scavenger-hunt

This is a scavenger hunt to learn Linux commands. Our goal is to find all the clues and learn how to use basic Linux commands in the process.

Setup

If you are using a new Linux install or Live CD, you may need to install Git first (sudo apt-get install git on Ubuntu). Open a terminal and type:

git clone https://github.com/pushingice/scavenger-hunt.git
cd scavenger-hunt

First, choose a secret number to share with your team, or keep to yourself if you are working alone. Don't enter any extra spaces or non-number characters. Write down your secret number. The secret number makes your clues unique, so other teams can't look over your shoulder. Then type:

python generate_clues.py [secret_number]

NOTE: On some older systems 'python' may need to be typed as 'python3'.

Any time we enclose something in square brackets, you need to replace it with an actual value (called an argument). For example, to get started I might type:

python generate_clues.py 42

This will create a subdirectory called clues. Be sure to keep this file (called the README) open in a separate viewer.

Dictionary Location

This code is tested on Ubuntu 22.04. If you get an error about being unable to find your dictionary, try the following commands

cd /
find . -name words

Change the value of the 'conf' file to the location of your dictionary.

Reference

If you want to learn more about Linux when you are finished, or need a reference during the hunt, go here: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/index.html.

Clue 1: The Hunt Begins

man

The first command we are going to learn is man, which is short for manual. Typing man [command] will give you a help page (usually called a manpage) for most commands.

ls

The next command we need to learn is ls (list). Type man ls and read the description. Press q to exit. Then type ls and you should see something like this:

APPENDIX.md clues generate_clues.py LICENSE.md next_clue.py README.md

Items which are blue are directories and everything else is a file. Any time you need to know which files and directories are available, type ls.

cd

We need a couple more tools before we can start clue hunting. To change to another directory we use cd (change directory). You may notice that man cd doesn't work. Sometimes there is no manpage for a command. In that case google is your friend. Changing directories is pretty simple:

cd clues

This puts us in the clues directory. To go up a directory, we can do this:

cd ..

If you ever get lost, just do

cd ~/scavenger-hunt

to return home. If you cd to the clues directory and do an ls, you will notice that there are a lot of clue directories. Most of them contain fake clues. Throughout our hunt we will be looking for real clues. Using cd, navigate to clues/12345 and type ls. You should see a single file named clue.

cat

Finally we need to be able to look at our clues. First read the manpage for cat, then do:

cat clue

This should list the clue in your terminal. From now on, everything we need will be contained in these clue files. It's a good idea to keep track of all the clue folders (like 123456) on a piece of paper. You can also do things like copy all the clue files to your home folder, or cut and paste the clue text into another file.