The Book of Secret Knowledge: DevOps & Security Reference
/the-book-of-secret-knowledge
The Book of Secret Knowledge is a single GitHub repository of cheat sheets, one-liners, and CLI/GUI/web tool links for sysadmins, DevOps engineers, pentesters, and security researchers. Reach for it when you want a fast shortlist of candidate tools for a task you already understand: nmap versus masscan for scanning, testssl.sh versus sslyze for TLS checks. Skip it if you're after tutorials, since most entries stop at a one-line description.
What This Collection Offers
The Book of Secret Knowledge is trimstray's personal reference for sysadmin, DevOps, and security material, built from cheat sheets, manuals, blog links, one-liners, and tool listings. It's organized into fifteen chapters, from CLI Tools and Networks through Hacking/Penetration Testing to three shell-specific chapters for one-liners, tricks, and functions.
Who Benefits from This Resource?
The Book of Secret Knowledge is aimed, per its own README, at system and network administrators, DevOps engineers, pentesters, and security researchers, though the author says anyone can find something useful in it. It suits people who already know roughly what category of tool they need and want named candidates fast, like someone choosing between log analyzers GoAccess and lnav. It's a weaker fit if you want deep coverage of one narrow topic instead of fifteen chapters of breadth, or if you need tutorials rather than pointers.
Key Categories and Content
- ✓CLI Tools is the largest chapter, split into subsections for shells, shell plugins, file managers, text editors, and files/directories tooling, covering entries like Zsh, tmux, ranger, and fd.
- ✓A dedicated Network subsection lists scanning and packet tools such as nmap, masscan, Rust Scan, Wireshark's tshark, and Scapy, plus SSH alternatives Mosh and Eternal Terminal.
- ✓SSL tooling gets its own list: openssl, sslyze, testssl.sh, Certbot, and mkcert for certificate work and TLS auditing.
- ✓Security and Auditing Tools spans OS hardening (SELinux, AppArmor) through pentest-style checks (Lynis, LinEnum, Rkhunter, PEASS).
- ✓System Diagnostics/Debuggers covers strace, bpftrace, htop, and FlameGraph for tracing and performance work.
- ✓GUI Tools opens with terminal emulators (Guake, Terminator, Kitty, Alacritty) before moving into GUI network tools like Wireshark and Ettercap.
- ✓Beyond CLI/GUI, the table of contents lists separate chapters for Web Tools, Systems/Services, Networks, Containers/Orchestration, Manuals/Howtos/Tutorials, Inspiring Lists, Blogs/Podcasts/Videos, Hacking/Penetration Testing, Other Cheat Sheets, and three shell chapters: One-liners, Tricks, and Functions.
Practical Applications
- •Shortlisting a tool for a task instead of googling one at a time, comparing nmap, masscan, and Rust Scan for port scanning, or httpstat, wrk, and vegeta for HTTP load testing.
- •Pulling the SSL and Security/Auditing subsections into an internal onboarding doc for new sysadmins, since the MIT license allows reuse.
- •Watching the GitHub commits RSS/Atom feed for new entries instead of re-reading the whole page on a schedule.
- •Pentesters and security researchers scanning the DNS-recon list (fierce, subfinder, amass, massdns) and the Hacking/Penetration Testing chapter for candidate tools.
- •Picking a terminal setup by comparing shells (Zsh, Bash, tclsh), prompts (Starship, powerlevel10k), and multiplexers (tmux, screen) side by side.
Strengths
- ✓Fifteen chapters cover a lot of ground, from CLI Tools and Networks to Hacking/Penetration Testing and three separate shell chapters for one-liners, tricks, and functions.
- ✓Most entries carry a short description, not a bare link: mtr, for instance, is noted as combining traceroute- and ping-style checks in one tool.
- ✓The maintainer states the repo isn't meant to hold everything, only good-quality material, which keeps it from turning into a link dump.
- ✓MIT license, so pulling sections into internal docs or a team wiki carries no licensing friction.
- ✓A GitHub commits RSS/Atom feed exists for tracking additions without re-reading the whole page.
Considerations and Scope
- △No fixed update cadence is documented. The README says new items are added on a regular basis, without a schedule, so the GitHub commits feed is the only way to track what changed.
- △The collection reflects one maintainer's own daily toolkit rather than a systematic survey of the field, per the README's framing, so depth across categories is uneven by design.
- △The project's own ToDo list shows open items: shell functions, one-liners for CLI tool collections, and consistent sort order across lists are still unfinished.
- △Entries are one-line pointers, not tutorials. They're useful for finding a tool's name, not for learning how to use it.
- △Some links go stale. The README flags temporarily unavailable URLs with an asterisk and asks contributors not to delete them without confirming they're permanently gone.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The Book of Secret Knowledge compiles cheat sheets, manuals, blog links, hacks, one-liners, and CLI/GUI/web tool listings, organized into chapters such as CLI Tools, Networks, Hacking/Penetration Testing, and three shell-specific chapters for one-liners, tricks, and functions.
The README says The Book of Secret Knowledge targets system and network administrators, DevOps engineers, pentesters, and security researchers, while noting that anyone can find something useful in it.
Contributors open a pull request with a clear, well-reasoned explanation of the change, following the guidelines in the repo's CONTRIBUTING.md file; the stated bar is good-quality material, not everything that exists.
No fixed schedule is documented. The README says new items are added on a regular basis, and points to a GitHub commits RSS/Atom feed for tracking changes.
The Book of Secret Knowledge is released under the MIT License, per its GitHub repository page.
Not always. The README marks temporarily unavailable URLs with an asterisk and asks contributors to confirm a link is permanently dead before removing it.
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