Let's Use BASH on Windows 10!

Let’s BASH Windows 10!

John Meister

Let’s BASH Windows 10!

Copyright 2017 John Meister

ISBN: 9781370013111

Published by John Meister at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction to BASH on Windows 10

How to INSTALL BASH on WIN10

How to Configure the BASH window

Chapter 1_Linux_Overview

Chapter 2_the_5_essential_commands

Chapter 3_the_vi_Editor

Chapter 4_shell_config_History_script

Chapter 5_File_Management:_cp_mv_rm

Chapter 6_Files, Processes and Special Characters

Chapter 7_Regular_Expressions_and_Filters

Chapter 8_ssh_setup_and_use

Chapter 9_Network_Basics

Chapter 10_Files_Systems:_df_du

Chapter 11_Managing Users

Chapter 12_apt-get installs and updates

Appendix: How to INSTALL_BASH_WIN10

Appendix: The LINUX Philosophy

Appendix: Exercise #1 - the 5 basic commands

Appendix: Exercise #2 - chmod, chown, file permissions

Appendix: Additional info on BASH

Appendix: Additional info from Chapter 2

Appendix: SCRIPT: fix filenames

Appendix: SCRIPT: use wget, date, and a while loop

Appendix: REAL WORLD LINUX COMMANDS

Other Books by this Author

Connect with John Meister

Introduction to BASH on Windows 10

Let's use BASH on Windows 10! This book introduces Microsoft users to a brave new world, well, actually a world that has existed for decades, the command line of UNIX. This book addresses the newly included developer tool called BASH, for Bourne-Again SHell by providing simple (hopefully) explanations and examples. The book is organized in a logical approach to the commands and functions, but FEEL FREE TO JUMP AROUND IN THIS BOOK. After installing BASH on Win10, I recommend that you configure ".bashrc and .History" and then just have fun trying commands, scripts and examples.

BASH has a rich set of command line tools that provide a wide array of powerful commands and features found in Ubuntu BASH, and other UNIX-like systems. What is learned related to BASH may be applied to other UNIX-like systems, so this is a set of tools that provides interoperability and is transferable; it is NOT proprietary or limited in scope.

BASH is available now in the current 64 bit versions of Microsoft Windows 10. This developer feature in Microsoft Windows 10 makes interoperability a reality! System Administrators, web designers, software developers, engineers, and power users from all platforms will find tools that will make their tasks more enjoyable. Examples of real world use of various scripts are included in the Appendix. Jump back to the Table of Contents

BASH is COMMAND LINE only and not a GUI (Graphical User Interface). Brian Kernighan, one of the developers of UNIX, said it best about GUI: What You See Is All You Get (WYSIAYG), a sarcastic variant of the original "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG). The truth is that CLI (command line interface) provides far more options than can be presented visually through pictures, ribbons or menus. The CLI provides a rich set of features that allows someone to solve unique problems in creative ways.

GUI interfaces simply can not provide all of the options for commands, which is what Kernighan was pointing out. Brian Wilson Kernighan (born 1942) contributed to UNIX along with Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, he is the K in K&R C and AWK. There is more information in the wiki about him linked here.

This book provides step by step details, screen shots and practical examples of Ubuntu's BASH on Win10 (Windows 10). These examples will also work on any Linux, Mac OS X or other UNIX-like system. BASH is a powerful enhancement to Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system and while intended for developers, it provides a rich set of tools for any power user. The incorporation of Canonical's Ubuntu BASH shell into recent editions of Microsoft Win10 is amazing news for anyone familiar with the power of the command line in Unix-like systems.

https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/03/30/ubuntu-on-windows-the-ubuntu-userspace-for-windows-developers/ states: Let's break this down slowly:

1) Windows 10 users

2) Can open the Windows Start menu

3) And type bash [enter]

4) Which opens a cmd.exe console

5) Running Ubuntu’s /bin/bash

6) With full access to all of Ubuntu user space

7) Yes, that means apt, ssh, rsync, find, grep, awk, sed, sort, xargs, md5sum, gpg, curl, wget, apache, mysql, python, perl, ruby, php, gcc, tar, vim, emacs, diff, patch…

8) And most of the tens of thousands binary packages available in the Ubuntu archives!

There are a few limitations of BASH within the Microsoft Win10 (Windows 10) environment related to networking and Microsoft executables. The limitations aren't show stoppers. To date I've not been able to ssh into the BASH shell from another system, ping, ifconfig and other networking related tools do not work, but as these commands are usually tied directly to a UNIX-like system kernel it is not unexpected. However, I am able to nslookup and ssh to various systems. I've seen some variations working with this, one some systems I needed to use the sudo command to connect with ssh, but this hasn't been consistent and may have been fixed with more recent updates from Microsoft. The rule of thumb for the advanced features might be to use sudo to give the BASH kernel authority to work, or even launch the BASH tool as an administrator from Win10, however, this book is written and tested as a normal user as many in corporate environments are not permitted admin rights. Because this is such a powerful tool that could benefit engineers, analysts and even bean counters I wanted to make sure that these things would work for everyone. Within BASH using sudo will not require elevated rights in any enterprise domain.

The jobs control feature doesn't work completely either, but because this is CLI only that is not unexpected. Overall most features of BASH work as one would expect from any Linux, Mac OS X or other UNIX-like system. The scripts provided in the Appendix have been tested in BASH on Win10 running in VMs on a Mac OS X and Linux, that they work there, as well as on native Win10 systems in the free world and within a Domain Controlled enterprise environment is proof enough of a successful implementation of what is labeled as beta. Congrats to all involved in implementing and deploying this fantastic feature! I am personally excited about this new feature because it reduces complexity in corporate settings for DBAs, Sys Admins, engineers, researchers, web developers, testers and others crunching a lot of data or information.

The Ubuntu BASH feature is not a full implementation of Linux, it is COMMAND LINE ONLY. It is not a virtual machine or a container, neither is it a compiled application like cygwin, it is native Ubuntu Linux BASH binaries running in Windows. Simply put, you can do things in Microsoft you could never do before. This means you no longer need to use putty.exe to ssh to a Linux system to work on your shell scripts, SQL statements or to edit web pages with the vi editor. You can do it all on a Microsoft desktop! This means you can sort large files and search (grep) for words quickly and even redirect the results into a completely new file any where on your computer, or even across the network. You can develop a web page in the vi editor quickly, then scp the file to your Linux Apache server with great ease!

BASH provides a very powerful set of tools that significantly enhances your Win10 system. GUI (graphical user interface) applications in Linux will not work as there are no windowing capabilities provided. However, many Linux users rarely use the GUI, except for the tools available on other systems, like Firefox, Thunderbird and an office suite, like OpenOffice or LibreOffice. Most real work takes place at the command line in the BASH shell. So, using BASH on Win10 means you may use the common applications on the Microsoft desktop and can still edit files in BASH as you would on a UNIX-like system. This is a wonderful capability and provides true interoperability, allowing power users to move across platforms without a loss of tools.

Once you become familiar with the tools in BASH you will be able to move across platforms and manage files faster and with fewer distractions. In time you will want to avoid the "clicking and drooling" associated with the GUI and will seek out the shell! You will also be able to amaze and impress friends as you demonstrate your new founds skills that also work on Linux and Mac!

The author has developed and released other material on Linux that may be found through O'Reilly Media and Smashwords.com, available on line and also on DVD, at the following links: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920050209.do and also on Amazon.com,

ASIN: B01I25VO9A. The author has e-books on Linux, Windows and other topics available through a variety of sources see e-books by John Meister.

The Appendix has TLDR (too long, didn't read) sections where expanded information is provided to cure your insomnia or satisfy your curiosity. I wanted to share the details.

Details about the history of UNIX, Linux and the BASH shell and others have been moved to the Appendix for your future reading pleasure, see Additional Background_on_UNIX_and_BASH

To install BASH step by step on Window10, see the Appendix. The appendix will provide current setup steps as of January 2017. As the tool matures the steps may change. In some corporate environments the steps may be different. If the instructions provided in the appendix don't work, use a search engine to find a method that works. Once you've got it installed the Appendix also shows how to set the colors and features. Chapter 4 discusses the configuration of your .bashrc file. I'd recommend that you create your .bashrc file immediately along with the .History directory. These two features will make navigation in BASH more practical.

Step by step examples are provided to show how the commands work, or what their limitations are in this environment, if any. The learning curve on some of these tools can be very steep, but seeing examples will open up a new world to you, and save you many hours of working with information in text files.

You do not need to master every aspect of BASH to use it. In fact, feel free to jump around in this book. If you see something being described and couldn't care less about it, skim on and look for something you like. If you find out later it was interesting, go back and dig in further. I'm following an approach to this material that has been developed over many years of teaching UNIX and Linux classes. People learn in different ways, and none of us needs to know everything about this subject, so if you don't get it, don't worry, move on and if you find later you need it, then learn it. Hack away and remember that this is a protected environment, meaning that you will not be able to damage your Win10 system unless you really work hard at it. I haven't tried to break Windows 10 from within BASH yet, but while it's possible, it would require advanced knowledge of both systems and is not likely to happen accidentally.

Much of this material has been used to teach UNIX and Linux courses for many years and you should be able to use much of this material to study for the LPIC exams (LPIC - Linux Professional Institute Certification).

The author has created a 12 hour video series on Linux for preparation of taking the LPIC-2 exams. That series covers Linux System Administration and is subtitled The Art of Linux System Administration. Some of that material will be included in this book to demonstrate pragmatic uses of the BASH tool.

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