Basic Linux Commands

What's a command?

It's a binary file kept under specific directory.

 Types of Commands
File and file system management:
cat | cd | chmod | chown | chgrp | cp | du | df | file | fsck | ln | ls | lsof | mkdir | mount | mv | pwd | rm |
rmdir | split | touch
Process management:
at | chroot | crontab | kill | killall | nice | pgrep | pidof | pkill | ps | sleep | time | top | wait | watch
User Management/Environment:
env | finger | id | mesg | passwd | su | sudo | uname | uptime | w | wall | who | whoami | write
Text processing:
awk | cut | diff | ex | head | iconv | join | less | more | paste | sed | sort | tail | tr | uniq | wc | xargs
Printing:
lp
Communications:
inetd | netstat | ping | rlogin | traceroute
Searching

find | grep | strings

Miscellaneous:
banner | bc | cal | man | size | yes
 Filesystem Utilities
cd – Change to another directory location
ls – List directory contents
cp – Copy a file or directory to another location
pwd – Print the current working directory
info – The GNU alternative to man
man – The standard unix documentation system
mkdir – Make a directory
mv – Move or rename a file or directory
rmdir – Delete an empty directory
touch – Create a new file or update its modification time
rm – Delete a file or directory tree
which - locate a command
Filesystem Utilities
(continued..)
wc - print newline, word, and byte counts for each file less –
opposite of more ;) pwd - print name of current/working
directory locate - find files by name ln – Link one file/directory
to another df – Report disk space strings - print the strings of
printable characters in files. find – Search for files through a
directory hierarchy chgrp – Change the group of a file or
directory chmod – Change the permissions of a file or
directory chown – Change the owner of a file or directory
quota – display disk usage and limits du – Calculate used
disk space
 HandsOn

find /usr -size +10M

find /home -mtime +120
find /var -atime -90
find / -name core -exec rm {} \;
 Text Processing Commands
echo – display line of text
cat – Concatenate files to standard output
less – Improved more-like text pager
head – Output the first parts of a file
tail - Output the last parts of a file
cut – Remove sections from each line of a file or
standard input
paste - merge lines of files
diff – Compare two text files line by line
 Text Processing Commands
(continued..)
sort - sort lines of text files
cmp – Compare two files byte for byte
join – Join lines of two files on a common field
awk – A pattern scanning and processing
language
grep – Print lines matching a pattern
sed - stream editor for filtering and transforming
text
 HandsOn
command to print the lines that has the the pattern "july" in all the
files in a particular directory?
grep -i july *
^$
print the file names in a directory that does not contain the word
"july"?
grep -L july *
a command to select only those lines containing "july" as a
whole word?
grep -w july filename
grep -r
grep -A 10
grep -B 1
grep -C 4
grep -n "" file
Print the line excluding the patte rn using -v option
 Text Processing
more – Pager
sed – Stream EDitor
sort – Sort lines of text files
grep – Print lines matching a pattern
split – Split a file into pieces
tail – Output the tail end of files
tee – Read from standard input, write to standard output and files
uudecode – Decodes a binary file that was used for transmission using
electronic mail
uuencode – Encodes a binary file for transmission using electronic mail
wc – Word/line/byte count
 Text Processing
(continued ..)
awk – A pattern scanning and processing language
banner – Creates ascii art version of an input string for printing large
banners
cat – Concatenate files to standard output
cksum – Print the CRC checksum and bytecount of a file (see also
MD5)
egrep – Extended pattern matching (synonym for "grep -E")
fgrep – Simplified pattern matching (synonym for "grep -F")
fold – Wrap each input line to fit within the given width
iconv – Convert the encoding of the specified files
join – Join lines of two files on a common field
less – Improved more-like text pager
 General User Commands
exit - cause normal process termination
logout – terminates login shell
dd - Convert and copy a file (Disk Dump)
dirname – Strip non-directory suffixes from a path
echo – Print to standard output
env – Show environment variables;
run a program with altered environment variables
file (or stat) – Determine the type of a file
nohup – Run a command with immunity to hangups outputting to non-tty
sh – The Bourne shell, the standard Unix shell
uptime – Print how long the system has been running
history - GNU History Library
for -
source - execute commands from filename in the current shell env &
return the exit status of the last command
tr - translate or delete characters
s eq - print a sequence of numbers
 Archivers and compression

tar – Tape ARchiver, concatenates files

gzip – The gzip file compressor
bzip2 – Block-sorting file compressor
ar – Maintain, modify, and extract from archives. Now largely obsoleted by
tar
cpio – A traditional archiving tool/format
zcat – Prints files to stdout from gzip archives without unpacking them to
separate file(s)
afio – Compatible superset of cpio with added functionality
p7zip – 7zip for unix/linux
pack, pcat, unpack – included in old versions of ATT Unix. Uses Huffman
coding, obsoleted by compress.
pax – POSIX archive tool that handles multiple formats.
 Processes and tasks management
Top - display Linux processes Htop Interactive ncurses-based process viewer that
allows scrolling kill - Send a signal to process, or terminate a process (by PID) killall -
Terminate all processes (in GNU/Linux, it's kill by name) watch - execute a program
periodically, showing output fullscreen background process & pkill - look up or signal
processes based on name and other attributes nohup - run a command immune to
hangups, with output to a non-tty Fg - send job in the foreground (interactive) bg - send
job in the background, as if it had been started with & | - It pipes the standard output of
the first program to the standard input of the second
program.
> >> :redirect append
&> : redirect all standard stream
Processes and tasks management
(continued ..)
nice – Alter priorities for processes
pgrep – Find PIDs of processes by name
pidof – GNU/Linux equivalent of pgrep
pkill – Send a signal to process, or terminate a process (by name).
Equivalent to Linux killall
ps – Report process status
renice – Alter the priorities of an already running process
sleep – Delay for specified time
time – Time a command
top – Produce a dynamic list of all resident processes
wait – Wait for the specified process's exit status
 User management and support
chsh – Change user shell
finger – Get details about user
id – Print real/effective UIDs/GIDs
last – show listing of last logged in users
lastlog – show last log in information for users
locale – Get locale specific information
localedef – Compile locale definitions
logname – Print user's login name
man – Manual browser
mesg – Control write access to your terminal
passwd – Change user password
 User management and support
(continued ..)
su – Start a new process (defaults to shell) as a different user (defaults to root)
sudo – execute a command as a different user.
users – Show who is logged on (only users names)
w – Show logged-in users and their current tasks
whatis – command description from whatis database
whereis – locates the command's binary and manual pages associated with it
which (Unix) – locates where a command is executed from
who – Show who is logged on (with some details)
write – Send a message to another user
 Compilers
as – GNU assembler tool.
c99 – C programming language.
cc – C compiler.
dbx – (System V and BSD) Symbolic debugger.
f77 – Fortran 77 compiler.
gcc – GNU Compiler Collection C frontend (also known as GNU C Compiler)
gdb – GNU symbolic debugger.
ld – Program linker.
lex – Lexical scanner generator.
ltrace – (Linux) Trace dynamic library calls in the address space of the watched process.
m4 – Macro language.
make – Automate builds.
nm – List symbols from object files.
size – return the size of the sections of an ELF file.
strace – (Linux) or truss (Solaris) Trace system calls with their arguments and signals. Useful
debugging tool, but does not trace calls outside the kernel, in the address space of the
process(es) being watched.