Posts about command line

How to upgrade from Debian 12 Bookworm to Debian 13 Trixie
May 21, 2025
My old Dell Optiplex has been a great desktop PC for just minimal interneting and coding. I've been running Debian 12 Bookworm on it since it became available. Now that Debian 13 Trixie is available I upgraded to it, and it was a smooth and painless transition. Here's the process.
How to remove CasaOS from a ZimaBoard and upgrade to Debian 12 Bookworm
February 10, 2025
ZimaBoard is an x86 single board server that comes running Debian 11 Bullseye and CasaOS. It's a cool little machine, but after a few months I realized I don't like CasaOS. Nothing against it, I'm just set in my way of doing things, and their GUI was limiting some of my options. In this post I'll explain how to remove CasaOS from the ZimaBoard and then upgrade it to Debian 12.
How to resolve Git error insufficient permission for adding an object to repository database
March 17, 2024
When working on a GitHub repo from different Linux hosts, I encountered an "insufficient permission" error when using git commands. Here is the solution that worked for me from StackOverflow.
Using MergerFS to combine multiple hard drives into one unified media storage
March 11, 2024
My situation was simple -- my server's media storage was filling up and I wanted to add more drives, but without having to keep track of which drive specific files were for Plex. How to pool multiple hard drives together when they're all different brands, models and capacities? Enter mergerfs, an open source union filesystem that essentially merges multiple drives into one mount point.
Commands to turn off display in the Linux terminal
December 3, 2022
Sometimes I use laptops in the home lab, and to save myself on a few watts of power usage I use these terminal commands to turn off the display, then just SSH into it from my PC.
Autologin on Ubuntu and go straight to terminal
November 25, 2022
Configure an Ubuntu machine to autologin and go straight into the terminal on boot.
Setup auto-updates in Debian and Ubuntu with Unattended-Upgrades and NeedRestart
October 14, 2022
If you want your Linux machine to stay up-to-date on important security updates, but you don't want to SSH into it all the time to run updates and would rather set it and forget it, this is the way.
PowerShell commands cheat sheet
October 9, 2022
I'm much more comfortable using Bash over PowerShell, but there are definitely times that you need to use command line on Windows. So I keep a small, but growing list of my most commonly used cmdlets, their Linux-like aliases, and other must-know commands.
How to format and/or partition disks in Linux
October 8, 2022
Just a quick guide to format and partition hard drives in Linux command line that I wrote for myself a long time ago, and recently had to reference again.
Keeping a Linux laptop on when the lid is closed
October 4, 2022
I sometimes use old laptops in my home lab when I want to test anything on Linux, and I prefer to keep them closed so they take up less space. A few quick commands will keep the laptop even on with the lid closed.
Customizing the Windows Terminal command prompt with Oh-My-Posh
October 1, 2022
While I use Zsh with Oh-My-Zsh for making my Linux terminal pretty, it's not available for Windows. Luckily it's brother from another mother Oh-My-Posh basically does the same thing for Windows Terminal and PowerShell.
Transferring files between hosts with SCP
September 26, 2022
Using the Secure Copy (SCP) utility in Linux lets you securely copy files to and from remote hosts, and it's very easy to use.
Linux Commands & Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet
September 18, 2022
Just a quick cheat sheet of basic and slightly less basic Linux commands, as well as handy keyboard shortcuts, that I maintain for myself since I can't always remember them all.
VIM Quick Guide
September 17, 2022
Whenever I use Vim to edit files on Linux, I need to relearn how to use it. Years ago I found a thread on Stack Overflow with two simple and extremely useful answers that helped me make sense of Vim. So here it is.
Sudo without password
April 20, 2022
How to use sudo command in Linux without the password prompt, by adding a line to the sudoers file.
Quick guide to set up Zsh and Oh-My-Zsh with essential plugins and a theme
December 4, 2021
I've been getting more and more comfortable working on the command line in Linux, and looked into ways to pretty it up and make it more user friendly. Enter Zsh, an alternative to Bash shell, and the Oh-My-Zsh framework used to customize the terminal experience to your heart's content. Here's my basic set up.
Setup SSH authentication to push to Github
September 21, 2021
Setting up SSH keys and pushing to GitHub without needing to enter a username and password has always been a good practice, but now that GitHub is deprecating basic username and password authentication, it's past time to get this set up if you haven't already. It's pretty simple and only takes a few minutes, here's the quick and dirty instructions.
Rsync - A Quick Guide
September 15, 2021
Rsync is a very handy tool for doing high-speed file transfers between Linux hosts over a local network or remote hosts on the internet, such as EC2 instances on Amazon Web Services. You can pass options to Rsync to do things like recursive transfer (all files and sub-directories within the source directory are also transferred), ignore existing or newer files at the destination, and more.
Mounting (either internal or external) hard drives in Linux
September 13, 2021
When using Linux headless, such as via SSH or with no desktop environment, accessing a newly installed hard drive (not just external USB drives, but additional internal HDDs too) is not obvious, and most people end up having to Google it. I know I did. So let's have a quick and dirty guide on how.
Generating an SSH key pair
September 12, 2021
Secure Shell is a protocol for securely connecting from one computer to another. As a web developer, you will probably end up using SSH a lot, and even if you don't it's a handy skill to have. Here's a quick guide on how to generate SSH keys and copy them to other machines.
Git commands cheat sheet
September 8, 2021
When I was learning Git, in order to avoid giant articles and get right to the commands I needed reminding of, I made myself a cheat sheet that plainly and succinctly explained each Git command. Here is that quick and dirty guide of Git commands that you will likely use often as a web developer.
Copying SSH Keys between different hosts
July 9, 2021
How to copy SSH keys between Linux hosts and from Windows to Linux.