Tools a Unix administrator cannot live without [closed]

Question

After administering Unix or Unix-like servers, what tools (command-line preferably) do you feel you cannot live without?

Answer 1

screen is a must, especially with a good .screenrc file. I have it configured to display visually which window I'm in and can move between them with Ctrl+Arrow. For a single ssh session and multiple shells, it is a life saver.

Answer 2

• Bash
• Vim
• iostat
• ps
• top
• lsof
• strace
• tcpdump
• netstat
• find
• grep
• Perl
• sed
• tail
• dig
• traceroute

Where possible the GNU versions of the above over the propritary versions.

Answer 3

I love AWK as well as "for" on the command line.

Especially to build up a list of commands I want to run and then execute them all at once.

Answer 4

These are the tools I use on a daily basis (as a developer more than a system administrator)

• zsh
• lsof
• ps
• ack (or grep)
• find
• svn
• Python
• tar
• which
• fortune (a guy has to keep his sanity somehow)

Answer 5

All the standard commands and utilities (Bash, grep, sed, AWK, find, xargs, ssh, Vim, etc.)

• Lsof, awesome in so many ways, I love to use it for finding open ports AND the files associated with that process.
• Screen, for multi-session awesome.
• Tcpdump, its funny how many application problems are really weird network issues
• Ruby, makes more sense to me than Perl, becoming wildly popular for SA work.
• Chef, configuration management system.
• Capistrano, ssh in a for loop, but less crappy. And in Ruby.
• Rake, more sensible than make.

Answer 6

Perl and Vim. In that order. Anything else, I can use Perl to emulate somehow.

Answer 7

• rsync running over ssh to keep things consistent... in multiple directions (-gloptru[n]c)
• Vim and vimdiff to edit with 'folding' and viewing differences in scripts, logs, etc.
• Perl and (Ba)sh for scripting and analysis
• cURL (and maybe Wget) for posting/fetching data from ...
• Apache to webify them all (or at least create point-n-click admin tools)

Answer 8

The shutdown command.

Answer 9

• atop - yet another top alternative, great for monitoring changes in processes
• strace/ltrace - for tracking down those REALLY annoying bugs
• ldd - track down broken library dependencies
• cron, logrotate ;)

Of course, beyond command line, you need Nagios/Cacti/MRTG/etc...

Answer 10

Learn Vim or Emacs in and out!!
For text editing
Grep
Sed
AWK

For network tools
Nmap
dig

Answer 11

munin is a great tool for doing capacity analysis and review, but you need to set it up before you need it. We install it as a standard part of every server install we do.

Answer 12

nmon

Haven't seen anyone mention this yet.

The nmon tool is designed for AIX and Linux performance specialists to use for monitoring and analyzing performance data, including:

• CPU utilization
• Memory use
• Kernel statistics and run queue information
• Disks I/O rates, transfers, and read/write ratios
• Free space on file systems
• Disk adapters
• Network I/O rates, transfers, and read/write ratios
• Paging space and paging rates
• CPU and AIX specification
• Top processors
• and more

Can be run in file mode which generates a big CSV file. IBM also provide an Excel macro for parsing this and turning it in to awesome graphs, although you do need a Windows VM for that.

nagios and munin for monitoring and graphing.