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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
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Differences between freeBSD and linux?
#6840103 - 04/27/07 07:29 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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I've always wondered about FreeBSD but I can't find anything about the differences between the several unix flavours.
Anyone care to tell me what makes each unique?
-------------------- There's no better way to rock out than with your cock out!!
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sherm
sherman
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-------------------- shroomery. not even once.
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delta9
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: sherm]
#6841801 - 04/27/07 03:29 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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That's a really great article and he was mostly objective; however, he is mostly a bsd user and over generalizes some with linux.
The GeekNotes from a (debian) linux user follow (generally notes about linux, specifically debian, as a distrobution, not linux as a kernel which is entirely seperate - mostly specific technical things; he did fine with the generalities). (intro) Not all linux distrobutions should or even could claim to really be GNU/Linux. Debian can, and this has to do with its philosophy on free software and the fact that most of its basic utilities are provided by the GNU foundation. (the design) Debian is a lot more like BSD than he realizes; the debian base system is the set of packages that gives one a basic debian GNU/linux (so you have debian's GNU/linux version of the package, not just some collected copy) system. After installing the debian base system, you generally reboot, remove install media, and continue installing from your new basic linux system, much like he describes for BSD. Debian is very much designed and centrally controlled (check out the debian policy manual for a look see at some of it). (ports) Debian policy coupled with "apt" is similar to the ports system (I would say a bit more complicated and powerful in certain ways [that is to say, ports has some more power in its own ways too]). Apt by itself is nothing special if it doesn't enforce Debian Policy (this is why apt on non-debian or poorly maintained debian-based distrobutions is shitty). (releases) Debian now has four main branches: stable, testing, unstable, and experimental. I'm pretty sure you can still install debian bo and incrementally update it all the way to lenny, today. (upgrading) apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. (ports) Official Debian source package repositories are very similar in absract detail to the ports trees. You've got a package from an upstream developer with tools and information to automagically apply patches, configure, make, and install your package maintained and customized to work with your debian system. Or you can (and generally should, with the debian philosophy) just install the binary package (which has already been patched, configured, made, and READY to be installed).
-------------------- delta9
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tak
geo's henchman
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: delta9]
#6841828 - 04/27/07 03:39 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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FreeBSD is a server OS, and linux is moving towards becoming a desktop OS.
Linux always has the latest support for hardware, etc. FreeBSD is usually soon to follow. FreeBSD has a ports tree to manage installed apps, but most linux distros have their own, or other ones they use that are comparable.
FreeBSD has always outpreformed my linux machines running the same software. FreeBSD also has a very straight forward kernel compared to linux in MY opinion.
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delta9
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: tak]
#6841934 - 04/27/07 04:09 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Several linux distrobutions or branches of distrobutions are suitable for servers - specifically, I like to run the stable branch of debian on my server. As tak said, the BSDs will generally and regularily outperform linuxes due to the closer integration of its kernel and base utilities and all being built from source. On the one hand, this is really quite negligable with most modern equipment and really doesn't matter too much. On the other hand, I run BSD on my low-end hardware for a router because it IS very fast and small and stripped.
That's the message I think is most important - they are ALL very similar, but they EACH have their specific advantages and disadvantages. Since there IS so much to choose from you, as the user, get to choose which set of advantages, disadvantages, quirks, and philosophies best fit your needs, preferences, and philosophy. The best part is you get to make that choice! It can be overwhelming at first seeing all the choices out there, but take it a piece at a time and just start with what works best for you.
-------------------- delta9
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slackophage
Misanthropist
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: tak]
#6841960 - 04/27/07 04:17 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Long time FreeBSD user and administrator.
For one, FreeBSD is a full-blown OS. Technically Linux is just the kernel. A "distribution" is that kernel with a shell, userland utilities (usually GNU stuff), etc, that's been packaged up by a group. FreeBSD not only includes the kernel, but a complete userland, and some of the GNU stuff as well. This means if you want to do an updgrade from source, all the code is in one repository and handled by the same people (except the GNU/contrib stuff of course). Upgrading BSD from source is also a breeze and the recommended way for all upgrades.
Linux is generally more cutting edge, with all kinds of experimental support for new hardware and technologies. FreeBSD focuses more on being a stable and reliable OS, and therefore doesn't support some of the newest stuff. But what it does support is rock solid. The BSD TCP/IP stack is considered the golden standard for network performance testing, and is extremely widely used.
It's geared towards being a server OS, but I've been using it on both servers and workstations since version 4.9 with no troubles.
Linux configuration is handled by whatever tools the distro provides you with, or by manually editing the /etc trees. Most all FreeBSD config is done by editing the files in /etc/* or in /usr/local/etc/*. Get used to a text editor.
Also, BSD doesn't use a SysV-style runlevel setup. You won't see stuff like /etc/rc1.d/ /etc/rc2.d/ and so on. With BSD you get 3 runlevels: Go, Stop, and single user. All the stuff you'd normally see in /etc/init.d/* is in /etc/rc.d/* and to control it you edit /etc/rc.conf. It's a very clean and simple setup compared to the SysV way of doing things, much easier to manage than Linux IMO.
The ports tree is a fucking godsend. It's a directory heirarchy that structured like: /usr/ports/<category>/<app_name>/ Inside the directories are Makefiles and some patches.
Changing to a port's directory and running "make install" will fetch the source code, all it's dependencies, apply any necessary patches, build all of it from source, then install it.
i.e: "cd /usr/ports/www/firefox; make install".
Upgrading your installed ports is as easy as: "portsnap fetch update; portupgrade -ra".
I'm biased towards it, since I got into it I've not found a better OS for serving, anything network related, and day-to-day desktop use. You can put KDE/Gnome on top of it, or keep a console interface with no X. It will run practically anything Linux will, and has amazing binary compatibility support for Linux.
I think I covered a lot of it, anything more specific?
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delta9
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: slackophage]
#6842018 - 04/27/07 04:31 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Yeah, what happens when your "portsnap fetch update" command fails? Your portupgrade then runs and then what?
-------------------- delta9
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slackophage
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: delta9]
#6842040 - 04/27/07 04:35 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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"portsnap fetch update && portupgrade -ra"
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blink
eye of horus
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: slackophage]
#6842119 - 04/27/07 04:54 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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obsd 4.1 - may 1st
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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: delta9]
#6842761 - 04/27/07 08:15 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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From all this talk I'm guessing FreeBSD is not for me, since I've been using unix for only about 3 months?
I really like the idea of using freeBSD, I've always had, but I need simplicity
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wilshire
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i've messed around with freebsd a little bit. no thanks on a desktop. i'd consider it for a server.
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supercollider
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Gentoo is a Linux distro designed to have the packaging advantages of BSD, but with the usual linux kernel and tools. If you have basic knowledge of linux and can read straightforward manuals, you can install and use it.
-------------------- Supercollider? I just met her!
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blink
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: supercollider]
#6844429 - 04/28/07 08:07 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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I don't know who the original author is for this is but it seemed apropos.
Quote:
Fanboy Quiz/Which OS is for you?
- Windows
You wear wraparound sunglasses, even indoors. You wish your mother would let you ride a motorbike. You tell your friends you're pulling in $50,000 a year and $2,000 a month "playing the stock market" but in reality you're only bringing in half that and your dividends from MSFT havn't been good in years. Your non computing friends all turn to you for help; you only charge $30 an hour. Your collegues talk about you behind your back. Your workplace nickname is likely to be "The Asshole". Unlike the Linux fanboys, you actually try to pick up dates in bars but women laugh at you.
- Apple
You think you're so cool you hurt. You have mirrors on every wall in your "loft apartment", which is really a grimy little apartment next to a guy who plays Guns 'n Roses at 3am. All of your furniture is from Ikea. You sometimes think that changing your name to "Steve" would be "pretty cool". When you go to bars you only drink Miller Lite. No body ever asks you for help with their computers because they know you don't know anything but OS X, even if you do tell them you "run Unix" now. Your friends openly laugh at you.
- Linspire
You regularly give $10 bills to homeless guys because you have too much money. Computers baffle you, but you enjoy looking at pictures of naked women. You don't know what Linux is, but you continually bugged the IT guy at work about your computer he installed Linspire on your machine.
- Ubuntu
You shop at GAP. You probably used to use a Mac. When you saw the multiracial image used as a desktop picture and heard that this operating system came from the same country as Nelson Mandella, you knew it was for you. You meet with your friends in fair-trade coffee houses and talk about the eventual overthrow of evil corporations such as Microsoft and Starbucks. Like the Linspire user, you have very little real knowlege when it comes to computers but you would never use your computer to look at pictures of women degrading themselves.
- Gentoo
You've been "into computers" for ohh, one or two years now and fancy yourself as "a bit of a hacker". Wouldn't know C from C++, or even Perl for that matter. Older Gentoo users may be building their homes from matchsticks. You've explained to all your friends that your matchstick house will have an "optimised floorplan". They've tried to tell you that your house violates every known building code and law in your area, but you've ignored them so far because you can't read those complicated regulatory documents.
- Linux From Scratch
Much like the Gentoo user but you'd also be into sadomasochistic sex if you could get it. You're not just building a house from matchsticks, you're planing to grow the trees to make the matchsticks. You've cleared some land but don't know what to do next because you havn't read the books you've got, so you've posted to alt.arborists.newbie asking for help. It's been three days so far and no one has replied. You remain hopeful.
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Cepheus
Balance
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: blink]
#6845257 - 04/28/07 01:08 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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the major difference is the lisence..
then its the userland.. distros such as OpenBSD strive to use as little GNU / GPL'd software as possible to create a true BSD operating system.
-------------------- "I only ever hope to reach equilibrium, in Nature's matrix, in line with the meridian" ~ Jehst "...and I know that I have to keep breathing, as tomorrow the sun will rise, who knows what the tide will bring?" Free Spore Ring Europe Send any spare spore prints you might have and help the distribution Open Source. Freedom. GNU/Linux Addicting is not a word.
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supercollider
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: blink]
#6845678 - 04/28/07 03:28 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
blinkidiot said: I don't know who the original author is for this is but it seemed apropos.
No, it wasn't really.
-------------------- Supercollider? I just met her!
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delta9
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: supercollider]
#6845760 - 04/28/07 03:52 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
supercollider said:
Quote:
blinkidiot said: I don't know who the original author is for this is but it seemed apropos.
No, it wasn't really.
Yes, it was, really; specifically, it was "at the right time".
-------------------- delta9
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OJK
Stranger
Registered: 06/08/03
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Quote:
Colonel Kurtz Ph.D said: From all this talk I'm guessing FreeBSD is not for me, since I've been using unix for only about 3 months?
I really like the idea of using freeBSD, I've always had, but I need simplicity
If you've only been using *nix for three months, then Linux is for you. Choose from one of the main distros, it almost doesn't matter which, although Ubuntu isn't a bad choice.
Until you know exactly what you want and don't want from your OS, just choose something popular, regularly updated and with good hardware support. If, in six months, you know enough about what you like and don't like in a *nix OS to move to something different, so be it.
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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
Registered: 07/22/04
Posts: 11,113
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: OJK]
#6851079 - 04/29/07 09:11 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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I'm already using Xandros, simply becuase it seemed simple enough at first. I'm starting to get more proficient at the command line and strangely enough I'm loving it.
I don't know, freeBSD just got my attention somehow and I like it's philosophy.
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delta9
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It's not strange, the commandline interface is and always will be the most powerful and efficient.
-------------------- delta9
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Seuss
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: slackophage]
#6852941 - 04/30/07 08:39 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Also, BSD doesn't use a SysV-style runlevel setup. ...[snip]... It's a very clean and simple setup compared to the SysV way of doing things, much easier to manage than Linux IMO.
It would be a huge mistake to think of Linux and Sys-V Unix as being the same. Linux is as far from Sys-V as it is from BSD. I like to think of Linux as being an Unix-like OS rather than a true Unix OS. It borrowed a bit from the BSD world, a bit from the Sys-V world, a bit from other worlds, and tried to mangle all the different stuff together. They end up with a conglomeration that kind of resembles everything, doesn't specifically follow anything, but still works fairly well most of the time.
I find the Sys-V runlevel system to be about as easy to manage and very flexible compared to the BSD runlevel system. Granted, it is a bit more difficult to understand, but such is Unix in general. Having supported both BSD and Sys-V Unix in the real world (500+ users in the building that depend upon a working system), I prefer Sys-V. However, in the free opensource world, there isn't really a true Sys-V Unix, so BSD is what I would choose. (Actually, I run Solaris, which is Sys-V... but, last time I checked, was not free.)
One thing to keep in mind... most open source development is mostly done under Linux... thus for the latest and greatest (buggy) software, Linux is the place to be. (Buggy software goes hand in hand with greatest/latest; the statement was not meant to be a slam of Linux!)
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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supercollider
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: Seuss]
#6856433 - 05/01/07 12:48 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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I thought they open-sourced Solaris a couple years ago. Am I wrong?
(It's reeealy doubtful that I know more than Seuss does about his OS of choice, so I'm sure I am wrong.)
-------------------- Supercollider? I just met her!
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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
Registered: 07/22/04
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Loc: Shadow Moses
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: delta9]
#6857056 - 05/01/07 05:49 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
delta9 said: It's not strange, the commandline interface is and always will be the most powerful and efficient.
find -exec {} \ FTW!!
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Seuss
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: supercollider]
#6857074 - 05/01/07 06:01 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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> I thought they open-sourced Solaris a couple years ago. Am I wrong?
They did... though I haven't played with it, to be honest. However, it isn't "free software" in the typical sense of open source. (lawyers/license issues/etc...)
> find -exec {} \ FTW!!
Other way around... search path first, options second... "find / -exec WTF {} \;"
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
Registered: 07/22/04
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: Seuss]
#6858191 - 05/01/07 01:02 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Are you executing a command called WTF or am I missing something?
-------------------- There's no better way to rock out than with your cock out!!
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OJK
Stranger
Registered: 06/08/03
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I believe he was reformatting the example of a commandline command you posted, and mistook FTW as a search term (when in fact it was an initialism for "For The Win"), and then mistyped it as WTF ("What The Fuck") in his example.
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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
Registered: 07/22/04
Posts: 11,113
Loc: Shadow Moses
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: OJK]
#6858500 - 05/01/07 02:18 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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I didn't even write anything to search for in my example, I was mostly saying that the find tool is just awesome. "find /home/giaco/whatever/*shroomery* -exec mv .. {} \;" would have the correct syntaxis But anyway, find -exec is awesome!
-------------------- There's no better way to rock out than with your cock out!!
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: OJK]
#6858529 - 05/01/07 02:28 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
I believe he was reformatting the example of a commandline command you posted, and mistook FTW as a search term (when in fact it was an initialism for "For The Win"), and then mistyped it as WTF ("What The Fuck") in his example.
If you are referring to me, you got it 100% correct. (I think...)
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
Registered: 07/22/04
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Loc: Shadow Moses
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: Seuss]
#6858599 - 05/01/07 02:50 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Aren't you supposed to specify the command to be executed with the found files after the -exec anyway?
-------------------- There's no better way to rock out than with your cock out!!
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero
Registered: 04/27/01
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> Aren't you supposed to specify the command to be executed with the found files after the -exec anyway?
I use the following sort of command quite often:
% find ./ -name "*.c" -exec grep -H some_search_string {} \;
This would grep for "some_search_string" in every file that ends in ".c" from my current location. If the file contains the string, the filename would be displayed (the -H option on grep).
Another fun one... (don't type this one, or you might loose data!)
% (cd /users; rm -rf `du | sort -n | tail -1`)
... removes all of the files from the user account that is using the most disk space. Makes a nice monthly cron job... keeps the users fighting each other to maintain the lowest disk space usage.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Colonel Kurtz Ph.D
What What?
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Loc: Shadow Moses
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Re: Differences between freeBSD and linux? [Re: Seuss]
#6859068 - 05/01/07 04:35 PM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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You are baaaad man, BAAAAD.
I just love how powerful the command line is, shame I'm not that proficient at it yet.
-------------------- There's no better way to rock out than with your cock out!!
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delta9
Active Ingredient
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It's very nice. He's not bad, he's just another BOFH.
Being a really good BOFH is very commendable.
-------------------- delta9
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