1.

tar comma
nd examples
Create a new tar archive.
$ tar cvf archive_name.tar dirname/

Extract from an existing tar archive.

$ tar xvf archive_name.tar

View an existing tar archive.

$ tar tvf archive_name.tar

2. grep command examples

Search for a given string in a file (case in-sensitive search).
$ grep -i "the" demo_file

Print the matched line, along with the 3 lines after it.
$ grep -A 3 -i "example" demo_text

Search for a given string in all files recursively

$ grep -r "ramesh" *

3. find command examples

Find files using file-name ( case in-sensitve find)
# find -iname "MyCProgram.c"

Execute commands on files found by the find command

$ find -iname "MyCProgram.c" -exec md5sum {} \;

Find all empty files in home directory

# find ~ -empty

4. ssh command examples

Login to remote host
ssh -l jsmith remotehost.example.com

Debug ssh client

ssh -v -l jsmith remotehost.example.com

Display ssh client version

$ ssh -V
OpenSSH_3.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.7a Feb 19 2003

5. sed command examples

When you copy a DOS file to Unix, you could find \r\n in the end of each line. This example
converts the DOS file format to Unix file format using sed command.
$sed 's/.$//' filename

Print file content in reverse order

$ sed -n '1!G;h;$p' thegeekstuff.txt

Add line number for all non-empty-lines in a file

$ sed '/./=' thegeekstuff.txt | sed 'N; s/\n/ /'

6. awk command examples

Remove duplicate lines using awk
$ awk '!($0 in array) { array[$0]; print }' temp

Print all lines from /etc/passwd that has the same uid and gid
$awk -F ':' '$3==$4' passwd.txt

Print only specific field from a file.

$ awk '{print $2,$5;}' employee.txt

7. vim command examples

Go to the 143rd line of file

$ vim +143 filename.txt

Go to the first match of the specified

$ vim +/search-term filename.txt

Open the file in read only mode.

$ vim -R /etc/passwd

8. diff command examples

Ignore white space while comparing.
# diff -w name_list.txt name_list_new.txt
2c2,3
< John Doe --- > John M Doe
> Jason Bourne

9. sort command examples

Sort a file in ascending order
$ sort names.txt

Sort a file in descending order

$ sort -r names.txt

Sort passwd file by 3rd field.

$ sort -t: -k 3n /etc/passwd | more

10. export command examples

To view oracle related environment variables.
$ export |
declare -x
declare -x
declare -x
declare -x

grep ORACLE
ORACLE_BASE="/u01/app/oracle"
ORACLE_HOME="/u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0"
ORACLE_SID="med"
ORACLE_TERM="xterm"

To export an environment variable:

$ export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0

11. xargs command examples

Copy all images to external hard-drive
# ls *.jpg | xargs -n1 -i cp {} /external-hard-drive/directory

Search all jpg images in the system and archive it.

# find / -name *.jpg -type f -print | xargs tar -cvzf images.tar.gz

Download all the URLs mentioned in the url-list.txt file

# cat url-list.txt | xargs wget c

12. ls command examples

Display filesize in human readable format (e.g. KB, MB etc.,)
$ ls -lh
-rw-r----- 1 ramesh team-dev 8.9M Jun 12 15:27 arch-linux.txt.gz

Order Files Based on Last Modified Time (In Reverse Order) Using ls -ltr
$ ls -ltr

Visual Classification of Files With Special Characters Using ls -F

$ ls -F

13. pwd command

pwd is Print working directory. What else can be said about the good old pwd who has been
printing the current directory name for ages.

14. cd command examples

Use cd - to toggle between the last two directories
Use shopt -s cdspell to automatically correct mistyped directory names on cd

15. gzip command examples

To create a *.gz compressed file:
$ gzip test.txt

To uncompress a *.gz file:

$ gzip -d test.txt.gz

Display compression ratio of the compressed file using gzip -l

$ gzip -l *.gz
compressed
23709

uncompressed
97975

ratio uncompressed_name
75.8% asp-patch-rpms.txt

16. bzip2 command examples

To create a *.bz2 compressed file:
$ bzip2 test.txt

To uncompress a *.bz2 file:

bzip2 -d test.txt.bz2

17. unzip command examples

To extract a *.zip compressed file:
$ unzip test.zip

View the contents of *.zip file (Without unzipping it):

$ unzip -l jasper.zip
Archive: jasper.zip
Length
Date
Time
-------------40995 11-30-98 23:50
32169 08-25-98 21:07
15964 08-25-98 21:07
10542 08-25-98 21:07

Name
---META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
classes_
classes_names
classes_ncomp

18. shutdown command examples

Shutdown the system and turn the power off immediately.
# shutdown -h now

Shutdown the system after 10 minutes.

# shutdown -h +10

Reboot the system using shutdown command.

# shutdown -r now

Force the filesystem check during reboot.

# shutdown -Fr now

19. ftp command examples

Both ftp and secure ftp (sftp) has similar commands. To connect to a remote server and download
multiple files, do the following.
$ ftp IP/hostname
ftp> mget *.html

To view the file names located on the remote server before downloading, mls ftp command as
shown below.
ftp> mls *.html /ftptest/features.html
/ftptest/index.html
/ftptest/othertools.html
/ftptest/samplereport.html
/ftptest/usage.html

20. crontab command examples

View crontab entry for a specific user
# crontab -u john -l

Schedule a cron job every 10 minutes.

*/10 * * * * /home/ramesh/check-disk-space

21. service command examples

Service command is used to run the system V init scripts. i.e Instead of calling the scripts located
in the /etc/init.d/ directory with their full path, you can use the service command.
Check the status of a service:
# service ssh status

Check the status of all the services.

service --status-all

Restart a service.
# service ssh restart

22. ps command examples

ps command is used to display information about the processes that are running in the system.
While there are lot of arguments that could be passed to a ps command, following are some of
the common ones.
To view current running processes.
$ ps -ef | more

To view current running processes in a tree structure. H option stands for process hierarchy.
$ ps -efH | more

23. free command examples

This command is used to display the free, used, swap memory available in the system.
Typical free command output. The output is displayed in bytes.
$ free

total
Mem:
3566408
-/+ buffers/cache:
Swap:
4000176

used
1580220
473272
0

free
1986188
3093136
4000176

shared
0

buffers
203988

cached
902960

If you want to quickly check how many GB of RAM your system has use the -g option. -b option
displays in bytes, -k in kilo bytes, -m in mega bytes.
$ free -g
total
Mem:
3
-/+ buffers/cache:
Swap:
3

used
1
0
0

free
1
2
3

shared
0

buffers
0

cached
0

If you want to see a total memory ( including the swap), use the -t switch, which will display a
total line as shown below.
ramesh@ramesh-laptop:~$ free -t
total
used
Mem:
3566408
1592148
-/+ buffers/cache:
475332
Swap:
4000176
0
Total:
7566584
1592148

24. top command examples

free
1974260
3091076
4000176
5974436

shared
0

buffers
204260

cached
912556

top command displays the top processes in the system ( by default sorted by cpu usage ). To sort
top output by any column, Press O (upper-case O) , which will display all the possible columns
that you can sort by as shown below.
Current Sort Field: P for window 1:Def
Select sort field via field letter, type any other key to return
a: PID
d: UID
e: USER
........

= Process Id
= User Id
= User Name

v: nDRT
y: WCHAN
z: Flags

= Dirty Pages count

= Sleeping in Function
= Task Flags

To displays only the processes that belong to a particular user use -u option. The following will
show only the top processes that belongs to oracle user.
$ top -u oracle

25. df command examples

Displays the file system disk space usage. By default df -k displays output in bytes.
$ df -k
Filesystem
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2

1K-blocks
29530400
120367992

Used Available Use% Mounted on

3233104 24797232 12% /
50171596 64082060 44% /home

df -h displays output in human readable form. i.e size will be displayed in GBs.
ramesh@ramesh-laptop:~$ df -h
Filesystem
Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1
29G 3.1G
24G 12% /
/dev/sda2
115G
48G
62G 44% /home

Use -T option to display what type of file system.

ramesh@ramesh-laptop:~$ df -T
Filesystem
Type
1K-blocks
/dev/sda1
ext4
29530400
/dev/sda2
ext4
120367992

Used Available Use% Mounted on

3233120 24797216 12% /
50171596 64082060 44% /home

26. kill command examples

Use kill command to terminate a process. First get the process id using ps -ef command, then use
kill -9 to kill the running Linux process as shown below. You can also use killall, pkill, xkill to
terminate a unix process.
$ ps -ef | grep vim
ramesh
7243 7222
$ kill -9 7243

9 22:43 pts/2

00:00:00 vim

27. rm command examples

Get confirmation before removing the file.
$ rm -i filename.txt

It is very useful while giving shell metacharacters in the file name argument.
Print the filename and get confirmation before removing the file.
$ rm -i file*

Following example recursively removes all files and directories under the example directory.
This also removes the example directory itself.
$ rm -r example

28. cp command examples

Copy file1 to file2 preserving the mode, ownership and timestamp.
$ cp -p file1 file2

Copy file1 to file2. if file2 exists prompt for confirmation before overwritting it.
$ cp -i file1 file2

29. mv command examples

Rename file1 to file2. if file2 exists prompt for confirmation before overwritting it.
$ mv -i file1 file2

Note: mv -f is just the opposite, which will overwrite file2 without prompting.
mv -v will print what is happening during file rename, which is useful while specifying shell
metacharacters in the file name argument.
$ mv -v file1 file2