Big-E's [nearly] Daily Quick Tips. Updated: November 4th, 08

[Big-E]

So I figure I could at least be a little use, and I figured what way then giving a daily tip of various functions I find useful. Heck, I will probably forget about it some days, so it will probably be a tip every third day. Anyway, I will start with my first tip, other people can feel free to chip in with a tip of their own, if they wish..

SCP FUNCTION
Ever find yourself connected via SSH to a remote host and quickly want to transfer a file? Some of you might connect via ftp and transfer the file that way, but why? Why not use the scp function? SCP or "secure copy" will transfer files to and from your host, or remote host - whichever direction you wish to send the file. It`s really quite easy.

Send from remote host, to your localhost
In your local terminal type the following:

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scp user@remotehost.tld:/directory/to/file.extension /path/to/store/file/locally

This will prompt you to type the password to the remote users, on the remote host. Once you are authenticated, the file will be transfered via SSH to your computer.

Send from localhost, to remote host
In the terminal type the following:

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scp /local/path/to/file.ext username@hostname.tld:/path/to/folder/on/remote/host 

Again, this will prompt you to type the password, upon authenticating it will the transfer the file to the remote host.

Of course, this is not all you can do with the command, it`s but a small introduction. You can ready the manual pages by typing man scp and learn some of the more advanced features.

[Still_Learning]

First time i have heard of that feature, thanks!

[Big-E]

THE DIFF FUNCTION

So again, I will be explaining another simple command which most *nix systems have. The diff commands. It`s pretty simple to use.

Scenario: We have file1 and file2, file1 contains the configuration for a service we are running on our system and file2 contains a copy of the file, and the changes we have made to the file. So say we wish to view exactly which changes we have made, we can do the following:

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diff file1 file2

The output will look something like this:

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< String1 
---
> String1-WithChanges
< String2
---
> String2-WithChanges

So, what use is this? Well, very simple really. This is a very quick way you can note the difference between two files, without having to visually inspect each element of the file manually, that is why we invented machines in the first place. To work for us.

[computathug]

Nice tutorial buddy, il try this once i get all systems up and going again.

Like the title of the post as well