10 Lesser Known Effective Linux Commands – Part IV

Continuing the Lesser Known series, this fourth article of the series will let you know some useful funny and animated commands. Here we go into the practical session, without much theory.

10 Lesser Known Effective Commands

1. 11 Lesser Known Useful Linux Commands – Part I
2. 10 Lesser Known Linux Commands – Part 2
3. 10 Lesser Known Commands for Linux – Part 3
4. 10 Lesser Known Useful Linux Commands- Part V

In the fourth article of this series which includes few other lesser known Linux commands, worth knowing. Might be you’re already aware of these commands, no doubt you’re an experienced Linux user and loves exploration.

32. strace Command

The strace is a debugging tool which is used primarily for troubleshooting purpose in Linux. It might not be installed by default in your system and you may need to apt or yum the required package.

Trace a command execution using strace command:

root@tecmint [~]# strace pwd

Sample Output

execve("/bin/pwd", ["pwd"], [/* 29 vars */]) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x728000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f29b0df2000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=38427, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 38427, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7f29b0de8000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib64/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)      = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\360\355\1I;\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1922152, ...}) = 0
mmap(0x3b49000000, 3745960, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x3b49000000
mprotect(0x3b4918a000, 2093056, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x3b49389000, 20480, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x189000) = 0x3b49389000
mmap(0x3b4938e000, 18600, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x3b4938e000
close(3)                                = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f29b0de7000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f29b0de6000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f29b0de5000
....

The strace command accepts a lot of arguments and have many options. Refer to man page for detailed information.

33. disown -a && exit Command

Most of the system administrators use screen command to control jobs running in the terminal background. Let’s say if you having a long running job and want to detach from the terminal, you use screen command to do it. But what if you don’t know how to use screen, here comes disown command to rescue.

The disown command is used to run the jobs continuously in the background even after you closing the terminal session. The syntax of the disown command is:

root@tecmint [~]# Command; disown -a && exit

To detach again the long running job in the terminal, use the jobs command to find the job number and then use disown %n where n is the job number. To verify actually the job is running use ps or top command. The nohup command is an alternative to the disown command.

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