Reference guide: Linux

Google Cybersecurity Certificate

Table of contents
Navigate the file system
Read files
Manage the file system
Filter content
Manage users and their permissions
Get help in Linux

Navigate the file system

The following Linux commands are helpful when navigating the file system.

cd
Navigates between directories

cd reports
Navigates from the current working directory to its subdirectory reports

cd /home/analyst/reports
Navigates to the reports directory; the full path is required when reports is
not a subdirectory of the current working directory

cd ..
Navigates to the directory that is one level above the current working directory

ls
Displays the names of the files and directories
 ls
Displays the names of the files and directories in the current working directory

ls /home/analyst/reports
Displays the names of the files and directories in the reports directory;
providing an argument that specifies the path to a directory is necessary to
display the contents of a directory other than the user's current working
directory

ls -a
Displays hidden files when displaying the names of files and directories inside
the current working directory

ls -l
Displays permissions to files and directories in the current working directory;
also displays other additional information, including owner name, group, file
size, and the time of the last modification

ls -la
Displays permissions to files and directories in the current working directory,
including hidden files; also displays other additional information, including
owner name, group, file size, and the time of last modification

pwd
Prints the working directory to the screen

pwd
Prints the working directory to the screen, such as /home/analyst

whoami
Returns the username of the current user

whoami
Returns the username of the current user, such as analyst or fgarcia
Read files
The following Linux commands are helpful when reading files.

cat
Displays the content of a file

cat updates.txt
Displays the content of the updates.txt file

head
Displays just the beginning of a file, by default 10 lines

head updates.txt
Displays only the first 10 lines of the updates.txt file

head -n 5 updates.txt
Displays only the first five lines of the updates.txt file; the -n option allows
users to specify the number of lines to return

less
Returns the content of a file one page at a time

less updates.txt
Returns the content of updates.txt one page at a time; the less command
changes the terminal window to a display that allows users to easily move
forward and backward through content

tail
Displays just the end of a file, by default 10 lines

tail updates.txt
Displays only the last 10 lines of the updates.txt file
 tail -n 5 updates.txt
returns only the last five lines of the updates.txt file; the -n option allows
users to specify the number of lines to return

Manage the file system

The following Linux commands are helpful when managing the file system.

cp
Copies a file or directory into a new location; the file will not be removed from the
previous location

cp permissions.txt /home/analyst/logs
Copies the permissions.txt file from the user's current working directory to
the logs directory

mkdir
Creates a new directory

mkdir network
Creates a new directory named network in the user's current working directory

mkdir /home/analyst/logs network

Creates a new directory named network in the logs directory; the full path is
required when logs is not a subdirectory of the current directory

mv
Moves a file or directory to a new location; the file is also removed from the previous
location

mv permissions.txt /home/analyst/logs
Moves the permissions.txt file from the user's current working directory to
the logs directory
 mv permissions.txt perm.txt
Moves the permissions.txt file from the user's current working directory to
the new file name perm.txt in the user's current working directory; this results
in renaming the permissions.txt file as perm.txt

nano
Opens or creates a file in the nano command-line file editor

nano permissions.txt
Opens an existing permissions.txt file in the nano file editor, or creates the
permissions.txt file in the nano file editor if it doesn't already exist in the
current working directory

rm
Removes, or deletes, a file

rm permissions.txt
removes the permissions.txt file from the user's current working directory

rm home/analyst/reports/permissions.txt
Removes the permissions.txt file from from the reports directory; the full
path is required if the user's current working directory is not reports

rmdir
Removes, or deletes, a directory; only removes directories if they are empty

rmdir network
Removes the empty network subdirectory of the user's current working
directory from the file system

rmdir /home/analyst/logs/network
Removes the empty network directory from the file system; the full path is
required when network is not a subdirectory of the current directory
touch
Creates a new file

touch permissions.txt
Creates a new file named permissions.txt in the user's current working
directory

touch /home/analyst/reports/permissions.txt
Creates a new file named permissions.txt in the reports directory; the full
path is required if the user wants to create permissions.txt in any directory
other than the current working directory

Filter content
The following Linux commands are helpful when filtering content.

find
Searches for directories and files that meet specified criteria

find /home/analyst/projects
Searches for all files starting at the projects directory

find /home/analyst/projects -name "*log*"

Searches for all files in the projects directory that contain the word log in the
file name; the -name option searches for a specified string and is
case-sensitive; the * wildcard represents zero or more unknown characters

find /home/analyst/projects -iname "*log*"

Searches for all files in the projects directory that contain the word log in the
file name; the -iname option searches for a specified string and is not
case-sensitive; the * wildcard represents zero or more unknown characters

find /home/analyst/projects -mtime -3

Searches for all files in the projects directory that have been modified within
the past three days; the -mtime option bases its search for files or directories
that were modified on days
 find /home/analyst/projects -mmin -15
Searches for all files in the projects directory that have been modified within
the past 15 minutes; the -mmin option bases its search for files or directories
that were modified on minutes

grep
Searches a specified file and returns all lines in the file containing a specified string

grep OS updates.txt
Searches the updates.txt file and returns all lines containing the string OS

| (piping)
Sends the standard output of one command as standard input to another command
for further processing; accessed using the pipe character (|)

ls /home/analyst/reports | grep users

Redirects the standard output of ls /home/analyst/reports to be
standard input for the grep users command, meaning that grep users
identifies files and subdirectories in the /home/analyst/reports directory
that contain the string users within their file name

Manage users and their permissions

The following Linux commands are helpful when managing user permissions. (Also
review the subentries for ls -l and ls -la in the ls entry of the Navigate the file
system section.)

chmod
Changes permissions on files and directories

chmod u+rwx,g+rwx,o+rwx login_sessions.txt

Changes user (u), group (g), and other (o) permissions to add (+) read (r), write
(w), and execute (x) permissions for the login_sessions.txt file

chmod g-rw bonuses.txt

Changes the group (g) permissions to remove (-) read (r) and write (w)
permissions for the bonuses.txt file
 chmod u=r,g=r,o=r login_sessions.txt
Changes user (u), group (g), and other (o) permissions to assign (=) read (r)
permissions for the login_sessions.txt file

chown
Changes ownership of a file or directory; used with sudo

sudo chown fgarcia access.txt

Changes the user owner of the access.txt file to fgarcia

sudo chown :security access.txt

Changes the group owner of access.txt to security; a colon (:) must be
entered before the group name

groupdel
Deletes a group from the system; used with sudo

sudo groupdel accounting

Deletes accounting as a group

sudo
Temporarily grants elevated permissions to specific users; users must be in a sudoers
file to use have access to sudo

sudo useradd fgarcia

Grants elevated permissions to the user running this command and so that this
user can use the useradd command to add fgarcia as a new user to the
system

useradd
Adds a user to the system; used with sudo

sudo useradd fgarcia

Adds fgarcia as a new user to the system
 sudo useradd -g security fgarcia
Adds fgarcia as a new user and uses the -g option to set their primary group
as security

sudo useradd -G finance,admin fgarcia

Adds fgarcia as a new user and uses the -G option to add them to the
supplemental groups of finance and admin

userdel
Deletes a user from the system; used with sudo

sudo userdel fgarcia

Deletes fgarcia as a user

sudo userdel -r fgarcia

Deletes fgarcia as a user and deletes all files in their home directory

usermod
Modifies existing user accounts; used with sudo

sudo usermod -g executive fgarcia

Uses the -g option to change the existing fgarcia user's primary group to the
executive group

sudo usermod -G accounting fgarcia

Uses the -G option to replace any supplemental groups the the existing
fgarcia user is in with the supplemental accounting group; removes all other
supplemental groups fgarcia is in

sudo usermod -a -G marketing fgarcia

Uses the -a -G options to add the existing fgarcia user to the supplemental
marketing group; does not remove fgarcia from other supplemental groups

sudo usermod -d /home/garcia_f fgarcia

Uses the -d option to change the existing fgarcia user's home directory to
/home/garcia_f
 sudo usermod -L fgarcia
Uses the -L option to lock the existing fgarcia user's account so they cannot
log in

sudo usermod -l garcia_f fgarcia

Uses the -l option to change the existing fgarcia user's login name to
garcia_f

Get help in Linux

The following Linux commands are helpful when getting help in Linux.

apropos
Searches the manual page descriptions for a specified string

apropos password
Returns the manual pages of commands that contain the keyword password

apropos -a graph editor

Returns the manual pages of commands that contain both the keywords graph
and editor; the -a option specifies to only return commands that contain all
specified strings

man
Displays information on other commands and how they work; the output is called a
“man page,” which is short for "manual page"

man chown
Displays detailed information about chown and how it works

whatis
Displays a description of a command on a single line

whatis nano
Displays the description of nano on a single line