aka: The Ultimate List of Ubuntu Aliases

Okay, maybe this isn’t the ultimate list, and maybe it’s more than 10, but this is my list of essential, must-have aliases for Ubuntu (or any version of Linux). Aliases are “shortcuts”. For example, if you’re at the command prompt and want to exit, you normally type exit. But I have an alias for the letter e to exit. I cut my typing by 75%!! Do this all throughout your workflow and you’ll seriously wonder how you ever lived without it. Backup your aliases.

By adding these aliases, I have turned 277 characters of typing down to just 35. That’s a reduction of over 87%!!! Finally, I can leave work at 10am.

If you want to use an alias in Ubuntu Linux, insert these commands (or any other commands that speed up your workflow) at the bottom of your .profile or .bashrc files:

alias sp=’sudo pico’
alias la=’ls -alh’
alias m=’mutt’
alias e=’exit’
alias cdw=’cd /var/www/’
alias cdb=’cd /var/www/brockangelo/’
alias cda=’cd /var/www/angeloarchive/’ (if you host multiple websites, replace the “a” with a website identifier. aka, photoshopsamurai = ps)
alias cdps=’cd /var/www/photoshopsamurai/’

alias cdn=’cd /usr/local/nagios/etc/’
alias nr=’sudo /etc/init.d/nagios restart’
alias ar=’sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart’
alias coffee=’cat > /var/www/brockangelo/coffees.txt’ (I used to have a coffee-counter on my website and I would update the number of coffees my espresso machine had made – you can use this to replace the contents of a text file quickly)
alias s=’sudo’
alias aa=’/home/brock/scripts/add_alias.sh’ (I created a shell script to add new aliases by just typing aa – leave a comment if you’d like to download the script)

And here is the code for the shell script:

#!/bin/bash
echo Enter the shortcut, or alias, you want to use:
read SHORTTEXT
echo Now enter what text you want it to replace:
read LONGTEXT
echo “alias $SHORTTEXT=’$LONGTEXT’” >> ~/.profile
echo “alias $SHORTTEXT=’$LONGTEXT’ was added to your profile. Changes effective after logout/in.”