A little command line fun (From the #24DaysOfLInux Series)

[Susan]

    .--,       .--,
   ( (  \.---./  ) )
    '.__/o   o\__.'
       {=  ^  =}
        >  -  <
 ___.""`-------`"".___
/                     \
\ Have some CLI fun!! /
/                     \
\_____________________/
      ___)( )(___
     (((__) (__)))

Check out boxes! There is a new article and description at opensource.com and it is available in EPEL for RHEL 7.  I'll also point out that it has a -h help option and the -l option lists the available box designs.

[Susan]

Here is another one.

Drive a locomotive through your Linux terminal

It appears that opensource.com is offering a #24DaysOfLinux series of Linux command line toys.

In case anyone tries to tell you that the command line is no fun!

Enjoy!

[Susan]

Day 3 of #24DaysOfLinux

How to bring good fortune to your Linux terminal

I learned something new today because of (but not directly in) this article.

I'll add a little of my history with this command. It has been around for... well, as they say... since rocks were soft. It has been available for Unix as well as Linux. And not all the quotes have aged well. Some have not been internationally understood, politically correct, or family friendly. As I moved from college to commercial spaces I saw it specifically discouraged or even removed from commercial distros. But it can be fun and what many do not realize is that you can customize the content.

This article does mention that you can view the specific sets of content and the man page clearly states that removing a dat file eliminate that type of quote from the rotation.

While looking at the man page, I found that you can also adjust the ratio of quotes for what the project has classified as "funny" and "not funny" No more deep and meaningful inspiration for me, just more CLI fun times!

[oldbenko]

I have found out about Dave Barry thanks to fortune(1). I am immensely grateful for that, because I now know that electricity is made up of tiny particles called electrons, which you can not see with your naked eye unless you have been drinking.

[Lars]

Get a BOFH excuse from the BOFH excuse server (towel.blinkenlights.nl port 666)

# telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 666 2>/dev/null

[Lars]

Star wars ascii art animation (towel.blinkenlights.nl)

# telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

[Susan]

Day 4 of #24DaysofLinux

Have a cow at the Linux command line

Once you have cowsay installed go take a look at your ansible.cfg file.
If you search the default installed config in /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg for cowsay you will
find where you can enable or disable cowsay and then choose a stencil or whitelist severa
l stencils. Your ansible-playbook output will be enhanced.

Here is my output with cow_selection = tux

​< TASK [Gathering Facts] >
 ------------------------
   \
    \
        .--.
       |o_o |
       |:_/ |
      //   \ \
     (|     | )
    /'\_   _/`\
    \___)=(___/

There are some (hopefully) obvious reasons that cowsay is disabled by default on enterpris
e level versions of Ansible.

PS: You may also be interested in this holiday themed extention to cowsay for Ansible
 

[Susan]

Day 5 of #24DaysofLinux

Bring some color to your Linux terminal with lolcat

Ruby rainbows.

PS: The author is taking suggestions to round out the series. Leave a comment with the article at opensource.com (Be a contributor!)

[Susan]

Day 6 of #24DaysofLinux

Take a break at the Linux command line with Nyan Cat

This one is for @Lars . Since he brought up blinkinlights he probably also remembers netcat. Well netcat is back! From GitHub and for your local terminal.

I do have some concerns about the "In fact, I grabbed the source, built it, and launched it in one line:" example. The author is VERY trusting of this downloadable code but is also setting a bad example for users who have a tendency to not think about the security implications of these actions.

Some learners may have also noticed the dnf -y commands in previous articles in this series. Also a bad habit to show users and is something we have been trying to reduce in Red Hat Training. Save the -y for your automation tools. AFTER you have verified all the who, when, why, and wheres.

There, I said it. The latest (and Linux) version of "Please do not open attachments from unknown sources" Stop. Think. Decide.

[bonnevil]

Yeah, I have this problem with the official installation process for GitLab (whether CE or EE).  To set up their RPM repository, they have you curl a shell script and pipe it to bash.  Yeah, you're about to be installing packages from them as root that can do arbitrary things to your system, but it's still not a good habit to get into.

As for yum -y / dnf -y, our support folks don't like to see that.  By leaving off -y you have one last chance to abort when you see what dependencies are being installed -- or removed! -- that you weren't expecting.  We've seen a fair number of folks hose their system with a yum -y remove that removed stuff a bit too aggressively because of the weird way they originally installed something, or local code that's using an RPM but was not installed by RPM/yum/dnf and thus looks like a candidate for removal.