Linux Command Line Cheat-Sheet

This is a list of Linux commands for common operations.

Command Description
Show commands pertinent to word.
• apropos word
See also threadsafe
which command Show full path name of command
time command See how long a command takes
Start stopwatch. Ctrl-d to stop. See
• time cat
also sw
Run a low priority command (info in
• nice info
this case)
Make shell (script) low priority. Use
• renice 19 -p $$
for non interactive tasks
• look prefix Quickly search (sorted) dictionary
Highlight occurances of regular
• grep --color expr...ion /usr/share/dict/words
expression in dictionary
gpg -c file Encrypt file
gpg [Link] Decrypt file
Handy hexdump. (usage e.g.: • hd
• alias hd='od -Ax -tx1z -v'
/proc/self/cmdline | less)
Canonicalize path. (usage e.g.: •
• alias realpath='readlink -f'
realpath ~/../$USER)
• set | grep $USER Search current environment
Print in 9 columns to width of
• ls /usr/bin | pr -T9 -W$COLUMNS
terminal
touch -c -t 0304050607 file Set file timestamp (YYMMDDhhmm)
dir navigation
• cd - Go to previous directory
• cd Go to home directory
Go to dir, execute command and
(cd dir && command)
return to current dir
Put current dir on stack so you can
• pushd .
popd back to it
CDs
gzip < /dev/cdrom > [Link] Save copy of data cdrom
Create cdrom image from contents of
mkisofs -V NAME -r dir | gzip > [Link]
dir
Mount the cdrom image at /mnt/dir
mount -o loop [Link] /mnt/dir
(read only)
cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast Clear a CDRW
Burn cdrom image (use dev=ATAPI -
gzip -dc [Link] | cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -
scanbus to confirm dev)
Rip audio tracks from CD to wav files
cdparanoia -B
in current dir
Make audio CD from all wavs in
cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -audio *.wav
current dir (see also cdrdao)
 oggenc --tracknum='track' [Link] -o '[Link]' Make ogg file from wav file
archives
tar c dir/ | bzip2 > [Link].bz2 Make archive of dir/
Extract archive (use gzip instead of
bzip2 -dc [Link].bz2 | tar x
bzip2 for [Link] files)
tar c dir/ | gzip | gpg -c | ssh user@remote 'dd Make encrypted archive of dir/ on
of=[Link]' remote machine
find dir/ -name '*.txt' | tar c --files-from=- | bzip2 > Make archive of subset of dir/ and
dir_txt.tar.bz2 below
find dir/ -name '*.txt' | xargs cp -a --target-directory=dir_txt/ Make copy of subset of dir/ and
--parents below
Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to
( tar c /dir/to/copy ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar x -p )
/where/to/ dir
Copy (with permissions) contents of
( cd /dir/to/copy && tar c . ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar x -p )
copy/ dir to /where/to/
( tar c /dir/to/copy ) | ssh -C user@remote 'cd /where/to/ && Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to
tar x -p' remote:/where/to/ dir
dd bs=1M if=/dev/hda | gzip | ssh user@remote 'dd of=[Link]' Backup harddisk to remote machine
rsync (Use the --dry-run option for testing)
Only get diffs. Do multiple times for
rsync -P rsync://[Link]/path/to/file file
troublesome downloads
Locally copy with rate limit. It's like
rsync --bwlimit=1000 fromfile tofile
nice for I/O
rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~/public_html/ Mirror web site (using compression
[Link]:'~/public_html' and encryption)
rsync -auz -e ssh remote:/dir/ . && rsync -auz -e ssh . Synchronize current directory with
remote:/dir/ remote one
file searching
• alias l='ls -l --color=auto' quick dir listing
• ls -lrt List files by date. See also newest
Search 'expr' in this dir and below.
find -name '*.[ch]' | xargs grep -E 'expr'
See also findrepo
Search all regular files for 'string' in
find -type f -print0 | xargs -r0 grep -F 'string'
this dir and below
Search all regular files for 'string' in
find -maxdepth 1 -type f | xargs grep -F 'string'
this dir
find -maxdepth 1 -type d | while read dir; do echo $dir; echo Process each item with multiple
cmd2; done commands (in while loop)
Find files not readable by all (useful
• find -type f ! -perm -444
for web site)
Find dirs not accessible by all (useful
• find -type d ! -perm -111
for web site)
Search cached index for names. This
• locate -r 'file[^/]*\.txt'
re is like glob *file*.txt
networking (Note ifconfig, route, mii-tool, nslookup commands are obsolete)
• ip link show List interfaces
ethtool interface List interface status
ip link set dev eth0 name wan Rename eth0 to wan
ip addr add [Link]/24 brd + dev eth0 Add ip and mask([Link])
ip link set dev interface up Bring interface up (or down)
ip route add default via [Link] Set default gateway to [Link]
 Add 20ms latency to loopback device
• tc qdisc add dev lo root handle 1:0 netem delay 20msec
(for testing)
• tc qdisc del dev lo root Remove latency added above
Lookup ip address for name or vice
• host [Link]
versa
Lookup local ip address (equivalent
• hostname -i
to host `hostname`)
• netstat -tupl List internet services on a system
List active connections to/from
• netstat -tup
system
wget (multi purpose download tool)
(cd cmdline && wget -nd -pHEKk Store local browsable version of a
•
[Link] page to the current dir
Continue downloading a partially
wget -c [Link]
downloaded file
Download a set of files to the current
wget -r -nd -np -l1 -A '*.jpg' [Link]
directory
wget [Link] FTP supports globbing directly
wget -q -O- [Link] | grep 'a
• Process output directly
href' | head
echo 'wget url' | at 01:00 Download url at 1AM to current dir
Do a low priority download (limit to
wget --limit-rate=20k url
20KB/s in this case)
wget -nv --spider --force-html -i [Link] Check links in a file
Efficiently update a local copy of a
wget --mirror [Link]
site (handy from cron)
windows (note samba is the package that provides all this windows specific networking support)
Find windows machines. See also
• smbtree
findsmb
Find the windows (netbios) name
nmblookup -A [Link]
associated with ip address
List shares on windows machine or
smbclient -L windows_box
samba server
mount -t smbfs -o fmask=666,guest //windows_box/share
Mount a windows share
/mnt/share
Send popup to windows machine (off
echo 'message' | smbclient -M windows_box
by default in XP sp2)
math
• echo '(1 + sqrt(5))/2' | bc -l Quick math
Base conversion (decimal to
• echo 'obase=16; ibase=10; 123' | bc
hexadecimal)
Base conversion (hex to dec) ((shell
• echo $((0x2dec))
arithmetic expansion))
More complex (int) e.g. This shows
• echo 'pad=20; min=64; (100*10^6)/((pad+min)*8)' | bc
max FastE packet rate
• echo 'pad=20; min=64; print (100E6)/((pad+min)*8)' | python Python handles scientific notation
echo 'pad=20; plot [64:1518] (100*10**6)/((pad+x)*8)' | gnuplot
• Plot FastE packet rate vs packet size
-persist
text manipulation (note sed uses stdin and stdout, so if you want to edit files, append <oldfile
>newfile)
sed 's/string1/string2/g' Replace string1 with string2
 sed 's/\(.*\)1/\12/g' Modify anystring1 to anystring2
sed '/ *#/d; /^ *$/d' Remove comments and blank lines
sed ':a; /\\$/N; s/\\\n//; ta' Concatenate lines with trailing \
sed 's/[ \t]*$//' Remove trailing spaces from lines
Escape shell metacharacters active
sed 's/\([\\`\\"$\\\\]\)/\\\1/g'
within double quotes
sed -n '1000p;1000q' Print 1000th line
sed -n '10,20p;20q' Print lines 10 to 20
sed -n
Extract title from HTML web page
's/.*<[tT][iI][tT][lL][eE]>\(.*\)<\/[tT][iI][tT][lL][eE]>.*/\1/p;T;q'
sort -t. -k1,1n -k2,2n -k3,3n -k4,4n Sort IPV4 ip addresses
• echo 'Test' | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' Case conversion
• tr -dc '[:print:]' < /dev/urandom Filter non printable characters
• grep 'processor' /proc/cpuinfo | wc -l Count lines
set operations (Note LANG=C is for speed)
LANG=C sort file1 file2 | uniq Union of unsorted files
LANG=C sort file1 file2 | uniq -d Intersection of unsorted files
LANG=C sort file1 file1 file2 | uniq -u Difference of unsorted files
Symmetric Difference of unsorted
LANG=C sort file1 file2 | uniq -u
files
LANG=C comm file1 file2 | sed 's/^\t*//' Union of sorted files
LANG=C comm -12 file1 file2 Intersection of sorted files
LANG=C comm -13 file1 file2 Difference of sorted files
LANG=C comm -3 file1 file2 | sed 's/^\t*//' Symmetric Difference of sorted files
calendar
• cal -3 Display a calendar
Display a calendar for a particular
• cal 9 1752
month year
What date is it this friday. See also
• date -d fri
day
• date --date='25 Dec' +%A What day does xmas fall on, this year
Convert number of seconds since the
• date --date '1970-01-01 UTC 1234567890 seconds'
epoch to a date
What time is it on West coast of US
• TZ=':America/Los_Angeles' date
(use tzselect to find TZ)
echo "mail -s 'get the train' P@[Link] < /dev/null" |
Email reminder
at 17:45
echo "DISPLAY=$DISPLAY xmessage cooker" | at "NOW + 30
• Popup reminder
minutes"
locales
Print number with thousands grouping
• printf "%'d\n" 1234
appropriate to locale
• echo "I live in `locale territory`" Extract info from locale database
• locale | cut -d= -f1 | xargs locale -kc | less List fields in locale database
Lookup locale info for specific
• LANG=en_IE.utf8 locale int_prefix
country. See also ccodes
disk space (See also FSlint)
• ls -lSr Show files, biggest last
Show top disk users in current dir.
• du -s * | sort -k1,1rn | head
See also dutop
• df -h Show free disk space
• df -i Show free inodes
Show disks partitions sizes and types
• fdisk -l
(run as root)
List all packages by installed size
• rpm -q -a --qf '%10{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n' | sort -k1,1n
(Bytes) on rpm distros
dpkg-query -W -f='${Installed-Size;10}\t${Package}\n' | sort - List all packages by installed size
•
k1,1n (KBytes) on deb distros
Create a large test file (taking no
• dd bs=1 seek=2TB if=/dev/null of=[Link]
space). See also truncate
monitoring/debugging
Summarise/profile system calls made
• strace -c ls >/dev/null
by command
• strace -f -e open ls >/dev/null List system calls made by command
• ltrace -f -e getenv ls >/dev/null List library calls made by command
• lsof -p $$ List paths that process id has open
List processes that have specified
• lsof ~
path open
Show network traffic except ssh. See
• tcpdump not port 22
also tcpdump_not_me
• ps -e -o pid,args --forest List processes in a hierarchy
ps -e -o pcpu,cpu,nice,state,cputime,args --sort pcpu | sed '/^
• List processes by % cpu usage
0.0 /d'
List processes by mem usage. See
• ps -e -orss=,args= | sort -b -k1,1n | pr -TW$COLUMNS
also ps_mem.py
List all threads for a particular
• ps -C firefox-bin -L -o pid,tid,pcpu,state
process
• ps -p 1,2 List info for particular process IDs
• last reboot Show system reboot history.
Show amount of (remaining) RAM (-m
• free -m
displays in MB)
• watch -n1 'cat /proc/interrupts' Watch changeable data continuously
System information (see also sysinfo)
hdparm -i /dev/hda Show info about disk hda
hdparm -tT /dev/hda Do a read speed test on disk hda
Test for unreadable blocks on disk
badblocks -s /dev/hda
hda
Show mounted filesystems on the
• mount | column -t
system (and align output)
Show all partitions registered on the
• cat /proc/partitions
system
• grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo Show RAM total seen by the system
• grep "model name" /proc/cpuinfo Show CPU(s) info
• lspci -tv Show PCI info
• lsusb -tv Show USB info
recode (Obsoletes iconv, dos2unix, unix2dos)
Show available conversions (aliases
• recode -l | less
on each line)
Windows "ansi" to local charset (auto
recode windows-1252.. file_to_change.txt
does CRLF conversion)
recode utf-8/CRLF.. file_to_change.txt Windows utf8 to local charset
 recode iso-8859-15..utf8 file_to_change.txt Latin9 (western europe) to utf8
recode ../b64 < [Link] > file.b64 Base64 encode
recode /qp.. < [Link] > [Link] Quoted printable decode
recode ..HTML < [Link] > [Link] Text to HTML
• recode -lf windows-1252 | grep euro Lookup table of characters
Show what a code represents in latin-
• echo -n 0x80 | recode latin-9/x1..dump
9 charmap
• echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..latin-9/x Show latin-9 encoding
• echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..utf-8/x Show utf-8 encoding
interactive
Powerful filemanager that can
• mc
browse rpm, tar, ftp, ssh, ...
Virtual terminals with detach
• screen
capability, ...
• links Web browser
• gnuplot Interactive/scriptable graphing
• octave Matlab like environment