Aliases

Unix-based systems supports lots of various shells that the user could use. In my work environment is widely used zsh and bash. Recently I started practicing fish (friendly interactive shell), but for now it’s only a mention.

Aliases are our friends when it comes to long commands that you have to type on a daily basis.

> alias shortName="your custom command here"

To keep aliases between sessions, you can save them in your user’s shell configuration profile file. This can be:

Bash – ~/.bashrc ZSH – ~/.zshrc Fish – ~/.config/fish/config.fish

So for example, in bash, you can open .bashrc file with your favorite editor like this:

> vim ~/.bashrc

To remove specific alias:

> unalias alias_name

To remove all aliases:

> unalias -a

My Top 10 Aliases

  • alias open="nautilus --browser"
  • alias connectServer = ssh -p (my ssh port number) myuser@myserver
  • alias dockerClean = docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)
  • alias upgrade='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade'
  • alias netconnections="netstat -tuapw --numeric-hosts --numeric-ports"
  • alias myip="curl ident.me"
  • alias openvpn3-start="openvpn3 session-start --config ~/openvpn3/client.ovpn"
  • alias openvpn3-stop="~/openvpn3/disconnect_cli.sh" 
    # disconnect_cli.sh
openvpn3 sessions-list | grep Path | awk -v OFS='\t' '{print $2}' | while read -r path; do
  openvpn3 session-manage --path "$path" --disconnect
done
  • alias openvpn3-ls="openvpn3 sessions-list"
  • alias weather="wttr" 
    wttr() {
  if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "No arguments provided"
  else
    curl wttr.in/$1;
  fi
}