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Linux Commands
One of the great style of Linux OS is commands. We can manage the entire Operating System
using terminal. Commands and its description give here. Given commands have been tested
both on Fedora and Ubuntu.
Command Description
apropos whatis Show commands pertinent to string.
man -t man | ps2pdf > man.pdf make a pdf of a manual page
which command Show full path name of command
time command See how long a command takes
time cat Start stopwatch. Ctrl-d to stop.
nice
Run a low priority command (The
info reader in this case)
renice 19 -p $$
Make shell (script) low priority. Use
for non interactive tasks
dir navigation
cd - Go to previous directory
cd Go to $HOME directory
(cd dir && command)
Go to dir, execute command and
return to current dir
pushd .
Put current dir on stack so you can
popd back to it
file searching
alias l=ls -l color=auto quick dir listing
ls -lrt List files by date.
ls /usr/bin | pr -T9 -W$COLUMNS
Print in 9 columns to width of
terminal
find -name *.[ch] | xargs grep -E expr Search expr in this dir and below.
find -type f -print0 | xargs -r0 grep -F example
Search all regular files for example
in this dir and below
find -maxdepth 1 -type f | xargs grep -F example
Search all regular files for example
in this dir
find -maxdepth 1 -type d | while read dir; do echo $dir;
echo cmd2; done
Process each item with multiple
commands (in while loop)
find -type f ! -perm -444
Find files not readable by all (useful
for web site)
find -type d ! -perm -111
Find dirs not accessible by all (useful
for web site)
locate -r file[^/]*.txt
Search cached index for names. This
re is like glob *file*.txt
look reference
Quickly search (sorted) dictionary for
prefix
grep color reference /usr/share/dict/words
Highlight occurances of regular
expression in dictionary
archives and compression
gpg -c file Encrypt file
gpg file.gpg Decrypt file
tar -c dir/ | bzip2 > dir.tar.bz2 Make compressed archive of dir/
bzip2 -dc dir.tar.bz2 | tar -x
Extract archive (use gzip instead of
bzip2 for tar.gz files)
tar -c dir/ | gzip | gpg -c | ssh user@remote dd
of=dir.tar.gz.gpg
Make encrypted archive of dir/ on
remote machine
find dir/ -name *.txt | tar -c files-from=- | bzip2 >
dir_txt.tar.bz2
Make archive of subset of dir/ and
below
find dir/ -name *.txt | xargs cp -a target-
directory=dir_txt/ parents
Make copy of subset of dir/ and
below
( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p )
Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir
to /where/to/ dir
( cd /dir/to/copy && tar -c . ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x
-p )
Copy (with permissions) contents of
copy/ dir to /where/to/
( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ssh -C user@remote
cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p
Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to
remote:/where/to/ dir
dd bs=1M if=/dev/sda | gzip | ssh user@remote dd
of=sda.gz
Backup harddisk to remote machine
rsync (Network efficient file copier: Use the dry-run option for testing)
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rsync -P rsync://rsync.server.com/path/to/file file
Only get diffs. Do multiple times for
troublesome downloads
rsync bwlimit=1000 fromfile tofile
Locally copy with rate limit. Its like
nice for I/O
rsync -az -e ssh delete ~/public_html/
remote.com:~/public_html
Mirror web site (using compression
and encryption)
rsync -auz -e ssh remote:/dir/ . && rsync -auz -e ssh .
remote:/dir/
Synchronize current directory with
remote one
ssh (Secure SHell)
ssh $USER@$HOST command
Run command on $HOST as $USER
(default command=shell)
ssh -f -Y $USER@$HOSTNAME xeyes
Run GUI command on $HOSTNAME as
$USER
scp -p -r $USER@$HOST: file dir/
Copy with permissions to $USERs
home directory on $HOST
ssh -g -L 8080:localhost:80 root@$HOST
Forward connections to
$HOSTNAME:8080 out to $HOST:80
ssh -R 1434:imap:143 root@$HOST
Forward connections from
$HOST:1434 in to imap:143
wget (multi purpose download tool)

(cd dir/ && wget -nd -pHEKk

http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html)
Store local browsable version of a
page to the current dir
wget -c http://www.example.com/large.file
Continue downloading a partially
downloaded file
wget -r -nd -np -l1 -A *.jpg http://www.example.com/dir/
Download a set of files to the current
directory
wget ftp://remote/file[1-9].iso/ FTP supports globbing directly

wget -q -O- http://www.pixelbeat.org/timeline.html | grep

a href | head
Process output directly
echo wget url | at 01:00 Download url at 1AM to current dir
wget limit-rate=20k url
Do a low priority download (limit to
20 KB/s in this case)
wget -nv spider force-html -i bookmarks.html Check links in a file
wget mirror http://www.example.com/
Efficiently update a local copy of a
site (handy from cron)
networking (Note ifconfig, route, mii-tool, nslookup commands are obsolete)
ethtool eth0
Show status of ethernet interface
eth0
ethtool change eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full
Manually set ethernet interface
speed
iwconfig eth1
Show status of wireless interface
eth1
iwconfig eth1 rate 1Mb/s fixed Manually set wireless interface speed
iwlist scan List wireless networks in range
ip link show List network interfaces
ip link set dev eth0 name wan Rename interface eth0 to wan
ip link set dev eth0 up Bring interface eth0 up (or down)
ip addr show List addresses for interfaces
ip addr add 1.2.3.4/24 brd + dev eth0
Add (or del) ip and mask
(255.255.255.0)
ip route show List routing table
ip route add default via 1.2.3.254 Set default gateway to 1.2.3.254
tc qdisc add dev lo root handle 1:0 netem delay 20msec
Add 20ms latency to loopback device
(for testing)
tc qdisc del dev lo root Remove latency added above
host pixelbeat.org
Lookup DNS ip address for name or
vice versa
hostname -i
Lookup local ip address (equivalent to
host `hostname`)
whois pixelbeat.org
Lookup whois info for hostname or ip
address
netstat -tupl List internet services on a system
netstat -tup
List active connections to/from
system
windows networking (Note samba is the package that provides all this windows specific
networking support)
smbtree
Find windows machines. See also
findsmb
nmblookup -A 1.2.3.4
Find the windows (netbios) name
associated with ip address
smbclient -L windows_box
List shares on windows machine or
samba server
mount -t smbfs -o
fmask=666,guest //windows_box/share /mnt/share
Mount a windows share
echo message | smbclient -M windows_box
Send popup to windows machine (off
by default in XP sp2)
text manipulation (Note sed uses stdin and stdout. Newer versions support inplace editing with
the -i option)
sed s/string1/string2/g Replace string1 with string2
sed s/(.*)1/12/g Modify anystring1 to anystring2
sed / *#/d; /^ *$/d Remove comments and blank lines
sed :a; /$/N; s/n//; ta Concatenate lines with trailing
sed s/[ t]*$// Remove trailing spaces from lines
sed s/([`"$])/1/g
Escape shell metacharacters active
within double quotes
seq 10 | sed s/^//; s/ *(.{7,})/1/ Right align numbers
sed -n 1000p;1000q Print 1000th line
sed -n 10,20p;20q Print lines 10 to 20
sed -n s/.*<title>(.*)</title>.*/1/ip;T;q Extract title from HTML web page
sed -i 42d ~/.ssh/known_hosts Delete a particular line
sort -t. -k1,1n -k2,2n -k3,3n -k4,4n Sort IPV4 ip addresses
echo Test | tr [:lower:] [:upper:] Case conversion
tr -dc [:print:] < /dev/urandom Filter non printable characters
history | wc -l Count lines
set operations (Note you can export LANG=C for speed. Also these assume no duplicate lines
within a file)
sort file1 file2 | uniq Union of unsorted files
sort file1 file2 | uniq -d Intersection of unsorted files
sort file1 file1 file2 | uniq -u Difference of unsorted files
sort file1 file2 | uniq -u
Symmetric Difference of unsorted
files
join -a1 -a2 file1 file2 Union of sorted files
join file1 file2 Intersection of sorted files
join -v2 file1 file2 Difference of sorted files
join -v1 -v2 file1 file2 Symmetric Difference of sorted files
math
echo (1 + sqrt(5))/2 | bc -l Quick math (Calculate ).
echo pad=20; min=64; (100*10^6)/((pad+min)*8) | bc
More complex (int) e.g. This shows
max FastE packet rate
echo pad=20; min=64; print (100E6)/((pad+min)*8) | python Python handles scientific notation

echo pad=20; plot [64:1518] (100*10**6)/((pad+x)*8) |

gnuplot -persist
Plot FastE packet rate vs packet size
echo obase=16; ibase=10; 64206 | bc
Base conversion (decimal to
hexadecimal)
echo $((0x2dec))
Base conversion (hex to dec) ((shell
arithmetic expansion))
units -t 100m/9.69s miles/hour Unit conversion (metric to imperial)
units -t 500GB GiB Unit conversion (SI to IEC prefixes)
units -t 1 googol Definition lookup
seq 100 | (tr n +; echo 0) | bc Add a column of numbers.
calendar
cal -3 Display a calendar
cal 9 1752
Display a calendar for a particular
month year
date -d fri What date is it this friday.
[ $(date -d "tomorrow" +%d) = "01" ] || exit
exit a script unless its the last day of
the month
date date=25 Dec +%A What day does xmas fall on, this year
date date=@2147483647
Convert seconds since the epoch
(1970-01-01 UTC) to date
TZ=:America/Los_Angeles date
What time is it on West coast of US
(use tzselect to find TZ)
echo mail -s get the train [email protected] < /dev/null
| at 17:45
Email reminder

echo DISPLAY=$DISPLAY xmessage cooker | at NOW + 30

minutes
Popup reminder
locales
printf %dn 1234
Print number with thousands
grouping appropriate to locale
BLOCK_SIZE=1 ls -l
get ls to do thousands grouping
appropriate to locale
echo I live in `locale territory` Extract info from locale database
LANG=en_IE.utf8 locale int_prefix
Lookup locale info for specific
country.
locale | cut -d= -f1 | xargs locale -kc | less List fields available in locale database
recode (Obsoletes iconv, dos2unix, unix2dos)
recode -l | less
Show available conversions (aliases on
each line)
recode windows-1252.. file_to_change.txt
Windows ansi to local charset (auto
does CRLF conversion)
recode utf-8/CRLF.. file_to_change.txt Windows utf8 to local charset
recode iso-8859-15..utf8 file_to_change.txt Latin9 (western europe) to utf8
recode ../b64 < file.txt > file.b64 Base64 encode
recode /qp.. < file.txt > file.qp Quoted printable decode
recode ..HTML < file.txt > file.html Text to HTML
recode -lf windows-1252 | grep euro Lookup table of characters
echo -n 080 | recode latin-9/x1..dump
Show what a code represents in
latin-9 charmap
echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..latin-9/x Show latin-9 encoding
echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..utf-8/x Show utf-8 encoding
CDs
gzip < /dev/cdrom > cdrom.iso.gz Save copy of data cdrom
mkisofs -V LABEL -r dir | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz
Create cdrom image from contents of
dir
mount -o loop cdrom.iso /mnt/dir
Mount the cdrom image at /mnt/dir
(read only)
cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast Clear a CDRW
gzip -dc cdrom.iso.gz | cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -
Burn cdrom image (use dev=ATAPI -
scanbus to confirm dev)
cdparanoia -B
Rip audio tracks from CD to wav files
in current dir
cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -audio *.wav
Make audio CD from all wavs in
current dir (see also cdrdao)
oggenc tracknum=track track.cdda.wav -o track.ogg Make ogg file from wav file
disk space)
ls -lSr Show files by size, biggest last
du -s * | sort -k1,1rn | head Show top disk users in current dir.
df -h
Show free space on mounted
filesystems
df -i
Show free inodes on mounted
filesystems
fdisk -l
Show disks partitions sizes and types
(run as root)
rpm -q -a qf %10{SIZE}t%{NAME}n | sort -k1,1n
List all packages by installed size
(Bytes) on rpm distros

dpkg -query -W -f=${Installed-Size;10}t${Package}n | sort -

k1,1n
List all packages by installed size
(KBytes) on deb distros
dd bs=1 seek=2TB if=/dev/null of=ext3.test
Create a large test file (taking no
space).
> file
truncate data of file or create an
empty file
monitoring/debugging
tail -f /var/log/messages Monitor messages in a log file
strace -c ls >/dev/null
Summarise/profile system calls made
by command
strace -f -e open ls >/dev/null List system calls made by command
ltrace -f -e getenv ls >/dev/null List library calls made by command
lsof -p $$ List paths that process id has open
lsof ~
List processes that have specified
path open
tcpdump not port 22 Show network traffic except ssh. See
ps -e -o pid,args forest List processes in a hierarchy

ps -e -o pcpu,cpu,nice,state,cputime,args sort pcpu | sed

/^ 0.0 /d
List processes by % cpu usage
ps -e -orss=,args= | sort -b -k1,1n | pr -TW$COLUMNS List processes by mem usage.
ps -C firefox-bin -L -o pid,tid,pcpu,state
List all threads for a particular
process
ps -p 1,2 List info for particular process IDs
last reboot Show system reboot history
free -m
Show amount of (remaining) RAM (-m
displays in MB)
watch -n.1 cat /proc/interrupts Watch changeable data continuously
system information (# means root access is required)
uname -a
Show kernel version and system
architecture
head -n1 /etc/issue
Show name and version of
distribution
cat /proc/partitions
Show all partitions registered on the
system
grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo Show RAM total seen by the system
grep model name /proc/cpuinfo Show CPU(s) info
lspci -tv Show PCI info
lsusb -tv Show USB info
mount | column -t
List mounted filesystems on the
system (and align output)
grep -F capacity: /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info Show state of cells in laptop battery
# dmidecode -q | less Display SMBIOS/DMI information
# smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep Power_On_Hours
How long has this disk (system) been
powered on in total
# hdparm -i /dev/sda Show info about disk sda
# hdparm -tT /dev/sda Do a read speed test on disk sda
# badblocks -s /dev/sda
Test for unreadable blocks on disk
sda
interactive
readline
Line editor used by bash, python, bc,
gnuplot,
screen
Virtual terminals with detach
capability,
mc
Powerful file manager that can
browse rpm, tar, ftp, ssh,
gnuplot Interactive/scriptable graphing
links Web browser
xdg-open http://www.pixelbeat.org/
open a file or url with the registered
desktop application
miscellaneous
alias hd=od -Ax -tx1z -v
Handy hexdump. (usage e.g.:
hd /proc/self/cmdline | less)
alias realpath=readlink -f
Canonicalize path. (usage e.g.:
realpath ~/../$USER)
set | grep $USER Search current environment
touch -c -t 0304050607 file Set file timestamp (YYMMDDhhmm)
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
Serve current directory tree at
http://$HOSTNAME:8000/
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