Linux Administration

Azza Khalel
[email protected]
Azza Khalel | LinkedIn
Day3 contents
• Processes, priorities and signals Concepts .
• Bash shell properties
• Shell history
• Auto complete
• File globbing
• Alias
• I/O & error redirection
• Piping
• Environment variables [HOME, PATH, PWD,SHELL, 0, PS1, PS2]
• Initialization and startup files
• Job control
Processes
• Every program you run creates a process (shell, command, an application)
• Everything that happens on a Linux server, a process is started.
• System starts processes called daemons which are processes that run in the
background and provide services.
• Every processes has a PID.
• When a process creates another, the first is the parent of the new process. The
new process is called the child process.
• In older versions of Linux, killing a parent process would kill all of its child
processes.
• Start from RHEL 8, if you kill a parent process, all of its child processes become
children of the systemd process.
• Types of process:
• Shell jobs.
• Daemons.
• Kernel threads.
Listing processes
• ps (process status) command
• ps [options]
• Outputs
• PID.
• TTY -> terminal identifier.
• Execution time.
• Command name.

• Options
• -e: all system processes.
• -f: full information.
• -u <uid>: display processes of that user.
• – a: all processes attached to a terminal.
• – x:all other processes.

• Search for a process

• you can use pgrep command.
• pgrep option(s) pattern.
• #pgrep vi ➔ search for all vi processes
• #pgrep –l vi ➔ display the name with pid
• #pgrep –u azza ➔ seach for all azza’s processes #pgrep –lu azza
Shell jobs
• Shell jobs are commands started from the command line. They associated
with the shell that was current when the process was started.
• When a user types a command, a shell job is started.
• By default, any executed command is started as foreground job.
• If you know that a job will take a long time to complete, you can start it in
with an & behind it to start it in background

• #jobs ➔ print all jobs and their status in the background

• #sleep 100 ➔ stop shell for 100 sec
• ctrl+z ➔ pause the command and send it to background
• #bg ➔ to run the last job enter background and it's ran in background also
• #bg %<nu> ➔ to run specific pause command from background
• #fg ➔ return the last command from background to foreground
• #fg %<nu> ➔ return specific command from background to foreground
Signals
• A signal is a message sent to a process to perform a certain action.
• To send signals to process or process group , you can use kill command, or pkill
command.
• #Kill -[signal] PID ➔ kill 12047
• #pkill -[signal] process_name ➔ kill -9 mail
• #killall process_name ➔ killall vim
• Signals are identified by a signal number and a signal name, and has an
associated action.
• SIGTERM → 15
• SIGKILL → 9
• SIGINT→ 2 ➔ctrl+c
• SIGSTOP →19 ➔ctrl+z
• SIGCONT→18
• If no signal is specified, the TERM signal is sent.
Process priority
• When Linux processes are started, they are started with a specific priority.
• By default, all regular processes are equal and are started with the same priority,
which is the priority number20.
• Every process which is ready to run has a scheduling priority.
• The Linux process divides CPU time into time slices, in which each process will get
a turn to run, higher priority processes first.
• User can affect the priority by setting the niceness value for a process.
Adjusting priority
• Niceness values range from -20 to +19, which indicates how much of a bonus or
penalty to assign to the priority of the process.
• Use #nice command if you want to start a process with an adjusted priority.
• nice [-n adjustment] command
nice -n 5 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null &
• Use #renice to change the priority for a currently active process, or you can use
the r command from the top utility to change the priority of a currently running
process
• #renice priority [[-p] pid ...] [[-g] group ...] [[-u] user ...]
#ps | aux
#renice -n 10 -p 1234
• The default niceness of a process is set to 0 (which results in the priority value
of 20.
• By applying a negative niceness, you increase the priority.
• Use a positive niceness to decrease the priority.
• Do not set process priority to -20, it risks blocking other processes from getting
served.
• The regular users can only decrease the priority of a running process.
• You must be root to give processes increased priority.
Viewing processes
• Use top to display Linux processes.
• The top program provides a dynamic real-time view of a running system.
• It can display system summary information as well as a list of processes or threads
currently being managed by the Linux kernel.
Standard input and output
• Standard input:
• Refers to the data source from which data is input to a command.
• Typically the keyboard.
• Standard output:
• Refer to data destination to which data from the command is written.
• Typically the screen.
• Standard error:
• Refer to the output destination for the errors and messages generated by the command.
• Typically the screen also.
• In I/O redirection, files can be used to replace the default standard input, standard
output and standard error.
• You can also redirect to device files.
• If you want to discard a command’s output, you can redirect to /dev/null.
Redirection
• Standard input:
• command < fname
• EX
• #mail < file2.txt
• #sort < file2.txt > sortedf1.txt
• Standard output:
• command > fname ➔ remove old content and add new
• command >> fname ➔ append new content to the old
• Standard error:
• command 2> fname
• command 2> /dev/null ➔ to discard output
Piping
• A pipe (|) is used to send the output of one command as the input to another.
• Command 1 | Command 2.
• Examples:
• #ls -lR / | more
• #ps -ef | more
• #history | more
Environment variables
• There are linux system environment variables ➔ its name is all capital
• $HOME➔ Complete path of the user home directory
• $PWD ➔ user current working directory
• $SHELL➔ path name of the default shell.
• 0 ➔ current working shell that user enter
• $PATH ➔ A colon-separated list of directories used by the shell to look for executable
program names.
• $USER ➔ Currently logged in user.
• $HOSTNAME ➔ Name of the computer
• $PS1➔ prompt string of the bash shell
• $PS2➔ has the prompt that print when the command not completed
• ex. When I run this command #ls \
• $$ ➔ has the bash process ID
• When a user logs in, an environment is created.
• The environment consists of some variables that determine how the user is
working
• Such as $PATH, which defines a list of directories that should be searched when a user
types a command.
• I can define my variables which called as user variables ➔ recommended to be
small to differentiate between it and system variable
Viewing Variable Contents
• The shell assumes whatever follows the dollar sign ($) in the command line is a
variable and substitutes its value.
#echo $HOME
• To display the current Environment variables with values use
• #env or #printenv command.
Creating a user environment
• To construct the user environment, a few files play a role:
• Global initialization file: /etc/profile and /etc/bashrc
• /etc/profile: Used for default settings for all users when starting a login shell.
• /etc/bashrc: Used to define defaults for all users when starting a subshell.
• Initialization file: ~/.profile
• ~/.profile: Specific setting for one user applied when starting a login shell.
• Startup files: ~/.bashrc
• ~/.bashrc:Specific setting for one user applied when starting a subshell.
• When logging in, these files are read in this order, and variables and other
settings that are defined in these files are applied.
• If a variable or setting occurs in more than one file, the last one wins.
Linux shell and alias
• The purpose of the linux shell is to provide an environment in which commands
can be executed.
• The shell takes care of interpreting the command that a user has entered
correctly.
• To do this, the shell makes a distinction between three kinds of commands.
• Aliases.
• Alias is a command that a user can define as needed.
• #alias newcommand = ‘oldcommand’ alias ll=’ls -l’
• Alias are executed before anything else.
• Internal commands.
• It is a command that is a part of the shell itself and, as such, doesn’t have to be loaded
from disk separately.
• External commands.
• It is a command that exists as an executable file on the disk of the computer.
• To find out whether a command is a Bash internal or an executable file on
disk, you can use the type command.
• To find out which exact command the shell will be using, you can use the
which command.
• Type alias at the terminal to see all set aliases.
• To remove aliases, you can use unalias command.
Command history
• Bash stores a history of commands you have entered so that you can recall
them later.
• The history is stored in the user's home directory and is called .bash_history
by default.
• You can recall commands by pressing the up arrow key.
• !!➔ Repeats the last command.
• !string ➔ Repeats the last command that started with string.
• !n ➔ Repeats a command by its number in history output.
• !-n ➔ Repeats a command entered n commands back.
• #echo $HISTSIZE