After my article SSH - Launch a terminal on your session without having to authenticate yourself, it was obvious that, next to the ssh and scp commands, I forgot the sftp one.

In this article, we'll explore how to start a SFTP connection to a remote server; from the command line.

In the second section, we'll also learn how to configure the sftp connection to use a proxy server.

As you know, VSCode is a superb editor that lets you program in probably any programming language. An editor, not an IDE, because VSCode is basically a Notepad in its ultimate version.

If you want to program in Python, you'll need to install a few extensions in VSCode to be really comfortable, i.e. syntax highlighting, code navigation, code refactoring (like renaming a variable or a class), etc.

There are ‘ready-to-use’ editors like PyCharm but 1. they cost money and 2. they are specific (you won't be able to program in PHP with PyCharm; or even work easily with HTML/CSS files).

In this new article, we'll look at how to get a VSCode environment ready to use straight away for coding in Python, and as it's VSCode it's 1. free, 2. multi-purpose and 3. insanely powerful.

During my summer holidays, I've watched this video: Full Ubuntu GUI in a Container Displayed on Windows (XServer) and, of course, I wanted to play with it.

The idea is to start a Lubuntu Desktop distribution as a Docker container. Lubuntu is a lightweight Ubuntu distribution designed to be more resource-efficient than the standard Ubuntu.

Using Docker and Windows X Server, we'll be able to play with Lubuntu just like any other containers i.e. play and drop without any impact on our ghost. Ideal for learning purposes then.

At the end of 2023, I wrote a very long post about using Joomla with Docker: Create your Joomla website using Docker - Part 1.

It was a step-by-step introduction to Docker and the creation of a local Joomla-based website.

I explained, at length, the various steps involved in creating a website, choosing a database engine (MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL), choosing a specific version of Joomla / database engine, the type of volumes (should the site and database be kept in RAM or on the hard disk (i.e. the notion of volumes)) and many other things such as choosing the port for the website, creating an alias (something like http://my_project.local instead of http://127.0.0.1). I strongly urge you to read or re-read this article before starting this one.

As Docker and Joomla are evolving rapidly, I propose here to start from where we were and see what has changed since then.

We're also going to take automation a step further, making much greater use of the concept of makefile and a configuration file called .env.

In previous articles (Part 1 and Part 2), we've seen how to create a Joomla site from scratch by using Docker: pull Joomla, PHP, Apache and MySQL from Docker Hub and do magic stuff so we have a fresh http://127.0.0.1:8080 local site.

In this article, we'll see how to restore on our machine, a backup created thanks to great Akeeba Backup component.

We'll reuse some files from Part 2 and make some changes to them.

At the end, we'll have a make import command that will start Akeeba Kickstart.

But what is Docker anyway? In the simplest possible terms, how can we explain what Docker is used for?

Let's take the case of a cooking recipe as a starting point.

Imagine that you regularly need to connect to your Linux server: you need to launch a tool such as Putty, you need to enter your login, password, etc. and carry out various operations before you can access the terminal.

If your password isn't saved in Putty's configuration, you'll have to launch another tool like a password vault; in short, it's annoying.

In this article, we'll look at how to authenticate once and for all on the server using an SSH key.

For me, one of the undeniable strengths of the command line under Linux is the management of the history of previously executed commands.

To be able to press the Up or Down keys on the keyboard to return to previously run commands, wow.

For older users, there was DOSKEY under MSDos, but Linux goes much further.

Let's look at a few tricks.

In my previous article; Linux - Take advantage of the number of CPUs you have; start concurrent jobs, we've seen how to start jobs in parallel.

The next cool thing is to show a progression bar in your console. This has a number of advantages, including a clear view of what's been done and what's still to be done, as well as an attractive interface.

Months ago, I've found this french blog post in my RSS feeds: https://xieme-art.org/post/bash-avance-barre-de-progression/ and, just, wow!!!

Let's play with it.

In my professional activity, I've been faced with the following requirement: process each line of a CSV file and make a POST API call to upload a document.

One line of the CSV contained information that needed to be communicated to an API service, and each line corresponded to a PDF file. So if there are 1000 lines in the CSV file, I have to make 1000 API calls to upload 1000 PDFs.

I wrote my script in Linux Bash and then it was time to optimise: not just one API call at a time, but as many as possible.

Let's how we can start more than one task at a time using Linux Bash.