Databases, Systems & Networks

I am a new Ubuntu Linux laptop user. I setup my computer name to ‘tom’ during installation but now I would like to change the computer name to ‘jerry’. Can you tell me how do I I remove tom and set it to jerry on Ubuntu Linux? How do I change the Ubuntu computer name from ‘ubuntu’ to ‘AvlinStar’? Can you tell me more about Ubuntu Linux change hostname command?

You can use the hostname command to see or set the system’s host name. The host name or computer name is usually at system startup in /etc/hostname file. Open the terminal application and type the following commands to set or change hostname or computer name on Ubuntu.

Display the current Ubuntu hostname

Simply type the following command:
$ hostname
Sample outputs:

Ubuntu change hostname command

The procedure to change the computer name on Ubuntu Linux:

1. Type the following command to edit /etc/hostname using nano or vi text editor:
   sudo nano /etc/hostname
   Delete the old name and setup new name.
2. Next Edit the /etc/hosts file:
   sudo nano /etc/hosts
   Replace any occurrence of the existing computer name with your new one.
3. Reboot the system to changes take effect:
   sudo reboot

Sample outputs:

How to change the Ubuntu server hostname without a system restart?

Type the following commands:
$ sudo hostname new-server-name-here
Next edit the /etc/hostname file and update hostname:
$ sudo nano /etc/hostname
Finally, edit the /etc/hosts file and update the lines that reads your old-host-name:
$ sudo nano /etc/hosts
From:
127.0.1.1 old-host-name
To:
127.0.1.1 new-server-name-here
Save and close the file.

Ubuntu Linux Change Hostname Using hostnamectl

Systemd based Linux distro such as Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS and above can simply use the hostnamectl command to change hostname. To see current setting just type the following command:
$ hostnamectl
Sample outputs:

   Static hostname: nixcraft
         Icon name: computer-laptop
           Chassis: laptop
        Machine ID: 291893e6499e4d99891c3cf4b70a138b
           Boot ID: 9fda2365b77841649e40a141fde46537
  Operating System: Ubuntu 17.10
            Kernel: Linux 4.13.0-21-generic
      Architecture: x86-64

To change hostname from nixcraft to viveks-laptop, enter:
$ hostnamectl set-hostname viveks-laptop
$ hostnamectl

How to check file size in unix using wc command

The wc command shows the number of lines, words, and bytes contained in file. The syntax is as follows to get the file size:
wc -c /path/to/file
wc -c /etc/passwd
Sample outputs:

5253 /etc/passwd

You can easily extract the first field either using the cut or awk command:
wc -c /etc/passwd | awk '{print $1}'
Sample outputs:

5253

OR assign this size to a bash variable:

myfilesize=$(wc -c "/etc/passwd" | awk '{print $1}')
printf "%d\n" $myfilesize
echo "$myfilesize"

How to get the size of a file in a bash script using stat command

The stat command shows information about the file. The syntax is as follows to get the file size on GNU/Linux stat:
stat -c %s "/etc/passwd"
OR
stat --format=%s "/etc/passwd"
To assign this size to a bash variable:

myfilesize=$(stat --format=%s "/etc/passwd")
echo "$myfilesize"
## or ##
myFileSizeCheck=$(stat -c %s "/etc/resolv.conf")
printf "My file size = %d\n" $myFileSizeCheck

The syntax is as follows to get the file size on BSD/MacOS stat:
stat -f %z "/etc/passwd"
Please note that if the file is symlink you will get size of that link only with the stat command.

du command example

The syntax is

du --apparent-size --block-size=1  "/etc/passwd"
fileName="/etc/hosts"
mfs=$(du --apparent-size --block-size=1  "$fileName" | awk '{ print $1}')
echo "$fileName size = ${mfs}"

Sample outputs from above commands:

Fig.01: How to check size of a file using a bash/ksh/zsh/sh/tcsh shell?

Find command example

The syntax is:

find "/etc/passwd" -printf "%s"
find "/etc/passwd" -printf "%s\n"
fileName="/etc/hosts"
mysize=$(find "$fileName" -printf "%s")
printf "File %s size = %d\n" $fileName $mysize
echo "${fileName} size is ${mysize} bytes."

You can use standard Unix commands such as sed, awk, grep, Perl, Python and more to get domain name from URL. No need to write regex. It is pretty simple.

Let use see various commands and option to grab the domain part from given variable under Linux or Unix-like system.

Get domain name from full URL

Say your url name is stored in a bash shell variable such as $x:
x='https://www.dbsysnet.com/'
You can use the awk as follows:
echo "$x" | awk -F/ '{print $3}'
### OR ###
awk -F/ '{print $3}' <<<$x
Sample outputs:

www.dbsysnet.com

Extract domain name from URL using sed

Here is a sample sed command:
url="https://www.dbsysnet.com"
echo "$url" | sed -e 's|^[^/]*//||' -e 's|/.*$||'

Extract domain name from URL using bash shell parameter substitution

Another option is to use bash shell parameter substitution:

# My shell variable 
f="https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/copy-command/"
 
## Remove protocol part of url ##
f="${f#http://}"
f="${f#https://}"
f="${f#ftp://}"
f="${f#scp://}"
f="${f#scp://}"
f="${f#sftp://}"
 
## Remove username and/or username:password part of URL ##
f="${f#*:*@}"
f="${f#*@}"
 
## Remove rest of urls ##
f=${f%%/*}
 
## Show domain name only ##
echo "$f"

Shell script example

A shell script to purge urls from Cloudflare by matching domain name part:

#!/bin/bash
zone_id=""
api_key=""
 
urls="$@"
bon=$(tput bold)
boff=$(tput sgr0)
c=1
[ "$urls" == "" ] && { echo "Usage: $0 url"; exit 1; }
 
clear
echo "Purging..."
echo
for u in $urls
do
     echo -n "${bon}${c}${boff}.${u}: "
     ## Get domain name ##
     d="$(echo $u | awk -F/ '{ print $3}')"
     ## Set API_KEY, Email_ID, and ZONE_ID as per domain ##
     case $d in
	     www.cyberciti.biz) zone_id="ID_1"; api_key="MY_KEY_1"; email_id="webmaster@cyberciti.biz";;
	     theos.in) zone_id="ID_2"; api_key="MY_KEY_2"; email_id="webmaster@theos.in";;
	     *) echo "Domain not configured."; continue;;
     esac
     ## Do it ##
     curl -X DELETE "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/${zone_id}/purge_cache" \
     -H "X-Auth-Email: ${email_id}" \
     -H "X-Auth-Key: ${api_key}" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     --data "{\"files\":[\"${u}\"]}"
     echo
     (( c++ ))
done
echo

I want to find out how many times a word (say foo or an IP address) occurs in a text file using the grep command on Linux or Unix-like system?

You can use the grep command to search strings, words, text, and numbers for a given patterns. You can pass the -coption to grep command. It only shows the number of times that the pattern has been matched for each file.

Show the total number of times that the word foo appears in a file named bar.txt

The syntax is:
grep -c string filename
grep -c foo bar.txt
Sample outputs:

3

To count total number of occurrences of word in a file named /etc/passwd root using grep, run:
grep -c root /etc/passwd
To verify that run:
grep --color root /etc/passwd
Pass the -w option to grep to select only an entire word or phrase that matches the specified pattern:
grep -w root /etc/passwd
OR
grep -c -w root /etc/passwd
In this example only match a word being with root:
grep --color -w '^root' /etc/passwd
grep -c -w '^root' /etc/passwd
To show only the matching part of the lines.
grep -o 'root' /etc/passwd
grep -c -o 'root' /etc/passwd
Sample session:

Fig.01: Counting occurrence of words/strings using grep command

I type ‘find . -type d -iname foo -delete‘ command to find the foo directories and delete them. However, I am getting an error message that read as find: cannot delete './hourly.4/data/foo': Directory not empty on Linux server. How do delete directories based on find command output on Linux or Unix-like system?

The -delete option remove the DIRECTORY(ies), if they are empty. You need to use the -execoption to delete all directories and its contents. The syntax is as follows.

Find command syntax to delete dirs

Try:
find /dir/to/search/ -type d -name "dirName" -exec rm -rf {} +
OR
find /dir/to/search/ -type d -name "dirName" -exec rm -rf \;

Warning: Be careful with the rm command when using with find. You may end up deleting unwanted data.

Find will execute given command when it finds files or dirs. For example:
find . -type d -name "foo" -exec rm -rf {} +
OR
find . -type d -name "bar" -exec rm -rf "{}" \;
Sample outputs:

removed './daily.0/bar/.cache/motd.legal-displayed'
removed directory './daily.0/bar/root/.cache'
removed './daily.0/bar/.lesshst'
removed './daily.0/bar/.viminfo'
removed './daily.0/bar/.vim/.netrwhist'
removed directory './daily.0/bar/root/.vim'
removed './daily.0/bar/root/.bashrc'
removed './daily.0/bar/.ssh/authorized_keys'
removed directory './daily.0/bar/root'
removed directory './daily.0/bar/var/spool/cron/crontabs'

You can find directories that are at least four levels deep in the working directory /backups/:
find /backups/ -type d -name "bar" -depth +4 -print0 -exec rm -rf {} +

Find and xargs

The syntax is as follows to find and delete directories on Linux/Unix system:
## delete all empty dirs ##
find /path/to/dir/ -type d -empty -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} /bin/rm -rf "{}"
## delete all foo dirs including subdirs in /backups/
find /backups/ -type d -name "foo*" -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} /bin/rm -rf "{}"
The second command is secure and fast version as it deals with weird dir names such as:

• “foo bar”
• “Foo _ *bar”