Ben Chuanlong Du's Blog

And let it direct your passion with reason.

Sample Lines from a File Using Command Line

NOTE: the article talks about sampling "lines" rather than "records". If a records can occupy multiple lines, e.g., if any field contains a new line (\n), the following tutorial does not work and you have to fall back to more powerful tools such as Python or R.

Let's say …

Account Management in Linux

** Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement! **

Create a User

Both adduser and useradd can be used to create a new user. adduser is interactive while useradd is non-interactive. It is suggested that you use useradd in batch …

Get Group Names on Linux/Unix

Linux

  1. Get information of the staff group.

    $ getent group staff
    staff:x:20:
    
  2. Get group ID of the staff group.

    $ getent group staff | cut -d: -f3
    20
    

Mac

  1. Get information of the staff group.

    $ dscl . -read /Groups/staff
    
  2. Get group ID of the staff group.

    $ dscl . -read /Groups/staff | awk …

Add Users to a Group in Linux

There are several ways to add users to a group in Linux. The following uses the sudo group as illustration.

  1. gpasswd, usermod and adduser can all be used to add a user to a given group. However, it is suggested that you use gpasswd as it is more portable and …

Cygwin Portable

** Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement! **

Cygwin Portable

  1. The portable versions has some problems

    • Vim, edit mode, backspace doesn't work sometimes (identation related)
  2. Cygwin portable scroll doesn't work after Vim is opened and then closed. but if …