A Set of Smooth, Fzf-Powered Shell Aliases&functions for Systemctl
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
silverrainz.meTechstory
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SystemdFzfShell ScriptingLinux Administration
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Systemd
Fzf
Shell Scripting
Linux Administration
The post shares a set of shell aliases and functions for systemctl using fzf, sparking discussion on the usefulness of such tools and the trade-offs between customizing workflows versus learning raw commands.
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Sep 12, 2025 at 9:40 PM EDT
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Consider this a feature request, I guess :)
I think the functionality is already there:
https://github.com/joehillen/sysz/blob/master/sysz
A TUI in pure shell script?? I read the script and don't even see how it's done.
1: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
Out of the box it already ships zsh integration to fuzzy-search history with ctrl+r. I don't know what I'd do without this.
I also have a short script, `re` to fuzzy-search a local git repository:
This copies the path into clipboard. I typically paste it immediately, so that `cd $PATH_TO_REPO` ends up in history for next time.I use zk[1] to organise my notes, and it uses fzf to provide a TUI for fuzzy-search notes too.
The way in which fzf is re-usable by different scripts and tools is really neat. I the world of GUIs, we don't really have composable re-usable components like this.
[1]: https://github.com/zk-org/zk
I use fzf to fuzzy-search my notes too! Although I am not a user of zk, I use Sphinx with some home-made extensions.
And this is why I daily-drive bash, vi, top, and screen, even on my own systems... although I can usually get away with `apt install htop fzf tmux vim-tiny` (or the equivalent) if necessary. And I don't use many shell or git aliases. Woe is me!
You can use these tricks the blog post is showing on computers you have full control over, to ease your life a bit, while, at the same time, unbelievably, you can keep using the regular commands on systems where this is not available.
Using these scripts does not mean you no longer need to understand "raw" commands, it's a requirement because it builds on top of those.
I understand your point, but I suspect I'm not the only sysadmin-type on HN and that this might be a more common (to this particular audience) use-case than your thesis would suggest.
> Using these scripts does not mean you no longer need to understand "raw" commands
Sure, but the reality for many is that if you spend your working hours typing "sstart" and "sj" and "gc" and "ll" and whatever else in zsh with a billion plugins, one day you'll find yourself on a P1 call at 2 AM going:
>> oops, that's not it
>> erg, I guess I made an alias for that on my machine
>> what are the flags for ps again?
>> why did that glob delete the wrong files?
>> why isn't journalctl showing me all the logs??
etc.
Whereas if you have to type e.g. `ps auxfwww` and `journalctl -xel --user` a billion times a day, that will be locked and loaded when you need it. Even if you can't necessarily remember what all the arguments do. ;)