Linux Tips

Some things I consistently have to look up how to do. This is mainly a reference for myself to remember how to do certain things in Linux.

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rsync

Filter Files and Directories

Here is an example command to transfer files remote host to local by only including directories in the host's /path/to/files directory that have the directory_prefix (and include all their contents) and exclude everything else:

rsync -avW host:/path/to/files/ ./my/local/dir --include 'directory_prefix*/***' --exclude '*'

• This post gives helpful advice on how to handle --include/--exclude with rsync.

Use a Different Port Number

rsync -e 'ssh -p 5522' -av user@remote:/path/to/transfer ./local/path/to/save/to

Mount a Hard Drive

Manually Mount

1. Execute lsblk to see what your drive partitions are. Example output:

sda           8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
└─sda1        8:1    0 931.5G  0 part /media/data_haro
sdb           8:16   0   3.7T  0 disk 
├─sdb1        8:17   0   200M  0 part 
└─sdb2        8:18   0   3.7T  0 part /media/adam/LL4MA-D2
nvme0n1     259:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
└─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0 465.8G  0 part /

2. Create new directory to mount drive to

sudo mkdir /media/data_haro

3. Mount the drive

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/data_haro

Auto-mount at Startup

1. Install GParted

sudo apt install gparted

2. Open GParted and select the drive you want to auto-mount. See what it's filesystem type is.
3. Edit /etc/fstab with root permissions

sudo emacs /etc/fstab

3. Add a line at the bottom of the file that looks like

/dev/sda1    /media/data_haro    ext4    defaults    0    2

• First column is drive partition to mount.

• Second column is mount point.

• Third column is filesystem type (from GParted).

• Fourth column is options, leave as defaults.

• Fifth column leave as 0.

• Sixth column is fsck which determines filesystem order. Only options are 0 (no check), 1 (check first), and 2 (check second). Only boot should be 1, additional drives should be 2.

• Ubuntu: Mount The Drive From Command Line - Simple instructions for mounting a hard drive manually and setting up fstab to auto-mount on startup.

You may need to change the permissions on the drive:

sudo chown -R username:username /media/data_haro

where you should set username to be your username.

Note if you do the auto-mounting and then decide to remove the drive, you must comment out the entry in /etc/fstab. Otherwise you may find yourself unable to boot the OS and enter emergency mode like described here.

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