The /etc/shadow file is also very important in Linux. It stores all the users passwords (in crypted format) and other security user account information. The /etc/shadow file can be edited only by root and read by root and the group…
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How to create and delete groups in Linux with groupadd and groupdel
Groups are important in Linux systems. In order to have a well secured distro, you will need to set security rules on both users and groups. The information about the groups is stored in /etc/group. How to create groups in…
The Linux/Unix /etc/passwd file
The /etc/password file is very important on Unix systems because it stores information about all the user accounts in the system. It is readonly, the users can read the file, but not to modify it, unless they have superuser priviledges.…
How to safely edit /etc/passwd , /etc/shadow and /etc/group in Linux
Do not edit the /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group and /etc/gshadow by hand !!! If a user tries to change it’s account / group info while root is editing the files by hand (ex: vim /etc/passwd), the /etc files will not pe…
How to convert packages with alien: RPM to DEB, DEB to RPM
Alien is used for converting packages. You can convert packages to RPM, to DEB, to Slackware tgz, to LSB, to Stampede slp package or to Solaris pkg package. How to install alien? on Debian: sudo apt-get install alien on Fedora:…
What is Molly-Guard and how to install it
Molly-Guard is a usefull and easy to use tool. It prevents you from accidentally shutting down your Linux. This is very good when you are connected as root on ssh and by mistake you shutdown the remote server instead of…
How to remove files by their inode
Sometimes we have to remove files with weird names, like “-h”. rm -h does not work because the shell sees “-h” as a command option. So, how can we delete these file? Simple: by it’s inode. A file’s inode can…
How to install the zsh shell in Linux; how to set it as a default login shell
Z shell’s (zsh) popularity has increased in the last years. I have not moved too zsh yet, but I am going to do that. zsh is not installed in Linux by default, but it can be installed easilly with a package…
How to install, delete and purge packages with dpkg:
Debian/Ubuntu or Linux Mint are dpkg based. dpkg is a low level tool, mostly for installing and removing packages. If you fail to install/delete a package with the Apt package manager, try that with dpkg: Listing the files in the…
Bash wildcards: ? (question mark) and * (asterisk)
The usage of wildcards is a nice feature that the shell provides us. Simple characters such as * or ? can make our bash life much more easier than we have ever imagined. Wildcards are special characters that allow us…
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