newbie

When copying files and especially directories, sometimes you want to keep the existing file attributes. For example, you may likely want to keep the same owner, group, timestamp, etc. You can keep the attributes by using the preserve argument. preserve=all

I was trying to copy a directory, and I kept getting a cryptic error: cp: omitting directory `/var/log' The copy (cp) command only works for files. To copy a directory, you need to use the -r recursive flag: In this

Some times you may not want a server or daemon to start as part of the postinstall scrip when installing with apt-get or dpkg. To prevent servers from starting, do the following: # Prevent launch of servers during apt-get install

There is no rename function in Ubuntu Linux. Instead, you simply move the file, giving it a new name. If you don’t actually mv it to another directory, then you have effectively renamed it: If you are trying to rename

To see the current time from the Ubuntu or Linux command line: date which will give you: Fri May 30 15:53:21 EDT 2008 To see how to include and format dates and times in your shell scripts, see this post:

How do you know which linux kernel you are using? uname -kFind out other system info withuname -a

To change your own password from the command line: To change the password for another user, you must use sudo: Related posts: Newbie: how to edit a file from the command line Could there be any more basic question? We

How do you know which version of Ubuntu you are running? This will return something like this: Related posts: Setup WordPress or WPMU to make an atomic version switch — AND allow you to revert I have a new WordPress

Could there be any more basic question? We all know there are no stupid questions, but I sure felt dumb having to look up this one. I found the built in editor nano. Likely more searching will yield a better

I went to check out my apache2 logs and I noticed that they were being automatically rotated (access.log, access.log.1, etc.) and compressed with gzip (access.log.2.gz, etc.). This seems to be the default Ubuntu configuration. I wanted to make find out