I'm a 3 week old newbie that would like to know what's the best way to learn shell commands. Is there a book, web-site or training DVD that makes some of this more clear. I'm in a class right now, but it's a four hour jam session. I'm having trouble retaining all the different commands. I was hoping someone who has gone through the same situation as me might have some words of advise.

I recommend looking at the "init" scripts as examples. They tend to have many of the most commonly used conditionals (for, case, etc) and commands. You should have a good idea of what they're supposed to do (start and stop services), which should make them relatively easy to read through and understand.

If you're intent on having a book, the O'Reilly "Cookbooks" are generally useful.

are you looking to learn shell scripting or all the command-line tools in Linux. If the former, then google for 'advanced BASH scripting' book. It's free and very thorough.

If the former, look for the oReilly book called Linux in a Nutshell.

some links
http://rute.2038bug.com/rute.html.gz
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.linuxcommand.org/index.php
and this one is a must
http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/
then there is
http://www.shell-fu.org/

The "advanced bash scripting guide" is a very valid resource not only for scripting. You'll learn all the basic commands, and it's perfectly suitable for a beginner regardless of what the title says.

I dunno, I've always considered Advanced Bash Scripting to be pretty poor for the beginner. It starts with various scripts, little or no explanation of why, basically, similar to far too much Linux documentation. It's always difficult to find the proper balance between how and why, especially as some people do better at understanding the how after learning the why and others understand the why, once they learn the how.

Everyone learns in different ways, and the others who have posted here disagree. Obviously, you have to decide for yourself what you find useful.

The Advanced guide can be useful, but I fear that I don't share others' high opinion of it.

The Rute book, listed above, is, IMHO, excellent.

I also like
http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml


I have my own little page of links that *I* found useful when first trying to figure it out. For what it's worth...


http://home.roadrunner.com/~computer...scripting.html