home / skills / openclaw / skills / sysadmin-toolbox

sysadmin-toolbox skill

unsafe

This skill provides curated CLI tools and shell one-liners for sysadmin tasks, speeding debugging, networking, security, and automation workflows.

npx playbooks add skill openclaw/skills --skill sysadmin-toolbox

Review the files below or copy the command above to add this skill to your agents.

Files (8)

SKILL.md

3.0 KB

---
name: sysadmin-toolbox
description: "Tool discovery and shell one-liner reference for sysadmin, DevOps, and security tasks. AUTO-CONSULT this skill when the user is: troubleshooting network issues, debugging processes, analyzing logs, working with SSL/TLS, managing DNS, testing HTTP endpoints, auditing security, working with containers, writing shell scripts, or asks 'what tool should I use for X'. Source: github.com/trimstray/the-book-of-secret-knowledge"
---

# Sysadmin Toolbox

Curated tool recommendations and practical shell one-liners for operational work.

## When to Auto-Consult

Load relevant references when user is:
- Debugging network connectivity, ports, traffic
- Troubleshooting DNS or SSL/TLS
- Analyzing processes, memory, disk usage
- Working with logs or system diagnostics
- Writing shell scripts or one-liners
- Asking "what's a good tool for..."
- Doing security audits or pentesting
- Working with containers/Docker/K8s

## Reference Files

| File | Use When |
|------|----------|
| `references/shell-oneliners.md` | Need practical commands for: terminal, networking, SSL, curl, ssh, tcpdump, git, awk, sed, grep, find |
| `references/cli-tools.md` | Recommending CLI tools: shells, file managers, network utils, databases, security tools |
| `references/web-tools.md` | Web-based tools: SSL checkers, DNS lookup, performance testing, OSINT, scanners |
| `references/security-tools.md` | Pentesting, vulnerability scanning, exploit databases, CTF resources |
| `references/shell-tricks.md` | Shell scripting patterns and tricks |

## Quick Tool Index

### Network Debugging
- `mtr` - traceroute + ping combined
- `tcpdump` / `tshark` - packet capture
- `netstat` / `ss` - connection monitoring
- `nmap` - port scanning
- `curl` / `httpie` - HTTP testing

### DNS
- `dig` / `host` - DNS queries
- `dnsdiag` - DNS diagnostics
- `subfinder` / `amass` - subdomain enumeration

### SSL/TLS
- `openssl` - certificate inspection
- `testssl.sh` - TLS testing
- `sslyze` - SSL scanning
- `certbot` - Let's Encrypt

### Process/System
- `htop` / `btop` - process monitoring
- `strace` / `ltrace` - syscall/library tracing
- `lsof` - open files/connections
- `ncdu` - disk usage

### Log Analysis
- `lnav` - log navigator
- `GoAccess` - web log analyzer
- `angle-grinder` - log slicing

### Containers
- `dive` - Docker image analysis
- `ctop` - container top
- `lazydocker` - Docker TUI

## Keeping Current

References auto-refresh weekly (Sundays 5am ET) from the upstream repo:
```bash
~/clawd-duke-leto/skills/sysadmin-toolbox/scripts/refresh.sh
```

Manual refresh anytime:
```bash
./scripts/refresh.sh [skill-dir]
```

## Example Queries → Actions

**"Why is this port not responding?"**
→ Load shell-oneliners.md, search for netstat/ss/lsof commands

**"What's a good tool for testing SSL?"**
→ Load cli-tools.md SSL section, recommend testssl.sh or sslyze

**"Show me how to find large files"**
→ Load shell-oneliners.md, search for find/ncdu/du commands

**"I need to debug DNS resolution"**
→ Load shell-oneliners.md dig section + recommend dnsdiag from cli-tools.md

Overview

This skill is a curated sysadmin toolbox that recommends the right CLI/web tools and provides practical shell one-liners for common operational tasks. It helps you quickly discover tools and copy tested commands for networking, DNS, SSL/TLS, process debugging, log analysis, containers, and security audits. Auto-consult triggers for troubleshooting and tool-lookup scenarios.

How this skill works

The skill maps common problems to a compact index of recommended tools and vetted one-liner commands. When consulted, it pulls relevant reference sections (networking, DNS, SSL, logs, containers, etc.) and returns concise tool choices plus ready-to-run shell snippets. References refresh weekly and can be manually refreshed to keep recommendations current.

When to use it

Troubleshooting network connectivity, ports, or packet captures
Debugging processes, memory, disk usage, or tracing syscalls
Testing or inspecting SSL/TLS certificates and HTTPS endpoints
Troubleshooting DNS resolution or enumerating subdomains
Analyzing logs, extracting slices, or building one-line reports
Managing and inspecting containers and Docker images

Best practices

Start with low-impact, read-only commands (ss, netstat, tcpdump -c) before modifying system state
Use targeted filtering in one-liners (grep/awk/sed) to avoid noisy outputs
Run packet captures and traces with timeboxed captures to limit disk and privacy exposure
Verify tool versions and TLS/crypto libraries when auditing SSL to avoid false positives
Prefer reproducible commands for automation and capture outputs for postmortem

Example use cases

Investigate a hanging service: check connections with ss, list open files with lsof, trace syscalls with strace
Validate TLS on a web endpoint: inspect certs with openssl, run testssl.sh or sslyze for protocol checks
Find disk hogs: use du/ncdu and a find one-liner to locate large files by mtime and size
Debug DNS failures: run dig for record checks and dnsdiag for resolution path analysis
Capture network issues: start a short tcpdump, analyze with tshark, and correlate with application logs
Audit container images: analyze layers with dive, monitor containers with ctop or lazydocker

FAQ

How do I pick between multiple tools for the same task?

Choose the tool that fits the scope: lightweight inspectors (ss, dig) for quick checks, full scanners (nmap, sslyze, testssl.sh) for deeper audits. Consider speed, output format, and required privileges.

Are the one-liners safe to run in production?

Most provided one-liners are read-only or resource-light, but always review commands and run on a maintenance window or staging environment if impact is uncertain.