CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF LINUX BASIC COMMANDS

System Information commands

1. uname : Displays linux system information. With -a switch you can view all the information,
with -r switch you can view kernel release information and with -o you can view OS information

2. cat file : pastes file

3. uptime : Shows how long the system has been running

4. hostname : Shows system host name. With -i switch you can view the ip address of the machine
and with -d you can view the domain name

5. last reboot : Shows system reboot history

6. date : Shows the current date and time. You can spe-cify the format you want to view the
date as well. As an example, by using 'date +%D' you can view the date in 'MM/DD/YY' format

7. cal : Shows the calendar of the current month. With -y switch you can view the calendar of the
whole current year

8. w : Displays who is logged on and what they are doing

9. whoami : Shows current user id

10. finger user : Displays information about user

11. reboot : Reboots the system

12. shutdown : Shuts down the system

II Hardware related commands

13. dmesg : Displays all the messages from Kernel ring buffer With -k switch you can view kernel
messages and with -u you can view userspace messages

14. cat /proc/cpuinfo : Displays information about processes and CPUs of the system

15. cat /proc/meminfo : Displays details on hardware memory

16. cat /proc/interrupts : Lists the number of interrupts per CPU per I/O device

17. lshw : Displays information on hardware configuration of the system. But this command
must be run as super user or it will only report partial information

18. lsblk : Displays block device related information of the machine. With -a you can view all
block devices

19. free -m : Shows used and free memory (-m for MB)

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20. lspci -tv : Shows information on PCI buses devices

21. lsusb -tv : Shows information on USB devices

22. dmidecode : Shows hardware info from the BIOS (vendor details)

23. hdparm -i /dev/sda : Shows info about disk sda

hdparm -tT /dev/sda : Performs a read speed test on disk sda

24. badblocks -s /dev/sda : Tests for unreadable blocks on disk sda

24. badblocks -s /dev/sda : Tests for unreadable blocks on disk

sda

III. Statistic Related Commands

These set of commands are used to view various kinds of stats of the Linux system

25. mpstat 1 : Displays processors related statistics

26. vmstat 2 : Displays virtual memory statistics

27. iostat 2 : Displays I/O statistics

28. tail -n 500 /var/log/messages : Displays the last 500 kernel/syslog messages

29. tcpdump -i eth1 : Captures all packets flow on interface eth1. With -w switch you can
specify a file where you can direct the output to

tcpdump -i eth0 'port 80' : Monitors all traffic on port 80 on interface eth0

30. lsof : Lists all open files belonging to all active processes

lsof -u testuser : Lists files opened by a specific user

31. free -m : Shows RAM memory details

32. watch df -h : Watches changeable disk usage continuously

IV. User-Related Commands

These commands are used to manage Linux users

33. id : Shows the active user and group information. With -G switch you can
view the IDs of groups

34. last : Shows a list of last logins on the system. Using -a switch you can add the
hostname to the last column of the output

35. who : Shows who is logged on the system

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36. groupadd admin : Adds the group "admin"

37. useradd -c "Sam Tomshi" -g admin -m sam : Creates user "sam" and adds to group "admin"

38. userdel sam : Deletes user sam

39. adduser sam : Adds user "sam"

40. usermod : Modifies user information

41. passwd user1 : Changes the password of user1

V. File Related Commands

These commands are used to handle files and directories

42. ls -al : Displays all information about files/directories. This includes displaying
all hidden files as well

43. pwd : Shows current directory path

44. mkdir directory-name : Creates a directory

45. rm file-name : Deletes file

rm -r directory-name : Deletes directory recursively

rm -f file-name : Forcefully removes file

rm -rf directory-name : Forcefully removes directory recursively

46. cp file1 file2 : Copies linux files, here file1 to file2

cp -r dir1 dir2 : Copies dir1 to dir2, creates dir2 if it doesn't exist

47. mv file1 file2 : Moves files from one place to another/renames file1 to file2

48. ln -s /path/to/file-name link-name : Creates a symbolic link to file-name

49. touch file : Creates empty file

50. cat file : Prints the file content in terminal

51. more file : Display the contents of file

52. head file : Display the first 10 lines of file

53. tail file : Outputs the last 10 lines of file

tail -f file : Outputs the contents of file as it grows starting with the last 10 lines

54. gpg -c file : Encrypts file

gpg file.gpg : Decrypts file

55. cksum file : View the checksum of the file

56. diff file1 file2 : View the differences between contents of file1 and file2

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57. ln -s link file : Create a soft link named link to the file

58. sort : Sorts files in alphabetical order

59. uniq : Compares adjacent lines in a file and removes/reports any duplicate
lines

60. wc : Counts number of words/lines

61. dir : Lists the content of the directory

62. tee : Command for chaining and redirection

63. tr : Command for translating characters

VI. Process Related Commands

These commands are used to handle Linux processes

64. ps : Displays your currently active processes

ps aux | grep 'telnet' : Displays all process ids related to telnet process

65. pmap : Display Memory map of process

66. top : Display all running processes and cpu/memory usage

67. kill pid : Kills process with mentioned pid

68. killall proc : Kills all processes named proc

69. pkill processname : Sends kill signal to a process with its name

70. bg : Resumes suspended jobs without bringing them to foreground

71. fg : Brings the most recent job to foreground

fg n : Brings job n to the foreground

VII. File Permission Related Commands

These commands are used to change permissions of the files

72. chmod octal file-name : Changes the permissions of file to octal

chmod 777 /data/test.c : Sets rwx permission for owner , group and others

chmod 755 /data/test.c Sets rwx permission for owner and rx for group and others

73. chown owner-user file : Changes owner of the file

chown owner-user:owner-group file-name : Changes owner and group owner of the file

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 chown owner-user:owner-group directory : Changes owner and group owner of the directory

74. chgrp group1 file : Changes the group ownership of the file to group1

VIII. Network Related Commands

These commands are used to view and edit network configurations related aspects of the system

75. ifconfig -a : Displays all network interface and set ip address

76. ifconfig eth0 : Displays eth0 ethernet port ip address and details

77. ip addr show : Display all network interfaces and ip addresses

78. ip address add 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 : Sets ip address of eth0 device

79. ethtool eth0 : Linux tool to show ethernet status

80. mii-tool eth0 : Linux tool to show eth0 status

81. ping host : Sends echo requests to the host to test ipv4 connection

82. whois domain : Gets who is information for domain

83. dig domain : Gets DNS nameserver information for domain

dig -x host : Reverse lookup host

84. host google.com : Lookup DNS ip address for the name

85. hostname -i : Lookup local ip address

86. wget file : Downloads file

87. netstat -tupl : Lists all active listening ports

88. nslookup : Resolves domain names to IP addresses

IX Compression commands

89. tar cf home.tar home : Creates a tar named home.tar containing home/

tar xf file.tar : Extracts the files from file.tar

tar czf file.tar.gz files : Creates a tar with gzip compression

90. gzip file : Compresses file and renames it to file.gz

91. bzip2 -z file : Compresses file and renames it to file.bz2

bzip2 -d file.bz2 : Decompress the file

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Search Related Commands

These commands are used to search for files and patterns

94. grep pattern files : Searches for pattern in files

grep -r pattern dir : Searches recursively for pattern in dir

95. locate file : Finds all instances of file

96. find /home/tom -name 'index*' : Finds file names that start with "index" inside /home/tom
directory

find /home -size +10000k : Finds files larger than 10000k in /home

IX. Login Related Commands

These commands are used to log into another host

97. ssh user@host : Securely connect to a host as user

ssh -p port $ user@host : Connects to host using specific port

98. telnet host : Connects to the system using telnet port

X. File Transfer Related Commands

These commands are used to copy files from one system to another system

99. scp file.txt server2:/tmp : Secure copy file.txt to remote host /tmp folder

scp nixsavy@server2:/www/*.html /www/tmp : Copies *.html files from remote host to

current host /www/tmp folder

scp -r nixsavy@server2:/www /www/tmp : Copies all files and folders recursively from
remote server to the current system /www/tmp folder

100. rsync -a /home/apps /backup/ : Synchronizes source to destination

rsync -avz /home/apps $ linoxide@192.168.10.1:/backup : Synchronize files/directories between

the local and remote system with compression enabled

XI. Disk Usage Related Commands

These commands are used to view disk statistics

101. df -h : Shows free space on mounted filesystems

df -i : Shows free inodes on mounted filesystems

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102. fdisk -l : Shows disks partitions sizes and types

103. du -ah : Displays disk usage in human readable form

103. du -ah : Displays disk usage in human readable form

du -sh : Displays total disk usage on the current directory

104. findmnt : Displays target mount point for all filesystems

105. mount device-path mount-point : Mounts a device to the device-path

Directory Traverse Related Commands

These commands are used to change the directory

106. cd .. : Goes up one level of the directory tree

cd : Goes to $HOME directory

cd /test : Changes to /test directory