Tux Training

Welcome to the Linux Command Line Interface Desktop

Posted on May 15th, 2008 in Commandline Tools by admin

TuxTraining.com has covered numerous commandline applications but now it’s time to tie it all together. So Ctrl Alt F6 and get to that command line, because you don’t need no stinkin GUI.

The Internet

Now most of us with desktops realize our computers are pretty worthless without our chat, internet, downloading files, torrents, etc. So lets jump right in.

Surf the Web

elinks is a command line web browser for unix-based systems. It’s relatively simple to use. To install:

on Fedora: yum -install elinks
on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install elinks
on Suse I was unable to find a suitable package. So i grabbed the source from here
- extract the package: tar -xjvf elinks-0.11.4rc0.tar.gz
- change to the directory: cd elinks
- configure: ./configure
- gain root access: su (and type admin password)
- make
- make install
run the application: elinks

Usage

You’ll find the application immediately prompts you for a web address to go to. Use the arrow keys to jump from link to link. Use the Enter key once text boxes are selected to enter text within them. The Page Up and Page Down buttons will make scrolling through the pages easier.

If you’re using a terminal emulator and not just a straight terminal you’ll the links are clickable with the mouse. If you click the mouse at the top of the screen you’ll bring down the menu for the browser. You can access these menu’s with keyboard commands as well. Ctrl+F for the File menu, Ctrl+V for the View, Ctrl+L for Link, Ctrl+T for Tools, and Ctrl+S for Setup.

Chat with Friends

naim is a command line AIM client for unix-based systems. It’s relatively simple to use. To install:

on Fedora: yum -install naim
on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install naim
on Suse I was unable to find a suitable package. So i grabbed the source from here
- extract the package: tar -xjvf naim-0.11.8.3.1.tar.bz2
- change to the directory: cd naim*
- configure: ./configure
- gain root access: su (and type admin password)
- make
- make install
run the application: naim

When the application opens type: /connect “screename” and press enter, then enter your password when prompted.

Usage

You can scroll through your buddy list with the Tab button
To add a buddy: addbuddy “screenname”

For more info on using naim

irssi is a command line IRC client for unix-based systems. It’s relatively simple to use. To install:

on Fedora: yum -install irssi
on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install irssi
on openSuse: zypper in irssi
run the application: irssi

Usage

When the application opens type: /connect “irc_channel” and press enter. As an example:

/connect irc.freenode.net

/join “#channel” “optional_password”
- exampe /join kde

And that’s it.

Don’t worry, piracy doesn’t stop when X crashes

rtorrent is a command line bit torrent client for unix-based systems. It’s relatively simple to use. To install:

on Suse I was unable to find anything in the repo’s. So i grabbed the source from here
(both packages are available at the link above)
run the application: rtorrent

Usage

To simply download a torrent do the following:

rtorrent http://extratorrent.com/download/666052/openSUSE-10+2-GM-DVD-i386-iso.torrent

For further options see the man page and the user guide.

Update Twitter with cURL

Most distribution’s repositories have cURL. So it’s just a matter of using apt-get, yum, or zypper to get it installed. If you don’t have cURL in your repo’s you can always build it from source. You can obtain the source for curl here.

With cURL installed, you can post to Twitter from the terminal window by using the following syntax: (Note, this should be all one line)

curl -u yourusername:yourpassword -d status="Your Message Here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

You will receive a response containing the XML coding for your post which acts as a confirmation that your post was submitted.

Stay up to date with your RSS Feeds

SnowNews is a feedreader for your unix/linux command line. It doesn’t have some necessary features some would like, such as full html rendering, https access, etc.. But for the most part SnowNews does what it is intended to do and does it well. You can build it from source or you can simply run the binary by downloading this tarball, extracting it and running “./snownews”. I suggest building it from source if it is not in your repositories.

See the homepage here: http://kiza.kcore.de/software/snownews/

Once you’ve installed and run SnowNews you’ll notice a white bar at the bottom stating Press ‘h’ for the help screen. Lets go ahead and press that. We get the following:

a: Add RSS feed…
D: Delete highlighted RSS feed…
c: Rename feed…
R: Reload all feeds
r: Reload this feed
m: Mark all read
B: Change default browser…
P, N: Move item up, down
s: Sort feed list alphabetically
C: Categorize feed…
f: Apply filter…
g: Only current category
F: Remove filter
H: Show new headlines
e: Add conversion filter…
tab: Type Ahead Find
A: About
E: Show error log…
q: Quit program
Pretty self explanatory, no? Just for testing purposes go ahead and hit ‘a’ and lets type in TuxTraining’s main feed for this test run:

Press the ‘a’ key to add a feed and past http://tuxtraining.com/feed/ into the white bar and press Enter, the feed should add successfully. Hit Enter again to select the feed and you’ll see the rss entries for TuxTraining.

You can escape whatever menu you’re in using the ‘q’ key. As the menu and the tips are pretty self explanitory I’ll leave you here to browse through the rest of the options.

For Further Downloads

Organization and Office files

File Management

If you remember computers as far back as the late 1980s, you might remember how Peter Norton came to prominence with the three-floppy (was it three?) Norton Utilities suite. There were a lot of cool tools in that pack, especially Norton Commander, which suddenly made file management a breeze.

Midnight Commander (or just mc) is the GNU version of that utility, with an identical layout and similar color scheme. mc should be available in most linux distribution’s repo’s.

Old-timers will rejoice at that screenshot. Two-panel file management, with options for a quick-view, syntax-colored file preview, file info, filesystem tree, and a mess of other features. Opens tar, bz2, gz and some other compressed packages like folders and has implicit shell access as well. mc reads mouse input without gpm, handles transparent X terminal emulators and can access smb and ftp directly.

For sheer speed and power, it’s hard to top such a mature, full-featured and well-rounded file access utility, and after using it for a week or so, you’ll wonder why you put up with sluggish, incomplete graphical file managers that only do a fraction of what mc does natively. This is one of those programs that has so many options and so many possibilities that I really do it a disservice my glazing over it like this. But alas, this is how it has to be. Perhaps in the future

Multimedia

Play your music

mpg123 is a command line mp3 player for unix-based systems. It’s relatively simple to use. To install:

on Fedora: yum install mpg123
on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install mpg123
on openSuse: zypper in mpg123
run the application:

mpg123 /home/username/song.mp3

mpg123 /home/username/music_folder/

Control Your Volume

You more than likely already have alsamixer installed on your computer, even if you just don’t know it’s there. Simply type “alsamixer” on the command line and you will be presented with:

It does everything most graphical volume controls do and does it just as good. It handles setting the volume, controlling 3D switches, CD audio volume and line-in ports just like the graphical versions you are normally accustomed to. Key controls are a simple combination of left and right arrow keys, up and down keys and the M button to mute a channel. Simple, right?

The great part of alsamixer is that you don’t have to mess with the amixer terminal commands to set the volume on your rig. And it runs on a fraction of the space, with no need for a particular desktop environment to work. It’s a natural born utility

How do I organize all this when I only have one screen?

Screen is a session management utility for the unix/linux terminal. It serves multiple functions. Say you’re on a linux box and not running X Windows but you have the need to run multiple applications at once, without a window manager like we’re accustomed to in a GUI environment this can be troublesome, enter Screen. Screen allows you to run multiple instances of your terminal and switch back and forth between those instances with a stroke of the keyboard.

But Screen also serves another function. Have you ever been working remotely via an SSH session while in the middle of a running an app or working on a file and all of a sudden the connection simply drops? Again, Screen is here to save the day.

To see if you have Screen installed simply type:

which screen

Installation

In most redhat / centos/ fedora systems this should be in your path already. On my Ubuntu box I had to install it from the repo’s. It came included with my openSuse installation. On the off chance that it’s not preinstalled and not in your repo’s you can download it here: http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/

Using Screen

to call screen, simply type

$ screen

Depending on your install, it may give you a line of text, a page of text, or it may seem nothing happened at all when you ran screen. As long as you didn’t get an error message screen should be running after calling the application. Now you should be sitting in a window within screen. Lets demonstate.

Screen uses the command “Ctrl-A” as a signal to send commands to screen instead of the shell. To get help, just use “Ctrl-A” then “?”. You should now have the screen help page.

How to do multiple windows?

Screen, like many windows managers, can support multiple windows. This is very useful for doing many tasks at the same time without opening new sessions.

To open a new window, you just use “Ctrl-A” “c”. This will create a new window for you with your default prompt. For example, I can be running top and then open a new window to do other things like chat on naim or irssi, or update Twitter with cURL, or edit a file in vi. Go ahead and try it out, since you’ve already started screen, go ahead an “vi file1? to create a file in vi, then hit “Ctrl-A” and then type “c”. You will be taken to a new prompt. Go ahead and start ‘top’ to view your system processes. Then use “Ctrl-A” and then press “n” to switch back and forth between your open windows.

Leaving Screen

There are two ways to get out of screen. The first is just like logging out of a shell. You kill each window with “Ctrl-A” “K” . I personally use “exit” for each screen I wish to close, when there’s no more screens left, i simply type exit again to exit Screen.

The second way to leave screen is to detach from a windows. This method leaves the process running and simple closes the window. If you have really long processes, you need to close your SSH program, you can detach from the window using “Ctrl-A” “d”. This will drop you into your shell. All screen windows are still there and you can re-attach to them later.

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