Basic Linux Commands

HPC
Team IIT
Delhi
[email protected]
n
 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 pattern 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 seq - 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.