Sebastiaan Tammer - Learn Linux Shell Scripting – Fundamentals of Bash 4.4: A comprehensive guide to automating administrative tasks with the Bash shell

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Sebastiaan Tammer is a Linux enthusiast from the Netherlands. After attaining his BSc in information sciences, he graduated with an MSc in business informatics, both from Utrecht University. His professional career started in Java development, before he pivoted into a Linux opportunity. Because of this dual background, he feels most at home in a DevOps environment.

Besides working extensively with technologies such as Puppet, Chef, Docker, and Kubernetes, he has also attained the RHCE and OSCP certificates. He spends a lot of time in and around Bash. Whether it is creating complex scripting solutions or just automating simple tasks, there is hardly anything he hasn't done with Bash!

Heathe Kyle Yeakley holds degrees in technical communications and network management. He began his IT career in 1999 doing entry-level help desk support. In 2003, he began his first enterprise data center job performing tape backup and recovery for the United States Federal Aviation Administration. He worked in the aerospace sector for several years, during which time he worked on a wide range of products, including HP Tru64 Unix, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris 10, Legato Networker, Symantec NetBackup, HP and NetApp storage arrays, Spectra Logic and ADIC tape libraries, VMware, and HP Blade servers.

He currently works for Agio, where he and his coworkers deliver managed IT services to some of the world's most prestigious companies.

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Shell scripts allow us to program commands in chains and have the system execute them as a scripted event, just like batch files. This book will start with an overview of Linux and Bash shell scripting, and then quickly deep dive into helping you set up your local environment, before introducing you to tools that are used to write shell scripts. The next set of chapters will focus on helping you understand Linux under the hood and what Bash provides the user. Soon, you will have embarked on your journey along the command line. You will now begin writing actual scripts instead of commands, and will be introduced to practical applications for scripts. The final set of chapters will deep dive into the more advanced topics in shell scripting. These advanced topics will take you from simple scripts to reusable, valuable programs that exist in the real world. The final chapter will leave you with some handy tips and tricks and, as regards the most frequently used commands, a cheat sheet containing the most interesting flags and options will also be provided.

After completing this book, you should feel confident about starting your own shell scripting projects, no matter how simple or complex the task previously seemed. We aim to teach you how to script and what to consider, to complement the clear-cut patterns that you can use in your daily scripting challenges.

This book targets new and existing Linux system administrators, as well as Windows system administrators or developers who are interested in automating administrative tasks. No prior shell scripting experience is required, but if you do possess some experience, this book will quickly turn you into a pro. Readers should have a (very) basic understanding of the command line.