I built a free bash script library because I kept Googling the same 10 scripts over and over

I built a free bash script library because I kept Googling the same 10 scripts over and over

Leader posted 2 min read

Let me be honest about how BashSnippets started. . .

I wasn't trying to build a brand. I was just tired of opening the same Stack Overflow threads every time I needed to check disk space, clean up old logs, or back up a folder. The scripts weren't hard — I just never had them anywhere useful.

They lived in some random .sh file buried in a folder I'd have to dig for, or worse, I'd rewrite them from scratch because I couldn't remember where I put the last version.At some point I thought: if I keep needing these, other people do too.So I made a site. Static HTML on GitHub Pages, no CMS, no login wall, no newsletter popup. Just copy-paste bash scripts with plain-English explanations. Free. No sign-up.

What's actually on it

Right now there are 8 snippet pages live:

disk-space-warning.sh — checks disk usage and fires a warning if you cross a threshold. Drop it in cron and forget it.
delete-old-log-files.sh — finds and deletes logs older than N days. Saves you from the "why is /var/log at 94%" panic.
automated-file-backup.sh — compresses a target directory into a timestamped archive. Dead simple, zero dependencies.
check-if-website-is-up.sh — curls a URL, checks the HTTP status, logs the result. Built this one after a site went down and I didn't notice for 6 hours.
quick-system-info-report.sh — spits out CPU, memory, disk, uptime in one clean output.
bash-error-handling.sh — set -euo pipefail template with explanation. The thing nobody tells you when you first start writing bash.
Plus a few more.

Every page has the full script, a line-by-line breakdown, and a cron setup example so you can actually schedule it instead of just running it once and forgetting it exists.

The part I didn't expect

I started making YouTube Shorts to go with the scripts. 60-second videos. Dark terminal, green text, IBM Plex Mono, same aesthetic as the site. The disk space warning Short hit somewhere between 500 and 1,000 views in its first few days, which for a brand-new channel with basically zero subscribers is more than I expected.

The retention on that one was 51.1%. For a Short that's decent. It means more than half the people who started it actually watched the whole thing. The hook was consequence-first: "your server crashed at 3am and you had no idea it was coming."

People stay when they feel the pain before you explain the fix.

I'm posting 2–3 Shorts a week right now and cross-posting to TikTok same day. All the scripts from the videos are free on the site.

Why I'm sharing this here

Honestly, to connect with people who actually write and use bash. Most of the content I see about bash scripting is either too basic ("here's what a variable is") or too advanced for someone who just needs something that works on their home server or VPS tonight.

The gap I'm trying to fill is: useful, practical, copy-paste ready, with enough explanation that you actually understand what you just ran.

If you work with Linux regularly and have a script you reach for all the time, I'd genuinely like to hear what it does. I'm building out the library and I'd rather add things people actually need than guess.

Site: https://bashsnippets.xyz
YouTube: @BashSnippets
GitHub (scripts repo, MIT license): github.com/BashSnippets/bash-scripts

If you've been burned by a full disk, runaway logs, or a site going down silently. These scripts exist for exactly that.

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