Top new questions this week:

How do I open an incognito bash session?

Is it possible to open an incognito session in bash? For example, when we need to enter passwords in commands and don't want bash to add them to history.

/ bash / shell / command-history / privacy

asked by Ali AlipourR 30 votes answered by Martin von Wittich 58 votes

Is there any UNIX variant on which a child process dies with its parent?

I have been studying the Linux kernel behaviour for quite some time now, and it's always been clear to me that: When a process dies, all its children are given back to the init process (PID 1) …

/ process / init / exit / fork

asked by John WH Smith 27 votes answered by Gilles 53 votes

Dealing with file names with special first characters (ex. ♫)

I have recently come across a file whose name begins with the character '♫'. I wanted to copy this file, feed it into ffmpeg, and reference it in various other ways in the terminal. I usually …

/ command-line / filenames / wildcards / special-characters / fish

asked by ZirconCode 20 votes answered by jimmij 25 votes

How can I see the exact command line being executed inside some bash instance?

I have a long running bash instance (inside a screen session) that is executing a complex set of commands inside a loop (with each loop doing pipes, redirects, etc). The long command line was …

/ bash / process / debugging

asked by ttsiodras 19 votes answered by ttsiodras 27 votes

Why does the X Window System use a server?

I never really understood why a window system must have a server. Why do desktop environments, display managers and window managers need xorg-server? Is it only to have a layer of abstraction on top …

/ xorg / x11 / x-server

asked by Aadit M Shah 18 votes answered by Jander 29 votes

Why do I sometimes get repeatedly prompted with ">" in the terminal?

Alright, when I run certain commands the wrong way, (misspelled, etc.) The terminal outputs this: > instead of computername:workingfolder username$, and when I type enter it goes like this: > …

/ bash / shell / command-line / prompt

asked by DisplayName 15 votes answered by John1024 39 votes

Linux solution for schools?

The school I'm working for as an administrator requested a system upgrade. Currently we are using a government-suggested Linux distribution called SuliXerver - it would be great, but most of the admin …

/ samba / server / distribution-choice / ldap

asked by fonix232 12 votes answered by YoMismo 0 votes

Greatest hits from previous weeks:

How to find path where jdk installed?

I'm a newbie to Linux so please forgive me for asking such stupid question! I'd installed jdk1.7.0.rpm package in RHEL6. Where I do find the path and to execute my first java program?

/ rhel / java

asked by Mohammad Faisal 1 vote answered by Matteo 5 votes

Is CentOS exactly the same as RHEL?

I'm sure this question has been asked again and again elsewhere (I did not find anything specific to CentOS vs RHEL in SE), but I would still like to ask and confirm a few specific points. I am well …

/ centos / rhel

asked by Oxwivi 35 votes answered by Gilles 18 votes

Can you answer these?

Convert Evolution filters.xml file to Thunderbird msgFilterRules.dat?

I migrated evolution to Thunderbird yesterday. I googled for migrate filters, but Evolution stores them as an XML file and Thunderbird stores using a Mork formatted file such as: version=`9` logging= …

/ xml / thunderbird / evolution / mork

asked by Mohsen Pahlevanzadeh 3 votes

Unable to load a USB keyboard driver on Debian machine

I have a pretty simple driver for USB keyboard: #include <linux/module.h> #include <linux/kernel.h> #include <linux/usb.h> #include <linux/usb/input.h> #include …

/ debian / drivers / usb / keyboard

asked by user1343318 2 votes

zparseopts with associative array in older version of zsh

I am confused by the differing behavior of zparseopts in two different versions of zsh. Basically I am trying to set a list of default option values in an associative array and overwrite these …

/ zsh

asked by Sean Mackesey 1 vote