KellyKeeton dot Com v3.0 reverse engineering life

some linux tricks I didnt know

now there are a lot of tricks I dont know, but here are a few that were rather interestingthat I havent picked up in my years of emergency linux support work.

apropos -  apropos - search the whatis databasefor strings  

whereis- locate the binary, source, and manual page filesfor a command on disk (adding -b will only give binary returns)

Alt + SysRq + B

If you’re not running any crucial, scheduled tasks or inthe middle of composing a letter or an e-mail then this key combination may be theone to use. It will reboot the system immediately without bothering to sync or unmountdisks.

Alt + SysRq + R

If you cannot get to a terminal window by using Ctrl+ Alt + F2 then use this key combination (pressed altogether) to get a keyboard(this is because this key combination turns off what is called keyboard raw mode.Pressing these keys allows keyboard input even after your X-Windows session has crashed/frozen).Now, try Ctrl + Alt + F2 again and you can close down from the terminal.If that fails move on to the next option.

Alt + SysRq + S

This key combo does just what it says on the tin: it (S)ync’sall filesystems which reduces the possibility of loosing any data and possibly obviatingthe need for the system to run fsck upon reboot.

Alt + SysRq + U

As you might guess, this one tries to unmount disks andremount them as read only.

Alt + SysRq + O

Not so obvious, but this will power off your machine withoutsyncing or unmounting disks (but it won’t reboot)