Tag: bash

Tracking MediaWiki in a Subversion vendor branch

Vendor branches are the proper™ way of merging upstream changes in your web application installations. In Subversion, managing vendor branches isn't so easy as it is in Git. Still, vendor branches make it much easier to track upstream. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on July 20, 2009, at 14:07 | 2 comments

My quest for the ultimate Bash prompt

On my new laptop (a Lenovo T61) I was still using the default Gentoo prompt in Bash. This was kind of a shame since my last Gentoo installation (on what is now my sister's Ubuntu machine) had a beautifully customized prompt. It was time to dig up the old escape codes. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on December 05, 2008, at 00:12 | 3 comments

Creating a bash fork bomb

Logged into a Unix machine? Does "ulimit -a" say that the max number of user processes is unlimited? Then type the following to crash the machine (provided it uses bash, or another shell with compatible syntax): Read More »
By halfgaar, 4 years ago, on July 10, 2008, at 15:07 | 1 comment

Microsoft batch file meets bash shellscript

Luca City, who already shared a nice readline keyboard shortcut with me, wrote me again on May 14 to share another unrelated, but very interesting trick: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on June 11, 2007, at 20:06 | No comments

Bypassing smart completion in Bash

Luca Citi, a nice Italian Ubuntu user, just gave me an excellent tip in response to my list of Readline keyboard shortcuts. Modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Gentoo can easily be configured for Bash to use smart completion. With smart completion enabled, instead of just looking among all the available files and directories without discrimination, TAB will be able to more accurately adjust its list of available completions depending on the program for which arguments are being sought. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on May 09, 2007, at 13:05 | 3 comments