Scripting / Alias
 

Just a general question to all the not so new linux users out there.

Do most of you use alot of scripts if so do you end up writing them yourselves?

I'm finding when I do a fresh install the manual work required to get everything up and running again is just crazy. While being new to linux I think this is a fantastic way to help get a stronger understanding of how things work, ideally scripting can then be used to automate some of the more annoying tasks on a fresh install and I'm sure many countless other functions that I have not yet realized or learned about.

Just curious. I felt this would be the best forum for this since it seems like a fairly newbish question.

I tend to write a quick shell script whenever I find myself doing something on a commandline that I know will be repeated exactly later. For instance, I created a CD-RW with a packet-writing filesystem so that it could be used as a large floppy. However, as most distros don't recognize their filesystems as such, mounting can be a pain. Therefore, I wrote a script that detects if a cdram is mounted. If so, it unmounts it and performs the associated maintenence. If not, it looks for it in the CD drive and mounts it.

I use scripts for alot of things, after new installs and forward. Backups, cd/dvd burning, maintainence, log parsing etc...many different things.
I use bash mostly but lately have been delving into Perl alot more, the local book store here has been getting rid of older perl dev books for like 3 bucks each, while older I feel they still provide valuable information.