The FreeBSD SysAdmin's Favorite Tools

The vi cronies are out in full force!

We get it. Vi is a good editor. Use it
if you like it. I use it for plenty of
tasks.

No reason to attribute vi with superior
administration. That is hardly the case.
 
I use pkg_libchk and pkg_validate from sysutils/bsdadminscripts a lot. I made pkg_validate to check the consistency of the system after a crash and pkg_libchk for the transition from 6.x to 7.x. It spared me the build of several hundred ports and now it helps me find problems resulting from a port upgrade and fix them before they cause trouble.
 
Since I don't use FreeBSD as a network tool but rather as a desktop OS, I'd have to say my favorite FreeBSD-specific tool is...sysinstall! :) Other than that, I'd be completely lost without gcc...writing machine code just isn't my idea of a fun time. :) And, since I always use X, nedit and kwrite are my code editors...I can't stand vi, never could...sorry vi folks. :) pkg_add, firefox, and kvirc round out my list of essential tools...yeah, IRC is essential dangit! :D
 
Eponasoft said:
and kvirc round out my list of essential tools...yeah, IRC is essential dangit! :D
Click to expand...

:O Konversation!

Administratively, sysutils/pstree, top, tail, sysutils/pftop, net- and sockstat for diagnostics, sysctl(8)+prayer to up that resource that's just been eaten and the rest is icing on the cake.
 
artificer said:
I recently appreciated recoverdisk(1), it's invaluable in many situations. Not many people seem to know it, as it's new (First appeared in 7.0).
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Sounds like useful/life saving tool. I dont have any damaged data here, so I cant test the tool, how well does it perform for you?
 
bsddaemon said:
Sounds like useful/life saving tool. I dont have any damaged data here, so I cant test the tool, how well does it perform for you?
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Very well, I've saved a lot of data from some defective cd-roms. I haven't tested it on a hard disk though.
 
Business_Woman said:
Simple and effective
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I must admit that ee both confuses and enrages me. Perhaps I'm odd, but vi is a lot easier to use once you get the hang of the very basics. Really, i a dw cw dd and o are enough to get quite far. And while it is extremely powerful/complex, one doesn't have to learn all of the features at once.

Case in point, I only recently realized that :$ would take me directly to the last line of any file, no matter how large it is.
robertclemens said:
No reason to attribute vi with superior
administration. That is hardly the case.
Click to expand...
You mean apart from the fact that it's the only editor guaranteed to be on a system in a form that's consistent, right?
 
bash/vim-lite/top/netstat/lsof/innotop/du/df/telnet

Of course, I could add cd and make to this list in order to install new ports ;)
 
You mean apart from the fact that it's the only editor guaranteed to be on a system in a form that's consistent, right?
Click to expand...

Actually, the only editor guaranteed to be on any *nix/Linux system is ED,
which is quite awesome :) I'm a strong advocate of ED :)
 
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Reactions: Oko
braveduck said:
I'm a strong advocate of ED :)
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I found this essay to be pretty amusing:
http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/religion/ed-standard

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

golem> ed

?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?

- ---
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is
generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm
the novice with verbosity.
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For me its got to be nano, mtr (excellent program!) and don't think I have seen them mentioned and don't see many people using them 'popd & pushd' be lost without them both! :e
 
braveduck said:
Actually, the only editor guaranteed to be on any *nix/Linux system is ED,
which is quite awesome :) I'm a strong advocate of ED :)
Click to expand...
Quite right. Linux version of vi is vim (which I do not like) while
bsd version is nvi (new vi editor). Heirloom vi (SUN's vi) is the closest thing to real vi. But Bill Joe is owner of SUN so that should not be surprise.

I like ed very much myself although I have honestly to admit that I use mostly nvi.
 
Pretty much everything I like has been mentioned already, save for one that has been left with but a fleeting mention:

watch(1)

I use this all of the time since I tend to leave console processes running while I go out and do something else. Maybe I'm at a friends house and notice that a portupgrade is sitting at a configuration window. No need to restart the process (which can be hairy if you're using -R or -r), just watch(1) the terminal and answer whatever it's asking.

Or maybe I want to idle on an IRC channel with just one client? Start the client on a vty and whenever you want to interact just ssh into the box, watch(1) the vty, and go.

Maybe I want to be really paranoid about restarting a firewall config when connected remotely and watch a local vty to run the restart.

Or I'm in X and can't switch to the vtys thanks to the new X.org and nVidia driver not honoring ctrl-alt-fx, yet I want to run something on the console? Watch solves that problem as well.
 
jandrese said:
Or I'm in X and can't switch to the vtys thanks to the new X.org and nVidia driver not honoring ctrl-alt-fx, yet I want to run something on the console? Watch solves that problem as well.
Click to expand...

Well, that explains the problem I have had since updating to 7.0 and the new X.org! I can't get to the console, and couldn't find out why. I have nVidia driver. Thanks a lot! :e

Can you give some details on how watch is used to get to the console. I read the manual, but to be honest, I didn't understand too much of it. :(
 
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