Linux

1259 readers

77 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml

nooter692@lemmy.ml

MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml

cypherpunks@lemmy.ml

cyclohexane@lemmy.ml

d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz

Documenting commands # or $ before sudo? (feditown.com)

submitted 1 year ago by exu@feditown.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This might be a stupid question, but hear me out.
I regularly document steps to install various software for myself on my wiki
More recently, I managed to use different custom text in the source markdown to prepend # and $ automatically, so commands can be copied more easily while still clarifying if it should be run as a normal user or as root.

Run command as user

$ some cool command

Run command as root/superuser with sudo

# some dangerous command

I usually remove and sudo and use the # prefix. However, in some cases, the sudo actually does something different that needs to be highlighted. For example, I might use it to execute a command as the user www-data

sudo -u www-data cp /var/www/html/html1 /var/www/html/html2

I often use $ as a prefix, but # would also make sense.
How would you prefix that line?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

# is a standard shell prompt for root, and only for root. For commands executed by any other user, including sudo, use $.

In general it is a bad practice to use sudo in documentation because in many distros it is not available by default. I would use su for your example. However system users have no passwords, so you need to become root first, and only after that change user to avoid prompting a password. So I would write

# su -s /bin/bash www-data
$ cp /var/www/html/html1 /var/www/html/html2

# su -s /bin/sh -c 'cp /var/www/html/html1 /var/www/html/html2' www-data

But if you are sure that sudo is installed and configured on a user's machine, you may write

$ sudo -u www-data cp /var/www/html/html1 /var/www/html/html2