux tools can be used to transform or manipulate images in various ways. One very useful
package for both transforming images and converting between image formats is the netpbm suite of
utilities (see Section 19.2 [Scanning Images], page 202). Another is the ImageMagick suite of imaging
tools, of which mogrify is particularly useful for performing fast command line image transforms; use
it to change the size of, to rotate, or to reduce the colors in an image.
mogrify always takes the name of the file to work on as an argument, and it writes its changes to
that file. Use a hyphen (‘-’) to specify the standard input, in which case mogrify writes its output to
the standard output.
I’ll use the image ‘phoenix.jpeg’ in the examples that follow to give you an understanding of
how to use mogrify:

NOTE: You can also perform many of the image transformations described in the following sections
interactively with the GIMP (see Section 18.3 [Editing Images with the GIMP], page 198).

18.1.1 Changing the Size of an Image

To resize an image with mogrify, use the ‘-geometry’ option with the width and height values, in
pixels, as an argument.
¯ To resize ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to 480x320 pixels, type:
$ mogrify -geometry 480x320 phoenix.jpeg
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ file to:

NOTE: Images scaled to a larger size will appear blocky or fuzzy.

When mogrify resizes an image, it maintains the image’s aspect ratio, so that the ratio between the
width and height stays the same. To force a conversion to a particular image size without necessarily
preserving its aspect ratio, append the geometry with an exclamation point.

¯ To resize ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to exactly 480x320 pixels, regardless of aspect ratio, type:

$ mogrify -geometry 640x480! phoenix.jpeg
RET

 This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to:

You can also specify the width or height by percentage. To decrease by a percentage, give the value
followed by a percent sign (‘%’). To increase by a percentage, give the value plus 100 followed by a
percent sign. For example, to increase by 25 percent, give ‘125%’.

¯ To increase the height of ‘phoenix.jpeg’ by 25 percent and decrease its width by 50 percent,
type:

$ mogrify -geometry 125%x50% phoenix.jpeg
RET

 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to:

NOTE: To view an image at a particular scale without modifying it, use display; when you resize its
window, you resize the image on the screen only (see Section 4.3.2 [Resizing a Window], page 53).

18.1.2 Rotating an Image

To rotate an image, use mogrify with the ‘-rotate’ option followed by the number of degrees to
rotate by. If the image width exceeds its height, follow this number with a ‘>’, and if the height exceeds
its width, follow it with a ‘<’. (Since both ‘<’ and ‘>’ are shell redirection operators, enclose this
argument in quotes, omitting either if the image height and width are the same.)
¯ To rotate ‘phoenix.jpeg’, whose height exceeds its width, by 90 degrees, type:
$ mogrify -rotate ’90<’ phoenix.jpeg
RET
This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to:

NOTE: After this command, the width of ‘phoenix.jpeg’ now exceeds its height, so to rotate it again
use ‘>’ instead of ‘<’.

18.1.3 Adjusting the Colors of an Image

You can use mogrify to make a number of adjustments in the color of an image. To reduce the number
of colors in an image, use the ‘-colors’ option, followed by the number of colors to use.
¯ To reduce the colors in ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to two, type:
 $ mogrify -colors 2 phoenix.jpeg
RET

This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to:

Use the ‘-dither’ option to reduce the colors with Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion, a popular algo-
rithm for improving image quality during color reduction.
¯ To reduce the colors in ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to four and apply Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion, type:
$ mogrify -colors 4 -dither phoenix.jpeg
RET
This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to:

Use the ‘-map’ option with a second file name as an argument to read the color map, or the set of
colors, from the second image and use them in the first image.
¯ To change the colors in the file ‘rainbow.jpeg’ to those used in the file ‘prism.jpeg’, type:
$ mogrify -map prism.jpeg rainbow.jpeg
RET
Use the ‘-monochrome’ option to make a color image black and white.
¯ To make the color image ‘rainbow.jpeg’ black and white, type:
$ mogrify -monochrome rainbow.jpeg
RET
If you have a PPM file, use ppmquant to quantize, or reduce to a specified quantity the colors in the
image—see the ppmquant man page for details (see Section 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System
Manual], page 28).
Because of differences in display hardware, the brightness of an image may vary from one computer
system to another. For example, images created on a Macintosh usually appear darker on other systems.
When you adjust the brightness of an image it is called gamma correction.
To adjust the brightness of an image, give the numeric level of correction to apply as an argument to
the ‘-gamma’ option. Most PC displays have a gamma value of 2.5, while Macintosh displays have a
lower gamma value of 1.4.
¯ To set the gamma correction of the image ‘rainbow.jpeg’ to .8, type:
$ mogrify -gamma .8 rainbow.jpeg
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

18.1.4 Annotating an Image

Debian: ‘libjpeg-progs’
WWW: http://www.ijg.org/

To annotate an image file with a comment, use mogrify with the ‘-comment’ option, giving the
comment in quotes as an argument to the option. This is useful for adding a copyright (or copyleft)
statement to an image, or for annotating an image file with a URL.
¯ To annotate the image file ‘phoenix.jpeg’, type (all on one line):
$ mogrify -comment "If you can read this,
you’re too close!" phoenix.jpeg
RET
You won’t see the annotation when you view the image; it is added to the image header in the file.
You can, however, read image annotations with tools that display information about an image file, such
as display or the GIMP. To read annotations in JPEG files, you can also use the rdjpgcom tool—it
outputs any comments in the JPEG file whose file name is given as an argument.
¯
« ¨
To read any comments made in the image file ‘phoenix.jpeg’, type:

$ rdjpgcom phoenix.jpeg
RET

If you can read this, you’re too close!

ª$
©
NOTE: Another method for writing comments in JPEG files is to use wrjpgcom, which is distributed
with rdjpgcom in the ‘libjpeg-progs’ package.

18.1.5 Adding Borders to an Image

To draw a border around an image, use mogrify with the ‘-border’ option followed by the width
and height, in pixels, of the border to use.
¯ To add a border two pixels wide and four pixels high to ‘phoenix.jpeg’, type:
$ mogrify -border 2x4 phoenix.jpeg
RET
This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to:

NOTE: The border is added to the outside of the existing image; the image is not cropped or reduced in
size to add the border.
The ‘-frame’ option works like ‘-border’, but it adds a more decorative border to an image.
¯ To add a decorative frame eight pixels wide and eight pixels high to ‘phoenix.jpeg’, type:
 $ mogrify -frame 8x8 phoenix.jpeg
RET

This transforms the original ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to:

18.1.6 Making an Image Montage

To make a montage image of other images, use montage. It takes as arguments the names of the images
to use followed by the name of the output file to write the montage image to.
The montage image is made by scaling all of the input images to fit the largest size possible up to
120x120 pixels, and tiling these images in rows of five and columns of four.
¯ To create a montage from the files ‘owl.jpeg’, ‘thrush.jpeg’, and ‘warbler.jpeg’ and
write it to ‘endangered-birds.png’, type:
$ montage owl.jpeg thrush.jpeg warbler.jpeg endangered-birds.png
RET

NOTE: In this example, three JPEGs were read and output to a PNG file; to specify the format to use in
the output, give the appropriate file extension in the output file name.

18.1.7 Combining Images

Use combine to combine two images into one new image—give the names of the two source image files
and the new file to write to as arguments. Without any options, it makes a new image file by overlaying
the smaller of the two images over the larger, starting in the top left corner; if both images are the same
size, only the second image is visible.
¯ To combine two images, ‘ashes.jpeg’ and ‘phoenix.jpeg’, into a new file
‘picture.jpeg’, type:
$ combine ashes.jpeg phoenix.jpeg picture.jpeg
RET

You can specify the percentage to blend two images together with the ‘-blend’ option. Give the
amount to blend the second image into the first (as a percentage) as an argument to the option.
¯ To combine the image files ‘phoenix.jpeg’ and ‘ashes.jpeg’ so that the blended image
contains 70 percent of the second image, type:
$ combine -blend 70 ashes.jpeg phoenix.jpeg picture.jpeg
RET

This command combines the two images and writes a new image file, ‘picture.jpeg’, whose
contents contain 70 percent of the first image.
NOTE: Use ‘-blend 50’ to blend the two source files equally.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

18.1.8 Morphing Two Images Together

Morphing is a method of computer imaging for finding the difference between the shapes in two images;
it’s often used in special effects to transform aspects of two creatures, such as the faces of a human and
some other animal.
You can use combine to get a morph-like effect by giving the difference argument to the
‘-compose’ option. When specified with two input images and an output file, this command takes
the difference between corresponding pixels in the two images; the effect is like a “morphed” image.
¯ To make a morphed image of the files ‘ashes.jpeg’ and ‘phoenix.jpeg’, and write it to
‘picture.jpeg’, type:
$ combine -compute difference ashes.jpeg phoenix.jpeg picture.jpeg
RET

The result in file ‘picture.jpeg’ is:

NOTE: ‘xmorph’ is a tool for morphing images; see Section 18.4 [Interactive Image Editors and Tools],
page 199.

18.2 Converting Images between Formats

Debian: ‘imagemagick’
WWW: ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick/

Use convert to convert the file format of an image. Give the name of the file to convert as the first
argument, and the destination file as the second argument. When you convert a file, the original is not
altered.
To specify the file type to convert to, use that file type’s standard file extension in the file name of the
converted file.
¯ To convert the JPEG file ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to a PNG image, type:
$ convert phoenix.jpeg phoenix.png
RET
This command converts the JPEG image ‘phoenix.jpeg’ to PNG format and writes it to a new
file, ‘phoenix.png’.
The following table lists the file extensions to use and describes their format. (The convention is to
give extensions in all lowercase letters.)
F ILE E XTENSION I MAGE F ORMAT
bmp Microsoft Windows bitmap image.
cgm Computer Graphics Metafile format.
cmyk Raw cyan, magenta, yellow, and black bytes.
eps Adobe Encapsulated PostScript.
fax Group 3 fax format.
fig TransFig image format.
fpx FlashPix format.
gif CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format, version GIF89a
(usually pronounced “giff,” rhyming with “biff”).
gray Raw gray bytes.
jpeg and jpg Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format (usually pronounced
“jay-peg”).
pbm Black and white portable bitmap format.
pcd Kodak PhotoCD format, 512x768 pixels maximum resolution.
pcl Page Control Language format.
pcx ZSoft IBM PC Paintbrush format.
pdf Adobe Portable Document Format.
pict Apple Macintosh QuickDraw format.
png Portable Network Graphics format (usually pronounced “ping”).
pnm Portable “anymap” format.
ppm Color portable pixmap format.
ps Adobe PostScript format.
rgb Raw red, green, and blue bytes.
tga TrueVision Targa image format.
tiff and tif Tagged Image File Format (usually pronounced “tiff”).
xbm X Window System bitmap format.
xpm Color X Window System pixmap format.
xwd Color X Window System window “dump” file format.
When converting a file to JPEG format, be sure to use the ‘-interlace NONE’ option to make
sure the resultant JPEG image is non-interlaced—unless, of course, you want an interlaced image; an
interlaced image is drawn in multiple passes, and is often used on the Web where a reader may view the
low-resolution image consisting of early passes before the entire image is downloaded. A non-interlaced
image is drawn in one single pass.
For example, use convert to convert a PNM file to non-interlaced JPEG, while sharpening it,
adding a border, and adding a copyright statement.
¯ To convert the PNM file ‘pike.pnm’ to non-interlaced JPEG while sharpening the image by 50
percent and adding both a 2x2 border and a copyright comment, type:
$ convert -interlace NONE -sharpen 50 -border 2x2
-comment ’copyright 1999 MS’ pike.pnm pike.jpeg
RET
This command writes its output to a file ‘pike.jpeg’. Notice that the options ‘-border’ and
‘-comment’ were previously described for the ‘mogrify’ tool. Some ImageMagick tools share com-
mon options, which is useful if you are making multiple changes to an image file at once; only one tool
is needed for the job.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: Some image formats are “lossy,” in that some image information is lost when you convert to
it. For example, the JPEG format is a lossy format that is usually used for photographic images. If you
convert a file from its source PNM format to JPEG and then back to PNM, the resultant PNM will not be
identical to the original source PNM.

To convert image files interactively, use the GIMP to open the image, and then choose ‘Save as’
from the File menu, and select the file type to use; see Section 18.3 [Editing Images with the GIMP],
page 198.

18.3 Editing Images with the GIMP

Debian: ‘gimp’
Debian: ‘gimp-manual’
WWW: http://www.gimp.org/

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an all-encompassing image-editing and manipulation
program that lets you paint, draw, create, and edit images in complex ways. Using gimp you can also
convert image files, retouch and edit photographic images, and browse collections of images.

The GIMP comes with hundreds of tools, filters, fonts, and other goodies installed. Here is a partial
list of its features:

¯ Contains a full suite of painting tools, including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, and Clone.

¯ Supports custom brushes and patterns.

¯ Includes a full suite of image selection, transformation, and manipulation tools, including a gradient
editor, color blending, and special effects.

¯ Includes animation support.

¯ Permits the use of layers and channels.

¯ Allows for large images, with their size being limited only by available disk space.
¯ Provides high-quality anti-aliasing.

¯ Offers full alpha-channel support.

¯ Supports command scripting.

¯ Permits multiple undo and redo, limited only by available disk space.

¯ Allows multiple images to be open simultaneously.

¯ Supports all popular file formats, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, XPM, TIFF, TGA, MPEG, PS, PDF,
PCX, and BMP.
¯ Allows the easy addition of more than 100 plug-ins for new file formats and new effect filters.
 The GIMP runs under X and is started by running gimp or choosing it from your window manager’s
menu. When started, the GIMP looks like this:

NOTE: To learn the basics of the GIMP, consult The GIMP User’s Manual and the other documentation
and resources on the Web at http://www.gimp.org/. You can also install the manual on your
system; it comes in the Debian ‘gimp-manual’ package.

18.4 Interactive Image Editors and Tools

There are all kinds of image-editing software applications available for Linux—and there are as many
way to make and edit an image as there are tools to do it with.
The following table lists some other popular tools and applications for making and editing images—
including CAD engineering software—that you may want to explore. It is not exhaustive.
T OOL D ESCRIPTION
bitmap Use the bitmap editor to edit bitmap files, which are used for icons and tile patterns
in the X Window System.
Debian: ‘xbase-clients’
drgeo drgeo is a program for drawing interactive geometric figures.
Debian: ‘drgeo’
WWW: http://members.xoom.com/FeYiLai/dr_geo/doctor_
geo.html
dia Use dia to draw simple charts and diagrams. It saves files in its own format, but you
can export files to EPS (see Chapter 20 [PostScript], page 205); if you plan on editing a
diagram file again, however, be sure you keep the ‘.dia’ file since, as of this writing,
dia cannot import EPS files.
Debian: ‘dia’
WWW: http://www.lysator.liu.se/˜alla/dia
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

electric Use electric for designing images of electronic circuitry.

WWW: http://www.gnu.org/software/electric/electric.html
freedraft FREEdraft is a 2-D mechanical CAD tool for precision drawing and sketching.
WWW: http://www.freeengineer.org/Freedraft/
gnuplot gnuplot is a robust, non-interactive function-plotting tool. Given a data file and a
formula, gnuplot can make charts and graphs.
Debian: ‘gnuplot’
WWW: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gnuplot/
ivtools The ivtools suite of software includes idraw, a vector graphics editor.
Debian: ‘ivtools-bin’
WWW: http://www.vectaport.com/
kali Use kali for drawing patterns and tilings, including frieze patterns and infinite or
recursive tiles in the spirit of M.C. Escher.
Debian: ‘kali’
moonlight The Moonlight Creator is an X client for modeling, illuminating, and rendering 3-D
scenes.
Debian: ‘moonlight’
WWW: http://www.cybersociety.com/moonlight/
sced sced is a tool for creating 3-D scenes.
Debian: ‘sced’
WWW: http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/˜schenney/sced/sced.html
xfig Use the venerable xfig application for drawing figures—complex graphs, floor plans,
maps, flow charts, and so forth. It saves files in its own format (giving them a ‘.fig’
extension by default); the usual thing to do is export to EPS.
Debian: ‘xfig’
WWW: http://xfig.org/
xmorph xmorph is a tool to morph (sometimes called “warp”) two images together, making
a new image in the process. Images must be in TrueVision Targa file format, with the
same size, shape, and number of pixels in each file (also see Section 18.1.8 [Morphing
Two Images Together], page 196).
Debian: ‘xmorph’
WWW: http://www.colorado-research.com/˜gourlay/software/
xpaint xpaint, a simple “paint” tool that predates the GIMP, contains all of the basic fea-
tures that you would expect from a paint program. If you don’t need the GIMP’s
advanced capabilities, consider using the smaller xpaint instead.
Debian: ‘xpaint’
WWW: http://www.danbbs.dk/˜torsten/xpaint/index.html
19 Importing Images
While you can always make your own images, you may sometimes want to import and use existing
images from other sources. In this chapter, I’ll show how to import images from scanners and Kodak
PhotoCD discs. We’ll begin with recipes for taking screen shots.

19.1 Taking Screen Shots

A screen shot is a picture of all or part of the display screen. The following recipes show you how to
take screen shots in X and in the console.

19.1.1 Taking a Screen Shot in X

Debian: ‘imagemagick’
WWW: ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick/

Use import, part of the ImageMagick suite, to take a screen shot in X. import can capture the entire
screen, a single window, or an arbitrary rectangular area, taking as an argument the name of the file
to save to. As with other ImageMagick tools, the image format of the output file depends on the file
extension you specify: ‘.eps’ for EPS, ‘.tiff’ for TIFF, ‘.jpeg’ for JPEG, and so on. (For a
complete list, see Section 18.2 [Converting Images between Formats], page 196).
After you give the command, the mouse pointer changes to a set of cross-hairs. You then use the
mouse to specify which window to take the shot of, as follows:
¯ Left-click on a window to capture it.
¯ Left-click on the root window to capture the entire screen.
¯ Left-click and drag the mouse across an area of the screen to form a rectangular selection outline;
release the mouse button to capture the selected area.
When you specify a window, import captures only the window’s contents; use the ‘-frame’ option
to include the window manager frame in the image.
¯ To capture a particular window, including its window manager frame, and write it to a PNG-format
file, first type:
$ import -frame session-1.png
RET
¯ Then, left-click on the window you want to capture.
In this example, the capture is saved to a file called ‘session-1.png’.
NOTE: The system bell rings once when the screen capture starts, and twice when the captures finishes.

19.1.2 Taking a Screen Shot in a Console

To take screen shots in a virtual console, use cat to save the contents of the device file corresponding to
that virtual console; these files are in the ‘/dev’ directory, and are in the format ‘vcsnumber ’, where
number is the number of the virtual console.
For example, if the target console is the first virtual console (which you would see by typing
ALT-

F1), the device to cat is ‘/dev/vcs1’.

¯ To take a screen shot of the fourth virtual console, and save it to a file called ‘screenshot’, type:
$ cat /dev/vcs4 > screenshot
RET
NOTE: You must have superuser privileges to access these files (see Appendix A [Administrative Issues],
page 315).
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Take the screen shot from a virtual console different from the one you want to take a shot of; if you
try to take it from the same console you want to capture, the command line you give will be included in
the shot! (Kind of like having your thumb in front of the lens while taking a photograph.)
Screenshots taken of virtual consoles, as shown here, are saved as text files; you can’t take screen
shots of virtual consoles when graphics are displayed.

19.2 Scanning Images

Debian: ‘sane’
WWW: http://www.mostang.com/sane/

SANE, “Scanner Access Now Easy,” is the de facto Linux scanner interface; use it to scan an image with
a scanner and save it to a file.
SANE works with a wide array of scanning hardware, but make sure the scan-
ning hardware you want to use is compatible by checking the Hardware HOWTO
(http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html) and SANE’s list of
supported scanners (http://www.mostang.com/sane/sane-backends.html).
Once you have SANE running, you can scan images with SANE-aware applications like the GIMP
(see Section 18.3 [Editing Images with the GIMP], page 198).
The following recipes describe use of the command-line scanimage tool, which comes with the
SANE package.
NOTE: As the acronym implies, getting a scanner to work on a Linux system hasn’t always been smooth
going. The SANE interface is completely open, and its developers are making sure that it is generalized
enough to be implementable on any hardware or operating system.

19.2.1 Listing Available Scanner Devices

Before you can use a scanner device, you need to know its device name. To get this name, use
scanimage with the ‘--list-devices’ option.
¯
« ¨
To list available scanner devices, type:

$ scanimage --list-devices
RET

device ‘umax:/dev/sgb’ is a UMAX Astra 1220S flatbed scanner

ª$
©
In this example, there’s one scanning device on this system, a UMAX brand scanner that can be
specified to scanimage by giving its device name, ‘umax:/dev/sgb’, as an argument to the ‘-d’
option.
To list the available resolutions and options supported by a particular device, use the ‘--help’ option
along with the ‘-d’ option followed by its device name.
¯ To list available options supported by the device listed in the previous example, type:
$ scanimage --help -d ’umax:/dev/sgb’
RET

NOTE: For all scanimage commands, specify the scanner device you want to use by including the
‘-d’ option with the device name.
19.2.2 Testing a Scanner
To run diagnostic tests on a scanner to make sure that it can be properly read from, use scanimage
with the ‘--test’ option.
¯ To test the UMAX scanner listed previously, type:
$ scanimage --test -d ’umax:/dev/sgb’
RET

19.2.3 Scanning an Image

Debian: ‘netpbm’
WWW: http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/graphics/netpbm.html

Use scanimage to scan an image. Most scanners let you specify the x and y values, in pixels, for
the image size to scan, starting from the top-left corner of the scanner bed. Give these coordinates as
arguments to the ‘-x’ and ‘-y’ options. Also, give an argument to the ‘--resolution’ option to
specify the scan resolution, given in dpi (“dots per inch”). Common resolution values include 72, 120,
300, and 600 dpi; 72 dpi is the most popular resolution for use on the Web or for viewing on screen, and
204 dpi is often used for images that you want to send on a fax machine.
Scanned output is sent to standard output, so to scan an image to a file, redirect the standard output.
scanimage outputs images in the PNM (“portable anymap”) formats, so make sure that you have
the ‘netpbm’ package (installed on most Linux systems by default); it’s a useful collection of tools for
converting and manipulating these formats. The formats output by scanimage are as follows:
F ORMAT D ESCRIPTION
PPM Color images.
PBM Black and white images.
PGM Grayscale images.
Use the ‘--mode’ option to specify the format of the output, followed by one of the following
arguments: ‘color’ for color PPM, ‘gray’ for PGM grayscale, or ‘lineart’ for black and white
PBM. Each scanner has a default mode; for most color scanners, the default mode will be ‘color’.
¯ To make a 72 dpi scan of a color image 200 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall, using the UNIX scanner
from previous examples, and writing to a file called ‘scan.ppm’, type:
$ scanimage -d umax:/dev/sgb --resolution 72 -x 200 -y 100 >
scan.ppm
RET
¯ To make a 300 dpi scan of a black and white image 180 pixels wide and 225 pixels tall, using the
UMAX scanner from previous examples, and writing to a file called ‘scan.pbm’, type:
$ scanimage -d umax:/dev/sgb --resolution 300 --mode lineart
-x 180 -y 225 > scan.pbm
RET
NOTE: The command lines in this recipe are split across two lines because they’re too long to fit on one,
but type these commands on one long line.
Once the image has been scanned and written to a file, you can edit it just as you would any image.

19.3 Extracting PhotoCD Images

Debian: ‘xpcd’
WWW: http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/˜kraxel/linux/xpcd/

There are two methods to extract an image from Kodak PhotoCD
(“PCD”). If you are browsing the disc

This is a proprietary scanned image format from Kodak, which is a current standard for scanning film images to digital.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

with the xpcd tool, then choose an image, extract a copy at the desired resolution, and save it to a file,
as described in Section 17.5 [Browsing PhotoCD Archives], page 187.
You can also use pcdtoppm on a PCD file directly to extract an image at a given resolution and save
it to a file in PPM format. Use the ‘-r’ option to specify the resolution to extract, given as a numeric
argument from 1 (lowest resolution) to 5 (highest); if this option is omitted, a value of 3 is assumed. Also
give as arguments the name of the PCD file to read from and the name of the PPM file to write to.
¯ To extract the highest resolution from the file ‘slack.pcd’ and save it to a PPM file named
‘slack.ppm’, type:
$ pcdtoppm -r5 slack.pcd slack.ppm
RET

19.3.1 Converting a PhotoCD Image

Once you extract a PhotoCD image and write it to a PPM format file, use convert to convert it to
another format and adjust or improve the image (see Section 18.2 [Converting Images between Formats],
page 196).
To improve the image while you convert it to JPEG format, specify no interlacing with the
‘-interlace’ option, 50 percent image sharpening with the ‘-sharpen’ option, and add an optional
border and annotation to the image with the ‘-border’ and ‘-comment’ options.
¯ To convert the file ‘slack.ppm’ to non-interlaced JPEG, sharpen the image, add a two-pixel by
two-pixel border, and annotate the image, type (all on one line):
$ convert -interlace NONE -sharpen 50 -border 2x2 -comment
’Bob was here’ slack.pnm slack.jpeg
RET

19.3.2 Removing PhotoCD Haze

Debian: ‘gimp’
WWW: http://www.gimp.org/

Extracted PhotoCD images are known to sometimes have a kind of “green haze” over them; to remove it,
open the image in the GIMP and adjust the color levels with the Auto Levels function. This technique,
adapted from a tip for using PhotoCD by Philip Greenspun (http://philip.greenspun.com/),
works well for improving any scanned or imported image.
¯ To remove the “green haze” from a PhotoCD image, do the following:
¯ First, open the extracted image in the GIMP (see Section 18.3 [Editing Images with the GIMP],
page 198).
¯ Then, click through the Image menu to the Colors submenu and then to the Levels sub-
menu, and choose Auto Levels.
¯ Click OK in the Levels window to accept the changes.
20 PostScript
Debian: ‘gs’
Debian: ‘psutils’
WWW: ftp://www.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ghostscript/
WWW: ftp://ftp.dcs.ed.ac.uk/pub/ajcd/
WWW: http://www.cappella.demon.co.uk/tinyfiles/tinymenu.html

PostScript is a programming language, used to describe the way a “page” (usually a physical sheet of
paper) should look. PostScript files are text files containing the PostScript commands for drawing images
to be printed on pages.
Like plain text files, PostScript files are commonly found on the Internet (and are used by commercial
printers) because, as with plain text, they can be shared across platforms and hardware without difficulty.
The same PostScript file can be output on a high-end display or printed on a low-end printer, to the best
of that hardware’s capability. PostScript is a compact and elegant format.
While it’s possible to write directly in the PostScript language, and some people have become adept
at programming PostScript, so many tools and applications convert files to and from PostScript that you
don’t have to. See Section 15.2 [Converting Plain Text for Output], page 159, for a way to convert plain
text into PostScript.
Ghostscript is a free implementation of the PostScript language. The gs tool is a Ghostscript inter-
preter that is used to convert files from PostScript to other formats, usually for printing to a non-PostScript
printer (see Section 25.3.1 [Preparing a PostScript File for Printing], page 241). The ghostview tool
is used to preview PostScript files on the screen (see Section 17.1.2 [Previewing a PostScript File],
page 183).
EPS, or Encapsulated PostScript, is a file format that describes the contents of a box within a page.
EPS files can be embedded in the page of a PostScript file, and are therefore commonly used when
inserting an illustration into a document (for example, all of the illustrations in the Cookbook are EPS
format files). You can view and print EPS files just as you would PostScript files.
This chapter includes recipes for formatting and manipulating PostScript files. Recipes are separated
according to whether they work on the individual, logical pages in a PostScript file (the numbered pages
in the file that are not necessarily the physical pages of output), and those that work on the entire file as
a whole.
Unless otherwise indicated, the tools in this chapter are part of Angus Duggan’s PSUtils package.
These tools can be useful for other purposes than those described below; see their respective man pages
for more details.

20.1 Manipulating PostScript Pages

These recipes work on individual pages of PostScript files, and not the entire file itself.

20.1.1 Extracting DVI Pages to PostScript

To extract specific pages of a DVI (“DeVice Independent”) file to PostScript, use dvips and give the
page or hyphenated page ranges to output with the ‘-pp’ option.
¯ To extract only the first page from the file ‘abstract.dvi’ and send the PostScript output to the
printer, type:
$ dvips -pp1 abstract.dvi
RET
By default, dvips will output to the printer; to save the PostScript output to a file, give the file name
to be used for output with the ‘-o’ option.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To output as PostScript the pages 137 to 146 of the file ‘abstract.dvi’ to the file
‘abstract.ps’, type:
$ dvips -pp137-146 -o abstract.ps abstract.dvi
RET

20.1.2 Extracting Pages from a PostScript File

Use psselect to select pages from a PostScript file; when you give an input file, it outputs a new
PostScript file containing the specified pages.
Give the pages to select as arguments to the ‘-p’ option; you can list single pages and ranges of pages
separated by commas. Give ranges as two numbers between a hyphen; thus, ‘4-6’ specifies pages four
through six, inclusive. If you omit the first number in a pair, the first page is assumed, and if you omit
the last number, the last page is assumed. Pages are written to the new file in the order they are specified.
To select page 47 from the PostScript file ‘newsletter.ps’ and output it to the file
‘selection.ps’, type:
$ psselect -p47 newsletter.ps selection.ps
RET
¯ To select the first ten pages, page 104, pages 23 through 28, and page 2 from the file
‘newsletter.ps’ and write it to the file ‘selection.ps’, type:
$ psselect -p1-10,104,23-28,2 newsletter.ps selection.ps
RET
In the preceding example, page 2 is selected twice.
Prefix a number with an underscore (‘_’) to indicate that the given page number is relative to the last
page, counting backwards toward the first page.
¯ To select the second-to-last through the tenth-to-last pages from the PostScript file
‘newsletter.ps’ and output them to the file ‘selection.ps’, type:
$ psselect -p_2-_10 newsletter.ps selection.ps
RET
¯ To select the second-to-last through the tenth pages from the PostScript file ‘newsletter.ps’
and output them to the file ‘selection.ps’, type:
$ psselect -p_2-10 newsletter.ps selection.ps
RET
Use the ‘-e’ option to select all even-numbered pages, and use the ‘-o’ option to select all odd-
numbered pages.
¯To select all of the even pages in the file ‘newsletter.ps’ and write them to a new file,
‘even.ps’, type:
$ psselect -e newsletter.ps even.ps
RET
¯To select all of the odd pages in the file ‘newsletter.ps’ and write them to a new file,
‘odd.ps’, type:
$ psselect -o newsletter.ps odd.ps
RET
Use an underscore (‘_’) alone to insert a blank page, and use ‘-r’ to output pages in reverse order.
¯ To select the last ten pages of file ‘newsletter.ps’, followed by a blank page, followed by the
first ten pages, and output them to a new file, ‘selection.ps’, type:
$ psselect -p_1-_10,_,1-10 newsletter.ps selection.ps
RET
¯ To select the pages 59, 79, and 99 in the file ‘newsletter.ps’, and output them in reverse order
(with the 99th page first) to a new file, ‘selection.ps’, type:
$ psselect -p59,79,99 -r newsletter.ps selection.ps
RET
NOTE: The same result as the preceding example above could have been done by omitting the ‘-r’
option and just listing the three pages in the reverse order:
$ psselect -p99,79,59 newsletter.ps selection.ps
RET
20.1.3 Combining PostScript Pages
Use psnup to print multiple PostScript pages on a single sheet of paper; give as an option the number
of pages to be combined (or put “up”) on each sheet.
¯ To make a new PostScript file, ‘double.ps’, putting two pages from the file ‘single.ps’ on
each page, type:
$ psnup -2 single.ps double.ps
RET

To specify the paper size, give the name of a standard paper size as an argument to the ‘-p’ option:
a3, a4, a5, b5, letter, legal, tabloid, statement, executive, folio, quarto, or 10x14. You can also specify
any height and width with the ‘-h’ and ‘-w’ options; units can be specified in centimeters (followed by
‘cm’) or inches (followed by ‘in’). If no size is specified, psnup assumes a paper size of a4.
Use the ‘-l’ option when pages are in landscape orientation (rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise
from portrait orientation), and ‘-r’ when pages are in seascape orientation (rotated 90 degrees clockwise
from portrait orientation).
Pages are placed in “row-major” layout in the output file, where logical pages are placed in rows
across the page. Use the ‘-c’ option to specify a “column-major” layout, where logical pages are placed
in columns down the page. Scale the size of the pages by giving a percentage to multiply the page size
by as an argument to the ‘-s’ option; for example, ‘-s .5’ scales pages to 50 percent of their original
size.
To draw a border around each page, specify the border’s width in points as an argument to the ‘-d’
option (if no width is specified, a value of 1 is assumed).

20.1.4 Arranging PostScript Pages in Signatures

A signature is a group of pages in a document corresponding to sheets of paper folded and bound; these
pages are normally not in sequential order in a document (for example, in a document with eight-page
signatures, page 8 and page 1 might both be printed on the same sheet of paper).
To rearrange the pages of a PostScript file by signature—usually for printing the file as a book or
booklet—use psbook. Give as arguments the name of the PostScript file to read from and the name
to use for the output file; it reads the contents of the first, rearranges the pages, and then writes the
PostScript output to the second file.
¯ To rearrange the pages of file ‘newsletter.ps’ into a signature and write it to the file
‘newsletter.bound.ps’, type:
$ psbook newsletter.ps newsletter.bound.ps
RET

By default, psbook uses one signature for the entire file. If the file doesn’t contain a multiple of four
pages, it adds blank pages to the end.
To specify the size of the signature to use—in other words, the number of pages that will appear on
a single piece of paper—give the number as an argument to the ‘-s’ option. Signature size is always a
multiple of four.
¯ To rearrange the pages of file ‘newsletter.ps’ into an eight-sided signature and write it to
‘newsletter.bound.ps’, type:
$ psbook -s8 newsletter.ps newsletter.bound.ps
RET

20.2 Manipulating PostScript Documents

These recipes work on a PostScript document as a whole.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

20.2.1 Resizing a PostScript Document

Use psresize to resize a PostScript file. It takes as arguments the file to resize and the output file to
write to; you must also specify the page size of the output file, using the same format as with the psnup
tool: use ‘-p’ or ‘-h’ and ‘-w’ to specify the size of the output file, and use ‘-P’ to specify the size of
the input file (see Section 20.1.3 [Combining PostScript Pages], page 207).
¯ To resize the PostScript file ‘double.ps’ to US letter-sized paper, writing output to a new file,
‘doublet.ps’, type:
$ psresize -pletter double.ps doublet.ps
RET

20.2.2 Combining PostScript Documents

Use psmerge to concatenate and merge multiple PostScript files into a single file. Give the names of
the files to be merged as arguments, and psmerge outputs them to the standard output in the order
given. You can also specify an output file name with the ‘-o’ option (don’t put any spaces between the
file name and the option).
¯ To merge the files ‘slide1.ps’, ‘slide2.ps’, and ‘slide3.ps’ into a new PostScript file,
‘slideshow.ps’, type:
$ psmerge -oslideshow.ps slide1.ps slide2.ps slide3.ps
RET

NOTE: As of this writing, psmerge only works with PostScript files that were made with the same
application—which means, for example, that you can merge multiple files made with TEX, or multiple
files made with xfig, but not a combination of the two.

20.2.3 Arranging a PostScript Document in a Booklet

To arrange the pages in a PostScript file to make booklets, rearrange the file in a signature with psbook,
use psnup to arrange the pages—two to a printed page in landscape mode—and then use pstops to
output first the odd and then the even pages.
The trick to doing this properly is to first determine exactly what you need to do and then calculate
the proper measurements for use with pstops.
¯ To make a booklet from the file ‘newsletter.ps’:
1. Rearrange the pages into a signature:
$ psbook newsletter.ps newsletter.signature.ps
RET
2. Put the pages two to a page in landscape orientation, at 70 percent of their original size (typed
all on one line):
$ psnup -l -pletter -2 -s.7 newsletter.signature.ps >
newsletter.2up.ps
RET
3. Output the odd pages:
$ pstops "2:0(1in,0in)" newsletter.2up.ps > odd.ps
RET
4. Output the even pages:
$ pstops "2:-1(1in,0in)" newsletter.2up.ps > even.ps
RET
Then, to print the booklet, you send ‘odd.ps’ to the printer, load the printed pages in the manual
feed tray and then send ‘even.ps’ to the printer. This prints the odd and even pages on opposite sides
of the sheets.
¯ To make a double-sized booklet on letter-sized paper in landscape orientation, from a file using
letter-sized portrait orientation, type:
 « ¨
$ psbook input.ps > temp1.ps
RET
...processing messages...
$ psnup -l -pletter -2 -s.7 temp1.ps > temp2.ps
RET
...processing messages...
$ pstops "2:0(1in,0in)" temp2.ps > odd.ps
RET
...processing messages...
$ pstops "2:-1(1in,0in)" test2.ps > even.ps
RET
...processing messages...

ª$
©
20.3 Converting PostScript
These recipes show how to convert PostScript files to other formats. See also the recipes for preparing
PostScript files for printing, Section 25.3.1 [Preparing a PostScript File for Printing], page 241.

20.3.1 Converting PostScript to PDF

Use ps2pdf, part of the gs (“Ghostscript”) package, to convert a PostScript file to PDF. Give as argu-
ments the name of the PostScript file to read from, and the name of the PDF file to write to.
¯ To make a PDF file ‘sutra.pdf’ from the input file ‘sutra.ps’, type:
$ ps2pdf sutra.ps sutra.pdf
RET
This command writes a new file in PDF format called ‘sutra.pdf’. The original file, ‘sutra.ps’,
is not altered.
NOTE: To make proper PDF conversions, make sure that you have gs version 6.01 or higher installed;
use the ‘-v’ option with gs to output the installed version.

20.3.2 Converting PostScript to Plain Text

To convert a PostScript file to plain text, use ps2ascii. Give as arguments the name of the PostScript
file to read from, and the name of the text file to write to.
¯ To make a text file, ‘sutra.txt’, from the input file ‘sutra.ps’, type:
$ ps2ascii sutra.ps sutra.txt
RET
This command writes a text file called ‘sutra.txt’. The original file, ‘sutra.ps’, is not altered.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
PART FIVE: Sound
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
21 Sound Files
Debian: ‘alsa-base’
WWW: http://www.alsa-project.org/

This chapter covers the basic control of audio on Linux-based systems, including how to adjust the audio
mixer and how to play and record sound files using basic tools. You can also play and record audio with
snd (see Chapter 23 [Editing Sound Files], page 225) and many other sound applications.
For purposes of this discussion, I will assume you are using the ALSA sound driver on your system
and that you have sound working properly; unlike the standard Open Sound System driver (OSS/Linux),
the ALSA driver is made entirely of free software. It is becoming the de facto choice for musicians who
use Linux.
NOTE: Most systems come configured so that you must be the superuser to be able to use sound devices,
including audio CDs. If this is the case on your system, ask your administrator to give you access to
these devices, typically by adding you to the audio group (see Section 6.1 [Groups and How to Work
in Them], page 75).

21.1 Sound File Formats

The following table lists common audio file formats and their traditional file name extensions. You
can also use file to determine a file’s format (see Section 8.1 [Determining File Type and Format],
page 89).
F ILE E XTENSION S OUND F ORMAT
.aiff Apple Macintosh audio file.
.au Sun Microsystems audio file (8000 Hz, u-law compression).
.cdda or .cdr Both are names for the audio compact disc format, used for burning
audio CD-Rs and CD-RWs (44.1 KHz raw stereo).
.gsm Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) speech file format,
used in some voice-mail applications.
.midi or .mid The standard extensions for MIDI files.
.mod MOD file.
.mp3 MPEG II, Level 3 file.
.ra RealAudio file.
.raw Raw audio data.
.sf IRCAM SoundFile format, used by some music composition software,
such as CSound and MiXViews.
.voc SoundBlaster VOC file.
.wav Microsoft RIFF format (“WAV”).

21.2 Adjusting the Audio Controls

A mixer program is used to adjust various audio settings, such as volume and recording levels, and is
also used for turning on or muting the microphone or other input device. You must use a mixer to adjust
your audio settings before you play or record sound.
ALSA’s default mixer is called amixer, and the following recipes assume its use. There are other
mixers, and some of them are easier to use than amixer. If you want a graphical mixer, install the
aumix package, or see the end of this chapter for others.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

21.2.1 Listing the Current Audio Settings

To list all audio input and output devices and their settings, type amixer with no options.
Your sound card’s components are organized in groups, from the Master group containing the master
left and right volume settings to the individual groups for audio compact discs and digital sound files.
(These groups have nothing to do with the file access groups described in Section 6.1 [Groups and How
to Work in Them], page 75.)
¯ To peruse the current mixer settings, type:
$ amixer | less
RET
The following table describes some of the important sound groups that amixer lists.
S OUND G ROUP D ESCRIPTION
Master The master volume settings.
PCM Digital audio for playing sound files; the first channel is group PCM,0
and the second is PCM,1.
CD The audio compact disc player (a cable must be connected from the
CD-ROM drive to the sound card).
Synth The synthesizer device for MIDI.
Line The sound input device (the jack on the back of the soundcard is usu-
ally labeled LINE IN).
MIC The microphone device (the jack on the back of the soundcard is usu-
ally labeled MIC).
To list the settings for only one group, use the ‘get’ option followed by the name of the group you
want to list. Group names are case sensitive—so giving MIC specifies the microphone group, while Mic
and mic are not valid groups.
¯ To output the microphone settings, type:
$ amixer get MIC
RET
¯ To output the second PCM settings, type:
$ amixer get PCM,1
RET

21.2.2 Changing the Volume Level

To change a mixer setting, give the amixer ‘set’ command as an option, followed by both the group
and setting to change as arguments. To change the volume level for a device, give either a numeric value
or a percentage for the volume level.
¯ To set the master volume to 75 percent, type:
$ amixer set Master 75%
RET
¯ To set the PCM volume to 30, type:
$ amixer set PCM 30
RET

21.2.3 Muting an Audio Device

The special ‘mute’ and ‘unmute’ arguments are used for muting the volume of a given device. Before
you can record something, you must unmute the input device you want to record from. Remember to
also mute the microphone after you have finished recording, to avoid feedback when you turn up your
speakers.
¯ To unmute the microphone and turn it on for recording, type:
$ amixer set MIC unmute capture
RET
 ¯ To mute the microphone, type:
$ amixer set MIC mute
RET
¯ To unmute the master volume and set it to 80 percent volume, type:
$ amixer set Master 80% unmute
RET

21.2.4 Selecting an Audio Recording Source

To select a device for recording, use set followed by the name of the device and the ‘capture’
argument, which designates the specified group as the one to capture sound from for recording.
¯ To select the LINE IN jack as the recording source, type:
$ amixer set Line capture
RET
¯ To select the microphone jack as the recording source, type:
$ amixer set MIC capture
RET
NOTE: You can have only one group selected for capture at a time, and when you select a group as an
input source for recording, you are simply turning the microphone or other input on; recording does not
occur until you use a recording tool.

21.3 Playing a Sound File

Debian: ‘sox’
WWW: http://home.sprynet.com/˜cbagwell/sox.html

The play tool distributed with sox (a sound file translation tool) can recognize and play many audio
formats, including WAV, VOC, AU, AIFF, and SND format files, as well as audio CD-format files and
various raw binary files; just about the only common audio formats it can’t handle are MP3 and MIDI
files, which are discussed in the sections to follow.
¯ To play the file ‘pentastar.aiff’, type:
$ play pentastar.aiff
RET
NOTE: Before you begin playing sound, make sure you’ve set the master and PCM volume levels with
the mixer (see Section 21.2 [Adjusting the Audio Controls], page 213). The most common reason for no
sound being produced when you try to play sound is not having the volume turned up!
ALSA comes with aplay, a tool for playing sound files that is similar to play, but does not recog-
nize as many formats.

21.3.1 Playing an MP3 File

Debian: ‘mpg321’
WWW: http://freshmeat.net/projects/mpg321/

To play an MP3 file, give its name as an argument to mpg321.

¯ To play the MP3 file ‘september-wind.mp3’, type:
$ mpg321 september-wind.mp3
RET
To buffer the audio, useful for when the system is running many processes or otherwise has a lot of
activity, give a buffer size, in kilobytes, as an argument to the ‘-b’ option. The default is 0 (no buffer); if
you need this option, use a size of at least 1024KB (which is 1MB), or about six seconds of MP3 audio.
You can also use mpg321 to play “streaming” MP3 audio from the Web; just give the URL of the
MP3 stream as an argument.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To play the MP3 stream at http://example.net/broadcast/live.mp3, type:

$ mpg321 http://example.net/broadcast/live.mp3
RET
¯ To play the MP3 stream at http://example.net/broadcast/live.mp3 with a 2MB au-
dio buffer, type:
$ mpg213 -b 2048 http://example.net/broadcast/live.mp3
RET
NOTE: The mpg321 tool is a free software replacement of mpg123, another command-line MP3 player
that is not free software.
But there are a great many other MP3 players available; some of them are listed in Section 21.5 [Other
Sound File Tools], page 217.

21.3.2 Playing a MIDI File

Debian: ‘playmidi’
WWW: http://playmidi.openprojects.net/

The playmidi tool is for playing MIDI files; give the name of the MIDI file to play as an argument.
¯ To play the MIDI file ‘copa-cabana.mid’, type:
$ playmidi copa-cabana.mid
RET
If you have a non-MIDI sound card, you can still play MIDI files by giving the ‘-f’ option, which
sends the MIDI output to the FM synthesizer on the sound card, which in turn plays it using FM patches
that come with the playmidi distribution.
¯ To play the MIDI file ‘copa-cabana.mid’ on a non-MIDI sound card, type:
$ playmidi -f copa-cabana.mid
RET

21.4 Recording a Sound File

Debian: ‘sox’
WWW: http://home.sprynet.com/˜cbagwell/sox.html

To record sound, first select an input device as a source for recording. Sound cards may have MIC and
LINE IN jacks, as well as connections to the CD-ROM drive, all of which are sound inputs that can be
recording sources. When you select a device for capture, your recording will come from this source.
Recording occurs from the currently active input, if any, which must be set with the mixer; unmute it
and set its volume level before you begin recording. (Be sure to turn the volume on your speakers all the
way off, or you’ll get feedback.)
To record audio to a file, use the rec tool. It can write many audio file formats, either to a format
you specify with the ‘-t’ option, or by determining the format to use based on the file name extension
you give the output file (see Section 21.1 [Sound File Formats], page 213). Type C-c to stop recording.
Give the name of the sound file to record as an argument; if a ‘.wav’ file is specified, it records a
simple monaural, low-fidelity sound sample by default.
¯ To record a simple WAV sample from the microphone and save it to a file called ‘hello.wav’,
type:
$ rec hello.wav
RET
This command begins an 8,000 Hz, monaural 8-bit WAV recording to the file ‘hello.wav’, and
keeps recording until you interrupt it with C-c. While the default is to make a low-fidelity recording—
8,000 Hz, monaural 8-bit samples—you can specify that a high-fidelity recording be made. (But remem-
ber that high-fidelity recordings take up much more disk space.)
 To make a stereo recording, use the ‘-c’ option to specify the number of channels, giving 2 as the
argument. To make a 16-bit recording, give ‘w’ (“wide”) as the argument to the ‘-s’ (“sample size”)
option.
Set the recording sample rate by giving the samples per second to use as an argument to the ‘-r’
option. For CD-quality audio at 44,100Hz, use ‘-r 44100’.
Finally, to record a file in a particular format, either give the name of the format as an argument to
the ‘-f’ option, or use the traditional file name extension for that format in the output file name (see
Section 21.1 [Sound File Formats], page 213).
¯ To make a high-fidelity recording from the microphone and save it to a WAV-format file called
‘goodbye.wav’, type:
$ rec -s w -c 2 -r 44100 goodbye.wav
RET
¯ To make a sound recording in the CD audio format, and write the output to a file called
‘goodbye.cdr’, type:
$ rec goodbye.cdr
RET
NOTE: When you’re not recording sound, keep the inputs muted (see Section 21.2.3 [Muting an Audio
Device], page 214); this way, you can have a microphone plugged in without having feedback when
playing sounds. Also, make sure the volume levels are not set too high or too low when recording;
getting the right level for your microphone or other input device may take some initial adjustment.
Like play, rec is part of the sox toolkit.

21.5 Other Sound File Tools

There are many mixer, playback, and recording tools available. The following table lists some of them,
giving their Debian package name and URL, where available.
T OOL D ESCRIPTION
aumix A simple, visual audio mixer tool that can be used in X or in the console—use
this if you are too frustrated by amixer.
Debian: ‘aumix’
freeamp A popular audio sound file player for X, the Free Audio Music Player can play
MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats, and its graphical appearance can be changed with
“themes.”
Debian: ‘freeamp’
WWW: http://www.freeamp.org/
maplay An MP3 player.
Debian: ‘maplay’
mp3asm Use this tool to cut and paste MP3 frames and fix broken MP3 files.
Debian: ‘mp3asm’
WWW: http://packages.debian.org/stable/sound/mp3asm.html
xmms Inspired by Winamp, XMMS is a popular, comprehensive audio player for X that
features an array of plug-ins, support for many sound formats (including MP3
and Ogg Vorbis), and “skins” to change its look and feel; it can use FreeAmp
themes as well—see previous listing for freeamp
Debian: ‘xmms’
WWW: http://www.xmms.org/
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
22 Audio Compact Discs
Audio compact discs can be played on systems that have a CD-ROM drive and sound card installed. You
can control playback of an audio CD in all the ways you can with a traditional CD player, except on a
Linux system you control playback with software tools on the command line. There are tools for reading
the audio data from a CD and writing it to a file (which you can later write to a CD-R disc, or convert to
MP3 format).
Tools and techniques for manipulating CD-ROMs (data CDs) are in Section 24.4 [CD-ROMs],
page 236.

22.1 Controlling CD Audio

Debian: ‘cdtool’
WWW: ftp://jaka.cerl.uiuc.edu/pub/tinsel/

These recipes describe various ways to play audio CDs using the command-line tools found in the
‘CDTOOL’ suite. Other CD audio tools, including X clients, are listed in Section 22.4 [Other Audio
CD Applications], page 223.

22.1.1 Playing an Audio CD

Use cdplay to play an audio CD in the CD-ROM drive; the sound is output through the speakers
connected to the LINE OUT jack on your sound card. (You may need to use the audio mixer to adjust
the volume level and other settings; see Section 21.2 [Adjusting the Audio Controls], page 213.)
¯ To play an audio CD, type:
$ cdplay
RET
To begin with a particular track, give the number of the track as an argument.
¯ To play an audio CD, beginning with the third track, type:
$ cdplay 3
RET
To end with a particular track, give the number of the track as a second argument.
¯ To play an audio CD, beginning with the first track and ending with the fourth track, type:
$ cdplay 1 4
RET
¯ To play only the third track of an audio CD, type:
$ cdplay 3 3
RET

22.1.2 Pausing an Audio CD

Use cdpause to pause audio CD playback.
¯ To pause the current CD playback, type:
$ cdpause
RET
Use cdplay to start playback at the point where it was paused; to restart the playback from the
beginning, use cdplay with ‘x’ as an argument.
¯ To restart a paused CD, type:
$ cdplay
RET
¯ To restart a paused CD from the beginning, type:
$ cdplay x
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

22.1.3 Stopping an Audio CD

To stop playback of an audio CD, use cdstop.
¯ To stop the current CD playback, type:
$ cdstop
RET

22.1.4 Shuffling Audio CD Tracks

Use cdplay with the ‘shuffle’ argument to play the CD tracks in random order.
¯ To shuffle CD playback, type:
$ cdplay shuffle
RET

22.1.5 Displaying Information about an Audio CD

Use cdinfo to display information about an audio CD, including its play status and track times. With
no options, it outputs the play status: ‘play’ if the CD is currently playing, ‘paused’ if the CD is
currently on pause, ‘no-status’ if the CD is not playing, and ‘nodisc’ if no disc is in the drive.
¯ For the current status of the audio CD in the CD-ROM drive, type:
$ cdinfo
RET
In addition, cdinfo recognizes the following options:
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-a Output the absolute disc time.
-r Output the relative track time.
-s Output the play status (the default action).
-t Output the current track.
-v Output all available information: play status, current track, absolute
disc time, and relative track time.
To show the lengths of all tracks on an audio CD in a directory-like format, use cdir. This tool will
also show titles and artist names, if known, but for this to work, you must set up an audio CD database (see
the cdtool man page for details—Section 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System Manual], page 28).
¯
« ¨
To show a list of tracks, type:

$ cdir
RET
unknown cd - 43:14 in 8 tracks
5:15.00 1
5:50.40 2
5:29.08 3
3:50.70 4
4:17.00 5
5:56.15 6
7:13.40 7
5:19.22 8

ª
$
©
In this example, the CD contains eight tracks, with a total of 43 minutes and 14 seconds play time.
22.1.6 Ejecting an Audio CD
Use cdeject to eject the disc in the CD-ROM drive. If the disc is currently playing, play will stop and
the disc will eject.
¯ To eject a CD, type:
$ cdeject
RET
NOTE: This command will also eject a CD-ROM (data CD), if the CD-ROM is not currently mounted
(see Section 24.4 [CD-ROMs], page 236).

22.2 Sampling Sound from a CD

Debian: ‘cdda2wav’
Debian: ‘cdparanoia’
WWW: ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/cdda2wav/
WWW: http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/xiphmont/cdparanoia/index.html

Two tools used for sampling (sometimes called “ripping”) data from an audio CD are cdda2wav and
cdparanoia. Both can retrieve single tracks or entire disks; the former is the archetypal CD audio-
sampling tool for Linux, and should be used when speed is more important than sound quality. The
latter does various extra checks for the paranoid, and should be used when an absolutely perfect copy is
necessary—at the expense of speed. cdda2wav is perfectly capable of creating a digitally perfect audio
sample; cdparanoia is useful for when your original CD may have scratches (its scratch detection
capability can attempt to “hold sync” across the scratch), or for when you are using a less-than-optimal-
quality CD-ROM drive.
With cdda2wav, you specify the track number to be retrieved as an argument to the ‘-t’ option; use
‘x’ to specify a CD-quality retrieval, and give the name of the CD-ROM device with the ‘-D’ option—
unless you have multiple CD-ROM drives installed, this is almost certainly going to be ‘/dev/cdrom’.
By default, files are written as WAV format files; use the ‘-O’ option followed by ‘cdr’ to write
the files in CD audio format. ‘.cdr’ files are useful for burning an audio CD containing the files as
tracks (discussed in the following section), and ‘.wav’ files are useful for converting to MP3 format (see
Section 23.3.1 [Making an MP3 File], page 229). You can convert either format to the other at a later
time with sox—see Section 23.3 [Converting Sound Files], page 228.
¯ To copy track seven of an audio CD to a CD-quality WAV file in the current directory, type:
$ cdda2wav -t7 -d0 -x -D /dev/cdrom
RET
¯ To copy all tracks on an audio CD to separate CD-quality CD audio-format files, type:
$ cdda2wav -D /dev/cdrom -x -O cdr -d0 -B
RET
For more reliable sampling, use cdparanoia. Give the range of audio tracks to sample as an
argument (with no arguments, it samples the entire disc). Use the ‘-w’ option to specify WAV format
output.
¯ To sample the third track from a scratched audio CD in the default CD-ROM drive using “paranoid”
data verification, and write the output to a WAV format file in the current directory, type:
$ cdparanoia -w 3-3
RET
¯ To sample the entire audio CD using “paranoid” data verification, type:
$ cdparanoia -w -B
RET
¯ To sample the entire audio CD using less-than-maximum “paranoid” data verification, without
checking for scratches, and saving each song as a separate raw audio-format file in the current
directory, type:
$ cdparanoia -B -Y -X
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

NOTE: Sampling an entire audio CD can use a lot of disk space; most people delete the ‘.cdr’ or
‘.wav’ files as soon as they make MP3s or burn an audio CD-R from the data.

22.3 Writing an Audio CD-R

Debian: ‘cdrecord’
WWW: http://freshmeat.net/projects/cdrecord/

Use ‘cdrecord’ to write (or “burn”) audio files to a blank CD-R disc. You will need a CD-R drive

and the audio files must be in CD-DA CD audio format (they usually have a ‘.cdda’ or ‘.cdr’ file
name extension).
Specify the CD-R drive with the special ‘dev’ argument, which is given in this form:
‘dev=scsibus,target,lun ’
where scsibus is the number of the SCSI bus (0 for the primary bus), target is the SCSI target ID (usually
a number from 1 to 6), and lun is its LUN number (most always 0).
Use the ‘speed’ argument to set the speed factor for writing data: give ‘speed=2’ to specify double
speed or ‘speed=4’ to specify quad speed.
Use the ‘-dummy’ option to run with the drive laser turned off, so no actual burning takes place; this
is useful when you are first using a CD-R drive and need to test your configuration to make sure you’ve
got it right. Another useful option is ‘-v’, which gives a more verbose message output.
Give the names of the audio files to burn, in the order that they should appear on the disc, as arguments
to the ‘-audio’ option. The files are written in CD-DA CD audio format, and they should contain 16-bit
stereo at 44,100 samples/second (the ‘.cdr’ or ‘.cdda’ files meet this criterion).
¯ To burn the file ‘symphony.cdr’ to the disc in the CD-R drive whose target ID is 2 on the primary
SCSI bus, type:
$ cdrecord dev=0,2,0 -audio symphony.cdr
RET
¯ To burn all the files in the current directory ending with a ‘.cdr’ extension at double speed to the
CD-R drive whose target ID is 2 on the primary SCSI bus, and give verbose output, type:
$ cdrecord dev=0,2,0 speed=2 -v -audio *.cdr
RET
¯ To run a test burn of the file ‘symphony.cdr’ to the disc in the CD-R drive whose target ID is 6
(LUN 1) on the primary SCSI bus, type:
$ cdrecord dev=0,6,1 -dummy -audio symphony.cdr
RET
When you use wildcards for files, as in the second-to-the-last example, the shell expands the files in
alphabetical order. To write a group of tracks in a particular order without specifying all of their names
as arguments, rename them so that their names begin with numbers that correspond to the order you want
to write them in (see Section 5.5 [Moving Files and Directories], page 68).
For example, if you have the three files ‘morning-song.cdr’, ‘midday-song.cdr’,
and ‘evening-song.cdr’, and you want to write them in that order, rename the files to
‘01-morning-song.cdr’, ‘02-midday-song.cdr’, and ‘03-evening-song.cdr’;
otherwise, if you specify them as ‘*.cdr’, the shell will sort their names so that they will
be written to CD-R in the order of ‘evening-song.cdr’, ‘midday-song.cdr’, and
‘morning-song.cdr’—exactly the opposite of what was intended!
To write a disc containing both data and audio tracks, first specify the file for the data track (it
should contain a filesystem image in either ISO 9660 or Rock Ridge format), and then follow it with the
‘-audio’ option and the names of the audio tracks to use. The resulting CD-R will be both mountable
as a data CD and playable on audio CD players (the first track on the disc, the data track, will be skipped
when playing the audio).

You can also use this tool with a CD-RW drive and write to a CD-RW disc.
 ¯ To burn the data track ‘band-info’ and all the audio tracks in the current directory with a
‘.cdda’ extension to the CD-R drive whose target ID is 2 on the primary SCSI bus, type:
$ cdrecord dev=0,2,0 band-info -audio *.cdda
RET
NOTE: When writing an audio CD, you should have as few processes running as possible. If cdrecord
has to pause even momentarily to let the system shuffle other processes, the CD-R could be ruined! For
this reason, it is advisable to avoid switching between consoles—or between windows, if running X—
during the CD-R burning process.

22.4 Other Audio CD Applications

The following table lists some of the other available tools and applications that work on audio compact
discs.
T OOL D ESCRIPTION
dynamic Project Dynamic is a tool for playing samples of audio CDs; it is distinctive in
that it can play audio CDs backwards.
WWW: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/˜flatmax/dynamic/
workbone An interactive CD player that can be used on the console or in X; it allows you
to skip forward and backward through tracks as they are playing.
workman A tool for playing audio CDs, with a graphical interface that looks like the front
panel of a physical CD player.
xcdroast XCDRoast is a graphical front-end to the cdrecord tool for use in X.
WWW: http://www.xcdroast.org/
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
23 Editing Sound Files
All kinds of tools and applications exist to edit sound files. This chapter shows some of those tools,
giving methods for for cutting and pasting sound files, applying effects and filters, and converting sound
files between formats.

23.1 Working with Selections from Sound Files

Debian: ‘snd’
WWW: http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Software/snd/

Snd is a sound-file editing environment for X, and aims to be for sound what Emacs is to text. (And it
uses Emacs-style key bindings.)
You’ll find a complete manual for it in the ‘/usr/doc/snd’ directory; this section explains how to
use Snd to work with selections from sound files.
To open a sound file in Snd, give the name of the file to be opened as an argument to snd.
¯ To open the sound file ‘mixdown.wav’ in Snd, type:
$ snd mixdown.wav
RET
This command starts Snd with a WAV file called ‘mixdown.wav’:

Making a selection of a sound file in snd is similar to selecting text in Emacs; you can mark a section
of a sound file or recording you’ve made in Snd by left-clicking and dragging across the area with the
mouse. The area you drag across becomes shaded and is called the selection. Once you select a portion
of the sound, any effect you choose works on that selection. You can also cut and paste selections of the
sound you are editing into other sound buffers.
The xwave tool (and many others, no doubt) have similar capabilities and functions (see Section 23.4
[Other Tools for Sound Editing], page 230).

23.1.1 Cutting Out Part of a Sound File

To cut out a portion of a sound file you are editing in Snd, first make it the selection by left-clicking and
dragging, and then choose Cut from the Edit menu, somewhat like cropping an image file.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

23.1.2 Pasting a Selection of Sound

Paste a cut sound selection into a different sound buffer in Snd by opening the new buffer, left-clicking
in the target buffer, and then choosing Paste from the Edit menu. Your most recent selection will be
pasted at the point where you clicked in the sound buffer.

23.1.3 Mixing Sound Files Together

To mix different audio files together as multiple tracks in Snd, choose Mix from the File menu and
specify the files to use as the individual tracks.

23.2 Sound Effects

Debian: ‘sox’
WWW: http://home.sprynet.com/˜cbagwell/sox.html

The “Sound eXchange” tool, sox, is a sound sample translator. It reads sound as files or standard input
and outputs the sound either to a file or standard output, while translating in between. You can use sox
to convert sound files between formats or process sounds with special effects. This section describes
some of the special effects you can apply to sound files with sox.
When applying an effect, the original file is never altered. You must specify an output file, or use ‘-’
to indicate the standard output, specifying the output format with ‘-t’. You can only apply one effect
with each sox command; thus, to add both echo and reverb to a sound file, you would need to issue two
sox commands.
The amount and levels applied for each effect will vary with every situation. As such, consider the
following recipes guidelines only for using the options; you will probably end up experimenting a bit to
get your intended effect for any particular sound file.
Almost all of the sound effects are applied by specifying the input and output file arguments, followed
by the name of the effect to use and any options the effect takes (with notable exceptions, like the ‘-v’
option for changing the amplitude of a file).
NOTE: For more information on the effects Sox can do, see the various files in ‘/usr/doc/sox/’,
and read the sox man page (see Section 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System Manual], page 28).

23.2.1 Changing the Amplitude of a Sound File

To change the volume or amplitude of a sound file, use sox with the ‘-v’ option, giving the volume
level as an argument. Levels below 1.0 lower the amplitude, and higher numbers raise it.
¯ To raise the volume of file ‘old.wav’ twofold and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox -v3 old.wav new.wav
RET
¯ To lower the volume of file ‘old.wav’ by half and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox -v.5 old.wav new.wav
RET

Use sox with the ‘stat’ option and ‘-v’ to determine the largest possible value that can be used
before distortion or clipping occurs (it performs a statistical analysis on the file and outputs a numeric
value). This value comes in handy when you want to raise a file’s volume as high as possible without
ruining its fidelity.
¯ To raise the volume of the file ‘quit.cdr’ as high as possible without distortion, type:
 « ¨
$ sox quiet.cdr loud.cdr stat -v
RET
3.125
$ sox -v 3.125 quiet.cdr loud.cdr
RET

ª$
©
The preceding example writes a new file, ‘loud.cdr’.

23.2.2 Changing the Sampling Rate of a Sound File

To change the sampling rate of a sound file, use the ‘-r’ option followed by the sample rate to use, in
Hertz. Like the ‘-v’ option, specify this option before giving the name of the output file.
¯ To change the sampling rate of file ‘old.wav’ to 7,000 Hz, and write the output to ‘new.wav’,
type:
$ sox old.wav -r 7000 new.wav
RET

23.2.3 Adding Reverb to a Sound File

To add reverb to a sound file, use the ‘reverb’ effect. ‘reverb’ takes three arguments: the volume of
the output (its “gain-out”), the time (in milliseconds) of reverb, and the length (in milliseconds) of delay.
You can specify more than one delay; the more you specify, the more of an overlapping echo the reverb
will have.
¯ To add a basic reverb to file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to file ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav .5 1000 100
RET
¯ To add a spacey, echoing reverb to file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav reverb 1 1000 333 333 333 333
RET
NOTE: This last example makes a sound similar to some of the recordings of the band Flying Saucer
Attack. You know who they are, don’t you?)

23.2.4 Adding Echo to a Sound File

To add echo to a sound file, use the ‘echo’ effect. It takes as arguments the “gain-in” and “gain-out”
volume levels, as well as the delay and decay, both in milliseconds.
¯ To add a 100 millisecond echo to the sound file ‘old.wav’ and write output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav echo .5 .5 100 .5
RET
¯ To add a one-second echo to the sound file ‘old.wav’ and write output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav echo .5 .5 1000 .5
RET
¯ To add a “tin-can” echo effect to ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav echo 1 .5 5 .5
RET
NOTE: The ‘echos’ effect works like ‘echo’, but adds a sequence of echos to the sound file.

23.2.5 Adding Flange to a Sound File

The ‘flanger’ effect adds flange to a sound file. It takes as arguments the “gain-in” and “gain-out”
volume levels, as well as the delay and decay in milliseconds, and the speed of the flange, in Hertz.
Specify the type of modulation with either ‘-s’ (for sinodial) or ‘-t’ (for triangular).
¯ To add an “underwater” flange to the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav flanger .5 .5 4 .5 1 -t
RET
¯ To add flange that sounds somewhat like a “wah-wah” effects pedal to the file ‘old.wav’ and write
the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav flanger .5 .5 .5 1 2 -t
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

23.2.6 Adding Phase to a Sound File

The ‘phaser’ effect adds phase to a sound file. It takes the same arguments as the ‘flanger’ effect.
¯ To add a heavy phase to the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav phaser 1 .5 4 .5 1 -s
RET
¯ To add a phased “breathing” effect to the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav phaser .5 .5 .5 .9 .5 -t
RET
NOTE: Using a decay greater than .5 may result in feedback.

23.2.7 Adding Chorus to a Sound File

To add a chorus effect to a sound file, use ‘chorus’. Its options are the “gain-in” and “gain-out” of
the volume, the delay and decay in milliseconds, the speed in Hertz, and the depth of the chorus in
milliseconds. Specify either ‘-s’ or ‘-t’ for sinodial or triangular modulation.
¯ To add a 100 millisecond chorus to the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav chorus 1 .5 100 1 1 1 -t
RET
¯ To add a deep, “alien-sounding” chorus to the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’,
type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav chorus 1 .5 100 1 5 9 -t
RET

23.2.8 Adding Vibro-Champ Effects to a Sound File

The ‘vibro’ effect imitates the effect of the Fender Vibro-Champ amplifier. Give the speed in Hertz
(30 maximum) as an option, and specify an optional depth value between 0 and 1 (the default is .5).
¯ To add a subtle Vibro-Champ effect to the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’,
type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav vibro 1
RET
¯ To add an effect of a maxed-out Vibro-Champ to the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to
‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav vibro 30 1
RET

23.2.9 Reversing a Sound File

Use the ‘reverse’ effect to reverse the sound in a sound file.
¯ To reverse the sound in the file ‘old.wav’ and write the output to ‘new.wav’, type:
$ sox old.wav new.wav reverse
RET

23.3 Converting Sound Files

Debian: sox
WWW: http://home.sprynet.com/˜cbagwell/sox.html

Use sox for most sound-file conversions. Give as arguments the name of the input file and the name of
the output file to write to; use a file name extension specifying the sound format for the output file (see
Section 21.1 [Sound File Formats], page 213).
¯ To convert the file ‘new.wav’ to an audio CD format file, type:
$ sox new.wav new.cdr
RET
 This command writes a new file, ‘new.cdr’, in the audio CD format; the original file, ‘new.wav’,
is not altered.
You may sometimes need to specify additional options, such as with raw audio files where the sam-
pling rate and other properties must be specified.
¯ To convert all of the raw audio files in the current directory to audio CD format files, type:
$ for i in *.raw
RET
{
RET
sox -s -w -c2 -r 44100 $i -x $i.cdr
RET
}
RET
This command writes all of the ‘.raw’ files to new files of the same name but with a ‘.cdr’ ex-
tension. You could then use cdrecord to burn an audio CD with the ‘.cdr’ files (see Section 22.3
[Writing an Audio CD-R], page 222).
To convert a file to a particular format without using the standard extension, specify the format to
write to with the ‘-t’ option.
¯ To convert the file ‘new.wav’ to the audio CD format and write output to a file named
‘cd-single’, type:
$ sox new.wav -t cdr cd-single
RET

23.3.1 Making an MP3 File

WWW: http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/

The process of making an MP3 file from a raw audio or WAV format audio file is called “encoding”
an MP3 file; programs that do this are MP3 encoders. This is not so much a recording process as it is
a conversion process: existing audio is converted to an MP3 file. (To make MP3 files from your own
recordings, make the recording as a CD-quality WAV file, and then convert that.)
Unfortunately, the algorithm for encoding MP3 is patented, and all software which uses it must pay
a license fee—including free software. This restriction makes it difficult for people to create a free
software MP3 encoder, and it is the reason why some free software and open source groups advocate the
development of a high-quality compressed audio format to replace MP3.

A workaround is presented in the form of LAME (“LAME Ain’t an MP3 Encoder”). LAME isn’t
an MP3 encoder, but it is a free software patch file (see Section 8.4.3 [Patching a File with a Difference
Report], page 91) designed to work with the sample source code distributed by the patent holders of the
MP3 encoding process.
This means that you can download both separately and combine them to get a working MP3 encoder
called notlame, perhaps the fastest (yes, encoding MP3s is a slow process) encoder currently available
for Linux. When you visit the LAME Project at http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/, you’ll find a
link to download a pre-assembled notlame binary from a site in Australia, where the patent laws do
not apply.
The notlame encoder takes two arguments: the name of the input file and the name of the output
file.
¯ To encode an MP3 file from a WAV file called ‘september-wind.wav’, type:
$ notlame september-wind.wav september-wind.mp3
RET
It usually takes some time to encode an MP3 file; when notlame is encoding a file, it continually
outputs the current percentage of completion.
NOTE: Scripts on the download site show how to encode multiple WAV files and how to decode all of
the tracks on an audio CD.

Ogg Vorbis is one such format; see http://www.vorbis.com/.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

23.3.2 Converting MP3 to Another Format

Debian: sox
Debian: mpg321
WWW: http://home.sprynet.com/˜cbagwell/sox.html
WWW: http://freshmeat.net/projects/mpg321/

To convert an MP3 file to another format, use mpg321 (or another command-line MP3 player) to play
the file to the standard output, and then use sox to read the resultant raw audio and write it to another
file with a specified input format.
¯ To convert the MP3 file ‘remix.mp3’ to a WAV file ‘remix.wav’, type:
$ mpg321 -b 10000 -s remix.mp3 | sox -t raw -r 44100 -s -w
-c 2 - remix.wav
RET

23.4 Other Tools for Sound Editing

Sound software in Linux is a fast-moving target, and it is impossible for a printed volume to keep up
with it; you can stay abreast of the latest developments by checking out Dave Phillips’s “Sound & MIDI
Software for Linux” page at http://www.bright.net/˜dlphilp/linuxsound/. This page
is the most comprehensive and up-to-date list of Linux-related sound software available.
As with text editors, there are all manner of sound editors, ranging from simple editors to advanced
environments. The following table lists a few of the most popular ones.
S OUND E DITOR D ESCRIPTION
dap Richard Kent’s Digital Audio Processor, DAP, is a graphical tool for editing
sound files.
WWW: http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/˜richardk/
festival Festival is a speech-synthesis system. It reads English (British and American),
Spanish, and Welsh plain text input and outputs speech as sound.
Debian: ‘festival’
WWW: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
gramofile Use GramoFile for sampling sound from vinyl records. It can remove ticks and
pops from the sound using filters and signal processing, and is frequently used to
copy records onto CD-Rs.
Debian: ‘gramofile’
WWW: http://panic.et.tudelft.nl/˜costar/gramofile/
mxv MiXViews is an advanced sound editor. Its features include cross-fades, filters,
and various powerful data analysis tools.
Debian: ‘mixviews’
WWW: http://www.create.ucsb.edu/˜doug/htmls/MiXViews.html
xwave XWave is a simple sound editor that contains the basic functions you would ex-
pect in a WAV file editor.
WWW: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/sound/editors/
PART SIX: Productivity
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
24 Disk Storage
All files and directories on a Linux-based system are stored on a Linux filesystem, which is a disk device
(such as a hard drive) that is formatted to store a directory tree (see Chapter 5 [Files and Directories],
page 59).
There are two kinds of disk storage on a Linux system: fixed and removable. Fixed storage refers
to a disk that is firmly attached to the computer system, and is not intended for casual removal (except
when upgrading). Your hard drive (sometimes called “hard disk”), used to store the operating system,
application software, and user data, is the prime example of a fixed disk.
The second kind of disk storage is removable storage, disks that are intended to be removed for
archiving or transfer to another system. Common examples of removable storage are floppy disk (or
“diskette”) and CD-ROM drives, where you typically remove the storage media from its drive bay when
you’re done using it.
On Linux systems, disks are used by mounting them to a directory, which makes the directory tree
the disk contains available at that given directory mount point. Disks can be mounted on any directory
on the system, but any divisions between disks are transparent—so a system which has, aside from
the root filesystem disk mounted on ‘/’, separate physical hard disks for the ‘/home’, ‘/usr’, and
‘/usr/local’ directory trees will look and feel no different from the system that only has one physical
disk.
System administrators often mount high-capacity drives on directory trees that will contain a lot of
data (such as a ‘/home’ directory tree on a system with a lot of users), and for purposes of fault tolerance,
administrators often use several physical hard disks on one system—if there is a disk failure, only the
data in that disk is lost.
This chapter describes tools and techniques for manipulating disks and storage media.

24.1 Listing a Disk’s Free Space

To see how much free space is left on a disk, use df. Without any options, df outputs a list of all
mounted filesystems. Six columns are output, displaying information about each disk: the name of its
device file in ‘/dev’; the number of 1024-byte blocks the system uses; the number of blocks in use; the
number of blocks available; the percent of the device used; and the name of the directory tree the device
is mounted on.
¯
«
To see how much free space is left on the system’s disks, type:
¨
$ df
RET
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1 195167 43405 141684 23% /
/dev/hda2 2783807 688916 1950949 26% /usr
/dev/hdb1 2039559 1675652 258472 87% /home/webb

ª
$
©
This example shows that three filesystems are mounted on the system—the filesystem mounted on ‘/’
is at 23 percent capacity, the filesystem mounted on ‘/usr’ is at 26 percent capacity, and the filesystem
mounted on ‘/home/webb’, a home directory, is at 87 percent capacity.

24.2 Listing a File’s Disk Usage

Use du to list the amount of space on disk used by files. To specify a particular file name or directory
tree, give it as an argument. With no arguments, du works on the current directory.
It outputs a line for each subdirectory in the tree, listing the space used and the subdirectory name;
the last line lists the total amount of space used for the entire directory tree.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯
« ¨
To output the disk usage for the directory tree whose root is the current directory, type:

$ du
RET
8 ./projects/documentation
12 ./projects/source
4 ./projects/etc
24 ./projects
3 ./tmp
27 .

ª$
©
This example shows two subdirectories in the directory tree: ‘projects’ and ‘tmp’; ‘projects’
contains three additional directories. The amount of disk space used by the individual directories is the
total on the last line, 27K.
By default, output is in 1K blocks, but you can specify another unit to use as an option: ‘-k’ for
kilobytes and ‘-m’ for megabytes.
¯ To output the disk usage, in kilobytes, of the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree, type:
$ du -k /usr/local
RET
¯ To show the number of megabytes used by the file ‘/tmp/cache’, type:
$ du -m /tmp/cache
RET
Use the ‘-s’ option (“summarize”) to output only the last line containing the total for the entire
directory tree. This is useful when you are only interested in the total disk usage of a directory tree.
¯ To output only the total disk usage of the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree, type:
$ du -s /usr/local
RET
¯ To output only the total disk usage, in kilobytes, of the ‘/usr/local’ directory tree, type:
$ du -s -k /usr/local
RET

24.3 Floppy Disks

Before you can use a floppy disk for the first time, it must be formatted, which creates an empty filesystem
on the disk.
To read or write files to a formatted disk, you mount the floppy on an empty directory, making
its filesystem available in the specified directory. Usually, Linux systems have an empty ‘/floppy’
directory for this purpose. (Another general-purpose directory for mounting filesystems is the ‘/mnt’
directory.)
NOTE: While you cannot mount a filesystem on a directory containing other files, you can always create
a new directory somewhere to mount a filesystem.
When you mount a disk on a directory, that directory contains all the files and directories of the disk’s
filesystem; when you later unmount the disk, that directory will be empty—all the files and directories
on the disk are still on the disk’s filesystem, but the filesystem is no longer mounted.
When you’re done using a floppy, you must unmount it first before you remove it from the drive. If
you don’t, you risk corrupting or deleting some of the files on it—Linux may still be using the mounted
files when you remove the disk (see Section 2.1.2 [Shutting Down the System], page 17).
The following sections show you how to format, mount, and unmount floppies. On many systems,
you need superuser privileges to do any one of these actions.
NOTE: For recipes describing use of MS-DOS (and Microsoft Windows) formatted disks under Linux,
see Section 26.1 [Using DOS and Windows Disks], page 245.
24.3.1 Formatting a Floppy Disk
Use mke2fs to format a floppy and make a Linux filesystem. Give the name of the device file of the
floppy drive as an argument—usually the first removable disk drive, ‘/dev/fd0’. The floppy must be
in the drive when you give the format command, and any data already on it will be lost.
¯ To format a floppy disk in the first removable floppy drive, type:
$ mke2fs /dev/fd0
RET

24.3.2 Mounting a Floppy Disk

To mount a floppy, use mount with the ‘/floppy’ option.

¯ To mount a floppy, type:
$ mount /floppy
RET

To mount a floppy to a specific directory, use mount and give as arguments the device name of the
floppy drive (usually ‘/dev/fd0’ for one-floppy systems) and the name of the directory to mount to.
¯ To mount the floppy in the first floppy drive to ‘˜/tmp’, type:
$ mount /dev/fd0 ˜/tmp
RET

Once you have mounted a floppy, its contents appear in the directory you specify, and you can use
any file command on them.
¯ To list the contents of the base directory of the floppy mounted on ‘/floppy’, type:
$ ls /floppy
RET
¯ To list the contents of the entire directory tree on the floppy mounted on ‘/floppy’, type:
$ ls -lR /floppy
RET

NOTE: You can copy files to and from the directory tree that the floppy is mounted on, make and remove
directories, and do anything else you could on any other directory tree. But remember, before you remove
it, you must first unmount it.

24.3.3 Unmounting a Floppy Disk

Use umount to unmount a floppy disk, using the name of the directory it is mounted on as an argument.
¯ To umount the floppy that is mounted on ‘/floppy’, type:
$ umount /floppy
RET

NOTE: You can’t unmount a disk if your current working directory, the directory you are in, is some-
where in that disk’s directory tree. In this case, trying to unmount the disk will give the error that the
‘/floppy’ filesystem is in use; change to a different directory that isn’t in the ‘/floppy’ directory
tree, and then you can unmount the disk.
Sometimes when you unmount a floppy, the light on the floppy drive will go on and remain on for
a few seconds after it has been unmounted. This is because Linux sometimes keeps changes to files in
memory before it writes them to disk; it’s making sure that the files on the floppy are up-to-date. Simply
wait until the light goes off before you remove the floppy from the drive.

This works if your administrator has set up the floppy drive filesystem for user access—see Section A.3.2 [Letting Users
Access Hardware Peripherals], page 318.
 This is sometimes called being “under the mount point” of the disk.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

24.4 CD-ROMs
As with a floppy disk, before you can use a data CD (compact disc) on your system, you must first mount
it on an empty directory. You then unmount it from the directory before you can eject the CD from the
CD-ROM drive (you can also eject the disc using software—see Section 22.1.6 [Ejecting an Audio CD],
page 221).
NOTE: To use audio CDs, see Chapter 22 [Audio Compact Discs], page 219.

24.4.1 Mounting a CD-ROM

To mount a CD-ROM on the system, use mount with the ‘/cdrom’ option.
¯ To mount a CD-ROM on the system, type:
$ mount /cdrom
RET
This command makes the contents of the CD-ROM available from the ‘/cdrom’ directory tree. You
can use any Linux file command on the files and directories on a CD-ROM, but you can’t write to a
CD-ROM—the CD-ROM format is read-only, so you can read the disc but not write to it.
Like the ‘/floppy’ directory, the use of the ‘/cdrom’ directory is a standard practice and conve-
nient, but not necessary—you can mount disks in whatever empty directory you like. (You could even,
for example, mount discs from the CD-ROM drive to ‘/floppy’ and mount floppy disks to ‘/cdrom’,
but why would anyone do that!)
To mount a CD-ROM to a specific directory, use mount and give as arguments the name of the
device file in ‘/dev’ corresponding to the CD-ROM drive, and the name of the directory to mount to.
This directory must already exist on the filesystem, and must be empty. If it doesn’t exist, use mkdir to
create it first (see Section 5.1.2 [Making a Directory], page 62).
Most Linux systems are set up so that the device file of the first CD-ROM drive is ‘/dev/cdrom’,
but the name of the device file may be different, especially if you have a SCSI CD-ROM drive.
¯ To mount the disc in the CD-ROM drive to the ‘/usr/local/share/clipart’ directory, type:
$ mount /dev/cdrom /usr/local/share/clipart
RET
The contents of the disc in the CD-ROM drive will then be available in the
‘/usr/local/share/clipart’ directory tree, and you can then use the files and
directories on the CD-ROM as you would any other files. For example:
¯ To peruse a directory tree graph of the CD-ROM’s contents, type:
$ tree /usr/local/share/clipart | less
RET
¯ To change to the root directory of the CD-ROM, type:
$ cd /usr/local/share/clipart
RET
¯ To list the contents of the root directory of the CD-ROM, type:
$ ls /usr/local/share/clipart
RET

24.4.2 Unmounting a CD-ROM

Use umount to unmount a CD-ROM; give as an argument the name of the directory it’s mounted on.
¯ To unmount the disc in the CD-ROM drive mounted on ‘/cdrom’, type:
$ umount /cdrom
RET
NOTE: As with unmounting any kind of filesystem, make sure that none of the files on the disc are
in use, or you won’t be able to unmount it. For example, if the current working directory in a shell is
somewhere inside the ‘/cdrom’ directory tree, you won’t be able to unmount the CD-ROM until you
change to a different directory.
 This works if your administrator has set up the CD-ROM drive filesystem for user access—see Section A.3.2 [Letting Users
Access Hardware Peripherals], page 318.
25 Printing
Debian: ‘magicfilter’

The usual way to print on a Linux system is to send a print job to the printer with lpr, as described
below in Section 25.1.1 [Sending a Print Job to the Printer], page 237.
But you don’t always send a file straight to the printer—sometimes you may want to add special
things to it before you print it, such as headers or graphic trim. For example, you might want to split a
text file into pages and add a header to the top of each page containing the file name and page number;
all of this is described in Chapter 13 [Formatting Text], page 139.
Sometimes you may need to convert or otherwise prepare a file so that it can be printed on your
particular printer, since not all print hardware can print the same kinds of file formats. Recipes in this
chapter show how to do this, such as how to convert PostScript files so that they will print properly on a
non-PostScript printer (see Section 25.3 [Preparing Files for Printing], page 240).
This chapter also shows how to format PostScript files for printing. To convert plain text to PostScript
and enhance it for printing, by adding fonts, graphic headers, and the like, see Section 15.2 [Converting
Plain Text for Output], page 159.
And this chapter isn’t in the files section, because you can print things that aren’t in a file—for
example, you can pipe the output of another tool or series of tools to lpr, and it will spool that command
output to the printer. This usage is actually very common.
NOTE: When a printer is properly configured on Linux, it is a pleasure to use, but a misconfigured
printer can lead to all kinds of trouble—including the dreaded “staircase effect,” where a text file prints
with each subsequent line of output offset to the right by the length of the previous line.
If print services haven’t been configured yet on your system, I strongly recommend that the
‘magicfilter’ package be installed; it includes filters for the automatic detection of file types—when
you print a file, it automatically converts it to the proper format for your printer.
Comprehensive details on the setup of printer resources can be found in both the Printing HOWTO
and the Printing Usage HOWTO (see Section 2.8.6 [Reading System Documentation and Help Files],
page 31).

25.1 Making and Managing Print Jobs

The traditional way to print on Linux-based systems is to send a print job for the file or data you want to
print to the spool queue for the printer in question. The spool queue contains all of the print jobs sent to
it by all users; these jobs are released in turn to the printer device as it becomes available. In this way,
Linux can handle multiple print jobs going to the same printer at once.
The following recipes show how to make and manage print jobs. In practice, you will probably send
print jobs all the time—since this is the way most printing is done in Linux—and use the tools for listing
or cancelling print jobs rarely. But sometimes things do go wrong, and it helps to know what to do when
that happens.

25.1.1 Sending a Print Job to the Printer

Use lpr to send a print job to the printer—give the name of the file to print as an argument. (You can
also pipe the output of a command to lpr.)
lpr writes a copy of the specified file or text to the spool queue of the specified printer, to be sent to
the printer when the printer becomes available.
¯ To print the file ‘invoice’, type:
$ lpr invoice
RET
¯ To type a message with banner and send it to the printer, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

$ banner "Bon voyage!" | lpr
RET

¯ To print a verbose, recursive listing of the ‘/usr/doc/HOWTO’ directory, type:
$ ls -lR /usr/doc/HOWTO | lpr
RET
If you have more than one printer connected to your system, specify the printer to send to as an
argument to the ‘-P’ option. (Printers have names just as user accounts and hosts do, and it is the
administrator’s privilege to name them; the default printer is usually called lp, for “line printer.”)
¯ To send the file ‘nightly-report’ to the printer called bossomatic, type:
$ lpr -P bossomatic nightly-report
RET
NOTE: The name of the lpr tool comes from “line printer,” which was the kind of printer hardware in
popular use back when this program was first developed.

25.1.2 Printing Multiple Copies of a Job

To print more than one copy of a print job, give the number of copies to print as an argument to the ‘-#’
option of lpr.
¯ To print a dozen copies of the file ‘nightly-report’, type:
$ lpr -#12 nightly-report
RET

25.1.3 Listing Your Print Jobs

To list your print jobs, use lpq, the “line printer queue” tool. It outputs a list of all print jobs currently in
the default printer’s spool queue—each on a line of its own—giving its rank in the queue, the username
who sent the job, the print job number, the file names in the job, and the size of the data to be printed, in
bytes.
¯
« ¨
To view the spool queue for the default printer, type:

$ lpq
RET
lp is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job Files Total Size
active groucho 83 cigar.ps 1739030 bytes
1st harpo 84 harp.ps 499 bytes
2nd chico 85 love.ps 45576 bytes

ª$
©
In this example, there are three jobs queued for the default printer—one by user groucho, for the
file ‘cigar.ps’, one by user harpo, for the file ‘harp.ps’, and one by user chico, who has printed
a file called ‘love.ps’.
The job by user groucho is the active job ; this is the job that is currently printing on the printer.
The other jobs must wait until this file is finished printing, and then they print in rank order.
As with lpr, you can specify the name of a printer as an argument to the ‘-P’ option.
¯ To view the spool queue for the printer called bossomatic, type:
$ lpq -P bossomatic
RET
To only list the jobs for a particular user, give the name of the user as an argument.
¯ To list the print jobs for user harpo, type:
$ lpq harpo
RET
NOTE: When there are no print jobs, lpq outputs the text ‘no entries’.
25.1.4 Cancelling a Print Job
To cancel a print job and remove it from the spool queue, use lprm, the “line printer remove” tool. Give
as an argument the number of the print job to remove.
¯ To cancel print job 83, type:
$ lprm 83
RET
To cancel all of your print jobs in the spool queue, use a hyphen instead of the number of a print job.
¯ To cancel all of your print jobs, type:
$ lprm -
RET
NOTE: If you try to cancel an active job—one that has already been spooled to the printer—don’t be
alarmed if some pages still print; the printer probably has some of the job in its internal print buffer. To
stop the printing in a case like this, take the printer offline, reset it, and then put it back online again
(usually, the printer will have buttons for these commands on its front control panel).

25.2 More Recipes for Printing

Another way of printing besides making a print job is to print from within an application.
Not all applications have print controls, but some of them do—including Emacs and LyX (see Sec-
tion 15.3 [LyX Document Processing], page 164). Their print commands essentially send the print job to
the printer via lpr, after possibly formatting or otherwise preparing the data to print. If you are working
in such an application and want to print your work, using the built-in print control can be easier than
having to go to a shell to run lpr.
For example, to print the current document in the LyX document processing application, choose
Print from the File menu; it creates the proper output for your printer and makes a print job contain-
ing this output (see Section 15.3 [LyX Document Processing], page 164).
Some tools, such as dvips and enscript (see Section 15.2 [Converting Plain Text for Output],
page 159), are also configured to spool output to the printer.
You can view these print jobs in the spool queue and you can cancel them, just as you could any print
job.

25.2.1 Printing in Emacs

To print the current buffer in Emacs, choose Print Buffer from the Print submenu, found off
the Tools menu on the menu bar. Another option on the print submenu is Print Region, which
just prints the text between point and the mark (see Section 10.2.1 [Getting Acquainted with Emacs],
page 109). Both commands print the hardcopy output separated into pages, and with headers at the top
of each page, showing the file name and current page number.
To generate and print a PostScript image of the buffer, use the ps-print-buffer function, which
is also available on the Print submenu. A related function, ps-print-region, prints a PostScript
image of the region. These commands are useful for sending the text of a buffer to a PostScript printer.
You can also run any of these functions by specifying them with the M-x command; additionally, the
lpr-buffer and lpr-region functions send the buffer and region to lpr without paginating the
text or inserting headers.
¯ To print the current buffer with page numbers and headers, type:
M-x print-buffer
RET
¯ To print the current buffer with no additional print formatting done to the text, type:
M-x lpr-buffer
RET
¯ To print a PostScript image of the current buffer, type:
M-x ps-print-buffer
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

25.2.2 Printing with Dvips

You can print a DVI file directly with the dvips tool—omit the ‘-o’ option that is used to specify an
output file, and it will send the PostScript output directly to the spool queue of the default printer.
¯ To print the DVI file ‘list.dvi’, type:
$ dvips list.dvi
RET
The following table lists some of dvips’s various options for controlling print output.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-A Print only odd-numbered pages (DVI file must have been generated by
TEX).
-B Print only even-numbered pages (DVI file must have been generated
by TEX).
-b copies Specify the number of copies to print—useful for printing multiple
copies of flyers, posters, signs, and the like.
-k Print crop marks.
-l last Specify the last page number to print.
-m Use the manual feed tray.
-p first Specify the first page to begin printing from.
-r Reverse the order of the pages.
-t format Specify paper size and format; valid options include ‘letter’,
‘legal’, ‘a4’, and ‘landscape’. (You can use this option twice,
say to specify both ‘legal’ and ‘landscape’).
Using the ‘-m’ option and specifying landscape as the paper format with the ‘-t’ option is very
useful for printing on envelopes.
¯ To print the file ‘envelope.dvi’ on an envelope loaded in the manual feed tray of the default
printer, type:
$ dvips -m -t landscape envelope.dvi
RET
NOTE: You can also print DVI files with lpr using the ‘-d’ option.

25.2.3 Printing the Contents of an Xterm Window

To print the contents of an xterm window, press and hold
CTRL and left-click anywhere inside the
window, and choose the Print Window option. This command will send a copy of all the text in the
current window to the default printer.

25.3 Preparing Files for Printing

Not all printers recognize all output formats, so it’s sometimes necessary to convert files before you print
them.
Normally, you can print plain text on any printer. However, most graphics or image files must be
converted to PostScript or EPS (“Encapsulated PostScript”). Some applications—such as TEX—produce
DVI output; in this case, you convert that to PostScript for printing.
If you have a PostScript printer, you can print PostScript files directly to it. If not, you’ll need to
convert the PostScript output to a format your printer uses. Filter programs like ‘magicfilter’ make
the conversion easier by doing this work for you, but they’re not a panacea, since your system may use
one of a great many filters. Hence, the need for the following recipes.
25.3.1 Preparing a PostScript File for Printing
Debian: ‘gs’
WWW: ftp://www.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ghostscript/

If you don’t have a PostScript printer, you can use Ghostscript, gs, to convert PostScript to an output
format that your printer understands.
Use the ‘-?’ option to list the printers that the version of gs installed on your system can write output
for.
¯
« ¨
To list the available printer formats, type:

$ gs -?
RET
GNU Ghostscript 5.10 (1998-12-17)
...more output messages...
Input formats: PostScript PostScriptLevel1 PostScriptLevel2 PDF
Available devices:
x11 x11alpha x11cmyk x11gray2 x11mono lvga256 vgalib
t4693d8 tek4696 appledmp ccr lp2563 lbp8 lips3 m8510
oki182 okiibm la50 la70 la75 la75plus sxlcrt deskjet
djet500 laserjet ljetplus ljet2p ljet3 ljet4 declj250
cdeskjet cdjcolor cdjmono cdj550 cdj500 djet500c
hpdj uniprint epson eps9mid eps9high epsonc lq850
ap3250 ibmpro bj10e bj200 bjc600 bjc800 ljet3d faxg3
faxg32d faxg4 dfaxhigh dfaxlow pcxmono pcxgray pbm
pbmraw pgm pgmraw pgnm pgnmraw pnm pnmraw ppm ppmraw
pkm pkmraw tiffcrle tiffg3 tiffg32d tiffg4 psmono
psgray jpeg
...more output messages...

ª
$
©
A typical gs installation can write to more than 100 different print devices, including HP LaserJet 4
printers (‘ljet4’), HP Color DeskJets (‘cdeskjet’), and Group 4 fax (‘tiffg4’). Newer versions
of gs will have better support for newer printers, so make sure that you have a recent version installed if
you have a new model printer.
gs takes the file to convert as an argument; give the device to write output for as an argument to the
‘-sDEVICE=’ option, and give the name of the file to write to as an argument to the ‘-sOutputFile=’
option.
Two additional options are commonly used: ‘-dSAFER’, which prevents the accidental deleting or
overwriting of files, and ‘-dNOPAUSE’, which turns off the pause between pages.
When the conversion is complete, you will be at the gs prompt; type quit to exit.
¯ To convert the file ‘tiger.ps’ to a format suitable for printing on an HP Color DeskJet 500
printer, type:
$ gs -sDEVICE=cdj500 -sOutputFile=tiger.dj -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE
tiger.ps < /dev/null
RET
This command writes the output to a file, ‘tiger.dj’, which you can spool as a print job with lpr
to print.

25.3.2 Preparing a DVI File for Printing

 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Debian: ‘tetex-bin’
WWW: http://www.radicaleye.com/dvips/

To convert a file from DVI format to PostScript, use dvips. It takes the file to convert as an argument;
give the name of the PostScript file to write to as an argument to the ‘-o’ option.
¯ To convert the file ‘abstract.dvi’ to PostScript, type:
$ dvips -o abstract.ps abstract.dvi
RET
This command reads the DVI file ‘abstract.dvi’ and writes a PostScript version of it to the file
‘abstract.ps’; the original file is not altered.
To write only certain pages of a DVI file to the PostScript output, give the page or pages as arguments
to the ‘-pp’ option.
¯ To output only pages 14 and 36 from file ‘abstract.dvi’ to a PostScript file, ‘abstract.ps’,
type:
$ dvips -pp14,36 -o abstract.ps abstract.dvi
RET
¯ To output pages 2 through 100 from file ‘abstract.dvi’ to a PostScript file, ‘abstract.ps’,
type:
$ dvips -pp2-100 -o abstract.ps abstract.dvi
RET
¯ To output page 1 and pages 5 through 20 from file ‘abstract.dvi’ to a PostScript file,
‘abstract.ps’, type:
$ dvips -pp1,5-20 -o abstract.ps abstract.dvi
RET
To specify an output paper size, give it as an argument to the ‘-t’ option; if you have a PostScript
printer, you can also send the output directly to the printer (see Section 25.2.2 [Printing with Dvips],
page 240).
¯ To output the file ‘abstract.dvi’ as a PostScript file, ‘abstract.ps’, with a paper size of
‘legal’, type:
$ dvips -t legal -o abstract.ps abstract.dvi
RET
¯ To print the file ‘abstract.dvi’ to the default printer in landscape mode, type:
$ dvips -t landscape abstract.dvi
RET
NOTE: This conversion is not only useful for print preparation. Once the DVI file is converted to
PostScript, you can then convert the PostScript to other formats, such as plain text or PDF—see Sec-
tion 20.3 [Converting PostScript], page 209.
Use the ‘-P’ option with dvips to specify the printer name to write output to—use this option
to make output for non-PostScript printers. For example, to convert TEX and LaTeX files to PDF, use
dvips and give ‘pdf’ as an argument to the ‘-P’ option.
¯ To generate a PDF file from the DVI file ‘abstract.dvi’, type:
$ dvips -Ppdf -o abstract.pdf abstract.dvi
RET
This command writes a new file, ‘abstract.pdf’, in PDF format.

25.3.3 Preparing a PDF File for Printing

Debian: ‘xpdf’
Debian: ‘gs’
WWW: http://www.aimnet.com/˜derekn/xpdf/
WWW: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/˜ghost/

There are at least two ways to convert and print a file that’s in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF),
usually marked with a ‘.pdf’ file name extension.
 The first way is to view the file in xpdf (the PDF file viewer), and then left-click the printer icon.
This won’t actually send the file to the printer, but it writes a PostScript file in the same directory, with
the same base file name as the PDF file but with a ‘.ps’ extension. You can then print this file with lpr
or convert it to another format (see Section 25.3.1 [Preparing a PostScript File for Printing], page 241).
The second way is to use pdf2ps, part of the ‘gs’ package, to convert the PDF file to PostScript
(then print the PostScript output as described for xpdf above). pdf2ps takes two arguments: the name
of the PDF file to convert, and the name of the PostScript file to write to.
¯ To convert the PDF file ‘pricelist.pdf’, type:
$ pdf2ps pricelist.pdf pricelist.ps
RET
This command writes a PostScript file ‘pricelist.ps’ in the current directory.

25.3.4 Preparing a Man Page for Printing

To convert a man page to output that is suitable for printing, use the ‘-t’ to output PostScript, and either
pipe the output to lpr (if you have a PostScript printer), or save it to a file that you can then convert for
your printer.
¯ To output the man page for psbook as PostScript and send it as a print job to the default printer,
type:
$ man -t psbook | lpr
RET
¯ To output the man page for psbook to the file ‘psbook.ps’, type:
$ man -t psbook > psbook.ps
RET
In the preceding example, you can then use gs to convert the file to a format your non-PostScript
printer understands (see Section 25.3.1 [Preparing a PostScript File for Printing], page 241).
NOTE: A manual “page” can actually contain more than one physical page; the output will have as many
pages as necessary to print it.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
26 Cross-Platform Conversions
Sometimes, it’s inevitable—through no choice of your own, you must deal with a disk from another
operating system, or a file with data stored in a proprietary format from one of these systems.
The recipes in this chapter are about converting data from other platforms—reading disks from DOS,
Windows, and MacOS systems, and converting DOS text and Microsoft Word files.

26.1 Using DOS and Windows Disks

Debian: ‘mtools’
WWW: http://mtools.linux.lu/

The mtools package provides a collection of tools to facilitate the manipulation of MS-DOS files.
These tools allow you to use and manipulate MS-DOS disks (usually floppies, but Jaz and Zip drives are
supported, too); they can handle the extensions to the MS-DOS format which are used by the different
Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows NT.
The following recipes describe how to use some of the tools in this package to get directory listings of
MS-DOS disks, copy files to and from them, delete files on them, and even format them. They’re similar
in use and syntax to the equivalent MS-DOS commands.

26.1.1 Listing the Contents of a DOS Disk

Use mdir to get a directory listing of a DOS disk. Give as an argument the “drive letter” of the disk to
read, as used by DOS; for example, to specify the primary floppy drive, use ‘A:’ as the drive to read, and
use ‘B:’ to specify the secondary floppy drive.
¯ To get a directory listing of the DOS disk currently in the primary floppy drive, type:
$ mdir a:
RET

26.1.2 Copying Files to and from a DOS Disk

Use mcopy to copy files to and from a DOS disk.
To copy a file to a DOS disk, give as arguments the name of the source file to copy and the “drive
letter” of the disk to copy it to.
¯ To copy the file ‘readme.txt’ to the DOS disk in the primary floppy drive, type:
$ mcopy readme.txt a:
RET
To copy a file from a DOS disk, give the “drive letter” of the disk to copy from, followed by the file
name to copy, and no other arguments; mcopy will copy the specified file to the current directory.
¯ To copy the file ‘resume.doc’ from the DOS disk in the secondary floppy drive to the current
directory, type:
$ mcopy b:resume.doc
RET
To copy all files from a DOS disk, just give the “drive letter” without any file names.
¯ To copy all of the files and directories from the DOS disk in the primary floppy drive to the current
directory, type:
$ mcopy a:
RET

26.1.3 Deleting Files on a DOS Disk

Use mdel to delete a file on a DOS disk. Give as an argument the name of the file to delete preceded by
the “drive letter” of the disk to delete from.
¯ To delete the file ‘resume.doc’ on the DOS disk in the primary floppy drive, type:
$ mdel a:resume.doc
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

26.1.4 Formatting a DOS Disk

To format a floppy disk for DOS, writing an empty MS-DOS filesystem to the disk in the process, use
mformat. Give as an argument the name of the “drive letter” of the disk to format. (Remember, when
you format a disk, any existing information contained on the disk is lost.)
¯ To format the floppy disk in the primary floppy drive so that it can be used with MS-DOS, type:
$ mformat a:
RET

NOTE: If you want to use a floppy disk with your Linux system and don’t need DOS compatibility, don’t
bother using this MS-DOS format—the native Linux format is much more efficient (see Section 24.3.1
[Formatting a Floppy Disk], page 235). If you know how long a DOS format takes, you’ll be amazed at
how much faster the Linux format is, too—it will do it so fast you’ll think it didn’t work!

26.2 Using Macintosh Disks

Debian: ‘hfsutils’
WWW: http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/hfs/

Apple Macintosh computers use a file system called the “Hierarchical File System,” or HFS. The
hfsutils package contains a set of tools to read and write disks in the HFS format.
The following recipes describe the use of the individual tools in this package.

26.2.1 Specifying the Macintosh Disk to Use

To use a Macintosh disk with any of the ‘hfsutils’ commands, you must first use hmount to specify
the location of the HFS filesystem. Give as an argument the name of the Linux device file where the HFS
filesystem exists; this virtually “mounts” the disk for use with the other ‘hfsutils’ described in this
section.
The device file for the first floppy drive is ‘/dev/fd0’, and for the second drive, ‘/dev/fd1’. Any
valid device name, such as a SCSI device or Zip disk, may be given.
¯ To introduce the floppy disk in the first floppy drive as an HFS volume for the ‘hfsutils’, type:
$ hmount /dev/fd0
RET

After you run this command, the other tools in the hfsutils package will work on the Macintosh
disk in the first floppy drive.

26.2.2 Listing the Contents of a Macintosh Disk

Use hls to get a directory listing of the Macintosh disk currently specified with hmount (see Sec-
tion 26.2.1 [Specifying the Macintosh Disk to Use], page 246).
¯ To get a directory listing of the currently specified Macintosh disk, type:
$ hls
RET

Give the name of a directory as a quoted argument.

¯ To get a directory listing of the ‘Desktop Folder’ directory in the currently specified Macintosh
disk, type:
$ hls ’Desktop Folder’
RET
26.2.3 Copying Files to and from a Macintosh Disk
Use hcopy to copy files to and from the Macintosh disk currently specified with hmount (see Sec-
tion 26.2.1 [Specifying the Macintosh Disk to Use], page 246).
To copy a file to a Mac disk, give as arguments the name of the source file to copy and the quoted
name of the target directory on the Mac disk.
¯ To copy the file ‘readme.txt’ to the ‘Desktop Folder’ directory in the current Mac disk,
type:
$ hcopy readme.txt ’Desktop Folder’
RET
To copy a file from a Mac disk, give the name of the directory and file to copy as a quoted argument,
and the name of the target directory to copy to.
¯ To copy the file ‘Desktop Folder:Readme’ from the current Mac disk to the current directory,
type:
$ hcopy ’Desktop Folder:Readme’ .
RET

26.2.4 Deleting Files on a Macintosh Disk

Use hdel to delete a file on the Macintosh disk currently specified with hmount (see Section 26.2.1
[Specifying the Macintosh Disk to Use], page 246). Give as a quoted argument the path name of the file
to delete. It deletes both the resource fork and the data fork of the files you specify.
¯ To delete the file ‘Desktop Folder:Readme’ on the current Mac disk, type:
$ hdel ’Desktop Folder:Readme’
RET

26.2.5 Formatting a Macintosh Disk

To format a disk for the Mac, writing an empty HFS filesystem to the disk, use hformat. Give as an
argument the name of the Linux device file where the disk is at; for example, the device file for the first
floppy drive is ‘/dev/fd0’, and the second drive is ‘/dev/fd1’
¯ To format the disk in the first floppy drive with a Macintosh HFS filesystem, type:
$ hformat /dev/fd0
RET
If the disk currently has a partition on it, this command won’t work; use the ‘-f’ option to force the
format, thus erasing any existing partition and data the disk contains.
Give a label for the drive as a quoted argument to the ‘-l’ option. The label name can’t contain a
colon character (‘:’).
¯ To format the disk in the first floppy drive with a Mac HFS filesystem, overwriting any existing Mac
filesystem, type:
$ hformat -f /dev/fd0
RET
¯ To format the disk in the second floppy drive with a Mac HFS filesystem, giving it a volume label
of ‘Work Disk’, type:
$ hformat -l ’Work Disk’ /dev/fd1
RET
When a disk has multiple partitions, give the number of the partition to format as an additional
argument. To format the entire medium, give ‘0’ as the partition to use.
¯ To format the second partition of the SCSI disk at ‘/dev/sd2’ with a Mac HFS filesystem, type:
$ hformat /dev/sd2 2
RET
¯ To format the entire SCSI disk at ‘/dev/sd2’ with a Mac HFS filesystem, overwriting any existing
Mac filesystem and giving it a label of ‘Joe’s Work Disk’, type:
$ hformat -f -l "Joe’s Work Disk" /dev/sd2 0
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

26.3 Converting Text Files between DOS and Linux

Debian: ‘sysutils’
WWW: http://web.singnet.com.sg/˜cslheng/

In all versions of DOS (and all subsequent versions of Microsoft Windows), text files are normally written
with both a linefeed character and a newline, both “invisible” control characters, to signify the end of
each line. In Linux and other unices, text files have only the newline character.
In either of these operating systems, text files that originated from the other may display irregularly—
in DOS and Windows, the lines of a Linux text file may appear to run together; in Linux, a DOS or
Windows text file may have ‘ˆM’ newline characters at the end of each line.
To convert a text file from DOS to Linux, removing the ‘ˆM’ newline characters in the file, use
‘fromdos’. It converts the file you give as an argument, removing the newline characters from the ends
of all its lines.
To convert a text file from Linux to the convention used by DOS and Windows, use todos. It adds
newline characters to the ends of all lines in the file you give as an argument.
¯ To remove the newline characters from the text file ‘autoexec.bat’, type:
$ fromdos autoexec.bat
RET
¯ To add newline characters to all of the text files with a ‘.tex’ extension in the current directory,
type:
$ todos *.tex
RET

NOTE: Both commands directly write to the files you specify. To make a backup of the original file, use
the ‘-b’ option; before the conversion, this writes a copy of each specified file with a ‘.bak’ file name
extension.

26.4 Converting Microsoft Word Files

Debian: ‘word2x’
WWW: http://word2x.alcom.co.uk/

Use word2x to convert Word 6 files to a format you can read. It can convert files to two different
formats: LaTeX and plain text.
Convert to LaTeX when the layout of the original document, including its formatting and font char-
acteristics, is important. When you just need the complete text of the document, convert it to plain text.
word2x can send its output to the standard output, so the latter conversion is useful for adding to a
pipeline.
Word files usually have a ‘.doc’ or ‘.DOC’ extension, which you don’t have to specify—for exam-
ple, if the Word file you want to convert is called ‘resume.doc’, you can simply give ‘resume’ as
the source file. (But if there exists another file named ‘resume’ in the same directory, this trick won’t
work).
If you don’t specify an output file, word2x writes its output to a file with the same base file name
and an appropriate extension for the output format. This is useful for converting a lot of Word files in the
same directory—specifying a wildcard such as ‘*.doc’ as the input and no output name will convert
them all.
You can also set the maximum line width to be used in the output file; specify the width as an argument
to the ‘-w’ option.
The following recipes describe how to use word2x to convert Word files to LaTeX and plain text
format.
NOTE: While word2x does a pretty good job of conversion, it won’t convert any pictures embedded in
Word documents.
Another way to read Word files is to import them into the AbiWord or StarWriter word processors
(see Section 15.6 [Other Word Processors and Typesetting Systems], page 173).

26.4.1 Converting Word to LaTeX

To convert a Word file to LaTeX format, use word2x and use ‘latex’ as an argument to the ‘-f’
option.
¯ To convert the Word file ‘resume.doc’ to LaTeX, type:
$ word2x -f latex resume.doc
RET
This command writes a new file, ‘resume.ltx’, in the LaTeX format; you can then view, print, or
convert the file to other formats—see Section 15.4.3 [Processing LaTeX Files], page 168. The original
‘resume.doc’ file is unaltered.
¯ To convert all of the ‘.DOC’ Word files in the current directory to LaTeX files with maximum line
widths of 40 characters, type:
$ word2x -f latex -w 40 *.DOC
RET

26.4.2 Converting Word to Plain Text

To convert a Word file to plain text, use word2x, and use ‘text’ as an argument to the ‘-format’
option.
¯ To convert the Word file ‘resume.doc’ to a plain text file called ‘resume’, type:
$ word2x -f text resume.doc resume
RET
To send a conversion to the standard output, give a hyphen character, ‘-’, as the output file to use.
This is useful for piping the plain text conversion to other tools that work on text, such as grep, a tool
for searching text (see Section 14.1 [Searching for a Word or Phrase], page 147).
¯ To search the text of the Word file ‘resume.doc’ for the string ‘linux’ regardless of case, type:
$ word2x resume.doc - | grep -i linux
RET
These commands convert the Word file ‘resume.doc’ to text, and output all lines of that text, if
any, that contain the string ‘linux’ regardless of case. The original ‘resume.doc’ file is unaltered.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
27 Reminders
If you’re working on a system on a regular basis, it can be very useful to have the system remind you when
you should be doing something else. This chapter describes software tools that provide reminders—
clocks, calendars, address books, and tools for tracking appointments.

27.1 Displaying the Date and Time

WWW: http://www.clock.org/
WWW: http://www.eecis.udel.edu/˜ntp/

Use date to output the current system date and time.

¯
«
To output the current system date and time, type:
¨
$ date
RET
Fri May 11 11:10:29 EDT 2001

ª$
©
The default format of the output is to display the day of the week; the month name; the day of the
month; the 24-hour time in hours, minutes, and seconds; the time zone; and the year.
Use the ‘-u’ option to output the current date and time in Greenwich Mean Time (also known as
Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC).
¯
«
To output the current date and time in UTC, type:
¨
$ date -u
RET
Fri May 11 15:10:29 UTC 2001

ª$
©
Use the ‘-R’ option to output the date in the format described in RFC822 (see Section 11.4 [Word
Lists and Reference Files], page 130): day of week followed by day of month, month name, year, time,
and time zone in numeric format. This is the date format used in email messages.
¯
«
To output the current date and time in RFC822 format, type:
¨
$ date -R
RET
Fri, 11 May 2001 11:10:29 -0400

ª$
©
You can also use the ‘-d’ option to specify the precise fields to output, and the order in which to
output them. One useful example is given next; for more information, see the date man page (see
Section 2.8.4 [Reading a Page from the System Manual], page 28).
To output the number of days into the year for a particular date, use ‘-d’ with ’DD MMM ’ +%j,
where ‘DD’ is the day of month and ‘MMM’ is the name of month.
¯
«
To output the numeric day of the year that 21 June falls on in the current year, type:
¨
$ date -d ’21 Jun’ +%j
RET
172

ª$
©
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This command outputs the number 172, which indicates that 21 June of the current year is the 172nd
day of the current calendar year.

NOTE: To ensure that the time on your system clock remains as accurate as possible, your system
administrator should install the ‘chrony’ package; it periodically adjusts the time on the system clock
according to measurements obtained from other servers on the Internet via “Network Time Protocol.”

27.2 Playing an Audible Time Announcement

Debian: ‘saytime’
WWW: http://www.acme.com/software/saytime/

Use the saytime command to output the current system time in an audible message in a male voice.
You must have a sound card installed on your system, and it must be set up with speakers or some other
output mechanism at an appropriate volume level in order for you to hear it (see Section 21.2 [Adjusting
the Audio Controls], page 213).

¯ To hear the current system time, type:

$ saytime
RET

NOTE: If you’re feeling adventurous, you can record another voice—like your own—and use that
voice instead of the default voice; the sound files used are Sun ‘.au’ files and are kept in the
‘/usr/share/saytime’ directory.

27.3 Calendars

The following recipes describe a few of the basic tools for displaying calendars in Linux.

27.3.1 Displaying a Calendar

The cal tool outputs a calendar to the standard output. By default, it outputs a calendar of the current
month.

¯ To output a calendar for the current month, type:

$ cal
RET

To output a calendar for a specific year, give just the year as an option.

¯ To output a calendar for the year 2001, type:

 « ¨
$ cal 2001
RET
2001

January February March

S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 1 2 3
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
28 29 30 31 25 26 27 28 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

April May June

S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 1 2
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
29 30 27 28 29 30 31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

July August September

S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
29 30 31 26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30
October November December
S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 1
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
28 29 30 31 25 26 27 28 29 30 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31

ª$ ©
Use the ‘-y’ option to output a calendar for the current year.

¯ To output a calendar for the current year, type:

$ cal -y
RET

¯ So, to print out a calendar for the current year to the default printer, type:
cal -y | lpr
RET

To output a calendar for a specific month, give both the numeric month and year as arguments.

¯ To output a calendar for June 1991, type:

 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ cal 06 1991
RET
June 1991
S M Tu W Th F S
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30

ª
$
©
27.3.2 Displaying a Calendar in Emacs
Emacs comes with its own calendar service. The calendar function displays a three-month calendar in
a new buffer—it gives the current, previous, and next months, and it puts point on the current date. To se-
lect the month and year to display, preface the calendar function with the universal-argument
command, C-u.
¯ In Emacs, to display a three-month calendar for the current month and year, type:
$ M-x calendar
RET
¯ In Emacs, to display a three-month calendar for August 2010, type:
C-u M-x calendar
RET

Year (>0): 2001
BKSP
BKSP 10
RET

Month name: Aug
RET

NOTE: When you display a calendar for a specific month and year, Emacs fills in the current year in the
minibuffer; in the example above, the current year was 2001, and
BKSP was typed twice to erase the last
two digits, which were replaced with ‘10’ to make it the year 2010.

27.4 Managing Appointments

Debian: ‘bsdmainutils’

The calendar tool is a reminder service that you can use to manage your appointments. It reads a
calendar file, which is a text file in the current directory containing a list of appointments and reminders;
then it outputs those entries from the file that have today or tomorrow’s date. (On a Friday, it outputs
entries for that weekend and for the following Monday.)
For example, if today is Friday, June 16, and you run calendar in the same directory as your

« ¨
calendar file, typical output might look like this:

$ calendar
RET
6/16 Finish draft of book
Party at Jack’s
Fri Lunch with Kim and Jo, 12:30
Mon Book manuscript due

ª$
©
The calendar tool reportedly first appeared in Version 7 of AT&T UNIX, and was rewritten
early on for the BSD family of Unix. While the BSD derivate is available for Debian as part of the
bsdmainutils package, this tool isn’t yet standard on all Linux distributions.
 The following are recipes for writing your calendar files, including other calendar files in your own
calendar file, and for automating the delivery of your reminders.
NOTE: Emacs has its own equivalent to this tool, which it calls the “Diary.” See Info file
‘emacs-e20.info’, node ‘Diary’ for more information on this feature.

27.4.1 Making an Appointment File

To begin using calendar, you need to make a “calendar file” where you can enter your appointments.
It’s just a plain text file, and can be called either ‘calendar’ or ‘.calendar’; the latter makes it a
“hidden” file, as described in Section 5.3.4 [Listing Hidden Files], page 65.
Write each appointment or calendar entry on a line by itself; blank lines in the file are ignored. The
format of a calendar entry is as follows:
[date] [tab or spaces] [text of reminder itself]
Just about every common date style is recognized. For example, the following are all valid dates for
the fourth of July:
7/4
July 4
4 July
Jul. 4
Jul 4
Entries aren’t constrained to a single day, either; you can have entries for a day of the week or for
a certain month—‘Mon’ or ‘Monday’ for every Monday; ‘Jun’ or ‘June’ for the first day of every
June. You can use an asterisk as a wildcard: ‘*/13’ reminds you of something on the thirteenth of every
month. When the date is omitted on a line, the date of the preceding appointment is assumed.
For example, suppose you have a file called ‘calendar’ in your home directory that looks like this:
6/16 Finish draft of book
Party at Jack’s
6/20 Gallery reading
Fri Lunch with Kim and Jo, 12:30
Mon Book manuscript due
If the current date is 16 June, a Friday, and you run calendar in your home directory, you’ll get the
same output as in the example in the previous section, Section 27.4 [Managing Appointments], page 254.
NOTE: In the example above, the entry for the party doesn’t have a date on it—it used the date of the
preceding entry, ‘6/16’.

27.4.2 Including Holidays in Your Reminders

The calendar package comes with a collection of prepared calendar files for many kinds of holidays
and other occasions, which you can reference in your own calendar file to include their entries in your
own reminders.
The prepared files are stored in ‘/usr/share/calendar’. The following table gives the name of
each calendar file and describes its contents.
C ALENDAR F ILE D ESCRIPTION
calendar.birthday Births and deaths of famous people.
calendar.christian Christian holidays.
calendar.computer Significant dates in the history of computing.
calendar.history Dates of U.S. historical events.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

calendar.holiday Standard and obscure holidays.

calendar.judaic Jewish holidays.
calendar.music Dates related to music, mostly 1960s rock and roll.
calendar.usholiday U.S. holidays.
calendar.hindu Hindu holidays.
To have calendar output dates from one of these files along with your usual appointments, put the
following in your calendar file, where file is the name of the particular calendar file you want to include:
#include <file >
For example, to output both US holidays and famous births and deaths when you run calendar,
put these lines somewhere in your calendar file:
#include <calendar.usholiday>
#include <calendar.birthday>
NOTE: You can, of course, share your own calendar files with other users; this is useful for mak-
ing special calendars for a group or organization. If the calendar file is in the current directory or
‘/usr/share/calendar’, you can just give the file name; otherwise, give its full path name in
the include statement.

27.4.3 Automatic Appointment Delivery

You can automate your appointment service so that your appointments and reminders are delivered each
time you log in or start a new shell, or you can have the day’s reminders emailed to you each morning.
Add calendar to your ‘.bashrc’ file to output the day’s appointments and reminders every time
you log in or start a new shell (see Section 3.6.4 [Customizing Future Shells], page 43).
If you keep your calendar file in a directory other than your home directory, make sure that
calendar (the tool) is called from that directory. For example, if your calendar file is in your
‘˜/doc/etc’ directory, you’d put the following line in your ‘.bashrc’ file:
cd ˜/doc/etc; calendar; cd
To have the system send you the day’s appointments in email, use crontab to schedule a daily cron
job process which runs calendar and, if there is any output, mails it to you with mail.
To do this, add the following line to your ‘crontab’ file (if you don’t have one, just put this line in
a text file called ‘crontab’ somewhere in your home directory):
45 05 * * 1-5 calendar | mail -s ’Your Appointments’ joe@example.org
The ‘45 05 * * 1-5’ specifies that these commands be run at 5:45 a.m. on every weekday. The rest
of the line is the series of actual commands that are run: the calendar tool is run on your personal
calendar file, and if there is any output, it’s mailed to joe@example.org (replace that with your actual
email address, or with your username on your local system if you check mail there).
Add this new crontab entry to the cron schedule by running the crontab tool with the name of
your ‘crontab’ file as an argument.
¯ To add the new entry in the file ‘crontab’ to the cron schedule, type:
$ crontab crontab
RET

NOTE: The name of the command, crontab, is the same as the file, ‘crontab’.
27.5 Contact Managers
Loosely put, a contact manager is a piece of software that helps you keep track of information about
people you may need to contact in the future. In the past, people often called the physical embodiment of
these things a “rolodex,” which incidentally was a brand name for the Cadillac of such contact managers,
the circular Rolodex file that sat atop the desk of every successful 20th century businessman. I hear that
many people use them even today; the following recipes show how it can be done in Linux with less desk
space and faster search times.

27.5.1 Keeping a Free-Form Address List

The simplest way to keep names and addresses in Linux is to keep them. in a text file as a free-form
address list; to find an entry, use the search capabilities of tools like grep, less, and Emacs.
This method is useful for when you need to keep track of name and address information of many
parties, and don’t always keep the same kind of information for each—maybe sometimes a name and
phone number, sometimes just a mailing address, sometimes a name and email address. With a free-
form address list, each entry contains whatever information you have in the format you want.
Separate the entries with a delimiter line of your preference. I happen to use ‘###’, but you can use
whatever characters you’re comfortable with—just make it a combination that won’t appear in the text
for any of the entries themselves.
For example, suppose you have a text file, ‘rolo’, containing three entries:
John Dos Passos
1919 America Ave.
New York City

###

Scott F. - 602 555 1803

(don’t call after 12)

###

T. Wolfe’s new email has changed.

The new one is: tw@example.com
Notice that each entry contains varied information, and is in no particular format. That’s the benefit
of a free-form list—you don’t have to type in the entries in any particular order, and you’re not bound by
a given set of “fields”; you can even cut and paste text into it from email, the Web, or other windows (see
Section 10.4 [Selecting Text], page 115).
There are several ways to find text in such a file. Suppose, for example, you want to contact your
friend Scott, and you need his telephone number.
¯
«
To output the line in the file containing the text ‘scott’, regardless of case, type:
¨
$ grep -i scott rolo
RET
Scott F. - 602 555 1803

ª
$
©
This works nicely when the information you need is on the same line as the information you search
for—here, the name Scott is on the same line as the telephone number; however, the output did not show
the warning that appears on the next line in the file. And what about when the term you search for and
the information you need are on adjacent lines?
Use the ‘-C’ option with grep to output several lines of context before and after matched lines.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯
« ¨
To output the several lines around the line matching the text ‘olfe’, type:

$ grep -C olfe rolo
RET

T. Wolfe’s new email has changed.

The new one is: tw@example.com

ª$ ©
Another way to search such a file is to open it as a buffer in Emacs and use any of the Emacs searches.
The Emacs incremental-search function, C-s, is very useful for such files—even for very large
ones. If you do such a search on a large file, and the first result doesn’t turn up the right record, just
keep typing C-s until the right one appears. If you type the letters to search for in all lowercase, Emacs
matches those letters regardless of case.
¯ To search through the current buffer in Emacs for the first entry containing the text ‘New York’,
regardless of case, type:
C-s new york
¯ To search for the next entry containing the text ‘New York’, regardless of case, type:
C-s
You can repeat the second example as many times as you wish to show all entries in the entire buffer
with the text ‘New York’ in them. Once you reach the end of the buffer, type C-s again to loop around
to the beginning of the buffer and continue the search from there. (The minibuffer will tell you when
you’ve reached the end of the buffer, and will remind you to type this if you want to loop the search.)
NOTE: It’s also useful to peruse and search through these kind of files with less—see Section 14.7
[Searching Text in Less], page 155.

27.5.2 Keeping a Contact Manager Database

Debian: ‘bbdb’
WWW: http://pweb.netcom.com/˜simmonmt/bbdb/index.html

The Insidious Big Brother Database is a contact manager tool for use with Emacs. You can use it
with Emacs email and news readers; it stores contact information in records, and allows you to search
for records that match a regular expression, as well as records whose particular fields match a regular
expression (see Section 14.2 [Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns], page 148).
There are several ways to add a record to the database. Use the bbdb-create function to manually
add a record (when you run this command, bbdb prompts you to enter the relevant information for each
field). When in a mail reader inside Emacs, type a colon (‘:’) to display the record for the author of the
current message; if there is none, bbdb asks whether or not one should be created.
¯ To create a new bbdb record from scratch, type:
M-x bbdb-create
RET
¯ To add a new bbdb record for the author of the current email message, type:
:
Use the bbdb function to search for records—it takes as an argument the pattern or regexp to search
for.
¯ To output records containing the text ‘scott’ anywhere in the record, type:
M-x bbdb
RET scott
RET
 There are additional functions that let you narrow your search to a particular field: bbdb-name,
bbdb-company , bbdb-net, and bbdb-notes, which respectively search the name, company,
email address, and notes fields.
¯ To output records matching the regexp ‘*\.edu’ in the email address, type:
M-x bbdb-net
RET *\.edu
RET

27.6 Reminding Yourself of Things

Sometimes, it’s useful to make a reminder for yourself that you’ll see either later in your current login
session, or the next time you log in. These recipes describe the best ways to do this.
NOTE: When you want to give yourself a reminder for a future appointment, use calendar (see
Section 27.4 [Managing Appointments], page 254).

27.6.1 Sending Yourself Email Reminders

Sending yourself a short email message is often effective for reminding yourself to do something during
your next workday or next time you read mail; keeping a message in your INBOX works as a constant
reminder to get something done—provided you don’t abuse it and fill your INBOX with lots of these
“urgent” mails!
To quickly send an email reminder, give your email address (or just your username on your local
system, if you check mail there) as an argument to mail tool. You’ll be prompted to give a subject for
the message, and if that isn’t enough space for the reminder, you can write as many lines as you need
below it as the message body text; type C-d on a line by itself to send the mail.
For example, if your username on your local system is joe, to send yourself an email reminder,

«
you’d type:
¨
$ mail joe
RET
Subject: Bring files to meeting
RET
C-d
Cc:
RET
Null message body; hope that’s ok

ª$
©
NOTE: For more about using the mail tool, see Section 30.1 [Sending Mail], page 275.

27.6.2 Reminding Yourself When You Have to Leave

Debian: ‘leave’
WWW: http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/utils/leave.html

Use the leave tool to remind yourself when you have to leave. Give as an argument the time when you
have to go, using the format of hhmm, where hh is hours in 24-hour format and mm is minutes.
¯ To remind yourself to leave at 8:05 p.m., type:
$ leave 2005
RET
When you run leave with no arguments, it prompts you to enter a time; if you just type
RET then
leave exits without setting the reminder. This method is good for adding leave to scripts or to your
‘.bashrc’, so that you may interactively give a time to leave, if desired, when the script runs (see
Section 3.6.4 [Customizing Future Shells], page 43).
NOTE: leave will output a reminder on the terminal screen five minutes before the given time, one
minute before the time, at the time itself, and then every minute subsequently until the user logs off.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

27.6.3 Running a Command on a Delay

The sleep tool does nothing but wait (or “sleep”) for the number of seconds specified as an argument.
This is useful for ringing the system bell, playing a sound file, or running some other command at your
terminal after a short delay.
To do this, give the number of seconds to “sleep” for as an argument to sleep, followed by a
semicolon character (‘;’)
and the command(s) to run. This runs the given command(s) only after
sleep waits for the given number of seconds.
Since the shell where you type this command will be unusable until the commands you give are
executed (or until you interrupt the whole thing), type this command in an xterm or virtual console
window (see Section 2.3 [Console Basics], page 20) other than the one you are working in.
¯To ring the bell in five seconds, type:
$ sleep 5; echo -e ’\a’
RET
¯To announce the time in thirty seconds, type:
$ sleep 30; saytime
RET
You can also give the time in minutes, hours, or days. To do this, follow the argument with a unit, as
listed in the following table.
U NIT D ESCRIPTION
s Seconds.
m Minutes.
h Hours.
d Days.
¯ To announce the time in exactly five minutes, type:
$ sleep 5m; saytime &
RET

The shell command separator; see Section 3.1.4 [Running a List of Commands], page 36.
28 Mathematics
Tools and techniques for dealing with numbers are the subject of this chapter: listing them in sequence or
randomly, calculating arithmetic, and converting between units. Larger applications, such as spreadsheets
and plotting tools, are also mentioned.

28.1 Calculating Arithmetic

As you might expect, there are many tools for making arithmetic calculations in Linux. The following
recipes describe how to use two of them for two common scenarios; a list of other calculator tools,
including a visual calculator, appears at the end of this chapter (see Section 28.6 [Other Math Tools],
page 265).

28.1.1 Making a Quick Arithmetic Calculation

WWW: http://dsl.org/comp/tinyutils/

To do a quick calculation that requires only addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division, use calc.
It takes as an argument a simple mathematical expression, and it outputs the answer.
Use ‘*’ for a multiplication sign and ‘/’ for division; to output the remainder, use ‘%’. You can use
parenthesis to group expressions—but when you do, be sure to quote them (see Section 3.1.1 [Passing
Special Characters to Commands], page 34).
¯
« ¨
To output the result of 50 times 10, type:

$ calc 50*10
RET

500

ª $
©
¯ To output the result of 100 times the sum of 4 plus 420, type:
« ¨
$ calc ’100*(4+420)’
RET
42400

ª $
©
¯ To output the remainder of 10 divided by 3, type:
« ¨
$ calc 10%3
RET
1

ª$
©
NOTE: This tool is useful for quickly computing a simple arithmetic equation, but it has several draw-
backs: it only outputs whole integers, its operators are limited, and complex expressions must be quoted.
For doing anything more than the simplest operations, see the next recipe, which describes bc.

28.1.2 Making Many Arithmetic Calculations

 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Debian: ‘bc’
WWW: ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/pub/gnu/bc-1.05a.tar.gz

When you have a lot of calculations to make, or when you must compute numbers with decimals, use
bc, a calculation language that supports arbitrary precision numbers. Type bc to perform arithmetic
operations interactively, just like you would with a calculator.
Type each statement to evaluate on a line by itself, typing
RET at the end the statement; the evaluation
of what you type is output on the following line. Each line you type will be evaluated by bc as an
arithmetic expression. To exit, type quit on a line by itself.
¯
« ¨
To multiply 42 and 17, type:

$ bc
RET
bc 1.05
Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type ‘warranty’.
42 * 17
RET
714
quit
RET

ª
$
©
In this example, bc output its version number and warranty information when it started; then, the
statement 42 * 17 was typed by the user, bc output the result (‘714’), and then the user typed quit to
exit bc.
By default, digits to the right of the decimal point are truncated from the output—so dividing 10 by
3 would output ‘3’ as a result, and outputting the remainder from this operation by typing 10%3 would
output a ‘1’. However, bc is an arbitrary precision calculator, and you can give the number of digits to
use after the decimal point by specifying the value of the scale variable; its default value is 0.
¯ To use bc to compute the result of 10 divided by 3, using 20 digits after the decimal point, type:

« ¨
$ bc
RET
bc 1.05
Copyright 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type ‘warranty’.
scale=20
RET
10 / 3
RET
3.33333333333333333333
quit
RET

ª
$
©
The following table describes the symbols you can use to specify mathematical operations.
S YMBOL O PERATION
expression + expression Add: output the sum of the two expressions.
expression - expression Subtract: output the difference of the two expressions.
expression * expression Multiply: output the product of the two expressions.
expression / expression Divide: output the quotient of the two expressions.
expression % expression Remainder: output the remainder resulting by dividing the two expres-
sions.
expression ˆ expression Power: raise the first expression to the power of the second expression.
(expressions ) Group an expression or expressions together, altering the standard
precedence of performing operations.
sqrt(expression ) Output the square root of expression.

28.2 Outputting a Random Number

WWW: http://dsl.org/comp/tinyutils/

To output a random number, use random. Give as an argument an integer denoting the range of numbers
to be output; random then outputs a random number from 0 to the number you give, minus one.
¯ To output a random number from 0 to 9, type:
$ random 10
RET

28.3 Listing a Sequence of Numbers

Use seq to print a sequence of numbers. This is very useful for getting a listing of numbers to use as
arguments, or otherwise passing sequences of numbers to other commands.
To output the sequence from one to a number, give that number as an argument.
¯ To output the sequence of numbers from one to seven, type:
$ seq 7
RET
To output the sequence from one number to another, give those numbers as arguments.
¯ To output the sequence of numbers from two to six, type:
$ seq 2 6
RET
To specify an increment other than one, give it as the second argument, between the starting and
ending number.
¯ To output the sequence of numbers from -1 to 14, incrementing by 3, type:
$ seq -1 3 14
RET
Use the ‘-w’ option to pad numbers with leading zeros so that they’re all output with the same width.
Specify a separator string to be output between numbers as an argument to the ‘-s’ option; the default
is a newline character, which outputs each number in the sequence on its own line.
¯ To output the sequence of numbers from 9 to 999, incrementing by 23, with numbers padded with
zeros so that they’re all of equal width, type:
$ seq -w 9 23 999
RET
¯ To output the sequence of numbers from 1 to 23, with a space character between each, type:
$ seq -s ’ ’ 1 23
RET
To pass a sequence of numbers as arguments to a command, pipe the output of seq using a space
character as a separator.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To concatenate all the files in the current directory, whose names are numbers from 25 through 75,
into a new file called ‘selected-mail’, type:
$ cat ‘seq -s " " 25 75‘ > selected-mail
RET

28.4 Finding Prime Factors

The factor tool calculates and outputs the prime factors of numbers passed as arguments.
¯
«
To output the prime factors of 2000, type:
¨
$ factor 2000
RET
2000: 2 2 2 2 5 5 5

ª$
©
NOTE: If no number is given, factor reads numbers from standard input; numbers should be separated
by space, tab, or newline characters.

28.5 Converting Numbers

The following recipes are for converting numbers in various ways.

28.5.1 Converting an Amount between Units of Measurement

Debian: ‘units’
WWW: http://www.gnu.org/software/units/units.html

Use the units tool to convert units of measurement between scales. Give two quoted arguments: the
number and name of the units you have, and the name of the units to convert to. It outputs two values: the
number of the second units you have, and how many of the second kind of unit can make up the quantity
of the first that you’ve specified.
¯
«
To output the number of ounces in 50 grams, type:
¨
$ units ’50 grams’ ’ounces’
RET
* 1.7636981
/ 0.56699046

ª$
©
In this example, the output indicates that there are about 1.7636981 ounces in 50 grams, and that
conversely, one ounce is about 0.56699046 times 50 grams.
The units tool understands a great many different kinds of units—from Celsius and Fahrenheit to
pounds, hectares, the speed of light, and a “baker’s dozen.” All understood units are kept in a text file
database; use the ‘-V’ option to output the location of this database on your system, which you can then
peruse or search through to see the units your version supports.
¯
«
To determine the location of the units database, type:
¨
$ units -V
RET
units version 1.55 with readline, units database in
/usr/share/misc/units.dat

ª$
©
 In this example, the units database is located in the file ‘/usr/share/misc/units.dat’,
which is the file to peruse to list all of the units data.

28.5.2 Converting an Arabic Numeral to English

Debian: ‘bsdgames’

Use number to convert Arabic numerals to English text. Give a numeral as an argument; with no
argument, number reads a numeral from the standard input.
¯ To output the English text equivalent of 100,000, type:
$ number 100000
RET

28.6 Other Math Tools

The following table lists some of the other mathematics tools available for Linux. It is by no means a
complete list.
T OOL D ESCRIPTION
calc calc is a scientific calculator tool for Emacs.
Debian: ‘calc’
dc Like bc, the dc tool is an arbitrary-precision calculator language, but
it is a reverse-polish calculator, where numbers are pushed on a stack.
When you give an arithmetic operation symbol, dc pops numbers off
the stack for their operands, and then it pushes the evaluation on the
stack.
Debian: ‘dc’
dome Richard J. Bono’s dome is a geodesic math tool for calculating
the properties of a geodesic dome symmetry triangle—it can calcu-
late chord factors, vertex coordinates, and topological abundance of
various dome types, including “Buckyball” formations and elliptical
geodesics.
Debian: ‘dome’
WWW:
http://www.cris.com/˜rjbono/html/domes.html
gnucash GnuCash is an intuitive personal finance application. Use it for manag-
ing finances, including bank accounts, stocks, income, and expenses;
it’s “based on professional accounting principles” to ensure accuracy
in computation and reporting.
Debian: ‘gnucash’
WWW: http://www.gnucash.org/
gnumeric Gnumeric is the GNOME spreadsheet application. It is powerful, and
somewhat reminiscent of Excel.
Debian: ‘gnumeric’
WWW:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnumeric/gnumeric.html
gnuplot The gnuplot tool can be used for data visualization, making 2-D and
3-D graphs, and plotting functions.
Debian: ‘gnuplot’
WWW: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gnuplot/
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

oleo GNU Oleo is a spreadsheet application. It can run in both X and in

the console, has Emacs-like key bindings, and can generate PostScript
output.
Debian: ‘oleo’
WWW:
http://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/oleo.html
sc sc is a small spreadsheet tool that runs in the console; it provides
formulas and other basic features you would expect from a minimal
spreadsheet.
xcalc xcalc is a visual scientific calculator for the X Window System—it
draws a calculator on the screen, and you can use the mouse or key-
board to use it. It is capable of emulating the TI-30 and HP-10C cal-
culators.
xspread xspread is the X client front-end to sc.
Debian: ‘xspread’
PART SEVEN: Networking
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
29 Communications
You will almost certainly want to go “online,” or otherwise communicate with other systems. Most
systems today are sold with the necessary hardware that you need in order to be able to connect to other
systems, such as a modem or a network card. You connect this hardware to the outside world via a
telephone line or network connection.
This chapter includes recipes for connecting your Linux system to the Internet with an ISP, using fax
services, and making serial connections with a modem.
For more information on this subject, see The Linux Network Administrator’s Guide
(http://metalab.unc.edu/mdw/LDP/nag/nag.html).

29.1 Connecting to the Internet

Debian: ‘ppp’
WWW: ftp://cs.anu.edu.au/pub/software/ppp/

There are several ways to connect a Linux box to the Internet. Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service,
cable modems, and dial-up connections with ISDN or analog modems are currently the most popular
methods. Each of these services have their own hardware and software requirements.
For up-to-date, detailed instructions for using these services on Linux-based systems, the relevant
HOWTOs published by the Linux Documentation Project (http://www.linuxdoc.org/) remain
the definitive guides (see Section 2.8.6 [Reading System Documentation and Help Files], page 31):
¯ ISP Hookup HOWTO, by Egil Kvaleberg
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/ISP-Hookup/
¯ DSL HOWTO for Linux, by David Fannin
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/DSL-HOWTO/
¯ Cable Modem Providers HOWTO, by Vladimir Vuksan
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Cable-Modem/
The following recipes show how to set up and use a PPP (“Point-to-Point Protocol”) dial-up connec-
tion, long the de facto means of connecting a computer to the Internet over a dial-up line.

29.1.1 Setting Up PPP

To configure PPP for a regular dial-up connection, where your system is assigned a dynamic IP address
(the norm for home Internet access), you need to be root (the superuser) to edit the PPP configuration
files, and you’ll need the standard connection information from your ISP: the dial-up number to use, the
IP addresses for their nameservers, and your username and password for accessing their system.
Use this information to customize the file ‘/etc/chatscripts/provider’:
ABORT BUSY
ABORT "NO CARRIER"
ABORT VOICE
ABORT "NO DIALTONE"
"" "\p\p+++\p\p"
"" "at"
"" "at"
OK "ath0"
"" atdt5551010,,
ost ppp
ogin smith
word \qsecret \q
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

In this example, after eight lines of modem initialization strings, the modem is instructed to dial the
ISP dial-up number, ‘5551010’. Some systems need one or two commas after the number to signify
pauses for the modem; only do this if you can’t get a good connection with just the telephone number in
this space.
Next is the “host” line: this is an optional line used by some ISPs whose connection line contains a
choice of services from which you must make a selection before entering your username and password
(some ISPs offer SLIP and shell access along with the standard PPP, for example); customize this and
the following lines as instructed by your ISP.
Finally, the username ‘smith’ is given, and then the password of ‘secret’. The password appears
between two ‘\q’ strings, which—for security purposes—instruct ppp to display the question mark
(‘?’) characters instead of the actual password in system log files or other places where an intruder might
see it.
Next, edit the file ‘/etc/ppp/peers/provider’ so that it contains these lines:
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/provider"
defaultroute /dev/modem 115200 persist
The last line in this file should include the device name of the modem you are using and the maximum
connect speed to try; the preceding example uses ‘/dev/modem’ as the device name of the modem, and
115,200 bps as the maximum connect speed, which is a good value for a typical 56K modem (a rule
of thumb is to use the highest connect speed your modem supports; you can always go lower when a
connection is made, but you can never raise the speed above what is given here).
Finally, edit the file ‘/etc/resolv.conf’ so that it contains the following, using the two name-
server IP addresses given to you by your ISP:
search .
nameserver nameserver address 1
nameserver nameserver address 2
For the two nameserver address values, use the IP address of the nameserver machines, as given to
you by your ISP. The second is optional—most ISPs have more than one designated nameserver as a
backup in the event that the first system becomes unavailable.
Make sure that your user account has membership to the dialout group; otherwise, you’ll have to
have the superuser account start and stop PPP, which is not recommended (see Section A.3.2 [Letting
Users Access Hardware Peripherals], page 318).
Once you’ve done these things, you should be able to start and stop PPP connections to the Internet.
Complete documentation for setting up PPP is in the ‘/usr/share/doc/ppp’ directory.

29.1.2 Controlling a PPP Connection

After PPP has been installed and configured, use the pon tool to start a PPP connection to the Internet.
It calls the number of your ISP with your modem, sends the appropriate login information, and starts the
PPP connection.
¯ To start a PPP connection, type:
$ pon
RET
Once you have a PPP connection, you can connect to other systems on the Internet via the WWW or
other network services, as described in the following chapters.
To make PPP automatically start when the system first boots, rename the file
‘/etc/ppp/no_ppp_on_boot’ to ‘/etc/ppp/ppp_on_boot’. (you must be root,
the superuser, to do this.)
To output the last few lines of the PPP log file, type plog. This is useful for checking the progress
of your PPP connection when it first dials.
Use the poff tool to stop a PPP session. It disconnects your computer from your ISP and hangs up
the modem.
 ¯ To stop a PPP session, type:
$ poff
RET

29.2 Faxing
Debian: ‘efax’
WWW: http://casas.ee.ubc.ca/efax/

If you have a Class 1 or 2 fax modem, you can send and receive fax (“facsimile”) messages with your
Linux system. The following subsections show how to do this with the efax package, which is designed
for single user systems or relatively simple fax configurations (more complicated tools for faxing exist,
but they are beyond the scope of this book).
To set up efax for faxing, edit the file ‘/etc/efax.rc’ (you must be root to do this). The
important things to specify in this file are the value for ‘DEV’, which is the device name in ‘/dev’
of the fax or modem device (this should almost always be ‘modem’), and the values for ‘FROM’ and
‘NAME’—the fax number and organization name to appear on outgoing faxes.
NOTE: Unless you have membership to the dialout group, you must ask your system administra-
tor for access to the modem hardware before you can use it (see Section A.3.2 [Letting Users Access
Hardware Peripherals], page 318).
More information on faxing is contained in the Fax Server mini-HOWTO (see Section 2.8.6 [Reading
System Documentation and Help Files], page 31).

29.2.1 Sending a Fax

Use efax to send a fax. It dials the telephone number you give and faxes the contents of the file or files
you specify. You can send plain text files or files in TIFF Group 3 format as they are. You can also send
files in other formats, but you must convert them to ‘tiffg3’ first—see Section 29.2.4 [Converting to
and from Fax Format], page 273.
Use the ‘-d’ option to specify the full path name of the fax device (usually ‘/dev/modem’ if you
are using the modem connected to your system) and the ‘-t’ option followed by a telephone number to
specify the number you are to send the fax to. To specify DTMF tone dialing, precede the phone number
with a ‘T’; specify pauses in the dialing sequence with a comma (‘,’) character—this is useful for dialing
out from a PBX or office phone system.
¯ To fax a copy of the file ‘resume.txt’ to the number ‘555-9099’, using DTMF tone dialing,
type:
$ efax -d /dev/modem -t T555-9099 resume.txt
RET
To send more than one file, specify them as arguments in the order they are to be sent. You can
also specify them with a wildcard character, but be careful—they are sent in the order in which the shell
expands the file names, which is alphabetical order. If you have a lot of files that should be sent in a
particular order, rename them so their file names begin with the number of the page they correspond to.
But be sure to number them with the same number of digits for each file—for example, if you have eleven
files to fax, don’t name them ‘1.fax’, ‘2.fax’, and so on, to ‘10.fax’ and ‘11.fax’, because the
shell will expand them in the order of ‘1.fax’, ‘10.fax’, ‘11.fax’, ‘2.fax’, ‘3.fax’, and so on
up to ‘9.fax’. In this case, you would number them as ‘01.fax’, ‘02.fax’, and so on, so that files
one through nine contain the same number of digits in their name as do ‘10.fax’ and ‘11.fax’.
¯ To fax all of the files with the ‘.fax’ extension in the current directory to the number ‘555-9099’,
using DTMF tone dialing, type:
$ efax -d /dev/modem -t T555-9099 *.fax
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Another way to do this is to make a text file containing the list of files to fax, one file name per
line, in the order you want them sent. If the files you want to send are not in the current directory, be
sure to write the file names with path names relative to the current directory—so for example, if you
want to send the file ‘header.fax’, which is in your home directory, and the current directory is
‘˜/documents/faxes’, the file should be specified as ‘˜/header.fax’.
¯ To fax all of the files listed in the file ‘fax.list’ to the number ‘555-9099’, dialing ‘9’ first to
obtain an outside line, and using DTMF tone dialing, type:
$ efax -d /dev/modem -t T9,555-9099 $(cat fax.list)
RET
NOTE: efax doesn’t delete the files it faxes.

29.2.2 Receiving a Fax

To receive a fax, use efax with the ‘-w’ option. You may also have to use ‘-iSO=1’ to send an ‘S0=1’
command to the modem to set it to auto answer, and use ‘-kZ’ to send an ‘ATZ’ reset request to the
modem after efax exits.
As with sending a fax, specify the full path name of the device file to use with the ‘-d’ option.
By default, efax outputs a “session log” to the standard error, containing information on the status
of the fax messages received; use redirection to redirect it to a file (see Section 3.2.3 [Redirecting Error
Messages to a File], page 37).
¯ To set up efax to receive an incoming fax, saving the session log to a file, ‘faxlog’, type:
$ efax -d /dev/modem -kZ -w -iS0=1 2>&1 >> faxlog
RET
This command starts efax and sets up the modem to wait for an incoming fax. After a fax is received,
efax exits. You can stop efax before it receives a fax by typing C-c or by killing the efax job (see
Section 3.3.5 [Stopping a Job], page 39).
When a fax is received, it is written to a file in the current directory whose base name consists of
the current numeric date and a session number generated by efax; each page is written to a separate
file whose three-digit file extension is the page number. The received fax files are in TIFF Group 3
fax format; use display to view them (see Section 17.2 [Viewing an Image in X], page 184), or
convert them to PostScript or another format for printing (see Section 29.2.4 [Converting to and from
Fax Format], page 273).

29.2.3 Receiving Faxes Automatically

WWW: http://dsl.org/comp/tinyutils/

The command described in the previous recipe can only receive one fax; once the fax is received, efax
exits. To set up your system so that you automatically receive all incoming fax messages continually,
until you interrupt it, use ‘faxon’, part of the tinyutils package. It starts efax for receiving an
incoming fax, as explained previously, but after a fax is received, it starts efax again and continues until
you interrupt it.
¯
« ¨
To automatically receive any incoming fax messages, type:

$ faxon
RET
efax: Wed Feb 24 08:38:52 1999 efax v 0.8a (Debian release 08a-
6)
Copyright 1996 Ed Casas
efax: 38:52 opened /dev/modem

ªefax: 38:53 waiting for activity

©
 Each time a fax is received and then saved, efax restarts, waiting for another fax. A session log is
written to the file ‘faxlog’ in your home directory.
Should an incoming facsimile message arrive, efax will receive it and write the message in files in
the current directory, with a file name convention as described previously; then efax restarts, ready to
receive another fax. Type C-c to stop the script and exit efax.

29.2.4 Converting to and from Fax Format

In order to view or print a received fax, or to fax a file that you have, you must first convert the file to or
from the TIFF Group 3 (‘tiffg3’) fax format, which is the standard format for sending fax files. (You
can, however, view ‘tiffg3’ files with the GIMP, or with display—see Section 17.2 [Viewing an
Image in X], page 184).
Use efix to convert (or “fix”) files for faxing; it will convert a file you want to fax to the ‘tiffg3’
format. You can also use it to convert received fax files to another format you can view or print. efax
outputs to standard output, but you can redirect its output to a file to save it.
To convert a file for faxing, type efix followed by the name of the file to convert, and redirect
standard output to the file you want to contain your fax image. efix can read plain text, PBM, and TIFF
files.
¯ To convert the file ‘chart.pbm’ for faxing, type:
$ efix -i pbm chart.pbm > chart.fax
RET

This command converts a copy of the file ‘chart.pbm’ to the ‘tiffg3’ fax format, writing it to a
file called ‘chart.fax’. The original PBM file is not altered.
To convert a PostScript file to fax format, use gs and specify tiffg3 as the output device to write
to—see Section 25.3.1 [Preparing a PostScript File for Printing], page 241.
¯ To convert the PostScript file ‘resume.ps’ to fax format, type:
$ gs -q -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE
-sOutputFile=resume.fax resume.ps < /dev/null
RET

This command (typed all on one line) writes a copy of the file ‘resume.ps’ to the file
‘resume.fax’ in ‘tiffg3’ format, which you can then send as a fax. The original PostScript file is
not altered.
To convert a received fax file to a PostScript file that you can then preview (see Section 17.1.2 [Pre-
viewing a PostScript File], page 183) or print (see Section 25.1.1 [Sending a Print Job to the Printer],
page 237), use the ‘-o ps’ option.
¯ To convert ‘19990325.001’, a received fax file, to a PostScript file, type:
$ efix -o ps 19990325.001 > received.ps
RET

This command converts the fax file into a PostScript file called ‘received.ps’.

29.3 Calling Out on a Modem

Use minicom to dial out with the modem and connect with another system—such as when you want to
connect to a BBS (“Bulletin Board System”). It’s a serial communications tool for X or the console; it
resembles some of the communications tools of the DOS world, such as Telix and Procomm.
When you start minicom, the connection screen looks like this:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨

ª ©
The bottom line contains a status bar showing a message describing how to get help, the current
modem settings (in this case, 57,600 bps, 8 data bits, no parity, one stop bit), whether or not cursor
keys work (the mysterious ‘NOR’ message), the version of the program (‘1.82’), the kind of terminal
emulation currently set (‘VT102’), and whether or not an online connection is currently established.
To get a help menu, type C-a z; from this menu, you can press
P to set the communications param-
eters,
T to set the terminal settings,
O to configure minicom, or
D to enter the dialing directory.
To dial a number from the main screen, type ATDT followed by the number to dial.
¯ To dial the number ‘368-2208’, type:
ATDT3682208
RET
When you type
RET, minicom will begin dialing the number; type any key to interrupt the dialing
and hang up the line. Once connected, type C-a h to hang up the line and type C-a x to hang up the
line and exit the program.
NOTE: minicom isn’t really a way to connect your system to the Internet; to do that, you normally
start a PPP connection, as described earlier in this chapter.

Technically, you can use minicom to dial a computer that is connected to the Internet, like a local Free-Net system, but
your access to the net will be restricted to inside this minicom window; with a traditional Internet connection, such as
PPP, your whole system has direct access to the net, including your Web browsers, email software, and other networking
tools.
30 Email

The primary means of sending plain-text messages (or binaries in attachment files) between users across
computer networks and systems on the Internet is called electronic mail, or email (and more often than
not these days, just “mail”).
The number of email applications (called mail user agents, or MUAs) available for Linux is large,
and you could spend endless hours exploring the details of all of them. Instead of guiding you toward
this route, this chapter attempts to do three things: give a brief intro to using the default mail agent; give
an overview of other well-supported mail agents, with pointers on where to go for more info; and show
how you can use other tools on the system to manipulate your email.
The mail tool is the default mail agent on Debian and most other Linux systems. It comes without
many bells and whistles that are standard with most MUAs, and any user who sends and receives email
more than occasionally will certainly want to learn a more advanced system (see Section 30.6 [Picking
the Right Mail Application], page 283).
However, mail is available on almost all Unix-based systems, and it works in a pinch—by learning
to use it you can always send and receive email on any Linux- or Unix-based system you encounter.
NOTE: On some Unix-based systems, the name of the tool is mailx instead of mail.

30.1 Sending Mail

To send an email message with mail, give the email addresses to which you are sending as arguments,
and then type the message proper in the lines that follow; type C-d on a line by itself to signify the end
of the message body, and to send the message.
¯ To send an email message to lisa@example.com, type:
$ mail lisa@example.com
RET
Subject: Hello
RET
Hi there, long time no talk! I’m just learning how to use
RET
Linux and thought I’d show you how easy it is to send email!
RET
C-d
Cc:
RET

The text you type on the ‘Subject:’ line is displayed as the subject of your email message, and
the lines of text you type after that is the body text of the message. Type C-d on a line alone to end the
message. Then, mail prompts for ‘Cc:’ addresses; a “carbon copy” of the email message is sent to any
addresses you give here, if any (just type
RET for none, and separate multiple addresses with commas).
When you type, mail just reads the standard input like any other command-line tool, so there’s little
direct editing capability in this basic email service—use C-u to erase the current line, and C-c C-c
(that is, C-c pressed twice) to cancel your input and abort the message altogether.
That’s it! No bells, no whistles—but no time-wasting excess, either.

30.1.1 Mailing a User on the Same System

To send an email message to another user on the same system, give their username on the system instead
of an email address (technically, you are giving the email address, since email addresses take the form
of username @hostname ; when hostname is omitted, the localhost is assumed).
¯ To send an email message to user mrs on your local system, type:
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ mail mrs
RET
Subject: are you going to the party tonight?
RET
C-d
Cc:
RET
Null message body; hope that’s ok

ª
$
©
This command sends an email message to the user mrs on the local system. The email message itself
is empty, but the subject is a short note asking whether user mrs will be attending a party.
NOTE: Besides being good for sending mail to users that you might share your system with, mail is
useful for sending yourself mail, as a way to give yourself a reminder at your terminal (see Section 27.6.1
[Sending Yourself Email Reminders], page 259).

30.1.2 Mailing a File or the Output of a Command

The mail tool is also useful for mailing the contents of a text file or the text output of a command. To
do this, give the email addresses you want to send to as arguments to mail, and use the standard input
redirection operators to redirect the text to use as the message body (see Section 3.2 [Redirecting Input
and Output], page 36).
¯ To mail the contents of the text file ‘trades’ to the email address terrapin@example.com,
type:
$ mail terrapin@example.com < trades
RET

30.1.3 Mailing the Contents of a URL

A variation on the previous recipe is to use mail and shell redirection to send the output of some
command to some address via email. You can, for example, send the contents of a URL as an annotated
text file by redirecting the output of the lynx Web browser (see Section 31.3 [Reading Text from the
Web], page 288).
¯ To mail the text of the URL http://etext.org/ as annotated text to the email address
droneon@example.com, type:
$ mail droneon@example.com < lynx -dump -number_links
http://etext.org/
RET

30.1.4 Special Mail Composition Keystrokes

The following table lists the special keystrokes that work when composing a mail message, and de-
scribes their functions.
K EYSTROKE D ESCRIPTION
C-c C-c Abort the current message and exit mail.
.
RET or C-d On a blank line, either of these commands sends the message and then
exits mail.
C-u Erase the current line and move the cursor to the beginning of the line.
There are also a few special commands that you may use while composing the body of the message.
They’re known as “tilde escapes” because you specify them by typing a tilde character (‘˜’).
The following table lists some of these commands and describes their functions.
C OMMAND D ESCRIPTION
˜!command Run command in a shell.
˜baddress Send a blind carbon copy to the usernames or email addresses given.
˜d Copy the file ‘dead.letter’ from your home directory into the
message.
˜e Edit the message in the default text editor program. (When you exit
the text editor, you are returned to mail.)
˜fnumber Insert copies of the specified received messages into the message body.
Messages are specified by number or a range (for example, ‘2-4’ in-
serts messages two through four inclusive); if no number is given, the
current received message is inserted.
˜F Same as ‘˜f’, but reads in the messages with full headers.
˜rfile Insert a copy of the file file into the message.
˜wfile Write a copy of the body text into the file file.
These commands should each be typed on a line by itself.
¯ To insert a copy of the current mail message into the body of the message you are writing, and then
open the message in the default text editor, type:
˜f
RET
˜e
RET

30.2 Receiving Mail

On Linux-based systems, the INBOX is a text file on the system where your incoming mail is written
to. Its location is always given by $MAIL, a special shell variable (see Section 3.6.1 [Changing the Shell
Prompt], page 42).
¯ To output the location of your INBOX, type:
$ echo $MAIL
RET
Usually, the INBOX location is in the ‘/var/spool/mail’ directory, and has the same name as
your username—so if your username is mrs, your INBOX is likely ‘/var/spool/mail/mrs’.
You shouldn’t directly edit this file, because doing so can inadvertently cause you to lose incoming
mail.
To see if you have any mail waiting in your INBOX, type mail. If you don’t have any mail, mail
will indicate this and exit; if you do have mail waiting, mail outputs a list of message headers, one line
per message, each containing the status of the message (‘N’ for new messages, blank for previously read
messages), the message number, the name of the sender, the date and time the message was received, and
the number of lines and characters in the message.
¯
« ¨
To see if you have mail, type:

$ mail
RET
Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help.
"/var/spool/mail/m": 3 messages 3 new
>N 1 mrs Mon Sep 6 17:29 13/345 "Re: A modest proposal"
N 2 Ray Tue Sep 7 04:20 15/694 "Latest news"
N 3 lisa@example Tue Sep 7 09:35 19/869 "Re: Hello"
ª
&
©
In this example, the user has three messages waiting—one from mrs, one from Ray, and one from
lisa@example.com.
The mail prompt is an ampersand (‘&’) character; from there, you can read, delete, reply to, and
save messages.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

When you type
RET at the ‘&’ prompt, mail outputs the next unread message to the screen. You can
also type a number to output that message.
¯To read the next unread message in mail, type:
&
RET
¯To read message number three in mail, type:
& 3
RET
There are two ways to exit mail: type q to exit mail and apply the deletion commands you have
given, if any, to your INBOX; type x to exit mail and revert the state of your INBOX to how it was
before you ran mail.
¯To exit mail and revert your INBOX to its state before you started mail, type:
& x
RET

30.2.1 Deleting Mail

To delete a message in mail, type d at the ‘&’ prompt after reading the message in question. You can
also specify a message or a range of messages to delete as an option to d.
¯To delete the message you just read, type:
& d
RET
¯To delete message 3, type:
& d3
RET
¯To delete messages 10 through 14, type:
& d10-14
RET

30.2.2 Options Available while Reading Mail

The following table summarizes the most common mail commands for reading mail; these commands
work at the ‘&’ prompt.
C OMMAND D ESCRIPTION
? Output a help menu containing a list of mail options and their mean-
ings.
d Delete a message. Give the number or range of the message(s) to delete
as an argument.
h Output a list of headers of mail messages. You can specify a range or
the number of the message to start with.
q Exit mail and apply the changes you have made in this mail session
to your INBOX.
r Reply to the message you last read; you can also give a message num-
ber as an argument to reply to that message number.
u Undelete a message you have deleted in the current mail session. Give
the number or range of the message(s) to be undeleted as an argument.
x Exit mail and revert the INBOX to its state before this mail session.
s file Save the message you last read to the file in your home directory spec-
ified by file (if the file does not exist, mail will ask you whether or
not it should create it).
NOTE: By default, only you (and, as always, the superuser) have access to read your INBOX. While
there are tools available (such as mail, and the other MUAs) to read this file in special ways, you can
also view this file like any other text file (see Chapter 9 [Viewing Text], page 99).
30.3 Managing Mail
A mail folder is simply a text file whose contents consist of saved mail messages; any tool that works on
text can be used on a mail folder.
The following subsections describe some of the common ways to manage and otherwise modify your
saved mail.

30.3.1 Viewing a Mail Folder

Debian: ‘elm-me+’
WWW: http://www.instinct.org/elm/

You can view your mail folders in less or edit them in a text editor, although the folder will appear as
one long scroll containing all of the messages the folder contains.
You can also view them in elm (see Section 30.6 [Picking the Right Mail Application], page 283) or
open them with mail, and they will appear in the normal way as your INBOX would appear with these
tools.
To view a mail folder with elm, give the name of the folder as an argument to the ‘-f’ option.
¯ To view the mail folder ‘˜/email/mrs’ in elm, type:
$ elm -f ˜/email/mrs
RET
If you save your mail messages in a lot of separate folders, you can view a sorted list of all messages
from all files by using cat in conjunction with elm. Concatenate all the folders into one with cat and
then view that file in elm as you would view any folder.
¯ To view the contents of all of the email folders in your ‘˜/email’ directory, type:
$ cat ˜/email/* > allmessages
RET
$ elm -f allmessages
RET
These commands write a new file, ‘allmessages’, in the current directory, containing the contents
of all email folders in ‘˜/email’; then, that file is viewed in elm.
NOTE: To view a list showing who all the messages in a folder are from, use frm; see Section 30.3.4
[Seeing Who Your Mail Is From], page 281.

30.3.2 Setting Notification for New Mail

Debian: ‘biff’
WWW: ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/Networking/
WWW: http://www.splode.com/˜friedman/software/packages/index.html

The biff tool notifies you when new mail arrives, by printing the header and first few lines of a mail
message.
To turn biff on, use ‘y’ as an option. To turn biff off, so that you stop being notified when new
mail arrives, use ‘n’ as an option. biff options don’t take a hyphen.
¯ To turn biff on, type:
$ biff y
RET
Some people put the above line in their ‘.bashrc’ file so that biff is always set on in all of their
shells (see Section 3.6.1 [Changing the Shell Prompt], page 42).
Typing biff alone with no options will tell you whether biff is set to ‘y’ or ‘n’.
¯ To see what biff is set to, type:
$ biff
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

A companion tool, xbiff, works only in the X Window System (you can use the regular biff in
X, too). When you start it, xbiff draws a window containing a mailbox that looks like this:

When you have mail, xbiff rings the system bell, the window icon reverses color, and the mailbox
flag goes up:

NOTE: The original version of biff was named after a dog. In the early 1980s at a UC Berkeley
computer lab, a girl would bring her dog, Biff, with her when she went to use the computers. Biff was
known for barking at the mailman when he came in to deliver the day’s mail. He was also very popular
with all of the BSD UNIX hackers at Berkeley, and when one of them wrote a mail notification tool, he
thought of Biff—hence the name. (Biff, the dog, died in August 1993.)

30.3.3 Counting How Many Messages You Have

Debian: ‘elm-me+’
WWW: ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/mail/elm

Use messages to count the number of mail messages in a folder or file. Give the name of a mail folder
as an argument; with no arguments, it counts the mail you have waiting in your INBOX.
¯ To see how many email messages you have waiting, type:
$ messages
RET
¯ To count the number of email messages in the mail folder ‘˜/email/saved’, type:
$ messages ˜/email/saved
RET

Noah Friedman has an alternate set of “Spam” images you can use, available from
http://www.splode.com/˜friedman/software/packages/index.html.
30.3.4 Seeing Who Your Mail Is From
Debian: ‘elm-me+’
WWW: ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/mail/elm

Use frm to output a list of sender names and subjects for your mail. Give the name of a mail folder as
an option; with no options, frm reads your INBOX.
¯ To output a list showing sender names and subjects of your incoming mail, type:
$ frm
RET
¯ To output a list showing sender names and subjects of the mail in the file ‘˜/email/saved’, type:
$ frm ˜/email/saved
RET
NOTE: An alternate tool, from, works in similar fashion, but it does not output subject lines; instead, it
outputs the names of senders and the time that messages were received.

30.3.5 Verifying an Email Address

Debian: ‘vrfy’
WWW: ftp://ftp.nikhef.nl/pub/network/

Use vrfy to determine whether or not a given email address works. This is useful when you are unsure
whether or not you have the right email address for someone. If the address works, vrfy outputs a
message indicating that the recipient exists; if the address is not valid, vrfy outputs a message saying
that the user is unknown.
¯ To verify that the email address user@example.edu is valid, type:
$ vrfy user@example.edu
RET
Use the ‘-f’ option to specify a text file containing email addresses; vrfy attempts to verify all
email addresses contained in the file.
¯ To verify all of the email addresses contained in the file ‘net-legends-faq’, type:
$ vrfy -f net-legends-faq
RET
NOTE: vrfy relies on the remote system to get this information; in these days of the heavily corpo-
ratized Internet, an increasing number of sites no longer supply this kind of information to the general
public. However, it’s still useful enough to be worth mentioning.

30.4 Mail Attachments

Debian: ‘metamail’
WWW: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/˜trey/emacs/metamail.html

MIME (“Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions”) is an Internet standard for encoding and attaching files
to mail messages. It’s used when sending image, audio, or other non-plain-text data via email.
Normally, you read and send MIME mail with your MUA. The following recipes, which show ways
to send and receive MIME mail on the command line, are useful for when you just use the mail tool to
read and send occasional mail with an attachment, but the built-in methods for manipulating MIME mail
in any reasonable MUA will invariably be easier and more convenient than the techniques described here
(see Section 30.6 [Picking the Right Mail Application], page 283).
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

30.4.1 Reading a Mail Attachment

To read a mail attachment, write the message to a file and then run metamail with the file name as
an argument. metamail lists each attachment and prompts you about whether it should display the
attachment, write it to a file, or skip it.

« ¨
To read a mail attachment, type:

$ mail
RET
Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help.
"/var/spool/mail/m": 1 messages 1 new
>N 1 Photo Dept. Mon Feb 12 14:37 231/10980 "New Images"
& w1 image.mail
RET
"image.mail" [New file]
& x
RET

ª$ metamail image.mail
RET

©
In this example, the mail tool was used to open the INBOX and write the message to a file called
‘image.mail’; then, metamail was run with the file name as an argument.

30.4.2 Sending a Mail Attachment

To send a file as an email attachment, use metasend. It prompts for the values to use in the ‘To:’,
‘Subject:’, and ‘CC:’ header fields, plus the following values for each MIME attachment: its
‘Content-type:’ field, which describes the kind of data the attachment contains; the file name; and
the type of encoding to use, if any (usually one is recommended).
¯ To mail the JPEG file ‘dream.jpeg’ in the current directory to the address

« ¨
dali@example.org, type:

$ metasend
RET
To: dali@example.org
RET
Subject: The image you requested
RET
CC:
RET
Content-type: image/jpeg
RET
Name of file containing image/gif data: dream.jpeg
RET
Do you want to encode this data for sending through the mail?
1 -- No, it is already in 7 bit ASCII
2 -- Yes, encode in base64 (most efficient)
3 -- Yes, encode in quoted-printable (less efficient, more readable)
4 -- Yes, encode it using uuencode (not standard, being phased out)
2
RET
Do you want to include another file too (y/n) [n] ? n
RET
Delivering mail, please wait... Mail delivery apparently succeeded.

ª$
©
The following table lists values to use in the MIME ‘Content-type:’ field for various kinds of
files.
VALUE F ILE T YPE
application/gzip File compressed with gzip.
application/zip File compressed with zip.
application/postscript PostScript file.
image/jpeg JPEG image file.
image/png PNG image file.
audio/basic Audio file.
audio/mpeg3 MP3 audio file.
audio/wav WAV audio file.

30.5 Making an Email Signature

Debian: ‘sigrot’
WWW: ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/misc/

A signature file (often called a “dot sig,” and written as ‘.sig’) is a text file containing text that you
want to appear at the end of email messages and other online postings.
Sometimes, people put their name, email address, and a small quote, or a piece of ASCII art (such as
text written in a figlet font—see Section 16.3.1 [Horizonal Text Fonts], page 178); once the World
Wide Web became popular, many people started including the URL of their home page in their ‘.sig’.
The use of signatures goes in and out of vogue with the years; you can decide whether or not you
want to use one, but whatever you do, be sure to keep your ‘.sig’ at most four lines in length—to use
any more is considered very bad form. A first line consisting only of ‘-- ’ is sometimes used; many
applications recognize this text as the beginning of a ‘.sig’ when processing messages.
You create your signature file in a text editor, just like any other text file. Name the file
‘.signature’ or ‘.sig’, and keep it in your home directory.
If you want to use more than one signature, use sigrot to “rotate” your various signatures—every
time you run sigrot, it selects one of the signature files you keep in your ‘.sigrot’ directory and
writes it to ‘.signature’. To change your ‘.signature’ every time you log in, you would run
sigrot in your ‘.bash_login’ file (see Chapter 3 [The Shell], page 33).

30.6 Picking the Right Mail Application

The following table lists some of the more popular MUAs that are available for Linux, describing their
special features, and listing their Debian package name and URL (when available).
A PPLICATION D ESCRIPTION
balsa A graphical email client that works in X with GNOME installed; its
interface is inspired somewhat by the proprietary Eudora.
Debian: ‘balsa’
WWW: http://www.balsa.net/
elm A menu-driven MUA, elm was popular in the early 1990s among ex-
perienced users—it has some interesting features, including ways to
send mails in batch mode to many addresses at once, and a tool to send
telephone messages as email messages. Interest in elm has waned
somewhat over the years, and most novices are advised to try mutt
instead.
Debian: ‘elm me+’
WWW: http://www.instinct.org/elm/
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

gnus The gnus newsreader for Emacs can also be used to read and send
mail. It has many features and should appeal to Emacs lovers—but a
warning: it can be daunting to learn!
Debian: ‘gnus’
WWW: http://www.gnus.org/
mew mew is an Emacs mail and news facility developed in Japan. It shows
promise as a fairly new MUA and has many features for handling mail
in complex ways.
Debian: ‘mew’
WWW: http://www.mew.org/
mh-e MH-E is an Emacs front end to nmh, below. It’s very powerful, yet it
remains easy to use.
Debian: ‘emacsen-common’
WWW: http://www.emacs.org/
mozilla Netscape Inc.’s open source Web browser, mozilla, has its famil-
iar and self-explanatory email interface that works in the X Window
System.
Debian: ‘mozilla’
WWW: http://www.mozilla.org/
mutt The MUA currently in favor among many vi users is mutt; it is one
of the most popular MUAs for Linux.
Debian: ‘mutt’
WWW: http://www.mutt.org/
nmh The Rand “Mail Handling” system, mh, is not one application but a
collection of small tools for manipulating mail folders. It should ap-
peal to those who excel at building complex commands from combina-
tions of simple tools and operators. nmh is the new “Mail Handling”
system, containing rewrites and improved versions of the mh tools.
Most Linux systems will install this over the old mh.
Debian: ‘nmh’
WWW: http://www.mhost.com/nmh/
vm VM (“View Mail”) is a facility for reading and sending mail in Emacs.
Older than gnus and mew, it is very configurable.
Debian: ‘vm’
WWW: http://www.wonderworks.com/vm/
wl Wanderlust is a MUA for Emacs designed to facilitate reading your
mail on multiple computers.
Debian: ‘wl’
WWW: http://www.gohome.org/wl/
31 The World Wide Web

Next to email, the most useful service on the Internet is the World Wide Web (often written “WWW” or
“Web”). It is a giant network of hypertext documents and services, and it keeps growing by the instant—
anyone with an Internet-connected computer can read anything on the Web, and anyone can publish to
the Web. It could well be the world’s largest public repository of information.

This chapter describes tools for accessing and using the Web. It also describes tools for writing text
files in HTML (“HyperText Markup Language”), the native document format of the Web.

31.1 Browsing the Web

Debian: ‘mozilla’
Debian: ‘skipstone’
WWW: http://www.mozilla.org/
WWW: http://galeon.sourceforge.net/
WWW: http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/

When most people think of browsing or surfing the Web, they think of doing it graphically—and the
mental image they conjure is usually that of the famous Netscape Web browser. Most Web sites to-
day make heavy use of graphic images; furthermore, commercial Web sites are usually optimized for
Netscape-compatible browsers—many of them not even accessible with other alternative browsers. That
means you’ll want to use this application for browsing this kind of Web site.

The version of Netscape’s browser which had been released as free, open source software (see Sec-
tion 1.1.3 [What’s Open Source?], page 10) in 1998 to much fanfare is called Mozilla.
When first
released, the Mozilla application was a “developer’s only” release, but as of this writing it is finally
reaching a state where it is ready for general use.

Once the Mozilla browser has been installed, run it in X either by typing mozilla in a shell or by
selecting it from a menu in the usual fashion, as dictated by your window manager.

Like most graphical Web browsers, its use is fairly self-explanatory; type a URL in the Location
dialog box to open that URL, and left-click on a link to follow it, replacing the contents of the browser’s
main window with the contents of that link. One nice feature for Emacs fans is that you can use Emacs-
style keystrokes for cursor movement in Mozilla’s dialog boxes (see Section 10.2.2 [Basic Emacs Editing
Keys], page 111).

Netscape’s browsers, from their earliest Navigator release to their later Communicator series, were always referred to by
the company as Mozilla; this was a pun on the name Mosaic, which had been the first popular graphical Web browser in the
early 1990s—Netscape’s goal had been to make a monster Mosaic.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

A typical Mozilla window looks like this:

(In this example, the URL http://slashdot.org/ is loaded.)

A criticism of the earlier Netscape Navigator programs is that the browser is a bloated application:
it contained its own email client, its own Usenet newsreader, and other functions that are not necessary
when one wants to simply browse the Web. Since Mozilla is free software, anyone can take out these
excess parts to make a slimmer, faster, smaller application—and that is what some have done. Two of
these projects, Galeon and Skipstone, show some promise; see the above URLs for their home pages.
The following recipes will help you get the most out of using a graphical Web browser in Linux.
NOTE: Mozilla development is moving very rapidly these days, and while Mozilla is continually im-
proving at a fantastic rate, some of these recipes may not work as described with the version you have.
Another way to browse the Web is to use Emacs (see Section 31.4 [Browsing the Web in Emacs],
page 290); more alternative browsers are listed in Section 31.7 [More Web Browsers and Tools],
page 296.

31.1.1 Maintaining a List of Visited Web Sites

Debian: ‘browser-history’
WWW: http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/browser-history/

Use the browser-history tool to maintain a history log of all the Web sites you visit.
You start it in the background, and each time you visit a URL in a Web browser (as of this writing,
works with the Netscape, Arena, and Amaya browsers), it writes the name and URL to its current history
log, which you can view at any time.
¯ To start browser-history every time you start X, put the following line in your ‘.xsession’
file:
browser-history &
 A trimmed-down Mozilla will soon be available for Debian systems.
 The browser history logs are kept in a hidden directory called ‘.browser-history’ in your home
directory. The current history log is always called ‘history-log.html’; it’s an HTML file that you
can view in a Web browser.
¯ To view the current history log with lynx, type:
$ lynx ˜/.browser-history/history-log.html
RET
Past history logs have the year, month, and week appended to their name, and they are compressed
(see Section 8.5 [Compressed Files], page 92). After uncompressing them, you can view them just as
you would view the current log (if you are viewing them in Mozilla, you don’t even need to uncompress
them—it handles this automagically.)
You can also use zgrep to search through your old browser history logs. The logs keep the URL and
title of each site you visit, so you can search for either—then when someone asks, “Remember that good
article about such-and-such?” you can do a zgrep on the files in your ‘˜/.browser-history’
directory to find it.
¯ To find any URLs from the list of those you visited in the year 2000 whose titles contain the word
‘Confessions’, type:
$ zgrep Confessions ˜/.browser-history/history-log-2000*
RET
This command searches all your logs from the year 2000 for the text ‘Confessions’ in it, and
outputs those lines.
NOTE: For more about zgrep, see Section 14.3.1 [Matching Lines in Compressed Files], page 152.

31.1.2 Opening a URL from a Script

To open a Web page in Mozilla from a shell script, use the ‘-remote’ option followed by the text
‘’openURL(URL )’’, where URL is the URL to open.
¯ To open the URL http://www.drudgereport.com/ in Mozilla from a shell script, use the
following line:
mozilla -remote ’openURL(http://www.drudgereport.com/)’

31.1.3 Mozilla Browsing Tips

The following tips make Web browsing with Mozilla easier and more efficient.
¯ Many users disable Java and JavaScript altogether; most Web sites don’t require their use, and they
often introduce security problems or have other pernicious effects on your browsing. Just say no.
¯ Disabling the automatic loading of images can help if you are on a slow connection; the broken-
image icons take some getting used to, but you’ll be surprised at how much more quickly pages will
load! If you need to see a page’s images, just left-click on the Load Images button. You can also
right-click on the broken-image icon of the image you want to load and select Open this Image.
¯ Right-click on an image to save it to a file; you will be given a choice to either open the image in
the browser window or save it to a file.
¯ To open a link in another browser window, middle-click on the link. Opening multiple links in their
own windows saves time when you are doing a lot of “power browsing.”
¯ If a site forces links to open in a new window, and you don’t want to do that, right-click on the link
you want to open, and choose Open this Link; the link will open in the current browser window.
¯ To go back to the last URL you visited, type
ALT-
, and to go forward to the next URL in your
history, type
ALT-
. (These keys may not have the desired effect in some window managers; if
they don’t work for you, try using the
CTRL key instead of the
ALT key.)
¯ If your visited-URL history on the Go menu is very large, and earlier URLs are truncated, you can
still visit them by doing this: left-click one of the lowest entries on the menu, and visit that; then,
left-click on the Home button. This eliminates all the URLs in the history list that are more recent
than the page you’d just visited, but all of the old pages will be back in the list.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯ To open your bookmarks file in a new window, type
ALT-b.

¯ To open a new Mozilla window,
ALT-n (it’s often useful to have several windows open at once).

31.2 Viewing an Image from the Web

Debian: ‘imagemagick’
WWW: ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick/

If you just want to view an image file from the Web, you don’t have to use a Web browser at all—instead,
you can use display, giving the URL you want to view as an argument. This is especially nice for
viewing your favorite webcam image, or for viewing images on ftp sites—you don’t have to log in or
type any other commands at all.
¯ To view the image at ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/garbo-gifs/garbo01.gif, type:
$ display ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/garbo-gifs/garbo01.gif
RET

NOTE: When viewing the image, you can use all of the image manipulation commands that display
supports, including resizing and changing the magnification of the image. For more information about
display, see Section 17.2 [Viewing an Image in X], page 184.

31.3 Reading Text from the Web

Debian: ‘lynx’
WWW: http://lynx.browser.org/

As of this writing, the venerable lynx is still the standard Web browser for use on Debian systems; it
was also one of the first Web browsers available for general use. It can’t display graphics at all, but it’s
a good interface for reading hypertext.
Type lynx to start it—if a “start page” is defined, it will load. The start page is defined in
‘/etc/lynx.cfg’, and can be a URL pointing to a file on the local system or to an address on the
Web; you need superuser privileges to edit this file. On Debian systems, the start page comes defined
as the Debian home page, http://www.debian.org/ (but you can change this, of course; many
experienced users write their own start page, containing links to frequently-visited URLs, and save it as
a local file in their home directory tree).
To open a URL, give the URL as an argument.
¯ To view the URL http://lycaeum.org/, type:
$ lynx http://lycaeum.org/
RET
When in lynx, the following keyboard commands work:
C OMMAND D ESCRIPTION

 and
 Move forward and backward through links in the current document.

 or
RET Follow the hyperlink currently selected by the cursor.

 Go back to the previously displayed URL.

DEL View a history of all URLs visited during this session.

PgDn or
SPC Scroll down to the next page in the current document.

PgUp Scroll up to the previous page in the current document.

 Like many of my generation, it was through lynx that I had my first view of the Web.
= Display information about the current document (like all pages in
lynx, type
 to go back to the previous document).
g Go to a URL; lynx will prompt you for the URL to go to. Type
 to
insert on this line the last URL that was visited; once inserted, you can
edit it.
h Display the lynx help files.
q Quit browsing and exit the program; lynx will ask to verify this
action.
The following are some recipes for using lynx.
NOTE: Emacs users might want to use the ‘-emacskeys’ option when starting lynx; it enables you
to use Emacs-style keystrokes for cursor movement (see Section 10.2.2 [Basic Emacs Editing Keys],
page 111).

31.3.1 Perusing Text from the Web

To peruse just the text of an article that’s on the Web, output the text of the URL using lynx with the
‘-dump’ option. This dumps the text of the given URL to the standard output, and you can pipe this to
less for perusal, or use redirection to save it to a file.
¯ To peruse the text of http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/winterd/winter.html, type
(all on one line):
$ lynx -dump
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/winterd/winter.html | less
RET
It’s an old net convention for italicized words to be displayed in an etext inside underscores like
‘_this_’; use the ‘-underscore’ option to output any italicized text in this manner.
By default, lynx annotates all the hyperlinks and produces a list of footnoted links at the bottom of
the screen. If you don’t want them, add the ‘-nolist’ option and just the “pure text” will be returned.
¯ To output the pure text, with underscores, of the previous URL, and save it to the file
‘winter_dreams’, type (all on one line):
$ lynx -dump -nolist -underscore
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/winterd/winter.html > winter_dreams
RET
You can do other things with the pure text, like pipe it to enscript for setting it in a font for
printing.
¯ To print the pure text, with underscores, of the previous URL in a Times Roman font, type (all on
one line):
$ lynx -dump -nolist -underscore
http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/winterd/winter.html | enscript -B
-f "Times-Roman10"
RET
NOTE: To peruse the plain text of a URL with its HTML tags removed and no formatting done to the
text, see Section 31.6.2 [Converting HTML to Another Format], page 295.

31.3.2 Viewing a Site That Requires Authorization

To view a site or Web page that requires registration, use lynx with the ‘-auth’ option, giving as ar-
guments the username and password to use for authorization, separating them by a colon (‘:’) character.
¯To view the URL http://www.nytimes.com/archive/ with a username and password of
‘cypherpunks’, type (all on one line):
$ lynx -auth=cypherpunks:cypherpunks
http://www.nytimes.com/archive/
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

It’s often common to combine this with the options for saving to a file, so that you can retrieve an
annotated text copy of a file from a site that normally requires registration.
¯ To save the URL http://www.nytimes.com/archive/ as an annotated text file,
‘mynews’, type (all on one line):
$ lynx -dump -number_links -auth=cypherpunks:cypherpunks
http://www.nytimes.com/archive/ > mynews
RET
NOTE: The username and password argument you give on the command line will be recorded in your
shell history log (see Section 3.4 [Command History], page 40), and it will be visible to other users on
the system should they look to see what processes you’re running (see Section 2.7.2 [Listing All of a
User’s Processes], page 25).

31.3.3 Options Available while Browsing Text

The following table describes some of the command-line options lynx takes.
O PTION D ESCRIPTION
-anonymous Use the “anonymous ftp” account when retrieving ftp URLs.
-auth=user :pass Use a username of user and password of pass for protected documents.
-cache=integer Keep integer documents in memory.
-case Make searches case-sensitive.
-dump Dump the text contents of the URL to the standard output, and then
exit.
-emacskeys Enable Emacs-style key bindings for movement.
-force_html Forces rendering of HTML when the URL does not have a ‘.html’
file name extension.
-help Output a help message showing all available options, and then exit.
-localhost Disable URLs that point to remote hosts—useful for using lynx to
read HTML- or text-format documentation in ‘/usr/doc’ and other
local documents while not connected to the Internet.
-nolist Disable the annotated link list in dumps.
-number_links Number links both in dumps and normal browse mode.
-partial Display partial pages while downloading.
-pauth=user :pass Use a username of user and password of pass for protected proxy
servers.
-underscore Output italicized text like this in dumps.
-use_mouse Use mouse in an xterm.
-version Output lynx version and exit.
-vikeys Enable vi-style key bindings for movement.
-width=integer Format dumps to a width of integer columns (default 80).

31.4 Browsing the Web in Emacs

Debian: ‘w3-el-e20’
WWW: ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/elisp/w3/
Bill Perry’s Emacs/W3, as its name implies, is a Web browser for Emacs (giving you, as Bill says, one
less reason to leave the editor). Its features are many—just about the only things it lacks that you may
miss are SSL support (although this is coming) and JavaScript and Java support (well, you may not miss
it, but it will make those sites that require their use a bit hard to use). It can handle frames, tables,
stylesheets, and many other HTML features.
¯ To start W3 in Emacs, type:
M-x w3
RET
To open a URL in a new buffer, type C-o and, in the minibuffer, give the URL to open (leaving
this blank visits the Emacs/W3 home page). Middle-click a link to follow it, opening the URL in a new
buffer.
¯ To open the URL http://gnuscape.org/, type:
C-o http://gnuscape.org/
RET
¯ To open the URL of the Emacs/W3 home page, type:
C-o
RET

« The preceding example opens the Emacs/W3 home page in a buffer of its own: ¨

ª ©
The following table describes some of the various special W3 commands.
C OMMAND D ESCRIPTION

RET Follow the link at point.

SPC Scroll down in the current buffer.

BKSP Scroll up in the current buffer.
M-
TAB Insert the URL of the current document into another buffer.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

M-s Save a document to the local disk (you can choose HTML Source,
Formatted Text, LaTeX Source, or Binary).
C-o Open a URL.
B Move backward in the history stack of visited URLs.
F Move forward in the history stack of visited URLs.
i View information about the document in current buffer (opens in new
buffer called ‘Document Information’).
I View information about the link at point in current buffer (opens in
new buffer called ‘Document Information’).
k Put the URL of the document in the current buffer in the kill ring, and
make it the X selection (useful for copying and pasting the URL into
another buffer or to another application; see Section 10.4 [Selecting
Text], page 115).
K Put the URL of the link at point in the kill ring and make it the X
selection (useful for copying and pasting the URL into another buffer
or to another application; see Section 10.4 [Selecting Text], page 115).
l Move to the last visited buffer.
o Open a local file.
q Quit W3 mode, kill the current buffer, and go to the last visited buffer.
r Reload the current document.
s View HTML source of the document in the current buffer (opens in
new buffer with the URL as its name).
S View HTML source of the link at point in the current buffer (opens in
new buffer with the URL as its name).
v Show the URL of the current document (URL is shown in the minibuf-
fer).
V Show URL of the link under point in the current buffer (URL is shown
in the minibuffer).
NOTE: If you get serious about using Emacs/W3, you’ll almost certainly want to run the XEmacs flavor
of Emacs—as of this writing, GNU Emacs cannot display images.

31.5 Getting Files from the Web

Debian: ‘wget’
WWW: http://www.wget.org/

Use wget, “Web get,” to download files from the World Wide Web. It can retrieve files from URLs that
begin with either ‘http’ or ‘ftp’. It keeps the file’s original timestamp, it’s smaller and faster to use
than a browser, and it shows a visual display of the download progress.
The following subsections contain recipes for using wget to retrieve information from the Web. See
Info file ‘wget.info’, node ‘Examples’, for more examples of things you can do with wget.
NOTE: To retrieve an HTML file from the Web and save it as formatted text, use lynx instead—see
Section 31.3.1 [Perusing Text from the Web], page 289.
31.5.1 Saving a URL to a File
To download a single file from the Web, give the URL of the file as an argument to wget.
¯ For example, to download ftp://ftp.neuron.net/pub/spiral/septembr.mp3 to a
file, type:
$ wget ftp://ftp.neuron.net/pub/spiral/septembr.mp3
RET
This command reads a given URL, writing its contents to a file with the same name as the original,
‘septembr.mp3’, in the current working directory.
If you interrupt a download before it’s finished, the contents of the file you were retrieving will contain
only the portion of the file wget retrieved until it was interrupted. Use wget with the ‘-c’ option to
resume the download from the point it left off.
¯ To resume download of the URL from the previous example, type:
$ wget -c ftp://ftp.neuron.net/pub/spiral/septembr.mp3
RET
NOTE: In order for the ‘-c’ option to have the desired effect, you should run wget from the same
directory as it was run previously, where that partially-retrieved file should still exist.

31.5.2 Archiving an Entire Web Site

To archive a single Web site, use the ‘-m’ (“mirror”) option, which saves files with the exact timestamp of
the original, if possible, and sets the “recursive retrieval” option to download everything. To specify the
number of retries to use when an error occurs in retrieval, use the ‘-t’ option with a numeric argument—
‘-t3’ is usually good for safely retrieving across the net; use ‘-t0’ to specify an infinite number of
retries, good for when a network connection is really bad but you really want to archive something,
regardless of how long it takes. Finally, use the ‘-o’ with a file name as an argument to write a progress
log to the file—examining it can be useful in the event that something goes wrong during the archiving;
once the archival process is complete and you’ve determined that it was successful, you can delete the
log file.
¯ To mirror the Web site at http://www.bloofga.org/, giving up to three retries for retrieving
files and putting error messages in a log file called ‘mirror.log’, type:
$ wget -m -t3 http://www.bloofga.org/ -o mirror.log
RET
This command makes an archive of the Web site at ‘www.bloofga.org’ in a subdirectory called
‘www.bloofga.org’ in the current directory. Log messages are written to a file in the current direc-
tory called ‘mirror.log’.
To continue an archive that you’ve left off, use the ‘-nc’ (“no clobber”) option; it doesn’t retrieve
files that have already been downloaded. For this option to work the way you want it to, be sure that you
are in the same directory that you were in when you originally began archiving the site.
¯ To continue an interrupted mirror of the Web site at http://www.bloofga.org/ and make
sure that existing files are not downloaded, giving up to three retries for retrieval of files and putting
error messages in a log file called ‘mirror.log’, type:
$ wget -nc -m -t3 http://www.bloofga.org/ -o mirror.log
RET

31.5.3 Archiving Part of a Web Site

To archive only part of a Web site—such as, say, a user’s home page—use the ‘-I’ option followed by a
list of the absolute path names of the directories to archive; all other directories on the site are ignored.
¯ To archive the Web site at http://dougal.bris.ac.uk/˜mbt/, only archiving the
‘/˜mbt’ directory, and writing log messages to a file called ‘uk.log’, type:
$ wget -m -t3 -I /˜mbt http://dougal.bris.ac.uk/˜mbt/
-o uk.log
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This command archives all files on the http://dougal.bris.ac.uk/˜mbt/ Web site whose
directory names begin with ‘/˜mbt’.
To only get files in a given directory, use the ‘-r’ and ‘-l1’ options (the ‘-l’ option specifies the
number of levels to descend from the given level). To only download files in a given directory, combine
these options with the ‘--no-parent’ option, which specifies not to ascend to the parent directory.
Use the ‘-A’ option to specify the exact file name extensions to accept—for example, use ‘-A
txt,text,tex’ to only download files whose names end with ‘.txt’, ‘.text’, and ‘.tex’ ex-
tensions. The ‘-R’ option works similarly, but specifies the file extensions to reject and not download.
¯ To download only the files ending in a ‘.gz’ extension and only in the given directory
‘/˜rjh/indiepop-l/download/’ at ‘monash.edu.au’, type:
$ wget -m -r -l1 --no-parent -A.gz
http://monash.edu.au/˜rjh/indiepop-l/download/
RET

31.5.4 Reading the Headers of a Web Page

All Web servers output special headers at the beginning of page requests, but you normally don’t see
them when you retrieve a URL with a Web browser. These headers contain information such as the
current system date of the Web server host and the name and version of the Web server and operating
system software.
Use the ‘-S’ option with wget to output these headers when retrieving files; headers are output to
standard output, or to the log file, if used.
¯ To retrieve the file at http://slashdot.org/ and output the headers, type:
$ wget -S http://slashdot.org/
RET
This command writes the server response headers to standard output and saves the contents of
http://slashdot.org/ to a file in the current directory whose name is the same as the original
file.

31.6 Writing HTML

Debian: ‘bluefish’
WWW: http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the markup language of the Web; HTML files are just plain text
files written in this markup language. You can write HTML files in any text editor; then, open the file in
a Web browser to see the HTML markup rendered in its resulting hypertext appearance.
Many people swear by Bluefish, a full-featured, user-friendly HTML editor for X.
Emacs (see Section 10.2 [Emacs], page 108) has a major mode to facilitate the editing of HTML files;
to start this mode in a buffer, type:
M-x html-mode
RET
The features of HTML mode include the insertion of “skeleton” constructs.
The help text for the HTML mode function includes a very short HTML authoring tutorial—view the
documentation on this function to display the tutorial.
¯ To read a short HTML tutorial in Emacs, type:
C-h f html-mode
RET
NOTE: When you’re editing an HTML file in an Emacs buffer, you can open the same file in a Web
browser in another window—Web browsers only read and don’t write the HTML files they open, so you
can view the rendered document in the browser as you create it in Emacs. When you make and save a
change in the Emacs buffer, reload the file in the browser to see your changes take effect immediately.
31.6.1 Adding Parameters to Image Tags
Debian: ‘imgsizer’
WWW: http://www.tuxedo.org/˜esr/software.html#imgsizer

For usability, HTML image source tags should have ‘HEIGHT’ and ‘WIDTH’ parameters, which specify
the dimensions of the image the tag describes. By specifying these parameters in all the image tags on
a page, the text in that page will display in the browser window before the images are loaded. Without
them, the browser must load all images before any of the text on the page is displayed.
Use imgsizer to automatically determine the proper values and insert them into an HTML file.
Give the name of the HTML file to fix as an argument.
¯ To add ‘HEIGHT’ and ‘WIDTH’ parameters to the file ‘index.html’, type:
$ imgsizer index.html
RET

31.6.2 Converting HTML to Another Format

Debian: ‘unhtml’
Debian: ‘html2ps’
WWW: http://dragon.acadiau.ca/˜013639s/
WWW: http://www.tdb.uu.se/˜jan/html2ps.html

There are several ways to convert HTML files to other formats. You can convert the HTML to plain
text for reading, processing, or conversion to still other formats; you can also convert the HTML to
PostScript, which you can view, print, or also convert to other formats, such as PDF.
To simply remove the HTML formatting from text, use unhtml. It reads from the standard input (or
a specified file name), and it writes its output to standard output.
¯ To peruse the file ‘index.html’ with its HTML tags removed, type:
$ unhtml index.html | less
RET
¯ To remove the HTML tags from the file ‘index.html’ and write the output to a file called
‘index.txt’, type:
$ unhtml index.html > index.txt
RET
When you remove the HTML tags from a file with unhtml, no further formatting is done to the text.
Furthermore, it only works on files, and not on URLs themselves.
Use lynx to save an HTML file or a URL as a formatted text file, so that the resultant text looks like
the original HTML when viewed in lynx. It can also preserve italics and hyperlink information in the
original HTML. See Section 31.3.1 [Perusing Text from the Web], page 289.
One thing you can do with this lynx output is pipe it to tools for spacing text, and then send that to
enscript for setting in a font. This is useful for printing a Web page in typescript “manuscript” form,
with images and graphics removed and text set double-spaced in a Courier font.
¯ To print a copy of the URL http://example.com/essay/ in typescript manuscript form,
type:
$ lynx -dump -underscore -nolist http://example.com/essay/ | pr -
d
| enscript -B
RET
NOTE: In some cases, you might want to edit the file before you print it, such as when a Web page
contains text navigation bars or other text that you’d want to remove before you turn it into a manuscript.
In such a case, you’d pipe the lynx output to a file, edit the file, and then use pr on the file and pipe
that output to enscript for printing.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Finally, you can use html2ps to convert an HTML file to PostScript; this is useful when you want
to print a Web page with all its graphics and images, or when you want to convert all or part of a Web
site into PDF. Give the URLs or file names of the HTML files to convert as options. Use the ‘-u’ option
to underline the anchor text of hypertext links, and specify a file name to write to as an argument to the
‘-o’ option. The defaults are to not underline links, and to write to the standard output.
¯ To print a PostScript copy of the document at the URL http://example.com/essay/ to the
default printer, type:
$ html2ps http://example.com/essay/ | lpr
RET
¯ To write a copy of the document at the URL http://example.com/essay/ to a PostScript
file ‘submission.ps’ with all hypertext links underlined, type:
$ html2ps -u -o submission.ps http://example.com/essay/
RET

31.6.3 Validating an HTML File

Debian: ‘weblint’
WWW: http://www.weblint.org/

Use weblint to validate the basic structure and syntax of an HTML file. Give the name of the file to
be checked as an argument, and weblint outputs any complaints it has with the file to standard output,
such as whether or not IMG elements are missing ALT descriptions, or whether nested elements overlap.
¯ To validate the HTML in the file ‘index.html’, type:
$ weblint index.html
RET

31.7 More Web Browsers and Tools

Surprisingly, there are not nearly as many Web browsers for Linux as there are text editors—or even text
viewers. This remains true for any operating system, and I have often pondered why this is; perhaps
“browsing the Web,” a fairly recent activity in itself, may soon be obsoleted by Web readers and other
tools. In any event, the following lists other browsers that are currently available for Linux systems.
W EB B ROWSER D ESCRIPTION
amaya Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium; both a graphical Web browser
and a WYSIWYG editor for writing HTML.
Debian: ‘amaya’
WWW: http://www.w3.org/amaya/
arena Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium; a very compact, HTML 3.0-
compliant Web browser for X.
Debian: ‘arena’
WWW: http://www.w3.org/arena/
dillo A very fast, small graphical Web browser.
Debian: ‘dillo’
WWW: http://dillo.sourceforge.net/
express A small browser that works in X with GNOME installed.
Debian: ‘express’
WWW: http://www.ca.us.vergenet.net/˜conrad/express/
links A relatively new text-only browser.
WWW: http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/˜mikulas/links/
gzilla A graphical browser for X, currently in an early stage of development.
Debian: ‘gzilla’
WWW: http://www.levien.com/gzilla/
w3m Another new text-only browser whose features include table support and an in-
teresting free-form cursor control; some people swear by this one.
Debian: ‘w3m’
WWW: http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
32 Other Internet Services
There are many Internet services other than email and the World Wide Web; this chapter describes how
to use many of the other popular services, including telnet, ftp, and finger.

32.1 Connecting to Another System

Use telnet to connect to a remote system. Give the name of the system to connect to as an argument,
specifying either its name or numeric IP address. If that system is reachable, you will be connected
to it and presented with a login: or other connection prompt (the network is not exclusive to Linux
systems) just as if you were seated at a terminal connected to that system. If you have an account on that
system, you can then log in to it (see Section 2.2.1 [Logging In to the System], page 18).
¯ To connect to the system kanga.ins.cwru.edu, type:
$ telnet kanga.ins.cwru.edu
RET
Trying 129.22.8.32...
Connected to kanga.INS.CWRU.Edu.
Escape character is ’ˆ]’.

BSDI BSD/OS 2.1 (kanga) (ttypf)

/\
WELCOME TO THE... _! !_
_!__ __!_
__ ! !
_! !_ ! ! ! !
! ! /\ ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ! ! !___
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! !_!_ ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
_! ! !_!_ ! ! !_
! ! !_! ! !
! !
! CLEVELAND FREE-NET !
! COMMUNITY COMPUTER SYSTEM !
!____________________________________!

brought to you by

Case Western Reserve University

Office of Information Services

Are you:
1. A registered user
2. A visitor

Please enter 1 or 2: 1
RET

Enter your user ID (in lower case) at the Login: prompt.

 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Then enter your password when asked. Note that the

password will not print on the screen as you type it.

Login:
In this example, the user connected to the system at kanga.ins.cwru.edu; the bottom Login:
prompt was the prompt of the remote system (if you are ever unsure what system you are on, use
hostname as a shell prompt; see Section 2.4 [Running a Command], page 22).
To disconnect from the system, follow the normal procedures for logging out from the system you
are connected to (for how to do that on a Linux system, see Section 2.2.2 [Logging Out of the System],
page 19).
¯
« ¨
To disconnect from a remote Linux system, type:

$ C-d
Connection closed.

ª$ ©
In the preceding example, the first shell prompt was on the remote system, and the second prompt
was on the local system.

32.1.1 Suspending a Connection with Another System

You can also temporarily escape back to the local shell by typing the escape character, which is a key
sequence that is interpreted by telnet before it reaches the remote system. You will then be brought
to the telnet command prompt, where you can suspend with the ‘z’ command; to return to the remote
system, bring the job back into the foreground (see Section 3.3.3 [Putting a Job in the Foreground],
page 39).
¯
« ¨
To temporarily return to a local shell prompt, type:

faraway-system$ C-[
telnet> z
RET
[2]+ Stopped telnet

ª$
©
¯ To return to the remote system, type:
« ¨
$ fg
RET

ªfaraway-system$
©
In the first of the two preceding examples, the escape character C-[ was typed on the remote system,
whose shell prompt in this example is ‘faraway-system$’ (you don’t have to type the escape char-
acter at a shell prompt, though; you can type it regardless of what program you are running or where you
are on the remote system). Then, the ‘z’ command was given to telnet to suspend the telnet con-
nection. In the second example, the suspended telnet connection to the remote system was brought
back into the foreground.
NOTE: You should be aware that it’s possible (though not often desirable) to “nest” multiple layers of
telnet sessions on top of each other by connecting from one system to the next, to the next, and so
on, without disconnecting from the previous system. To avoid this, make sure you know which host
you’re leaving when you’re about to telnet off to another; the hostname tool is useful for this (see
Section 2.2.1 [Logging In to the System], page 18).

32.1.2 Connecting to Another System with Encryption

Debian: ‘kerberos4kth-user’
WWW: http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/www/
WWW: http://www.openssh.com/

On some systems, your system administrator may ask you to install and use kerberos, openssh, or
some other network security tool so that you may connect to a remote system in a more secure manner
than with telnet. These tools encrypt the data that is passed between the local and remote systems dur-
ing your connect session; they’re becoming very popular today among security-conscious administrators.
Should you be asked to use one, follow your administrator’s instructions in installing and configuring it
for your system.
NOTE: In order to be of any use, the services and tools discussed in this chapter require that your system
is online or otherwise connected to a network; see Chapter 29 [Communications], page 269.

32.2 Transferring Files with Another System

FTP (“File Transfer Protocol”) is a way to exchange files across systems. Use the ftp tool to connect
to another system using this protocol, giving the name or numeric IP address of the system you want
to connect to as an argument. Once connected, you will be prompted to log in with a username and
password (if you have one on that system).
Many systems are set up to accept “anonymous ftp” connections, where a public repository of files
are available for downloading by the general public; to use this, log in with a username of anonymous,
and give your email address for a password.
¯ To make an anonymous ftp connection to ftp.leo.org, type:
$ ftp ftp.leo.org
RET
Connected to ftp.leo.org.
220-Welcome to LEO.ORG.
220-See file README for more information about this archive.
220-
220-Your connection class is named: The world outside Germany
220-
220-If you don’t connect from inside Munich and login anonymously,
220-your data transfers are limited to a certain bandwidth.
220-
220-If you notice unusual behaviour, drop a note to ftp-admin@leo.org.
220 FTP server leo.org-0.9alpha ready.
Name (ftp.leo.org:m): anonymous
RET
331 Guest login ok, send your email address as password.
Password: at118@po.cwru.edu
RET
230- _ ___ ___
230- | | | __|/ \ LEO - Link Everything Online
230- | |__| _| | - | Munich University of Technology (TUM)
230- |___/|___|\___/ Department of Computer Science
230-
230- This Anonymous FTP site is in Munich, Germany, Europe.
230- It’s Tue Sep 28 18:31:43 MET DST 1999.
230- Please transfer files during non-business hours (1800-0900 CET).
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Remote system type is UNIX.

Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>
Once connected and logged in, use the cd and ls commands to change directory and to list files on
the remote system.
It is standard practice for public systems to have a ‘/pub’ directory on their FTP host that contains
all the files and goodies available to the general public.
¯
« ¨
To change to the ‘/pub’ directory on the remote system and look at the files that are there, type:

ftp> cd /pub
RET

250 Directory changed to /pub.
ftp> ls
RET
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII connection for file (918 bytes)
total 30258
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftpadmin ftpadmin 10942767 Sep 28 06:18 INDEX.gz
drwxr-xr-x 5 ftpadmin ftpadmin 512 Sep 17 18:22 comp
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ftpadmin ftpadmin 9512498 Sep 28 06:40 ls-lR.gz
drwxr-xr-x 2 ftpadmin ftpadmin 512 Sep 17 18:22 rec
drwxr-xr-x 3 ftpadmin ftpadmin 512 Sep 17 18:22 science
226 Transfer completed with 918 Bytes/s.

ªftp>
©
In this example, the ‘/pub’ directory contained three subdirectories (‘comp’, ‘rec’, and
‘science’) and two files, ‘INDEX.gz’ and ‘ls-lR.gz’; many public systems have files similar
to these in their ‘/pub’ directories—‘INDEX.gz’ is a listing of all files on their ftp site, with
descriptions, and ‘ls-lR.gz’ is the output of the command ls -lR run on the directory tree of their
ftp server.
The following subsections describe how to upload and download files. Use the quit command to
exit ftp and end the connection to the remote system.

32.2.1 Uploading a File

Use the put command to upload a file; give the name of the file as an argument. put takes that file
in the current directory of the local system, and puts a copy of it in the current directory of the remote
system.
¯ To put a copy of the file ‘thyme.rcp’ from the current directory on the local system to the current
directory of the remote system, type:
ftp> put thyme.rcp
RET
The current directory of the local system is, by default, the directory where you ran the ftp com-
mand. To change directories on your local system, use lcd; it works just like the cd command, but it
changes the local directory.
¯
« ¨
To change to the parent directory of the current directory on the local system, type:

ftp> lcd ..
RET

Local directory now /home/james/demos

ªftp>
©
 In this example, the local current directory is now ‘/home/james/demos’.
There are other important commands for downloading files—use ‘i’ to specify that files be transferred
as binary; normally, the transfer is set up for text files. When you want to transfer programs, archives,
compressed files, or any other non-text file, set the transfer type to ‘i’ first.
In recent years, most public systems have added a security measure forbidding the upload by anony-
mous users to anywhere but the ‘/incoming’ or ‘/pub/incoming’ directories.
The mput command works like put but allows you to specify wildcards. By default, mput asks
you, for each file, whether to upload the file or not; to turn off this file prompting, type prompt before
giving the mput command. This command is a toggle—type prompt again to turn file prompting back
on for your session.

32.2.2 Downloading a File

The get command works like put, but in reverse—specify a file on the remote system, and get saves
a copy to the current directory on the local system. Again, use i first when downloading non-text files.
(You can also download text files with i, so it is good practice to always set it before you transfer files;
most Linux systems are configured to set the type to ‘i’ immediately upon connection).
¯ To download the file ‘INDEX.gz’ in the current directory on the remote system, saving it to your

« ¨
‘˜/tmp’ directory, type:

ftp> lcd ˜/tmp
RET

Local directory now /home/james/tmp
ftp get INDEX.gz
RET
local: INDEX.gz remote: INDEX.gz
Transferred 10942767 bytes

ªftp>
©
NOTE: The mget command works like get but allows wildcards; as with mput, you will be prompted
to verify each file unless you use the prompt command first to turn this off.

32.3 Reading Usenet

WWW: http://www.faqs.org/usenet/index.html
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/6882/

Usenet is a famous, vast collection of world-around discussion boards called newsgroups, where mes-
sages (called articles ) can be read and publicly responded to. Newsgroups are named and organized by
hierarchy, with each branch delineated by a period (‘.’); for example, the ‘comp.os.linux’ news-
group is part of the ‘comp.os’ branch of the ‘comp’ hierarchy.
The following table lists the “Big Eight” Usenet hierarchies and give examples of some newsgroups
in each one.
U SENET H IERARCHY D ESCRIPTION
comp Computing. news:comp.os.linux.advocacy,
news:comp.text.tex
humanities Humanities. news:humanities.music.composers.wagner
misc Miscellaneous. news:misc.consumers.frugal-living
news Newsgroups relating to Usenet itself.
news.newusers.questions
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

rec Recreation. news:rec.music.marketplace.vinyl,

news:rec.food.cooking
sci Science. news:sci.math, news:sci.cognitive
soc Social groups and cultures. news:soc.culture.usa,
news:soc.college
talk Talk and chit-chat. news:talk.environment,
news:talk.politics.guns
While there are many other hierarchies, these eight are technically the only newsgroups considered to
be part of Usenet proper. While netnews is the term for the collection of all newsgroups including those
in Usenet, these terms are often used interchangeably.
The “alternative” hierarchy, ‘alt’, is perhaps the most popular hierarchy of all—just about every
subject you might want to discuss has an appropriate newsgroup here, including non sequiturs. There
are also hierarchies for topics concerning certain geographical areas; for example, the ‘cols.’ hierar-
chy is for topics pertaining to Columbus, Ohio, and ‘seattle’ is for Seattle, Washington. So, while
‘cols.forsale’ pertains to items for sale in the greater Columbus area, ‘seattle.forsale’ is
for items for sale in and around Seattle. Hierarchies can exist also for certain organizations; for exam-
ple, the ‘gnu’ hierarchy is for newsgroups concerning the GNU Project, and ‘bit’ is for newsgroup
redistributions of the popular Bitnet LISTSERV mailing lists.
The following recipes describe tools for reading and posting articles to netnews.

32.3.1 Choosing a Newsreader

An application that lets you read and post articles to newsgroups is called a newsreader. Here are some
of the best newsreaders available for Linux-based systems.
N EWSREADER D ESCRIPTION
gnus Gnus is a very powerful and feature-full newsreader for use in Emacs. You can
use it to read mail, too.
Debian: ‘gnus’
WWW: http://www.gnus.org/
knews A graphical newsreader for use in X. Its features include the display of article
threads in a graphical tree, and options for those reading news over slow connec-
tions.
Debian: ‘knews’
WWW: http://www.matematik.su.se/˜kjj/
mozilla Historically, commercial Web browsers also had mail and newsreaders built into
them, and that capability remains in the Mozilla browser.
Debian: ‘mozilla’
WWW: http://www.mozilla.org/
nn The motto of nn is “No News is good news, but nn is better”; it’s an older (and
very popular) newsreader that was designed for reading the most news in the
minimal amount of time.
Debian: ‘nn’
WWW: http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/˜guckes/nn/
pan The “Pimp A** Newsreader” is a new-generation graphical newsreader that is
designed for speed. It is meant to be easy for beginners to use, and it works in X
with GNOME installed.
Debian: ‘pan’
WWW: http://www.superpimp.org/
peruser News Peruser is a suite of small tools for use in X that facilitate the reading and
composing of news articles when you’re offline—it downloads batches of news
when your system is online.
Debian: ‘peruser’
WWW: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/news/readers/
slrn Based on rn, one of the oldest newsreaders, slrn is optimized for use over slow
connections (like home modem dial-ups).
Debian: ‘slrn’
WWW: http://www.slrn.org/

32.3.2 Finding Newsgroups for a Topic

Debian: ‘nn’
WWW: ftp://ftp.uwa.edu.au/pub/nn/beta/

Use nngrep to find newsgroup names that match a pattern. This is useful for finding groups on a
particular topic.

¯ To output a list of all newsgroups that match the pattern ‘society’, type:
$ nngrep society
RET

Use the ‘-u’ option to only search through unsubscribed groups. This is useful if you are subscribed
to a number of groups, and you are looking only for groups you aren’t subscribed to yet.

¯ To output a list of all unsubscribed-to newsgroups that match the pattern ‘society’, type:
$ nngrep society
RET

In the previous example, if you were already subscribed to the group alt.society.neutopia,
that group will not be displayed; but other groups matching the pattern ‘society’ that you are not
subscribed to would be listed.

32.4 Listing Online System and User Activity

The following tools are used to list the activity of other users and systems on the Internet—showing
whether or not they are currently online and perhaps displaying a little more information about them.

32.4.1 Checking Whether a System Is Online

Use ping to determine whether a particular system is currently connected to the Internet.

Type ping followed by the name or numeric IP address of the system you want to check; if your
system is online and the system to be checked is also online, ping should continually output lines
telling how long the latency, in milliseconds, is between the two systems. Type C-c to interrupt it and
stop pinging.

¯ To ping the host bfi.org, type:

 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
« ¨
$ ping bfi.org
RET
PING bfi.org (209.196.135.250): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 209.196.135.250: icmp_seq=0 ttl=63 time=190.0 ms
64 bytes from 209.196.135.250: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=159.9 ms
64 bytes from 209.196.135.250: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=160.5 ms
C-c
--- bfi.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 159.9/170.1/190.0 ms

ª
$
©
In this example, the host bfi.org was pinged and a total of three pings were sent and received
before the user typed C-c to interrupt it. As long as these ping lines are output, you know that the other
machine is connected to the Internet (or at least to the same network that your localhost is connected to).
You really don’t need to analyze the information on each line of a ping message—the only useful
information is the number at the end of the line, which tells you how many milliseconds it took to go
out to the Internet, touch or “ping” that host, and come back.
The quicker the better—pings that
are four or five digits long (or greater) mean a slow connection between the two machines. When you
interrupt the ping, some statistics are output, including the minimum, average, and maximum number
of milliseconds it took to ping the given host. In the example above, the high was 190 and the low was
159.9 milliseconds, with an average of 170.1.
NOTE: If your own system is not online, ping will report that either the network is unreachable or that
the host isn’t found.

32.4.2 Checking Whether a User Is Online

Use finger to check whether or not a given user is online. Give as an argument the username of the
user (if on the local system) or their email address (if on a remote system). This is called “fingering” a
user.
If the system they are using has finger enabled (most Unix-based systems should), the command
will tell you the following: the date and time when they last logged in; whether or not they are currently
logged in; their full name; their office room and telephone number; their home directory; what shell they
use; whether or not they have mail waiting; the last time they read mail; and, finally, their “plan,” as
described below.
¯
« ¨
To finger the user bradley@ap.spl.org, type:

$ finger bradley@ap.spl.org
RET

[ap.spl.org]
Login: bradley Name: Bradley J Milton
Directory: /sp1/bradley Shell: /bin/tcsh
Last login Wed Jan 20 16:38 1999 (PST) on ttypb from zais.pair.com
No mail.
Plan:
To learn to how use Linux and GNU software.

ª$
©
In this example, the user bradley on the system at ap.spl.org is not currently logged in, logged
in last on 20 January, and uses the tsch shell.

“I named it after the sound that a sonar makes, inspired by the whole principle of echo-location,” said the original author of
ping, Mike Muss. He died in an automobile accident in November 2000.
NOTE: On Unix-based systems, you can put information in a hidden file in your home directory called
‘.plan’, and that text will be output when someone fingers you. Some people put elaborate informa-
tion in their ‘.plan’ files; in the early 1990s, it was very much in vogue to have long, rambling .plans.
Sometimes, people put information in their ‘.plan’ file for special events—for example, someone who
is having a party next weekend might put directions to their house in their ‘.plan’ file.

32.4.3 Listing Who Is Logged In to a System

To get a listing of all users who are currently logged in to a given system, use finger and specify the
name (or numeric IP address) of the system preceded with an at sign (‘@’).
This gives a listing of all the users who are currently logged in on that system. It doesn’t give
each individual’s ‘.plan’s, but the output includes how long each user has been idle, where they are
connected from, and (sometimes) what command they are running. (The particular information that is
output depends on the operating system and configuration of the remote system.)
¯
« ¨
To output the users who are currently logged in to the system ap.spl.org, type:

$ finger @ap.spl.org
RET

[spl.org]
Login Name Tty Idle Login Time Office
allison Allison Chaynes *q2 16:23 Sep 27 17:22 (gate1.grayline)
gopherd Gopher Client *r4 1:01 Sep 28 08:29 (gopherd)
johnnyzine Johnny McKenna *q9 15:07 Sep 27 16:02 (johnnyzine)
jezebel Jezebel Cate *r1 14 Sep 28 08:42 (dialup-WY.uu.net)
bradley Bradley J Milton t2 2 Sep 28 09:35 (spl.org)

ª$
©
32.4.4 Finding the IP Address of a Host Name
When you know the name of a particular host, and you want to find the IP address that corresponds to it,
ping the host in question; this will output the IP address of the host in parenthesis (see Section 32.4.1
[Checking Whether a System is Online], page 305).
You can also use dig, the “domain information groper” tool. Give a hostname as an argument to
output information about that host, including its IP address in a section labelled ‘ANSWER SECTION’.
¯
«
To find the IP address of the host linart.net, type:
¨
$ dig linart.net
RET
...output messages...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
linart.net. 1D IN A 64.240.156.195
...output messages...

ª$
©
In this example, dig output the IP address of 64.240.156.195 as the IP address for the host
linart.net.

32.4.5 Finding the Host Name of an IP Address

To find the host name for a given IP address, use dig with the ‘-x’ option. Give an IP address as an
argument to output information about that address, including its host name in a section labelled ‘ANSWER
SECTION’.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

¯
« ¨
To find the host name that corresponds to the IP address 216.92.9.215, type:

$ dig -x 216.92.9.215
RET

...output messages...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
215.9.92.216.in-addr.arpa. 2H IN PTR rumored.com.
...output messages...

ª
$
©
In this example, dig output that the host name corresponding to the given IP address was
rumored.com.

32.4.6 Listing the Owner of a Domain Name

An Internet domain name’s domain record contains contact information for the organization or individual
that has registered that domain. Use the whois command to view the domain records for the common
.com, .org, .net, and .edu top-level domains.
With only a domain name as an argument, whois outputs the name of the “Whois Server” that
has that particular domain record. To output the domain record, specify the Whois Server to use as an
argument to the ‘-h’ option.
¯ To output the name of the Whois Server for linart.net, type:
$ whois linart.net
RET
¯ To view the domain record for linart.net, using the whois.networksolutions.com
Whois Server, type:
$ whois -h whois.networksolutions.com linart.net
RET
NOTE: This command also outputs the names of the nameservers that handle the given domain—this is
useful to get an idea of where a particular Web site is hosted.

32.5 Sending a Message to Another User’s Terminal

Use write to write a message to the terminal of another user. Give the username you want to write to
as an argument. This command writes the message you give, preceded with a header line indicating that
the following is a message from you, and giving the current system time. It also rings the bell on the
user’s terminal.
¯
« ¨
To send the message ‘Wake up!’ to the terminal where user ‘sleepy’ is logged in, type:

$ write sleepy
RET

Wake up!
C-d

ª
$
©
The other user can reply to you by running write and giving your username as an argument. Tra-
ditionally, users ended a write message with ‘-o’, which indicated that what they were saying was
“over” and that it was now the other person’s turn to talk. When a user believed that a conversation was
completed, the user would end a line with ‘oo’, meaning that they were “over and out.”
A similar command, wall, writes a text message to all other users on the local system. It takes a text
file as an argument and outputs the contents of that file; with no argument, it outputs what you type until
you type C-d on a line by itself. It precedes the message with the text ‘Broadcast message from
username ’ (where username is your username) followed by the current system time, and it rings the bell
on all terminals it broadcasts to.
¯ To output the contents of ‘/etc/motd’ to all logged-in terminals, type:
$ wall /etc/motd
RET
¯ To output the text ‘Who wants to go out for Chinese food?’ to all logged-in terminals,
type:
$ wall
RET
Who wants to go out for Chinese food?
RET
C-d
You can control write access to your terminal with mesg. It works like biff (see Section 30.3.2
[Setting Notification for New Mail], page 279): with no arguments, it outputs whether or not it is set;
with ‘y’ as an argument, it allows messages to be sent to your terminal; and with ‘n’ as an argument, is
disallows them.
The default for all users is to allow messages to be written to their terminals; antisocial people usually
put the line mesg n in their ‘.bashrc’ file (see Section 3.6.4 [Customizing Future Shells], page 43).
¯ To disallow messages to be written to your terminal, type:
$ mesg n
RET
¯
« ¨
To output the current access state of your terminal, type:

$ mesg
RET
is n

ª
$
©
In the preceding example above, mesg indicated that messages are currently disallowed to be written
to your terminal.

32.6 Chatting with Other Users

There are several ways to interactively chat with other users on the Internet, regardless of their platform
or operating system. The following recipes describe the most popular tools and methods for doing this.

32.6.1 Chatting Directly with a User

Debian: ‘ytalk’
WWW: http://www.iagora.com/˜espel/ytalk/

Use talk to interactively chat in realtime with another user. Give the username (or email address) of
the user you want to chat with as an argument; a message will be sent to that user’s terminal, indicating
that a connection is requested. If that person then runs talk, giving your username as an argument, you
will both be connected in a talk session—the screen will clear and then what you type will appear on
the top of the screen; what the other user types will appear at the bottom of the screen.
¯ To request a chat with the user kat@kent.edu, type:
$ talk kat@kent.edu
RET
This command sends a connection request to the user kat@kent.edu. If the user is not logged on
or is refusing messages, talk will output a message indicating such; but if that user is available, talk
will send a message to that user asking to complete the connection, and it will tell you that it is ringing
your party.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

If that user then types talk stutz@dsl.org (if, in this example, your email address is
«
stutz@dsl.org), then your screen will clear and you will see the following:
¨

ª ©
You can then type, and what you type will appear on both your screen and that user’s screen; that
user, in turn, can also type—even while you are typing—and what that user types appears on the other
«
half of both screens:
¨

ª ©
It is standard practice to indicate that you are done saying something by typing
RET
RET, thus
making a blank line on your half of the screen. Some users, when they have typed to the bottom of their
half of the screen, sometimes type
RET repeatedly to “clear” their half of the screen and bring the cursor
back to the top.
Type C-c to end a talk session.
When you type, both users see the characters appear in realtime; my first demonstration of the inter-
active nature of the Internet, back in 1991, was when I had a live, real-time chat with a user in Australia,
on the other side of the globe—the magic felt that day has never quite left whenever I run this command!
NOTE: A similar command, ytalk, allows you to connect to multiple users, and it contains other
features as well; it is generally considered to be the superior successor of talk, but it is not yet available
or standard on all Unix-based systems.

32.6.2 Chatting with Users on IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a global chat system, probably the oldest and largest on the Internet. IRC
is a great way to meet and talk to all kinds of people, live on the Internet; it has historically been very
popular with Linux users.
There are several IRC networks, each with its own servers and tens of thousands of users; to “go on”
IRC, you use an IRC client program to connect with an IRC server. Like CB radio, IRC networks have
channels, usually based on a particular topic, which you join to chat with other users in that channel (you
can also send private messages to other users).
The following table lists some of the IRC clients available for Linux.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

C LIENT D ESCRIPTION
bitchx BitchX is an IRC client whose features include ANSI color, so it can
display all of the character escape codes that are popularly used on
IRC for special effects. Despite what you might gather from its name,
it doesn’t require X in order to run.
Debian: ‘bitchx’
WWW: http://www.bitchx.org/
epic EPIC is a large, feature-filled IRC client.
Debian: ‘epic’
WWW: http://www.epicsol.org/
irssi A modular IRC client; note that some versions can only be run in X
with GNOME.
Debian: ‘irssi’
WWW: http://irssi.org/
xchat Xchat is a graphical IRC chat client for use in X.
Debian: ‘xchat’
WWW: http://www.xchat.org/
zenirc ZenIRC is a minimalist, no-frills (yet fully extensible) IRC mode for
Emacs.
Debian: ‘zenirc’
WWW:
http://www.splode.com/˜friedman/software/emacs-
lisp/zenirc/
NOTE: If you’ve never used IRC before, you might want to read The IRC Prelude, on the Web at
http://irchelp.org/irchelp/new2irc.html.

32.6.3 Chatting with Users on ICQ

WWW: http://www.portup.com/˜gyandl/icq/

In the late 1990s, a company called Mirabilis released a proprietary program for PCs called ICQ (“I Seek
You”), which was used to send text messages to other users in realtime. Since then, many free software
chat tools have been written that use the ICQ protocol.
One nice feature of ICQ is is that you can maintain a “buddy list” of email addresses, and when you
have an ICQ client running, it will tell you whether or not any of your buddies are online. But unlike
talk, you can’t watch the other user type in realtime—messages are displayed in the other user’s ICQ
client only when you send them.
The following table lists some of the free software ICQ clients currently available.
C LIENT D ESCRIPTION
licq Licq is an ICQ client for use in X.
Debian: ‘licq’
WWW: http://www.licq.org/
micq Micq (“Matt’s ICQ clone”) is an easy-to-use ICQ client that can be
used in a shell.
Debian: ‘micq’
WWW: http://phantom.iquest.net/micq/
zicq Zicq is a version of Micq with a modified user interface.
Debian: ‘zicq’
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
Appendix A Administrative Issues
Every Linux system has an administrator—someone who installs the hardware and software, maintains
the system, and generally keeps things running smoothly. A single-user home Linux system, once in-
stalled and running, needs little administration—but the occasional upgrade or maintenance task is nec-
essary.
This appendix exists as a reference for those users who will also be performing the administrative
duties on their system. While a complete administrative guide is out of the scope of this book, the goal of
this appendix is to point the new Linux administrator in the right direction, giving tips on how to choose
the computer you’ll use for Linux, install Debian GNU/Linux on it, and get it ready for use.
Unlike the rest of this book, this chapter contains recipes describing commands to be run by root,
the superuser account.
If you’re new to Linux administration, you may want to consult the help resources listed in Section 1.3
[If You Need More Help], page 14.

A.1 Linux and Hardware Compatibility

WWW: http://www.thedukeofurl.org/

In days gone by, Linux enthusiasts had to piece together computer systems from individual components,
since the salesmen at computer stores had never even heard of Linux or the free software movement. But
no more. Today, many dealers sell complete systems with Linux pre-installed, including corporations
like Dell Computers and IBM.

The Duke of URL reviews the latest hardware as it performs with Linux. His periodic “Linux Buyer’s
Guide” feature lists current hardware that works well on a Linux-based system, and it gives sample
configurations (with prices and links to vendors) for putting together a complete system—from low-end
budget system to a blazing, dual-processor rig.
Since Linux runs on many different computers and supports a wide range of hardware, and because
everyone has different needs, I won’t make too many recommendations as to which specific hardware to
buy. (Systems change too fast for such a list to be useful, anyway.)
Before you make a hardware purchase, though, make sure that it’s compatible with Linux—that
bargain video-capture board will be worthless if it has a proprietary interface that only works with a
certain non-free operating system.
To find out whether your hardware will work under Linux, try the following:
¯ Read the Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO (see Section 2.8.6 [Reading System Documen-
tation and Help Files], page 31), an up-to-date list of hardware that is compatible with Linux.
¯ Visit the Linux Hardware Database (http://lhd.datapower.com/) and Linux
Hardware.Net (http://www.linuxhardware.net/) sites, which provide reviews and
information about hardware that works with Linux.
¯ Search the Internet—particularly Usenet news and the linux.com site—for the hardware you
intend to buy. Read any trouble reports people may have written about getting it to work with
Linux, so that you won’t be writing the next report about it.

A.2 Installing Software

All Linux distributions come with a multitude of software programs (also called “binaries”). But sooner
or later, you will want to install more programs, or you will want to upgrade your existing software
when newer versions are available. The following sections talk about installing the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution itself, installing and upgrading software when from Debian packages, and how to install
stand-alone shell scripts.

For a complete list, visit the Linux Documentation Project (http://linuxdoc.org/) Web site.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

A.2.1 Getting and Installing Debian

WWW: http://www.cheapbytes.com/
WWW: http://www.debian.org/
WWW: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/

You can get a copy of Debian GNU/Linux on CD-ROM from local or online vendors, or you can down-
load the installation files from the Internet (recommended only if you have a fast Internet connection, of
course).
If you choose to buy a copy of Debian in a local computer store, be sure you get the most recent
version. If a store only carries an older version, the software might not work with your brand-new
hardware! (Visit the Debian Web site to find the number of the latest version.)
If you’d rather buy a copy online, Cheap*Bytes sells affordable Debian
GNU/Linux CD-ROMs. The Debian Project maintains a full list of vendors at
http://www.debian.org/distrib/vendors/.
The precise details of installation are out of the scope of this book, but the Debian installation guide
comes on the CD-ROM. It contains step-by-step instructions and the latest release notes.

A.2.2 Installing a Debian Package

Debian makes the software programs available in ‘.deb’ packages, files that contain everything neces-
sary for the installation of a given software program.
There are different methods of installing packages on a Debian system: via dselect, where you
select packages from a menu; dpkg, a command-line tool for installing packages; and apt-get, part
of Debian’s new “Advanced Package Tool” system.
To install a package when you know the package name, mount your Debian distribution (for example,
if you install Debian via CD-ROM, put the first Debian CD-ROM disc in your CD-ROM drive). Then
run apt-get with the ‘install’ command option, and give the name of the package to install as
an argument. Should there be additional packages that must be installed first (called dependencies ), or
should the package conflict with others already installed, an action will be presented to fix this, and you
will be prompted to confirm or abort the operation.
¯ To install the ‘miscfiles’ package, type:
# apt-get install miscfiles
RET
If you already have the ‘.deb’ file, use dpkg to install it. Use the ‘-i’ option and give the name of
the file as an option. Any conflicts or dependencies will have to be resolved by you before the package
is installed. If a problem is detected, dpkg will report it and exit without installing the package.
¯ To install the package in the ‘miscfiles-1.1.7.deb’ file, type:
# dpkg -i miscfiles-1.1.7.deb
RET
Finally, to peruse available packages and choose them from a menu, use dselect, the Debian
package selection tool. A word of caution: its menu interface is different from most programs you have
probably encountered, and its usage is unfortunately an acquired skill. Even the man page makes note of
this: “The dselect package selection interface is confusing or even alarming to the new user.”
NOTE: If you’re new to Debian, I recommend consulting Dselect Documentation for Beginners
(http://www.debian.org/releases/2.1/i386/dselect-beginner.en.html).

A.2.3 Upgrading a Debian Package

People are constantly contributing to the free software movement. This means that new software pro-
grams are constantly being added to Linux distributions, and current software programs are continually
being improved—new features to match new hardware, faster program execution, security updates, and
so forth. A Linux system, therefore, needs to be kept up to date in order to reap the benefits of the latest
free software.
To upgrade a single package, use apt-get with the ‘install’ argument, and follow that with the
name of the package to upgrade.
¯ To upgrade the ‘sview’ package, type:
# apt-get install sview
RET
This command will upgrade the ‘sview’ package to the most current version available, if greater
than the version already installed on your system. If additional packages must be upgraded first in order
for this new package upgrade to function properly, this command will fetch and upgrade those packages,
too. Before downloading any packages, apt-get will show the list of packages that will be installed,
replaced, or otherwise changed, and wait for confirmation first.
To bring your entire Debian system up to date, use the apt-get tool with the following command
arguments. First, use the ‘update’ argument to update your system’s list of available software packages.
Then run apt-get again, using either the ‘upgrade’ argument to upgrade all of the installed packages
to their most recently available versions, or use the ‘dist-upgrade’ argument when a new version of
the Debian system is announced, to upgrade to that new version.
¯
« ¨
To upgrade all of the software on your system to their most recent versions, type:

# apt-get update
RET

...processing messages...
# apt-get upgrade
RET
...processing messages...
ª #
©
¯ To upgrade your Debian system to the most recent release, type:
« ¨
# apt-get update
RET
...processing messages...
# apt-get dist-upgrade
RET
...processing messages...
ª#
©
A.2.4 Installing a Shell Script
A shell script is a file that contains commands written in a shell command language (see Chapter 3 [The
Shell], page 33). You run (or “execute”) a script as you would any other command (see Section 2.4
[Running a Command], page 22). First, make sure that the script file is executable; if it isn’t, you won’t
be able to execute it (see Section 6.3.6 [Making a File Executable], page 78).
Generally, the administrator installs new shell scripts in the ‘/usr/local/bin’ directory. If you
are on a multi-user system and you are the only user liable to run a particular script, you can put it in
a special directory in your home directory tree—the ‘˜/bin’ directory is the standard recommendation
here—and then add that directory to your path (see Section 3.6.3 [Adding to Your Path], page 43).
Not all executable script files are shell scripts. The first line of a script contains the full path name of
the shell or other program that is to interpret and execute the script; sometimes, the path may differ on
your system from the one the script was written on, and so you may have to change this line.
For example, a script may start with the following line:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

This line means that the script is written in the perl language; the text after the ‘#!’ is the full path
name of the perl program, which in this case is ‘/usr/local/bin/perl’.
If you try to execute this script and the system reports an error finding the file, you’ll have to change
that first line to correspond to the location of the perl binary on your system. The which tool will
output this location.
¯ To find out where perl is installed on your system, type:
$ which perl
RET

If that command returns ‘/usr/bin/perl’ or some path name other than

/usr/local/bin/perl, you’ll have to change the location in the first line of the script
to the path name given:
#!/usr/bin/perl
NOTE: If the output of the which command returns nothing, that means that the perl program is not
installed on your system at all; in that case, you should install the perl software.

A.3 Administrating Users

This section describes some of the things the system administrator will have to do in administrating the
system’s users.
All of these commands must be run by the superuser, using the root account—these commands edit
system files.

A.3.1 Making a User Account

To make a new user account, use adduser. It takes as an argument the username to use for the new ac-
count. It will prompt for default setup information, including the user’s full name and an initial password
to use.
¯ To create a new user with a username of bucky, type:
# adduser bucky
RET

NOTE: By default, the name of the user’s home directory will be the same as the username. So, for
example, the user bucky will have a home directory of ‘/home/bucky’.

A.3.2 Letting Users Access Hardware Peripherals

Certain hardware peripherals, like CD-ROM drives and soundcards, normally require superuser privi-
leges in order to access them. These devices also have groups of their own, so a regular user can also
access them by having membership to their groups (see Section 6.1 [Groups and How to Work in Them],
page 75).
The groups that regular users might want to be part of include floppy (the floppy disk drive), audio
(the soundcard), and dialout and dip (modem dial-out privileges).
Use addgroup to add a user to the group associated with a hardware device. Give as arguments the
username to add and the name of the group to add to.
¯ To add the user doug to the audio group, type:
# addgroup doug audio
RET
A.3.3 Letting Users Mount Drives
The ‘/etc/fstab’ file specifies the details about the filesystems in use on a system, including those
that may be mounted by floppy or CD-ROM drive. In order to let users mount disks on these drives, make
sure that there is a line in ‘/etc/fstab’ for both the floppy and CD-ROM drives, each containing the
‘user’ flag:
/dev/fd0 /floppy auto defaults,noauto,user 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom auto defaults,noauto,user 0 0

A.4 Displaying Information about the System

The following recipes describe ways of displaying information about the system you are running.

A.4.1 How Long Has the System Been Up?

To find out how long the system has been running, use the uptime tool. When you run it as a command,
it outputs the current time, how long the system has been running, how many users are logged on, and
what the system “load averages” have been for the past one, five, and fifteen minutes.
¯
«
To find out how long the system has been up, type:
¨
$ uptime
RET
3:34pm up 4:31, 4 users, load average: 0.01, 0.05, 0.07

ª$
©
To get a list of the times and dates when the system was recently rebooted, give ‘reboot’ as an
argument to last (see Section 2.6.4 [Listing the Last Times a User Logged In], page 24).
¯ To output a list of times when the system was rebooted, type:
$ last reboot
RET
NOTE: An operating system capable of running constantly for a long time without crashes or freeze-ups
is a good one, and so having a high uptime value is a matter of pride for many Linux users. It is not
uncommon to hear of systems that have been running for months and sometimes even years non-stop—
one Linux administrator reported on the Internet about one of his work systems, which had been running
continuously without reboot for three years!

A.4.2 What Version of Linux Am I Running?

Use the GNU uname tool to see what version of Linux you are running. By default, it outputs the name
of the operating system; the ‘-r’ option outputs the operating system release number.
¯ To output the name of the operating system, type:
$ uname
RET
¯ To output the release number of the operating system, type:
$ uname -r
RET
You can also use uname to output the CPU processor type of the system (such as i586, PowerPC,
etc.); specify this with the ‘-m’ option. The ‘-a’ option is also useful; it outputs all information about
the system that it can, including all of the mentioned options, plus the version date and number of the
operating system and the machine’s hostname.
¯ To output the CPU processor type of the system, type:
$ uname -m
RET
¯ To output all of the uname information for the system you are on, type:
$ uname -a
RET
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

A.4.3 What Version of Debian Am I Running?

On a Debian system, the file ‘/etc/debian_version’ (see Chapter 5 [Files and Directories],
page 59) contains the release name of the Debian installed.
Use cat to output the contents of this file (see Section 10.6 [Concatenating Text], page 116).
¯ To output the release name of the Debian system you are on, type:
$ cat /etc/debian_version
RET
NOTE: Debian releases have historically been named after characters from the motion picture Toy Story.
Appendix B Linux Resources on the Web
To get the latest news related to Linux and the free software movement, find new documentation, and
keep up to date with the latest in free software, you’ll want to turn to the Web.
The following table is by no means a complete list of these resources, but it gives what I consider to
be the most important and useful Web resources for Linux, and free software in general. These are all
sites which every avid GNU/Linux enthusiast should be aware of.
W EB R ESOURCE D ESCRIPTION
http://freshmeat.net/ Freshmeat contains descriptions and links to thousands of
free software packages.
http://www.gnu.org/ The GNU Project Web site lists new software packages as
they become part of the GNU Project. This site is also the
home of the Free Software Foundation, and is a source for
both philosophical readings and news about the free soft-
ware movement.
http://linux.com/ Contains the latest Linux news, linux.com also has fea-
ture stories, links, and a database of Linux User Groups.
http://linuxgazette.com/ The Linux Gazette is a monthly webzine devoted to “mak-
ing Linux just a little more fun,” and it has been published
by SSC for years. Its “More 2-Cent Tips” column is famous.
http://linuxdoc.org/ The Linux Documentation Project manages the creation and
upkeep of Linux HOWTOs and other documentation.
http://lwn.net/ Linux Weekly News contains great coverage for Linux and
related free software.
http://mainmatter.com/ This site hosts the Linux FAQ.
http://sal.kachinatech.com/ SAL (“Scientific Applications on Linux”) is the authorita-
tive listing of scientific software that runs on Linux-based
systems.
http://slashdot.org/ Slashdot is a popular news and discussion site for members
of the Linux and free software community; many people
usually check Slashdot several times daily.
http://sourceforge.net/ Sourceforge is the Internet’s largest community for develop-
ers of free software; it gives free resources to developers of
free software.
http://themes.org/ A repository of GUI “themes” for your desktop.
http://www.bright.net/ “Sound and MIDI Software for Linux” is the comprehensive
˜dlphilp/linuxsound/ guide to sound and audio for Linux-based systems.
http://www.thedukeofurl.org/ Provides non-partisan hardware reviews; if you are con-
sidering a new system, reading the Duke’s latest “Linux
Buyer’s Guide” is an absolute must.

Additionally, the following table lists the primary Web sites for some of the most popular Linux
distributions.
W EB S ITE L INUX D ISTRIBUTION
http://debian.org/ Debian GNU/Linux.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

http://linux-mandrake.com/ Linux Mandrake.

http://redhat.com/ Red Hat Linux.
http://slackware.com/ Slackware Linux.
http://suse.de/ SuSE Linux.
Appendix C License
Like much of the software that makes a working Linux system, including the Linux kernel itself, the text
of this book is copylefted. That is, the copyright holder of the work has released it with a special kind
of copyright license that has come to be known as a “copyleft” license. That does not mean that it is in
the public domain, but rather, the copyleft describes a special set of terms that permit anyone to copy,
distribute, and modify the work, under those certain terms and conditions. For this book those terms are
described by the Design Science License, which follows.

C.1 Design Science License

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
­
Copyright c 1999–2001 Michael Stutz <stutz@dsl.org>
Verbatim copying of this document is permitted, in any medium.
0. PREAMBLE.
Copyright law gives certain exclusive rights to the author of a work, including the rights to copy, modify,
and distribute the work (the “reproductive,” “adaptative,” and “distribution” rights).
The idea of “copyleft” is to willfully revoke the exclusivity of those rights under certain terms and
conditions, so that anyone can copy and distribute the work or properly attributed derivative works,
while all copies remain under the same terms and conditions as the original.
The intent of this license is to be a general “copyleft” that can be applied to any kind of work that has
protection under copyright. This license states those certain conditions under which a work published
under its terms may be copied, distributed and modified.
Whereas “design science” is a strategy for the development of artifacts as a way to reform the environ-
ment (not people) and subsequently improve the universal standard of living, this Design Science License
was written and deployed as a strategy for promoting the progress of science and art through reform of
the environment.
1. DEFINITIONS.
“License” shall mean this Design Science License. The License applies to any work which contains a
notice placed by the work’s copyright holder stating that it is published under the terms of this Design
Science License.
“Work” shall mean such an aforementioned work. The License also applies to the output of the Work,
only if said output constitutes a “derivative work” of the licensed Work as defined by copyright law.
“Object Form” shall mean an executable or performable form of the Work, being an embodiment of the
Work in some tangible medium.
“Source Data” shall mean the origin of the Object Form, being the entire, machine-readable, preferred
form of the Work for copying and for human modification (usually the language, encoding or format in
which composed or recorded by the Author); plus any accompanying files, scripts or other data necessary
for installation, configuration or compilation of the Work.
(Examples of “Source Data” include, but are not limited to, the following: if the Work is an image file
composed and edited in PNG format, then the original PNG source file is the Source Data; if the Work is
an MPEG 1.0 layer 3 digital audio recording made from a WAV format audio file recording of an analog
source, then the original WAV file is the Source Data; if the Work was composed as an unformatted
plaintext file, then that file is the Source Data; if the Work was composed in LaTeX, the LaTeX file(s)
and any image files and/or custom macros necessary for compilation constitute the Source Data.)
“Author” shall mean the copyright holder(s) of the Work.
The individual licensees are referred to as “you.”
2. RIGHTS AND COPYRIGHT.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

The Work is copyright the Author. All rights to the Work are reserved by the Author, except as specifi-
cally described below. This License describes the terms and conditions under which the Author permits
you to copy, distribute and modify copies of the Work.
In addition, you may refer to the Work, talk about it, and (as dictated by “fair use”) quote from it, just as
you would any copyrighted material under copyright law.
Your right to operate, perform, read or otherwise interpret and/or execute the Work is unrestricted; how-
ever, you do so at your own risk, because the Work comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY—see Section
7 (“NO WARRANTY”) below.
3. COPYING AND DISTRIBUTION.
Permission is granted to distribute, publish or otherwise present verbatim copies of the entire Source
Data of the Work, in any medium, provided that full copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty, where
applicable, is conspicuously published on all copies, and a copy of this License is distributed along with
the Work.
Permission is granted to distribute, publish or otherwise present copies of the Object Form of the Work,
in any medium, under the terms for distribution of Source Data above and also provided that one of the
following additional conditions are met:
(a) The Source Data is included in the same distribution, distributed under the terms of this License; or
(b) A written offer is included with the distribution, valid for at least three years or for as long as the
distribution is in print (whichever is longer), with a publicly-accessible address (such as a URL on the
Internet) where, for a charge not greater than transportation and media costs, anyone may receive a copy
of the Source Data of the Work distributed according to the section above; or
(c) A third party’s written offer for obtaining the Source Data at no cost, as described in paragraph (b)
above, is included with the distribution. This option is valid only if you are a non-commercial party, and
only if you received the Object Form of the Work along with such an offer.
You may copy and distribute the Work either gratis or for a fee, and if desired, you may offer warranty
protection for the Work.
The aggregation of the Work with other works that are not based on the Work—such as but not limited
to inclusion in a publication, broadcast, compilation, or other media—does not bring the other works in
the scope of the License; nor does such aggregation void the terms of the License for the Work.

4. MODIFICATION.
Permission is granted to modify or sample from a copy of the Work, producing a derivative work, and
to distribute the derivative work under the terms described in the section for distribution above, provided
that the following terms are met:
(a) The new, derivative work is published under the terms of this License.
(b) The derivative work is given a new name, so that its name or title cannot be confused with the Work,
or with a version of the Work, in any way.
(c) Appropriate authorship credit is given: for the differences between the Work and the new deriva-
tive work, authorship is attributed to you, while the material sampled or used from the Work remains
attributed to the original Author; appropriate notice must be included with the new work indicating the
nature and the dates of any modifications of the Work made by you.
5. NO RESTRICTIONS.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the Work or any of its derivative works beyond those
restrictions described in this License.
6. ACCEPTANCE.
Copying, distributing or modifying the Work (including but not limited to sampling from the Work in a
new work) indicates acceptance of these terms. If you do not follow the terms of this License, any rights
granted to you by the License are null and void. The copying, distribution or modification of the Work
outside of the terms described in this License is expressly prohibited by law.
If for any reason, conditions are imposed on you that forbid you to fulfill the conditions of this License,
you may not copy, distribute or modify the Work at all.
If any part of this License is found to be in conflict with the law, that part shall be interpreted in its
broadest meaning consistent with the law, and no other parts of the License shall be affected.
7. NO WARRANTY.
THE WORK IS PROVIDED “AS IS,” AND COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, EX-
PRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, INCLUDING BUT
NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
8. DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, IN-
DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUD-
ING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS
OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON
ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (IN-
CLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
WORK, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

C.2 Applying Copyleft to Your Work

The underlying idea of free software is to help create a society where people are free, where we have
freedom, and where we can share our work with others; but software is just one part of the digital
information we work with and share in our lives.
The Design Science License is a generalized “copyleft” license that can be applied to any kind of
work that is recognized by copyright law. You can use it to copyleft (make “Open Source”) any kind of
work, not just a computer software program.
In order to copyleft a work, it must exist in machine-readable form (where identical copies can be
made without harm to the original), and you must be its copyright holder. If you are the author of a work,
then you automatically hold its copyright; you don’t need to register your work with the copyright office
(http://www.loc.gov/copyright/faq.html).
To apply the DSL to your work, do the following:
¯ Use the following text for the work’s copyright notice, substituting Year and Author for their ap-
propriate values:
­
Copyright c Year Your Name ; this information may be copied,
distributed or modified under certain terms and conditions, but it
comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; see the Design Science License for more
details.
¯ Include a copy of the DSL with the distribution of the work.
¯ Include the source data of the work (see the license text itself for the precise definition) with the
distribution, or make it available through postal mail for a cost not greater than storage media and
postage.
In many cases, the source data and the object form of a work will be the same—this is the case for
software programs written in the Perl language, for example. But often, the source data will differ
from a given object form. For example, when the object form is an MP3 format file made from a
WAV format sample of an analog source, the WAV sample is the source data. For a cropped and
manipulated JPEG file of a photograph obtained from a Kodak PhotoCD, the original PhotoCD file
is the source data.
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

By copylefting your work in this manner, you can make it available for the benefit of everyone—
all copies and modifications of your work remain as equally free as the original—while attribution and
artistic integrity is guaranteed.
If you are interested in applying copyleft to your works, you might be interested in the following
sites:
¯ “Copyleft and the Information Renaissance” (http://dsl.org/copyleft/), a general copy-
left primer and collection of resources, written and maintained by the author.
¯ Free Music Philosophy (http://ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html), on the
free music movement, by Dr. Ram Samudrala.
¯ “What is Copyleft?” (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/), an explanation of copyleft as it
applies to computer software programs, by the GNU Project.
Program Index

. cdinfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
.bash_logout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 cdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
.bash_profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 cdlabelgen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
.bashrc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 cdparanoia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
cdpause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
cdplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
9 cdrecord. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
9wm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 cdstop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
cdtool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
ce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
A chcase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Abbrev mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 chgrp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
addgroup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 chmod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 78
adduser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33, 318 chrony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
ae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 ci . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
afterstep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 clear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 43
alias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 cmp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
amaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 co . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
amixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 col . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 combine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195, 196
animate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 comm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
aplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 consolechars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 36, 37, 38 convert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196, 204
apt-get . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 cooledit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
arena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 cp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68, 72
ascii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 crontab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
aumix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 cse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
aview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 cutup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
cvs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

B
balsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
D
banner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157, 178 dadadodo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
bash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33, 149 dap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
bbdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
bc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 dc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
biff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 dedit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
bitchx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 del . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
BitchX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 df . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
bitmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 dia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
browser-history. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 diction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127, 128
diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91, 134
diff3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
C dig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
cal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 187, 194, 272, 273, 288
calc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261, 265 dissociated-press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254, 255, 256 dome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
can . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 dpkg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 316
cat . . 72, 101, 103, 116, 133, 139, 145, 151, 157, 178, 201, drgeo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
263, 320 dselect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
cd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62, 63 dtm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
cd-circleprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 du. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87, 233
cdda2wav. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 dvips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168, 172, 205, 240
cdeject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 dynamic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

E GNOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 285

echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 gnucash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
ed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 gnuplot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
ee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 gnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283, 304
efax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 gpm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
efix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 gramofile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
electric. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 grep . . . . . 26, 40, 71, 81, 84, 126, 128, 134, 139, 147, 148,
elm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279, 283 151, 153, 168, 249, 257
elvis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 groff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157, 173
emacs. . . 107, 108, 109, 111, 124, 134, 137, 143, 154, 254, groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
257, 258, 294 gs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159, 205, 209, 241, 242, 243, 273
Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135, 142, 239, 290 gunzip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 gv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183, 184
enscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 289, 295 gzip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84, 92
epic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
EPIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
expand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
H
express . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 hcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
hdel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101, 102
F hformat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 hfsutils. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
faxon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
fe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 hls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
festival. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 hmount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246, 247
fg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 hostname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 33, 36, 299
figlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34, 163, 178 html2ps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89, 167, 168
filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81, 84, 87
I
finger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306, 307 idraw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
flyspell-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Image Magick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
fmt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139, 140, 151 imgsizer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
fonter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 import . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
freax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
free . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 ins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
freeamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 irssi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
freedraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 ispell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122, 124
frm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 ivtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
fromdos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
ftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
J
fvwm2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 49, 55, 56 jed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
fvwm95. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
joe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

G
Galeon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 K
gawk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 kali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
gfont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 KDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
gfontview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 kerberos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
ghostview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159, 183, 205 kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
gimp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198, 204 knews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 kraut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
L mtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 319 mutt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
latex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168, 169, 170, 172 mv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68, 72
leave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 mxv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
less . . . 37, 91, 99, 100, 102, 128, 145, 155, 214, 257, 279,
289, 295
licq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 N
linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
ln . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 nano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
locate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 netpbm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
logout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 36 nl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
look . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126, 127 nmh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
lpq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 nn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
lpr . . . . . . 141, 163, 168, 170, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 243 nngrep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
lprm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 notlame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
ls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43, 63, 64, 65, 67, 72, 76, 77, 86, 87, 235 number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
lynx . . . . . 73, 115, 128, 153, 169, 276, 288, 289, 290, 292,
295
lyx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169, 239
O
oclock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
openssh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299, 301
M
m4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
magicfilter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 P
mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256, 259, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279
mailx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 28, 104, 157, 243 passwd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
maplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
mc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 pcdtoppm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
mcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 pdf2ps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
mdel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 perl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116, 136, 153
mdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 peruser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 ping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305, 307
mesg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
messages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
playmidi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
metamail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
metasend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 plog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
mew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 poff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
mformat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 pon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
mh-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
micq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 ppmquant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
minicom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 pr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140, 141, 142, 143, 295
miscfiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 ps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 39
mkdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 ps2pdf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172, 209
mkisofs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 psbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
mogrify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189, 192, 194
psmerge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
montage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
psnup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
moonlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 psresize. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
mount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235, 236 psselect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
mozilla . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 73, 183, 187, 283, 285, 287, 304 pstoascii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
mp3asm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 psutils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
mpg321 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215, 230 pwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62, 63
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

R T
random . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 tac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
rcs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 tail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
talk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
rdjpgcom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
tar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
rec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 ted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
rel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 telnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299, 300
remembrance-agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 tex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167, 168, 169, 170
rev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 texinfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
rlog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Texinfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
rm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70, 72, 84 the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
rmdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 timidity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
todos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
rxvt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62, 83, 89
tr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 134, 151
S tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
saytime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 twm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
scanimage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202, 203
sced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 U
script. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 ul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
sdiff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 umount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235, 236
sed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102, 103, 116, 139, 140, 153 uname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
seq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 unexpand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
sgml2html . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 unhtml . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
sgml2info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 uniq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121, 134
units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
sgml2latex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
uptime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 319
sgml2lyx. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
sgml2rtf. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
sgml2txt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 V
sgml2xml. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 vi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107, 114
sgmlcheck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 vim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
SGMLtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169, 170 vm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
sh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 vrfy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
showcfont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
showpicture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 W
shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
sigrot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
w3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Skipstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 w3m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
slrn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 wc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 87, 133, 134
snd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 weblint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 87, 121, 134, 144 wget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292, 293, 294
sox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226, 228, 230 whatis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
spell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121, 124, 127, 325 which . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88, 317
who . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 23
split . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
whoami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 27
startx. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 whois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127, 129, 133 wily . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
suggest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 wl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
sview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 wm2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
wn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125, 126 xli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
wnb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 xlsfonts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
word2x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248, 249 xmms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
workbone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 xmorph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
workman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 xpaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
write . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 xpaste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
wrjpgcom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 xpcd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187, 203
wterm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 xpdf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 242
xsetroot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
xterm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49, 54, 177, 240
X xwave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
X11R6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 xwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
xbiff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 xwud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
xcalc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
xcdroast. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
xchat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Y
Xchat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
ytalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
xclock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49, 52
xcolors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
xdm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
xdvi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168, 183
Z
xedit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 zcat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116, 170, 173
xemacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108, 109 zenirc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
XEmacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108, 290 ZenIRC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
xfd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 zgrep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152, 286
xfig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 zgv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
xfontsel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51, 176 zicq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
XFree86 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 zless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99, 170
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
Concept Index

$ Advanced Package Tool (“APT”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

$Id$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 airport city codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
$MAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 alias, making a command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
ALSA Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Amaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
* amplitude of a sound file, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
*scratch* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 anagrams, finding in text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
analyzing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
annotating an image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
. anonymous ftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
antonyms, of words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
.bashrc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
appending text to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
.xsession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55, 286
applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 22
applying copyleft to your work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
1 appointment file, making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
appointments, automatic delivery of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
1984 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 appointments, managing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
archives, creating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3 archives, extracting files from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
archives, file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
39 Steps, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 archives, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
archiving an entire Web site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
archiving part of a Web site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
A Arena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
a safe way to remove a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
abbreviations, a list of common . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 arithmetic calculation, making a quick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
abbreviations, making in Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 arithmetic calculations, making many . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
AbiWord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 arithmetic, calculating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
absolute file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 arranging PostScript pages in signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
accent characters, inserting in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 ascii art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
access modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 ascii art, viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
accounts and privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 ASCII character chart, viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 ASCII character set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
active client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 aspect ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
active job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 assumptions, scope and exclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
adding borders to an image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 AT&T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
adding chorus to a sound file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 AT&T UNIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
adding echo to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 atlases, online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
adding flange to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 attachments, mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
adding line breaks to text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 attributes, listing file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
adding margins to text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
adding members to a group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 audio cd applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
adding parameters to image tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 audio CD, displaying information about an . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
adding phase to a sound file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 audio CD-Rs, writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
adding reverb to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 audio CDs, controlling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
adding to your path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 audio CDs, ejecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
adding Vibro-Champ effects to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 audio CDs, pausing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
additional directory listing options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 audio CDs, playing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
additional image viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 audio CDs, shuffling tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
additional PostScript output options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 audio CDs, stopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
adjusting the audio controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 audio compact discs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
adjusting the colors of an image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 audio controls, adjusting the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
administrating users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 audio devices, muting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
administrative issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 audio recording source, selecting an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Adobe Type 1 fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 audio settings, listing the current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

author, contacting the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 carbon copies, sending in mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

authorization, viewing a site that requires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 caret, in regexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
automatic appointment delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 carriage returns, replacing with linefeeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Case Western Reserve University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
cassette labels, PostScript template for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
B CD, sampling sound from a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
background and history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 CD-R, writing an audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
background jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 CD-ROM drives, letting users mount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
background, putting a job in the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 CD-ROM, mounting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
backups, making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 CD-ROM, unmounting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
bang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 CD-ROMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
base file name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 changing directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
basic commands and concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 changing file modification time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
basic Emacs editing keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 changing file names to lowercase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
bass, adjusting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 changing the amplitude of a sound file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
BBS, connecting to a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 changing the ownership of a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
bell character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 changing the permissions of a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Bell Labs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 changing the root window parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Biff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 changing the sampling rate of a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
binaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 changing the shell prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
changing the size of an image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
changing the volume level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Bluefish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
changing to the last directory you visited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
booklet, arranging a PostScript document in a. . . . . . . . . . 208
changing to your home directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
booklets, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
changing your password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
booting the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Chao, Buwei Yang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
borders, adding to images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
character chart, viewing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Bourne, Steve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
characters, counting in a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Browne, Christopher B. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
characters, quoting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
browsing directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
chatting directly with a user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
browsing files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
chatting with other users. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
browsing image collections in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
chatting with users on ICQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
browsing images in a console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
chatting with users on IRC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
browsing PhotoCD archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
CheapBytes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
browsing text, options available while . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
checking grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
browsing the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
checking in a file revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
browsing the Web in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
checking out a file revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
browsing tips, for Mozilla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 checking SGML document syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
BSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 checking text for difficult sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 checking text for doubled words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Bulletin Board System (BBS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 checking text for long sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Burroughs, William S.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 checking text for misused phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
checking text for readability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
checking whether a system is online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
C checking whether a user is online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Cable Modem Providers HOWTO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Chet’s Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
calculating arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 choosing a newsreader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
calendar file, making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 choosing a window manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
calendar files, including . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 choosing the perfect text editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
calendar, displaying a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 choosing the right typesetting system for the job . . . . . . . 157
calendar, displaying in Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 chorus, adding to a sound file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 clearing the screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
calling out on a modem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 clients, X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
cancelling a print job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 color directory listing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
capture logs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 color map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
color reduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 converting a PhotoCD image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
colors, window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 converting an amount between units of measurement . . . 264
columns, placing text in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 converting an Arabic numeral to English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
combining images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
combining PostScript documents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 converting HTML to another format. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
combining PostScript pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 converting images between formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
command history. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 converting Microsoft Word files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
command line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 converting MP3 file to another format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
command line editing, keys for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 converting numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
command, finding the location of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
command, mailing the output of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 converting plain text for output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
command, repeating the last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 converting PostScript. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
command, running a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 converting PostScript to PDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
command, running on a delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 converting PostScript to plain text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
commands available while perusing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 converting sound files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
commands, listing usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
commands, making aliases for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 converting text files between DOS and Linux . . . . . . . . . . 248
commands, piping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 converting to and from fax format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
commands, running a list of. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 converting Word to LaTeX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
commands, running on the files you find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 converting Word to plain text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
commands, specifying from your history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 cookbook approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
compact discs, audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Cooledit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
comparing files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 copying files and directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
completion, tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 copying files to and from a DOS disk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
compressed files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 copying files to and from a Macintosh disk . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
compressed files, matching lines in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 copyleft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 323
compressing a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
concatenating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 copyleft, applying to your work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
concordance, making of a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Cosmo, Gregory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Concurrent Versions System (CVS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 counting how many messages you have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
configuring X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 counting lines per page in Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
connecting to another system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 counting text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
connecting to another system with encryption . . . . . . . . . . 301
connecting to the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 counting the characters in a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
console basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 counting the lines in a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
console font, displaying the characters in a . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 counting the occurrences of something . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
console font, setting the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 counting the words in a text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
console fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 creating a file archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
console manipulation, keys for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
console text, scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 cron jobs, scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
console, browsing images in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 cross-platform conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
console, emulating in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 current directory, getting the name of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
consoles, switching between . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 current working directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
contact manager database, keeping a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 customizing future shells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
contact managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
contexts, finding patterns in certain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 customizing your shell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
control characters, inserting in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 cut-ups, making in emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
control characters, showing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 cut-ups, making random word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
controlling a PPP connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 cut-ups, making simple text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
controlling access to files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 cut-ups, text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
controlling cd audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
controlling power to the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 cutting out part of a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
conventions, typographical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 cutting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
conversions, cross-platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 CVS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

D directories, renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
DAP (Digital Audio Processor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 directory listings, finding files in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
data CDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 directory tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
date, displaying the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 directory tree, finding files in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Davis, John E. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 directory tree, making a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Debian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
directory, changing to the last one you visited . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Debian GNU/Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 directory, finding the largest files in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Debian package, installing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 directory, finding the smallest files in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Debian package, upgrading a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 disk storage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Debian, getting and installing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 disk usage, listing a file’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Debian, what version am I running? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 disk, listing the free space on a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
decompressing a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
diskettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
DEdit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
disks, floppy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
definitions, of words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
delay, running a command on a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 displaying a calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
deleting files and directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 displaying a calendar in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
deleting files on a DOS disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 displaying information about an audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
deleting files on a Macintosh disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 displaying information about the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
deleting mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 displaying the characters in a console font . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Dell Computer Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
displaying the characters in an X font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Design Science License (DSL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 displaying the date and time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 distribution, defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
desktop environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 document processing, with LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
desktop, moving around the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Document Type Definition (DTD). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
destroying a window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 documentation, system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
determining file type and format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
domain name, listing the owner of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
determining the ownership of a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
determining whether two files differ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 domain record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
DFSG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 DOS disk, copying files to and from a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
dialects, outputting text in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 DOS disk, deleting files on a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
DICT Development Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 DOS disk, formatting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
diction, checking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 DOS disk, listing the contents of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
DOS disk, using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
dictionaries, online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
dictionary, personal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 DOS text files, converting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
dictionary, searching for words in the. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 dot files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
difference report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 double-spacing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
difference report, patching a file with a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 doubled words, checking text for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 downloading a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
directories, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
drives, letting users mount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
directories, copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
DSL (Design Science License) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
directories, finding the largest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
directories, finding the smallest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 DSL HOWTO for Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
directories, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 DTD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
directories, listing hidden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Duggan, Angus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
directories, listing in color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Duke of URL, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315, 321
directories, listing options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 DVI file, preparing for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
directories, listing tree graphs of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
DVI file, previewing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
directories, making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
directories, moving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 DVI files, printing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
directories, naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 DVI pages, extracting to PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
directories, removing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Dvips, printing with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
E extracting DVI pages to PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
echo area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 extracting files from an archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
echo, adding to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 extracting pages from a PostScript file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
editing images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 extracting PhotoCD images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
editing images with the GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
editing sound files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
editing streams of text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
F
editing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 fancy headers, outputting text with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
edition of the Cookbook, latest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Fannin, David . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
editors, text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
effects, sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 fax format, converting to and from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
ejecting an audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 fax, receiving a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
electronic mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 fax, sending a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
elements of an SGML document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 faxes, receiving automatically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Elements of Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 faxing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
eliminating extra spaces in text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 features of LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33, 107, 108, 143, 283, 294 Festival. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Emacs diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 FILE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Emacs, basic editing keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 file archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Emacs, browsing the Web in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 file attributes, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Emacs, counting lines per page in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 file compression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Emacs, displaying a calendar in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 file formats, sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Emacs, getting acquainted with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 file modification time, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Emacs, inserting special characters in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 file names, changing to lowercase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Emacs, listing relevant files in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 file names, specifying with patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Emacs, making abbreviations in. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 file ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Emacs, making cut-ups in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 file permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Emacs, printing in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 file revisions, checking in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Emacs, recording and running macros in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 file revisions, checking out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Emacs, searching and replacing in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 file, appending text to a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Emacs, searching for a phrase in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 file, changing the ownership of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Emacs, searching for a regexp in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 file, changing the permissions of a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Emacs, searching incrementally in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 file, determining the ownership of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Emacs, searching text in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 file, inserting text at the beginning of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Emacs, spell checking in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 file, listing disk usage of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 file, listing the permissions of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
email addresses, verifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 file, mailing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
email reminders, sending yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 file, making a private . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
email signature, making an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 file, making a public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
empty file, making an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 file, making an executable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
empty files, finding in a directory tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 file, perusing a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Encapsulated PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 file, redirecting error messages to a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
encryption, connecting to another system with . . . . . . . . . 301 file, redirecting input to a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
envelopes, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 file, redirecting output to a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
EPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 file, saving a URL to a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
EPS file, previewing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57, 59
errata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 files and directories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
error messages, redirecting to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 files, archiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
etext . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 files, browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
event number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 files, comparing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
event, history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 files, compressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
exclusions to the Cookbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 files, controlling access to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
execute permission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 files, converting Microsoft Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
expansions, file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 files, copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

files, creating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 finding all files that match a pattern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

files, creating an archive of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 finding anagrams in text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
files, decompressing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 finding files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
files, determining type and format of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 finding files by multiple criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
files, determining whether two differ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 finding files in a directory tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
files, dot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 finding files in a directory tree by modification time . . . . . 83
files, downloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 finding files in a directory tree by name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
files, executable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 finding files in a directory tree by owner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
files, finding all that match a pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 finding files in a directory tree by size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
files, finding in a directory tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 finding files in directory listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
files, finding in a directory tree by modification time. . . . . 83 finding newsgroups for a topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
files, finding in a directory tree by name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 finding palindromes in text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
files, finding in a directory tree by owner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 finding patterns in certain contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
files, finding in a directory tree by size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 finding phrases regardless of spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
files, finding in listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 finding prime factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
files, finding text in. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 finding the correct spelling of a word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
files, finding the differences between . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 finding the differences between files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
files, finding the largest in a directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 finding the host name of an IP address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
files, finding the number of in a listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 finding the IP address of a host name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
files, finding the smallest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 finding the largest directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
files, getting from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 finding the largest files in a directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
files, giving more than one name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 finding the number of files in a listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
files, hidden. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 finding the right tool for the job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
files, linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 finding the smallest directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
files, listing newest first . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 finding the smallest files in a directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
files, listing recursively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 finding where a command is located . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
files, listing the misspellings in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 fixed storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
files, making empty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
files, managing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 flange, adding to a sound file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
files, moving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 floppy disk, formatting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
files, naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 floppy disk, mounting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
files, perusing multiple text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 floppy disk, unmounting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
files, preparing for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 floppy disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
files, previewing print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 floppy drives, letting users mount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
files, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 floppy, permitting user access to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
files, read only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
files, removing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Flying Saucer Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
files, removing those with strange names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 folders, LaTeX templates for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
files, renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 font tools, other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
files, renaming multiple. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 font, resizing in an xterm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
files, searching more than plain text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 font, selecting in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
files, sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 font, window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
files, sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
files, splitting into smaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 fonts, console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
files, touching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 fonts, in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
files, tracking revisions to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 fonts, printing text with. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
files, transferring large . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 fonts, text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
files, transferring with another system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 foreground jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
files, uploading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 foreground, putting a job in the. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
files, world readable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 format of recipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
files, world writable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 formatting a DOS disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
files, write-protecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 formatting a floppy disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
files, writing text to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 formatting a Macintosh disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 formatting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
filter, defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 formfeeds, inserting in a text file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
FQDN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 headers of a Web page, reading the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
frames, window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 53 headers, placing on text pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Free Journalism Dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 help facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Free Music Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 help files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
free software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 help files, reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Free Software Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 321 help, if you need more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
free-form address list, keeping a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Hessling Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Free-Net. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 hidden files, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
FreeAmp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Hierarchical File System (HFS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Freshmeat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 history. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Friedman, Noah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 history, command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
fstab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 history, of Linux and free software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
full path name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 history, specifying a command from your . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Fuller, R. Buckminster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 history, viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Hitchcock, Alfred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
holidays, including in your reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
G home directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
gamma correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 home directory, changing to. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
generating output from SGML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 horizontal text fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
getting acquainted with Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
getting and installing Debian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 host name of an IP address, finding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
getting files from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 hostname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
getting the name of the current directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 how long has the system been up?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Ghostscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205, 209 HOWTOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196, 204 HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157, 285
GIMP, editing images with the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 HTML mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
giving a file more than one name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 HTML validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
GNOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283, 296 HTML, converting to another format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
GNU Awk User’s Guide, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 HTML, writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
GNU Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Hurd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
GNU Info System, using the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 hypernyms, of words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
GNU Manifesto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
GNU Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 127, 321
GNU/Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 I
GnuCash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 IBM Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Gnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 ICQ, chatting with users on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
grammar and reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 if you need more help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
grammar, checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 image editors and tools, interactive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
GramoFile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 Image Magick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
graphic files, viewing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 image tags, adding parameters to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Greenspun, Philip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 image viewers, additional. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
group, listing the members of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 image, scanning an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
groups and how to work in them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
groups, adding members to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 images, adding borders to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
groups, listing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 images, adjusting colors of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Gysin, Brion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 images, annotating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
images, browsing in X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
images, changing the size of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
H images, combining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Haardt, Michael. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 images, combining in montages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
hard links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 images, converting between formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
hardware compatibility, Linux and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 images, editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
hardware peripherals, letting users access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 images, importing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
hat notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 images, morphing two together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

images, rotating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 K

images, scanning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 keeping a contact manager database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
images, transforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 keeping a free-form address list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
images, viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 keeping a spelling word list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
images, viewing in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 kernel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
importing images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 kernel, defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
INBOX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Kernighan, Brian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
include file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 keys for command line editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
keys for console manipulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
including holidays in your reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
killing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
including text files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Knuth, Donald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
inclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Kvaleberg, Egil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
ingredients to recipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
input levels, setting for audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 L
input line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 landscape orientation, outputting text in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
input, redirecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 language highlighting, outputting text with . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
input, redirecting output to another command’s . . . . . . . . . 37 lanscape orientation, PostScript pages in. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
inserting special characters in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 LaStrange, Tom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
inserting text at the beginning of a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 LaTeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143, 157, 167
LaTeX files, processing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
installing a Debian package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
LaTeX, determining format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
installing a shell script. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 LaTeX, writing documents with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
installing software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 learning more about LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
interactive image editors and tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 leave, reminding yourself when you have to . . . . . . . . . . . 259
interactive spell checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 less, searching text in. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Internet Relay Chat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 letting the shell complete what you type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
internet services, other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 letting users access hardware peripherals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
Internet, connecting to the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 letting users mount drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 lexicons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
IP address of a host name, finding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Licq. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
IP address, finding the host name of an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
line breaks, adding to text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
IRC Prelude, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 line printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
IRC, chatting with users on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 lines beginning with certain text, matching . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
is it a TEX or LaTeX file? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 lines ending with certain text, matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
ISO 8859-1 character set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 lines of a certain length, matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
ISP Hookup HOWTO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 lines per page, counting in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 lines, counting in a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
lines, matching that only contain certain characters . . . . . 151
lines, showing the ends of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
links. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
J Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Jan, Dr. Lee Su . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Linux and hardware compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
job number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Linux Gazette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
job, printing multiple copies of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 Linux Mandrake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
jobs, background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Linux Network Administrator’s Guide, The . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Linux resources on the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
jobs, foreground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Linux User Groups (LUGs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
jobs, killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Linux Weekly News. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
jobs, listing your . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Linux, what version am I running? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
jobs, managing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 listing a description of a program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
jobs, suspending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 listing a disk’s free space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Joy, Bill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 listing a file’s disk usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
listing a sequence of numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 M
listing all of a user’s processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Macintosh disk, copying files to and from a . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
listing all processes on the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Macintosh disk, deleting files on a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
listing available scanner devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Macintosh disk, formatting a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
listing available X fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Macintosh disk, listing the contents of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
listing directories in color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Macintosh disk, specifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
listing directories recursively. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Macintosh disk, using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
listing directories, options for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 macros, recording and running in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
listing directory tree graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Magnusson, Björn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
mail application, picking the right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
listing file attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
mail attachment, reading a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
listing hidden files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
mail attachment, sending a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
listing newest files first . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 mail attachments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
listing online system and user activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 mail folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
listing processes by name or number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 mail folder, viewing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
listing relevant files in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 mail notification, setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
listing system activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 mail user agents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
listing the antonyms of a word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 mail, counting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
listing the contents of a DOS disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 mail, deleting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
listing the contents of a Macintosh disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 mail, electronic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
listing the contents of an archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 mail, managing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
mail, options available while reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
listing the current audio settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
mail, receiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
listing the definitions of a word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
mail, seeing who yours is from. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
listing the groups a user belongs to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 mail, sending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
listing the hypernyms of a word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 mail, special composition keystrokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
listing the last times a user logged in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 mailing a user on the same system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
listing the members of a group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 mailing files or the output of commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
listing the Misspellings in a text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 mailing the contents of a URL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
listing the owner of a domain name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 maintaining a list of visited Web sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
listing the permissions of a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 making a command alias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
listing the synonyms of a word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 making a concordance of a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
listing the usage of a tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 making a directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
making a directory tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
listing user activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
making a file executable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
listing who is logged in to a system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
making a file private . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
listing who is on and what they’re doing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
making a file public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
listing who is on the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 making a quick arithmetic calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
listing words that match a pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 making a text banner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
listing your current processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 making a user account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
listing your jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 making abbreviations in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
listing your print jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 making an appointment file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
listing your username. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 making an email signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
logging in to the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 making an empty file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
logging out of the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 making an image montage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
login group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 making an MP3 file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
making and managing print jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Lucid Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
making cut-ups in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
LUGs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
making many arithmetic calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 making random word cut-ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
LyX document processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 making simple text cut-ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
LyX, features of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 man pages, preparing for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
LyX, learning more about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 managing appointments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
LyX, writing documents with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 managing files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

managing jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Mosaic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

managing mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 motd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
manipulating PostScript documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 mounting a CD-ROM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
manipulating PostScript pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 mounting a floppy disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
manipulating X client windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 moving a window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
manual pages, reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 moving around the desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
manual pages, searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 moving files and directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
margins, adding to text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Mozilla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 304
mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Mozilla browsing tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Massachusetts Institute of Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Mozilla, browsing the Web with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
matching lines beginning with certain text . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Mozilla, running from a script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
matching lines ending with certain text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 MP3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
matching lines in compressed files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 MP3 file, making an. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
matching lines in Web pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 MP3 file, playing an. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
matching lines of a certain length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 MP3, converting to another format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
matching lines that contain all of some regexps . . . . . . . . 150 MUAs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
matching lines that contain any of some regexps . . . . . . . 150 Multics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
matching lines that don’t contain a regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 multisession CD-Rs, burning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
matching lines that only contain certain characters . . . . . 151 Muss, Mike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
matching text patterns with regular expressions . . . . . . . . 148 muting an audio device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
math tools, other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
maximizing a window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 N
Maxwell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
National Weather Service, city codes for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
measurement, converting an amount between units of . . 264
NetBSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
members of a group, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
netnews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
menu bar, in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Netscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
message of the day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Network Time Protocol (NTP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
messages, counting how many you have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
messages, sending to another user’s terminal . . . . . . . . . . . 308
News Peruser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Metafont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
newsgroups, finding for a topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Micq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
newsreader, choosing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
micro-editing, text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
non-printing characters, showing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
microphone, selecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
notification for new mail, setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Microsoft Word files, converting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
numbering lines of text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Microsoft Word files, reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
numbers, converting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
MIDI file, playing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Midnight Commander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 107 numbers, listing a sequence of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Midnight Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 numeral, converting an Arabic to English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
MIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
minimizing a window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
O
Minix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 occurrences of something, counting the. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
mirroring an entire Web site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Ogg Vorbis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
mixers, audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 online dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
mixing sound files together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 Open Sound System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
MiXViews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 Open Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
mode line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Open Source Initiative (OSI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
modem, calling out on a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 open source software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
modem, permitting user access to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 OpenBSD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
monochrome, transforming color images to . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 opening a URL from a script. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
montages, making image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
more recipes for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 options available when paginating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
more Web browsers and tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 options available while browsing text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
morphing two images together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 options available while reading mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
options, long-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 patterns, finding in certain contexts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Orwell, George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 pausing an audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
OSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 PDF file, preparing for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
OSS/Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 PDF file, previewing a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
other audio CD applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 PDF, converting from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
other font tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 PDF, converting to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
other internet services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 PDF, from PostScript input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
other math tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Perens, Bruce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
other sound file tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 permissions, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
other tools for sound editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 permissions, file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
other word processors and typesetting systems . . . . . . . . . 173 permissions, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
output, redirecting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Perry, Bill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
outputting a beginning part of a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 personal dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
outputting a middle part of a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 perusing a text file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
outputting a random number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 perusing multiple text files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
outputting an ending part of a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 perusing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
outputting multiple copies of text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 perusing text from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
outputting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 perusing text, commands available while . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
outputting text as a poster or sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 phase, adding to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
outputting text in a dialect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Phillips, Dave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
outputting text in a font. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 PhotoCD archives, browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
outputting text in landscape orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 PhotoCD image, converting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
outputting text with fancy headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 PhotoCD image, removing haze from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
outputting text with language highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 PhotoCD images, extracting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
outputting the context of a search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 phrase, searching for a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
outputting the text between strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 phrases, checking text for misused . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Overwrite mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 phrases, finding regardless of spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
ownership of a file, changing the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 picking the right mail application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Picking Up Perl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
ownership of a file, determining the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Pico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
ownership, of files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
PID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
pilcrow sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
P Pimp A** Newsreader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Pine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
package, installing a Debian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 pipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
package, upgrading a Debian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 pipeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
page breaks, inserting in a text file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 placing headers on each page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
pager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 53 placing text in columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
pages, extracting from a PostScript file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 plans, viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
paginating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 playing a MIDI file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
paginating text, options available when . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 playing a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
paging through a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 playing an audible time announcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
paging through multiple files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 playing an audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
palindromes, finding in text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 playing an MP3 file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
passing special characters to commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
password, changing your . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Point-to-Point Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
password, choosing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 posters, outputting from text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
pasting a selection of sound. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205, 273
pasting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 PostScript document, arranging in a booklet . . . . . . . . . . . 208
patching a file with a difference report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 PostScript document, resizing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 PostScript documents, combining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
path name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 PostScript documents, manipulating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
path, adding to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 PostScript file, preparing for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
pattern, finding all files that match a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 PostScript file, previewing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
patterns, file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 PostScript output options, additional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

PostScript pages, arranging in signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 putting a job in the background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

PostScript pages, combining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 putting a job in the foreground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
PostScript pages, extracting from DVI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 putting an image in the root window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
PostScript pages, manipulating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
PostScript, converting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
PostScript, converting to PDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Q
PostScript, converting to plain text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 quantizing images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
PostScript, extracting pages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Quarter Century of UNIX, A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
power, controlling to the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 quoting characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
powering up the system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
PPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
PPP, controlling a connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 R
PPP, setting up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
random number, outputting a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
preparing a DVI file for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
RCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
preparing a man page for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
read permission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
preparing a PDF file for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
readability, checking text for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
preparing a PostScript file for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
preparing files for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 reading a mail attachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
pretty-printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 reading a page from the system manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
previewing a DVI file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 reading mail, options available while . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
previewing a PDF file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 reading system documentation and help files . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
previewing a PostScript file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 reading text from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
previewing print files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 reading the headers of a web page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
prime factors, finding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 reading Usenet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
print files, previewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 receiving a fax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
print job, cancelling a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 receiving faxes automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
print job, sending to the printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 receiving mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
print jobs, listing your . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 recipes, definition of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
print jobs, making and managing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 recipes, format of. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 recording a shell session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
printing in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 recording a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
printing multiple copies of a job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 recording and running macros in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
printing the contents of an Xterm window . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 recording source, selecting an audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
printing with Dvips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Red Hat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
printing, more recipes for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Red Hat Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
printing, preparing files for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 redirecting error messages to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
privileges, user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 redirecting input and output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
process ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 redirecting input to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 redirecting output to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
processes, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 redirecting output to another command’s input . . . . . . . . . . 37
processes, listing all of a user’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 reference files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
processes, listing all on the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 reference, tools for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
processes, listing by name or number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 regexp, matching lines that don’t contain a. . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
processes, listing your current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 regexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
processing LaTeX files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 regexps for common situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
processing TEX files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 regexps, matching lines that contain all of some . . . . . . . . 150
Procomm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 regexps, matching lines that contain any of some . . . . . . . 150
productivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 regexps, searching for in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
program, listing a description of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 regexps, using a list to match from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
programs, starting in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 register labels, LaTeX templates for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
proprietary formats, converting data from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 regular expressions—matching text patterns . . . . . . . . . . . 148
PS1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 relevant text, finding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
PSUtils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
purpose of the book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 reminders, including holidays in your . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
reminding yourself of things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 scanner devices, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
reminding yourself when you have to leave . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 scanner, testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
removable storage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 scanning an image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
removing a file with a strange name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 scanning images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
removing files and directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 scope of the Cookbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
removing files, a safe way to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 screen shot, taking in a console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
removing PhotoCD haze. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 screen shots, in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
renaming multiple files with the same extension . . . . . . . . . 69 screen shots, taking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
repeated words, checking text for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 scrolling the console text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
repeating the last command you typed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 searching and replacing in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
replacing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 searching and replacing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
resizing a PostScript document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 searching for a phrase in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
resizing a window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 searching for a regexp in Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
resizing the xterm font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 searching for a word or phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
reverb, adding to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 searching incrementally in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
reverse incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 searching more than plain text files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
reversing a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 searching text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
reversing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 searching text in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Revision Control System (RCS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 searching text in less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
revision log, viewing a file’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 searching, outputting context while . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
revisions, tracking to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 seascape orientation, PostScript pages in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Rexx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 seeing who your mail is from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
rhyme, listing words that . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 selecting an audio recording source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
ripping sound from a CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 selecting an X font name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Ritchie, Dennis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 selecting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
rolodexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 selecting the pages of text to output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 sending a fax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
sending a mail attachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
root account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
sending a message to another user’s terminal. . . . . . . . . . . 308
root directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
sending a print job to the printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
root window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
sending mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
root window parameters, changing the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
sending mail to a user on the same system . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
root window, putting an image in the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
sending yourself email reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
rotating an image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
sentences, checking text for difficult. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
RSVP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
sentences, checking text for long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
running a command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
session, recording a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
running a command on a delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
setting notification for new mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
running a list of commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
setting the console font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
running a shell in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 setting up PPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
running a Vi tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 SGML document, elements of an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
running commands on the files you find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 SGML, checking document syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
running X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 SGML, generating output from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
running x clients automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 SGMLtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Rutten, Rob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 SGMLtools, writing documents with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
shell prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
shell prompt, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
S shell redirection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
SAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 shell script, installing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Salus, Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 shell scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
sampling rate of a sound file, changing the . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 shell session, recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
sampling sound from a CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 shell, customizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Samudrala, Ram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 shell, running in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
SANE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 shells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
saving a URL to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 showing non-printing characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
scaling image size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 shuffling audio CD tracks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

shutting down the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 staircase effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

signature file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Stallman, Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 108
signatures, PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 standard error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
signs, outputting from text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 standard input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
single-spacing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 standard output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 37
Slackware Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 StarOffice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Slashdot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 start menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
sleeping process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 starting X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Snd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 StarWriter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
soft links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Stettner, Heidi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
software, installing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 sticky windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
software, listing those that match a keyword. . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 stopping a job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
sorting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 stopping an audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
sorting text in order of relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 stopping X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 storage, disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
sound editing, other tools for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 streaming MP3 audio, playing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
sound effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 streaming text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
sound file formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
sound file tools, other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 streams, text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
sound file, cutting out part of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 strings, outputting the text between. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
sound file, playing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 strings, text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
sound file, recording a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Strunk, William . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
sound file, reversing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
style, checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
sound files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
subdirectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
sound files, converting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
superuser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
sound files, editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
superuser account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
sound files, mixing together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
SuSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
sound files, working with selections from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
SuSE Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
sound, pasting a selection of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
suspending a connection with another system . . . . . . . . . . 300
sound, sampling from a CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
suspending a job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
soundcard, permitting user access to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
swapping tab and space characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Sourceforge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
switching between consoles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
space and tab characters, swapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
spaces, eliminating extra in text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 switching between video modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
spacing text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 symbolic links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
spacing, finding phrases regardless of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 symlinks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 synergy, defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
special characters, inserting in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 synonyms, of words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
special characters, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 system activity, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
special characters, passing to commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 system dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
special mail composition keystrokes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 system manual, reading a page from the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
specifying a command from your history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 system, checking whether one is online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
specifying additional window attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 system, connecting to another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
specifying file names with patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 system, connecting to another with encryption . . . . . . . . . 301
specifying the Macintosh disk to use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 system, controlling power to the. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
specifying window colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 system, displaying information about the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
specifying window font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 system, how long has it been up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
specifying window size and location. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 system, listing who is logged in to a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
spell checking files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 system, listing who is on the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
spell checking in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 system, logging in to the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
spell checking, interactive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 system, logging out of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 system, powering up the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
spelling, keeping a word list for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 system, shutting down the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
splitting a file into smaller ones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 system, suspending a connection with another . . . . . . . . . 300
spool queue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 systems, listing activity of online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
T text, finding palindromes in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
tab and space characters, swapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 text, formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
tab characters, showing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 text, from PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
tab completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 text, inserting at the beginning of a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
taking a screen shot in a console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 text, listing the Misspellings in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
taking a screen shot in x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 text, making a concordance of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
text, matching lines beginning with certain . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
taking screen shots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
text, matching lines ending with certain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
tarballs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
text, numbering lines of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
telephone codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
text, outputting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
teletype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
text, outputting a beginning part of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Telix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
text, outputting a middle part of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
templates, TEX and LaTeX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
text, outputting an ending part of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
text, outputting in a dialect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
testing a scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
text, outputting in a font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
TeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
text, outputting in landscape orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
TEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
text, outputting multiple copies of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
TEX and LaTeX document templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
text, outputting that between strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
TEX Catalogue Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
text, outputting with fancy headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
TEX files, processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
text, outputting with language highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
TEX, determining format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
text, paginating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
TEX, writing documents with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
text, pasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Texinfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 text, perusing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 text, perusing from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
text banner, making a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 text, placing in columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
text cut-ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 text, reading from the Web. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
text editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 text, reversing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
text editor, choosing a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 text, scrolling the console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
text files, converting between DOS and Linux. . . . . . . . . . 248 text, searching through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
text files, including . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 text, selecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
text fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 text, selecting the pages to output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
text fonts, horizonal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 text, single-spacing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
text relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 text, sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
text, adding line breaks to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 text, sorting in order of relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
text, adding margins to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 text, spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
text, analyzing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 text, streaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
text, appending to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 text, triple-spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
text, checking for difficult sentences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 text, underlining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
text, checking for doubled words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 text, writing to files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
text, checking for long sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 texts, finding the differences between . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
text, checking for misused phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 the shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
text, checking for readability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 the World Wide Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
text, concatenating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Third Mind, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
text, converting to PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Thompson, Ken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
text, counting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 tilde commands, in mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
text, counting the characters in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 time, audible output of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
text, counting the lines in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 time, displaying the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
text, counting the words in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 timestamps, file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
text, counting unique words in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 title bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 52, 53
text, cutting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 tool, finding the right one . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
text, determining if two differ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 tool, listing the usage of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
text, double-spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 22
text, editing streams of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 tools philosophy of Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
text, eliminating extra spaces in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Torvalds, Linus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
text, finding anagrams in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Toy Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

tracking revisions to a file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 using the GNU Info system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

transferring files with another system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
transforming images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
trashcan directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 V
treble, adjusting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 validating an HTML file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
tree graphs, of directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 variables, shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
triple-spacing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 verifying an email address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
tty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 versions, latest edition, and errata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
turning off the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Vi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33, 107
typescripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Vi, running a tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
typesetting and word processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Vibro-Champ effect, adding to a sound file . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
typesetting system, choosing the right one for the job. . . 157 video modes, switching between . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
typesetting with TEX and friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 video tape labels, PostScript template for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
typographical conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 viewing a character chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
viewing a file’s revision log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
viewing a mail folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
U viewing a site that requires authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
underlining text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113, 143 viewing an image from the Web. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
underscores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 viewing an image in a Web browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
units of measurement, converting an amount between . . 264 viewing an image in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
University of Southern California-Berkeley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 viewing images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
University of Washington. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 viewing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 10 viewing your command history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Unix and the tools philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 virtual consoles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
UNIX Environment, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 128 virtual desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
unmounting a CD-ROM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 visual image directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
unmounting a floppy disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 volume level, changing the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
unused files, finding in a directory tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 volume of a sound file, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
upgrading a Debian package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 volume, adjusting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
uploading a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 Vuksan, Vladimir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
URL, mailing the contents of a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
URL, saving to a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Usenet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 W
user account, making a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 Walker, Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 128
user accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Walker, Andy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
user activity, listing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Web browser, viewing an image in a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
user groups, for Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Web browsers and tools, more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
user privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Web browsing, with Mozilla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
user, chatting directly with a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Web page, reading the headers of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
user, checking whether one is online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 Web pages, matching lines in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
username . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Web resources, for Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
username, listing your . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Web site, archiving an entire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
users, administrating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 Web site, archiving part of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
users, chatting with on ICQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 Web site, mirroring an entire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
users, chatting with on IRC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Web sites, maintaining a history list of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
users, chatting with other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Web, browsing in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
users, listing activity of online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Web, getting files from the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
users, listing those online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Web, perusing text from the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
users, listing what they are doing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Web, reading text from the. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
users, listing when they last logged in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Web, viewing an image from the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
users, listing which are on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 what every Linux user knows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
using a list of regexps to match from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 what to try first. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
using DOS and Windows disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 what version of Debian am I running? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
using Macintosh disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 what version of Linux am I running? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
what’s Debian? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 World Wide Web (WWW) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
What’s Debian? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 World Wide Web Consortium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
what’s free software? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 write permission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
what’s Linux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 write protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
what’s Open Source? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 write-protecting a file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
what’s Unix? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Writer’s Workbench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Writer’s WorkBench (WBB) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Winamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 writing an audio CD-R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
window attributes, specifying additional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 writing documents with LyX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
window border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 52 writing documents with SGMLtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
window colors, specifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 writing documents with TEX and LaTeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
window font, specifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 writing HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
window geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 writing text to files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
window manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 WYSIWYM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
window managers, choosing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
window outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
window size and location, specifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 X
Windows disk, using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 X client. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
windows, deiconifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 X clients, manipulating windows of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
windows, destroying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 X clients, running automatically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
windows, iconifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 X font name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
windows, manipulating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 X font name, selecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
windows, maximizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 X font, displaying the characters in an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
windows, minimizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 X fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
windows, moving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 X fonts, listing available . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
windows, resizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 X selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115, 176
windows, sticky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 X server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
wizard, defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 X Window Dump files, viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
word lists and reference files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 X Window System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
word lists, for spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 X, configuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
word processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 X, starting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
word processors and typesetting systems, other . . . . . . . . 173 X, stopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
word search, in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 XEmacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Word, converting to LaTeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 XMMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Word, converting to plain text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 xterm font, resizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
word, finding the correct spelling of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Xterm window, printing the contents of an . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
word, listing the antonyms of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 XWave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
word, listing the definitions of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
word, listing the hypernyms of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
word, listing the synonyms of a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Y
word, searching for a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 yanking text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
WordNet lexical database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
words, counting in a text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
words, listing that match a pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Z
workbench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Zawinski, Jamie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137, 173
working with linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Zicq. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
working with selections from sound files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 zombie process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
Short Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PART ONE: Working with Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 What Every Linux User Knows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3 The Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4 The X Window System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
PART TWO: Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5 Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6 Sharing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
7 Finding Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
8 Managing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
PART THREE: Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
9 Viewing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
10 Text Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
11 Grammar and Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
12 Analyzing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
13 Formatting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
14 Searching Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
15 Typesetting and Word Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
16 Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
PART FOUR: Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
17 Viewing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
18 Editing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
19 Importing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
20 PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
PART FIVE: Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
21 Sound Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
22 Audio Compact Discs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
23 Editing Sound Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
PART SIX: Productivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
24 Disk Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
25 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
26 Cross-Platform Conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
27 Reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
28 Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
PART SEVEN: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use
29 Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
30 Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
31 The World Wide Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
32 Other Internet Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Appendix A Administrative Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Appendix B Linux Resources on the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Appendix C License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Program Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Format of Recipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Assumptions, Scope, and Exclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Typographical Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Versions, Latest Edition, and Errata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

PART ONE: Working with Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1 Background and History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.1 What’s Unix? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.2 What’s Free Software?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.1.3 What’s Open Source?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.1.4 What’s Linux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.1.5 What’s Debian? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.1.6 Unix and the Tools Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.2 What to Try First. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3 If You Need More Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2 What Every Linux User Knows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.1 Controlling Power to the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.1 Powering Up the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1.2 Shutting Down the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 Accounts and Privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.1 Logging In to the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.2 Logging Out of the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3 Console Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.1 Switching between Consoles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.2 Scrolling the Console Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3.3 Keys for Console Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4 Running a Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.5 Changing Your Password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.6 Listing User Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.6.1 Listing Your Username . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.6.2 Listing Who Is on the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.6.3 Listing Who Is on and What They’re Doing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.6.4 Listing the Last Times a User Logged In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.7 Listing System Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.7.1 Listing Your Current Processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.7.2 Listing All of a User’s Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.7.3 Listing All Processes on the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.7.4 Listing Processes by Name or Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.8 Help Facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.8.1 Finding the Right Tool for the Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.8.2 Listing a Description of a Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.8.3 Listing the Usage of a Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.8.4 Reading a Page from the System Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.8.5 Using the GNU Info System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.8.6 Reading System Documentation and Help Files . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
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3 The Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.1 Keys for Command Line Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.1.1 Passing Special Characters to Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.1.2 Letting the Shell Complete What You Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1.3 Repeating the Last Command You Typed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1.4 Running a List of Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2 Redirecting Input and Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2.1 Redirecting Input to a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2.2 Redirecting Output to a File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2.3 Redirecting Error Messages to a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2.4 Redirecting Output to Another Command’s Input . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3 Managing Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3.1 Suspending a Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.2 Putting a Job in the Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3.3 Putting a Job in the Foreground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3.4 Listing Your Jobs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3.5 Stopping a Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.4 Command History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.4.1 Viewing Your Command History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.4.2 Specifying a Command from Your History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.5 Recording a Shell Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.6 Customizing Your Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.6.1 Changing the Shell Prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.6.2 Making a Command Alias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.6.3 Adding to Your Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.6.4 Customizing Future Shells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

4 The X Window System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

4.1 Running X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1.1 Starting X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.1.2 Stopping X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.2 Running a Program in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.2.1 Specifying Window Size and Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.2.2 Specifying Window Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2.3 Specifying Window Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2.4 Specifying Additional Window Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.3 Manipulating X Client Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.3.1 Moving a Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.3.2 Resizing a Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3.3 Destroying a Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3.4 Minimizing a Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3.5 Maximizing a Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.4 Moving around the Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.5 Running a Shell in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.6 Configuring X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.6.1 Switching between Video Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.6.2 Running X Clients Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.6.3 Changing the Root Window Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.6.4 Choosing a Window Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

PART TWO: Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

5 Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.1 Naming Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.1.1 Making an Empty File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.1.2 Making a Directory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.1.3 Making a Directory Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.2 Changing Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.2.1 Changing to Your Home Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.2.2 Changing to the Last Directory You Visited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.2.3 Getting the Name of the Current Directory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3 Listing Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.3.1 Listing File Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.3.2 Listing Directories Recursively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.3.3 Listing Newest Files First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.3.4 Listing Hidden Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.3.5 Listing Directories in Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.3.6 Listing Directory Tree Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.3.7 Additional Directory Listing Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.4 Copying Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.5 Moving Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.5.1 Changing File Names to Lowercase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.5.2 Renaming Multiple Files with the Same Extension . . . . . . . . . 69
5.6 Removing Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.6.1 Removing a File with a Strange Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.6.2 A Safe Way to Remove a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.7 Giving a File More than One Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.8 Specifying File Names with Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.9 Browsing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

6 Sharing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.1 Groups and How to Work in Them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.1.1 Listing the Groups a User Belongs To . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.1.2 Listing the Members of a Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
6.2 File Ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
6.2.1 Determining the Ownership of a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
6.2.2 Changing the Ownership of a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
6.3 Controlling Access to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
6.3.1 Listing the Permissions of a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6.3.2 Changing the Permissions of a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
6.3.3 Write-Protecting a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
6.3.4 Making a File Private . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
6.3.5 Making a File Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
6.3.6 Making a File Executable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

7 Finding Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.1 Finding All Files That Match a Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.2 Finding Files in a Directory Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.2.1 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.2.2 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
7.2.3 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Modification Time . . . . 83
7.2.4 Finding Files in a Directory Tree by Owner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
7.2.5 Running Commands on the Files You Find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
7.2.6 Finding Files by Multiple Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
7.3 Finding Files in Directory Listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.3.1 Finding the Largest Files in a Directory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.3.2 Finding the Smallest Files in a Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.3.3 Finding the Smallest Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.3.4 Finding the Largest Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.3.5 Finding the Number of Files in a Listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
7.4 Finding Where a Command Is Located . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

8 Managing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8.1 Determining File Type and Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8.2 Changing File Modification Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8.3 Splitting a File into Smaller Ones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
8.4 Comparing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
8.4.1 Determining Whether Two Files Differ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
8.4.2 Finding the Differences between Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
8.4.3 Patching a File with a Difference Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
8.5 Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
8.5.1 Compressing a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
8.5.2 Decompressing a File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
8.6 File Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
8.6.1 Creating a File Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
8.6.2 Listing the Contents of an Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
8.6.3 Extracting Files from an Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
8.7 Tracking Revisions to a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
8.7.1 Checking In a File Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
8.7.2 Checking Out a File Revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
8.7.3 Viewing a File’s Revision Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

PART THREE: Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

9 Viewing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9.1 Perusing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9.1.1 Perusing a Text File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9.1.2 Perusing Multiple Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9.1.3 Commands Available While Perusing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
9.2 Outputting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
9.2.1 Showing Non-printing Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
9.2.2 Outputting a Beginning Part of a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
9.2.3 Outputting an Ending Part of a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
9.2.4 Outputting a Middle Part of a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
9.2.5 Outputting the Text between Strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.2.6 Outputting Text in a Dialect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.3 Streaming Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.4 Viewing a Character Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
10 Text Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
10.1 Choosing the Perfect Text Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
10.2 Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
10.2.1 Getting Acquainted with Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
10.2.2 Basic Emacs Editing Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
10.2.3 Making Abbreviations in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
10.2.4 Recording and Running Macros in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
10.2.5 Inserting Special Characters in Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
10.3 Running a Vi Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
10.4 Selecting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
10.4.1 Cutting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
10.4.2 Pasting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
10.5 Editing Streams of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
10.6 Concatenating Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
10.6.1 Writing Text to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
10.6.2 Appending Text to a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
10.6.3 Inserting Text at the Beginning of a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
10.7 Including Text Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

11 Grammar and Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

11.1 Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
11.1.1 Finding the Correct Spelling of a Word. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
11.1.2 Listing the Misspellings in a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
11.1.3 Keeping a Spelling Word List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
11.1.4 Interactive Spell Checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
11.1.5 Spell Checking in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
11.2 Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
11.2.1 Listing Words that Match a Pattern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
11.2.2 Listing the Definitions of a Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
11.2.3 Listing the Synonyms of a Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
11.2.4 Listing the Antonyms of a Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
11.2.5 Listing the Hypernyms of a Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
11.2.6 Online Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
11.3 Checking Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
11.3.1 Checking Text for Misused Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
11.3.2 Checking Text for Doubled Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
11.3.3 Checking Text for Readability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
11.3.4 Checking Text for Difficult Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
11.3.5 Checking Text for Long Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
11.4 Word Lists and Reference Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
 The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

12 Analyzing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

12.1 Counting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
12.1.1 Counting the Characters in a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
12.1.2 Counting the Words in a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
12.1.3 Counting the Lines in a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
12.1.4 Counting the Occurrences of Something . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
12.1.5 Counting Lines per Page in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
12.2 Making a Concordance of a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
12.3 Text Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
12.3.1 Sorting Text in Order of Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
12.3.2 Listing Relevant Files in Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
12.4 Finding Anagrams in Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
12.5 Finding Palindromes in Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
12.6 Text Cut-Ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
12.6.1 Making Simple Text Cut-Ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
12.6.2 Making Random Word Cut-Ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
12.6.3 Making Cut-Ups in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

13 Formatting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

13.1 Spacing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
13.1.1 Eliminating Extra Spaces in Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
13.1.2 Single-Spacing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
13.1.3 Double-Spacing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
13.1.4 Triple-Spacing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
13.1.5 Adding Line Breaks to Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
13.1.6 Adding Margins to Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
13.1.7 Swapping Tab and Space Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
13.2 Paginating Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
13.2.1 Placing Headers on Each Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
13.2.2 Placing Text in Columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
13.2.3 Options Available When Paginating Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
13.3 Underlining Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
13.4 Sorting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
13.5 Numbering Lines of Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
13.6 Reversing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

14 Searching Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

14.1 Searching for a Word or Phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
14.2 Regular Expressions—Matching Text Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
14.2.1 Matching Lines Beginning with Certain Text . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
14.2.2 Matching Lines Ending with Certain Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
14.2.3 Matching Lines of a Certain Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
14.2.4 Matching Lines That Contain Any of Some Regexps . . . . . 150
14.2.5 Matching Lines That Contain All of Some Regexps . . . . . . 150
14.2.6 Matching Lines That Don’t Contain a Regexp . . . . . . . . . . . 151
14.2.7 Matching Lines That Only Contain Certain Characters . . . 151
14.2.8 Finding Phrases Regardless of Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
14.2.9 Finding Patterns in Certain Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
14.2.10 Using a List of Regexps to Match From . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
14.2.11 Regexps for Common Situations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
14.3 Searching More than Plain Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
14.3.1 Matching Lines in Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
14.3.2 Matching Lines in Web Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
14.4 Outputting the Context of a Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
14.5 Searching and Replacing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
 14.6 Searching Text in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
14.6.1 Searching Incrementally in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
14.6.2 Searching for a Phrase in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
14.6.3 Searching for a Regexp in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
14.6.4 Searching and Replacing in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
14.7 Searching Text in Less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

15 Typesetting and Word Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

15.1 Choosing the Right Typesetting System for the Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
15.2 Converting Plain Text for Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
15.2.1 Outputting Text in a Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
15.2.2 Outputting Text as a Poster or Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
15.2.3 Outputting Text with Language Highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
15.2.4 Outputting Text with Fancy Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
15.2.5 Outputting Text in Landscape Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.2.6 Outputting Multiple Copies of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.2.7 Selecting the Pages of Text to Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.2.8 Additional PostScript Output Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.3 LyX Document Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
15.3.1 Features of LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
15.3.2 Writing Documents with LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
15.3.3 Learning More about LyX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
15.4 Typesetting with TEX and Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
15.4.1 Is It a TEX or LaTeX File? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.4.2 Processing TEX Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.4.3 Processing LaTeX Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.4.4 Writing Documents with TEX and LaTeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
15.4.5 TEX and LaTeX Document Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
15.5 Writing Documents with SGMLtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
15.5.1 Elements of an SGML Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
15.5.2 Checking SGML Document Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
15.5.3 Generating Output from SGML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
15.6 Other Word Processors and Typesetting Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

16 Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
16.1 X Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
16.1.1 Selecting an X Font Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
16.1.2 Listing Available X Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
16.1.3 Displaying the Characters in an X Font. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
16.1.4 Resizing the Xterm Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
16.2 Console Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
16.2.1 Setting the Console Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
16.2.2 Displaying the Characters in a Console Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
16.3 Text Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
16.3.1 Horizontal Text Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
16.3.2 Making a Text Banner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
16.4 Other Font Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

PART FOUR: Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

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17 Viewing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

17.1 Previewing Print Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
17.1.1 Previewing a DVI File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
17.1.2 Previewing a PostScript File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
17.1.3 Previewing a PDF File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
17.2 Viewing an Image in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
17.2.1 Browsing Image Collections in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
17.2.2 Putting an Image in the Root Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
17.3 Browsing Images in a Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
17.4 Viewing an Image in a Web Browser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
17.5 Browsing PhotoCD Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
17.6 Additional Image Viewers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

18 Editing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

18.1 Transforming Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
18.1.1 Changing the Size of an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
18.1.2 Rotating an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
18.1.3 Adjusting the Colors of an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
18.1.4 Annotating an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
18.1.5 Adding Borders to an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
18.1.6 Making an Image Montage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
18.1.7 Combining Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
18.1.8 Morphing Two Images Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
18.2 Converting Images between Formats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
18.3 Editing Images with the GIMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
18.4 Interactive Image Editors and Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

19 Importing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

19.1 Taking Screen Shots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
19.1.1 Taking a Screen Shot in X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
19.1.2 Taking a Screen Shot in a Console . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
19.2 Scanning Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
19.2.1 Listing Available Scanner Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
19.2.2 Testing a Scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
19.2.3 Scanning an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
19.3 Extracting PhotoCD Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
19.3.1 Converting a PhotoCD Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
19.3.2 Removing PhotoCD Haze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

20 PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
20.1 Manipulating PostScript Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
20.1.1 Extracting DVI Pages to PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
20.1.2 Extracting Pages from a PostScript File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
20.1.3 Combining PostScript Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
20.1.4 Arranging PostScript Pages in Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
20.2 Manipulating PostScript Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
20.2.1 Resizing a PostScript Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
20.2.2 Combining PostScript Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
20.2.3 Arranging a PostScript Document in a Booklet . . . . . . . . . . 208
20.3 Converting PostScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
20.3.1 Converting PostScript to PDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
20.3.2 Converting PostScript to Plain Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

PART FIVE: Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

21 Sound Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
21.1 Sound File Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
21.2 Adjusting the Audio Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
21.2.1 Listing the Current Audio Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
21.2.2 Changing the Volume Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
21.2.3 Muting an Audio Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
21.2.4 Selecting an Audio Recording Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
21.3 Playing a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
21.3.1 Playing an MP3 File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
21.3.2 Playing a MIDI File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
21.4 Recording a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
21.5 Other Sound File Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

22 Audio Compact Discs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

22.1 Controlling CD Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
22.1.1 Playing an Audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
22.1.2 Pausing an Audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
22.1.3 Stopping an Audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
22.1.4 Shuffling Audio CD Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
22.1.5 Displaying Information about an Audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
22.1.6 Ejecting an Audio CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
22.2 Sampling Sound from a CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
22.3 Writing an Audio CD-R. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
22.4 Other Audio CD Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

23 Editing Sound Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

23.1 Working with Selections from Sound Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
23.1.1 Cutting Out Part of a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
23.1.2 Pasting a Selection of Sound. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
23.1.3 Mixing Sound Files Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
23.2 Sound Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
23.2.1 Changing the Amplitude of a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
23.2.2 Changing the Sampling Rate of a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
23.2.3 Adding Reverb to a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
23.2.4 Adding Echo to a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
23.2.5 Adding Flange to a Sound File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
23.2.6 Adding Phase to a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
23.2.7 Adding Chorus to a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
23.2.8 Adding Vibro-Champ Effects to a Sound File. . . . . . . . . . . . 228
23.2.9 Reversing a Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
23.3 Converting Sound Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
23.3.1 Making an MP3 File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
23.3.2 Converting MP3 to Another Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
23.4 Other Tools for Sound Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

PART SIX: Productivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

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24 Disk Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

24.1 Listing a Disk’s Free Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
24.2 Listing a File’s Disk Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
24.3 Floppy Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
24.3.1 Formatting a Floppy Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
24.3.2 Mounting a Floppy Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
24.3.3 Unmounting a Floppy Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
24.4 CD-ROMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
24.4.1 Mounting a CD-ROM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
24.4.2 Unmounting a CD-ROM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

25 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
25.1 Making and Managing Print Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
25.1.1 Sending a Print Job to the Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
25.1.2 Printing Multiple Copies of a Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
25.1.3 Listing Your Print Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
25.1.4 Cancelling a Print Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
25.2 More Recipes for Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
25.2.1 Printing in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
25.2.2 Printing with Dvips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
25.2.3 Printing the Contents of an Xterm Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
25.3 Preparing Files for Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
25.3.1 Preparing a PostScript File for Printing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
25.3.2 Preparing a DVI File for Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
25.3.3 Preparing a PDF File for Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
25.3.4 Preparing a Man Page for Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

26 Cross-Platform Conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

26.1 Using DOS and Windows Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
26.1.1 Listing the Contents of a DOS Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
26.1.2 Copying Files to and from a DOS Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
26.1.3 Deleting Files on a DOS Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
26.1.4 Formatting a DOS Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
26.2 Using Macintosh Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
26.2.1 Specifying the Macintosh Disk to Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
26.2.2 Listing the Contents of a Macintosh Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
26.2.3 Copying Files to and from a Macintosh Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
26.2.4 Deleting Files on a Macintosh Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
26.2.5 Formatting a Macintosh Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
26.3 Converting Text Files between DOS and Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
26.4 Converting Microsoft Word Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
26.4.1 Converting Word to LaTeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
26.4.2 Converting Word to Plain Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
27 Reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
27.1 Displaying the Date and Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
27.2 Playing an Audible Time Announcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
27.3 Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
27.3.1 Displaying a Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
27.3.2 Displaying a Calendar in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
27.4 Managing Appointments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
27.4.1 Making an Appointment File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
27.4.2 Including Holidays in Your Reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
27.4.3 Automatic Appointment Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
27.5 Contact Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
27.5.1 Keeping a Free-Form Address List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
27.5.2 Keeping a Contact Manager Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
27.6 Reminding Yourself of Things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
27.6.1 Sending Yourself Email Reminders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
27.6.2 Reminding Yourself When You Have to Leave . . . . . . . . . . 259
27.6.3 Running a Command on a Delay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

28 Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
28.1 Calculating Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
28.1.1 Making a Quick Arithmetic Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
28.1.2 Making Many Arithmetic Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
28.2 Outputting a Random Number. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
28.3 Listing a Sequence of Numbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
28.4 Finding Prime Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
28.5 Converting Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
28.5.1 Converting an Amount between Units of Measurement . . 264
28.5.2 Converting an Arabic Numeral to English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
28.6 Other Math Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

PART SEVEN: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

29 Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
29.1 Connecting to the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
29.1.1 Setting Up PPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
29.1.2 Controlling a PPP Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
29.2 Faxing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
29.2.1 Sending a Fax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
29.2.2 Receiving a Fax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
29.2.3 Receiving Faxes Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
29.2.4 Converting to and from Fax Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
29.3 Calling Out on a Modem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
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30 Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
30.1 Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
30.1.1 Mailing a User on the Same System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
30.1.2 Mailing a File or the Output of a Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
30.1.3 Mailing the Contents of a URL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
30.1.4 Special Mail Composition Keystrokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
30.2 Receiving Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
30.2.1 Deleting Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
30.2.2 Options Available while Reading Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
30.3 Managing Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
30.3.1 Viewing a Mail Folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
30.3.2 Setting Notification for New Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
30.3.3 Counting How Many Messages You Have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
30.3.4 Seeing Who Your Mail Is From . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
30.3.5 Verifying an Email Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
30.4 Mail Attachments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
30.4.1 Reading a Mail Attachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
30.4.2 Sending a Mail Attachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
30.5 Making an Email Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
30.6 Picking the Right Mail Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

31 The World Wide Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

31.1 Browsing the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
31.1.1 Maintaining a List of Visited Web Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
31.1.2 Opening a URL from a Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
31.1.3 Mozilla Browsing Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
31.2 Viewing an Image from the Web. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
31.3 Reading Text from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
31.3.1 Perusing Text from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
31.3.2 Viewing a Site That Requires Authorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
31.3.3 Options Available while Browsing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
31.4 Browsing the Web in Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
31.5 Getting Files from the Web. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
31.5.1 Saving a URL to a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
31.5.2 Archiving an Entire Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
31.5.3 Archiving Part of a Web Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
31.5.4 Reading the Headers of a Web Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
31.6 Writing HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
31.6.1 Adding Parameters to Image Tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
31.6.2 Converting HTML to Another Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
31.6.3 Validating an HTML File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
31.7 More Web Browsers and Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
32 Other Internet Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
32.1 Connecting to Another System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
32.1.1 Suspending a Connection with Another System. . . . . . . . . . 300
32.1.2 Connecting to Another System with Encryption . . . . . . . . . 301
32.2 Transferring Files with Another System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
32.2.1 Uploading a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
32.2.2 Downloading a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
32.3 Reading Usenet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
32.3.1 Choosing a Newsreader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
32.3.2 Finding Newsgroups for a Topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
32.4 Listing Online System and User Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
32.4.1 Checking Whether a System Is Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
32.4.2 Checking Whether a User Is Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
32.4.3 Listing Who Is Logged In to a System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
32.4.4 Finding the IP Address of a Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
32.4.5 Finding the Host Name of an IP Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
32.4.6 Listing the Owner of a Domain Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
32.5 Sending a Message to Another User’s Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
32.6 Chatting with Other Users. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
32.6.1 Chatting Directly with a User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
32.6.2 Chatting with Users on IRC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
32.6.3 Chatting with Users on ICQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

Appendix A Administrative Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

A.1 Linux and Hardware Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
A.2 Installing Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
A.2.1 Getting and Installing Debian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
A.2.2 Installing a Debian Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
A.2.3 Upgrading a Debian Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
A.2.4 Installing a Shell Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
A.3 Administrating Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
A.3.1 Making a User Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
A.3.2 Letting Users Access Hardware Peripherals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
A.3.3 Letting Users Mount Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
A.4 Displaying Information about the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
A.4.1 How Long Has the System Been Up? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
A.4.2 What Version of Linux Am I Running? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
A.4.3 What Version of Debian Am I Running? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

Appendix B Linux Resources on the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

Appendix C License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

C.1 Design Science License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
C.2 Applying Copyleft to Your Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Program Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use