In today’s fast-paced IT world, automation isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.
Imagine manually checking hundreds of servers, uploading backups daily, or testing APIs one by one. Exhausting, right?
That’s where curl comes in — a simple yet powerful command-line tool every sysadmin and DevOps pro should master.
Here are 10 curl commands you can use to automate daily tasks efficiently:
1️⃣ Check HTTP server status
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" https://example.com
2️⃣ Resume interrupted downloads
curl -C - -O https://example.com/large-file.zip
3️⃣ Upload files to FTP
curl -T file.txt ftp://user:[email protected]/
4️⃣ Check SSL certificate expiry
curl -s -v https://example.com 2>&1 | grep "expire date"
5️⃣ Monitor API with Bearer token
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer TOKEN" https://api.example.com/health
6️⃣ Test multiple URLs in bulk
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{url_effective}: %{http_code}\n" "https://site1" "https://site2"
7️⃣ Check DNS resolution and response time
curl -w "@curl-format.txt" -s -o /dev/null https://example.com
8️⃣ Automate form submissions
curl -X POST -d "username=admin&password=secret" https://example.com/login
9️⃣ Backup website HTML with timestamp
curl -s https://example.com -o "backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).html"
🔟 Monitor API response time
curl -w "%{time_total}" -s -o /dev/null https://api.example.com/endpoint
📌 Pro Tips for Sysadmins:
- Use
-s(silent) for cleaner outputs in scripts - Store URLs in a config file for bulk monitoring
- Schedule with
cronfor full automation - Secure your credentials with environment variables
- Always test your commands manually before automating
📘 Full curl documentation: https://curl.se/docs/manpage.html
Need curl on Ubuntu? Here’s a quick installation guide
🚀 Follow me for more sysadmin, DevOps, and automation tips!
#DevOps #SysAdmin #Automation #Curl #Linux #Bash #ShellScripting #Productivity
Related: 10 curl Commands Every Sysadmin Should Automate to Save Hours of Work.
Related: Docker Swarm Cheat Sheet: 20 Essential Commands Every Engineer Must Know.
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