What this book covers

Chapter 1, Crash Course in Bash, covers the Linux shell/Bash to get you up and running, and the remainder of the book will just fall into place.

Chapter 2, Acting Like a Typewriter and File Explorer, introduces several bolt-on technologies to make Bash even more extensive when searching for items and text, or automating file explorer/filesystem operations. 

Chapter 3, Understanding and Gaining File System Mastery, will help you view files from various angles: head, tail, less, searching for files by name and/or extension, creating a diff of two files, patching, creating symbolic links and using them effectively, crawling filesystem directories, printing a tree, and more.

Chapter 4, Making a Script Behave Like a Daemon, is about creating components that mimic application functionality, such as menus or a daemon.

Chapter 5, Scripts for System Administration Tasks, introduces logs, archiving them, job/task management, network connectivity, securing systems using a firewall (iptables), monitoring directories for changes, and creating users.

Chapter 6, Scripts for Power Users, is about creating syslog entries using the logger command, taking backups, creating graphics and presentations on the CLI, checking file integrity and tampering, mounting network filesystems, retrieving files, browsing the Web, capturing network traffic, finding binary dependencies, and encrypting and decrypting a file.

Chapter 7, Writing Bash to Win and Profit, will help you learn how to use commands and scripts for many tasks. You will get an idea about writing bash scripts for monitoring certain tasks. 

Chapter 8, Advanced Scripting Techniques, will help you learn about advanced scripting techniques as well as how to customize their shell.