Getting Started with Bash Scripting: My Weekly Dev Journey 🚀

Hey everyone! 👋 I'm Nishant, and this week I took my first steps into the world of Bash scripting. It was a great experience that helped me understand how powerful the command line can be. Here's a quick breakdown of what I worked on!

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🔰 Level 1: Basic System Info Script

🎯 Goal:

To get familiar with basic Linux commands, variables, and how to output useful system info with a simple script.

📌 What the Script Does:

• Shows the hostname of the machine

• Displays the OS name & version

• Prints the system uptime

• Displays free RAM and disk space

• Lists currently logged-in users

💡 Commands Used:

hostname
uname -a
uptime
free -h
df -h
who

📜 Script:

#!/bin/bash

echo "📍 Host Name:"
hostname

echo "📦 OS Name and Info:"
uname -a

echo "⏱️ Uptime:"
uptime

echo "🧠 Free RAM and Disk Space:"
free -h
df -h

echo "👥 Logged-in Users:"
who

📝 Takeaway:

These basic commands give you a powerful summary of your system with just a few lines of code. I now understand how Bash can help automate routine checks easily!

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🧰 Level 2: Backup Script

🎯 Goal:

To get hands-on with conditionals, loops, and simple automation.

📌 What the Script Does:

• Takes a target folder (e.g. /home/nishant/Documents)

• Creates a compressed .tar.gz backup file

• The filename includes the current date

💡 Concepts Learned:

• Using tar for compression

• Getting the current date using date

• if statements to check if directories exist

• Using mkdir to create folders

• Bonus: Learned how to schedule backups using cron

📜 Script:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Welcome to the backup program"

BACKUP_FILE="backup_$(date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S').tar.gz"
TARGET_DIR="/mnt/f/Programming/Linux/"

if [ -d "$TARGET_DIR" ]; then
    echo "Backing up..."
    tar -cvpzf "$BACKUP_FILE" "$TARGET_DIR"
    echo "Backup Done ✅"
else
    echo "❌ Cannot create backup"
    echo "Directory $TARGET_DIR does not exist"
    exit 1
fi

📚 Resource:

I followed this helpful YouTube video and articles on GeeksforGeeks to guide me.

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✅ What's Next?

I'm planning to dive deeper into Bash with more real-world scripts and maybe even explore cron jobs and log monitoring.

📢 I’ll be posting more on Monday, so stay tuned for the next update!

If you're new to Linux or Bash scripting, these projects are a great place to start. Simple, fun, and very practical!

Thanks for reading 🙌

Connect with me on LinkedIn 😊

#bash #linux #scripting #devops #nishantcodes #learning