Changing the DNS server on Linux sticks only when the command lands where the component that owns the setting reads it. On Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Arch that component is systemd-resolved, and /etc/resolv.conf is a symlink it rebuilds. NetworkManager and netplan hold the same value on the machines where they own the connection, which is
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A link name can point at one release today and another tomorrow. A deploy usually calls that link www/current, and ln -s writes it with one flag deciding what happens when the name is already taken. Leave out -n and ln treats a directory name as a directory, so the link you meant to replace
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Installing an RPM package on Ubuntu can still leave a program that will not start, because the conversion never touches the binary inside it. I compared three Fedora 44 packages against an Ubuntu 24.04 host to find where a conversion stops paying off, and the answer turned out to be a version number the program
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A server you SSH into has its own idea about which editor you should use, and it rarely matches yours. Terminal based text editors come in two families, and the family decides how long your first edit takes. Modal editors such as Vim give you a keystroke grammar that pays off across a long session
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Slack’s Linux download page never prints a version number, so the choice between four package formats is made blind. All of them carry the same build today, and it is 4.52.155. I compared the checksum of the .deb from Slack’s download host against the one in Slack’s own apt repository index, and I read the
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chown changes the owner and the group of a file or a directory on Linux, and nothing else. The command writes the two fields that sit beside the permission string in a long listing, and the permission string belongs to a different program. What sends readers searching is the reporting. The change line names the
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Ubuntu Server boots to a text prompt, and one apt command puts a desktop environment on the disk. Seeing that desktop is the step that catches people out. A server has no monitor and SSH carries no pixels, so the greeter starts, runs, and draws to nothing you can look at. I ran the sequence
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Ubuntu keeps a static IPv4 address in a YAML file under /etc/netplan, and a generator turns it into the configuration the system applies at boot. So editing /etc/network/interfaces does nothing on a current release, and a netplan file with the wrong interface name applies cleanly and changes nothing. The file owns the address, and the
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vsftpd opens two connections for every session, one for commands on port 21 and one for the bytes. That second connection is where a working login turns into a failed upload, and it is the one worth understanding before you edit anything. I ran the whole sequence on 3.0.5, which both current Ubuntu LTS releases
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rm deletes files and directories on Linux, and it does it permanently. Let me walk you through all the options available for safe deletion, with a terminal example for each one. What rm removes when you run it A file name is a directory entry, and that entry points at an inode which holds the
rm command in Linux: how to delete files and directories Read More »