Threadsafe Man: Command Description
Threadsafe Man: Command Description
Threadsafe Man: Command Description
apropos whatis
Show commands pertinent
to string. See also threadsafe
man -t ascii | ps2pdf - > ascii.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. See also sw
dir navigation
cd - Go to previous directory
cd Go to $HOME directory
(cd dir && command)
Go to dir, execute command
and return to current dir
pushd .
Put current dir on stack so
you can popd back to it
file searching
alias l='ls -l --color=auto' quick dir listing
ls -lrt
List files by date. See
also newest and find_mm_y
yyy
ls /usr/bin | pr -T9 -W$COLUMNS
Print in 9 columns to width
of terminal
find -name '*.[ch]' | xargs grep -E 'expr'
Search 'expr' in this dir and
below. See also findrepo
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)
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.
It's 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
$USER's home directory on
$HOST
scp -c arcfour $USER@$LANHOST: bigfile
Use faster crypto for local
LAN. This might saturate
GigE
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
ssh-copy-id $USER@$HOST
Install public key for
$USER@$HOST for
password-less log in
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 20KB/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
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 '1000{p;q}' 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
tr -s '[:blank:]' '\t' </proc/diskstats | cut -f4
cut fields separated by
blanks
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 -t'\0' -a1 -a2 file1 file2 Union of sorted files
join -t'\0' file1 file2 Intersection of sorted files
join -t'\0' -v2 file1 file2 Difference of sorted files
join -t'\0' -v1 -v2 file1 file2
Symmetric Difference of
sorted files
math
echo '(1 + sqrt(5))/2' | bc -l
Quick math (Calculate ).
See also bc
seq -f '4/%g' 1 2 99999 | paste -sd-+ | bc -l Calculate the unix way
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/9.58s' '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.
See also add and funcpy
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.
See also day
[ $(date -d '12:00 +1 day' +%d) = '01' ] || exit
exit a script unless it's 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)
date --date='TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 09:00 next Fri'
What's the local time for
9AM next Friday on west
coast US
locales
printf "%'d\n" 1234
Print number with thousands
grouping appropriate to
locale
BLOCK_SIZE=\'1 ls -l
Use locale thousands
grouping in ls. See also l
echo "I live in `locale territory`"
Extract info from locale
database
LANG=en_IE.utf8 locale int_prefix
Lookup locale info for
specific country. See
also ccodes
locale -kc $(locale | sed -n 's/\(LC_.\{4,\}\)=.*/\1/p') | 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.qp > file.txt Quoted printable decode
recode ..HTML < file.txt > file.html Text to HTML
recode -lf windows-1252 | grep euro Lookup table of characters
echo -n 0x80 | 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 -pad *.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 (See also FSlint)
ls -lSr
Show files by size, biggest
last
du -s * | sort -k1,1rn | head
Show top disk users in
current dir. See also dutop
du -hs /home/* | sort -k1,1h
Sort paths by easy to
interpret disk usage
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). See
also truncate
> 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
strace -f -e trace=write -e write=1,2 ls >/dev/null
Monitor what's written to
stdout and stderr
ltrace -f -e getenv ls >/dev/null
List library calls made by
command
lsof -p $$ List paths that process id has
open
lsof ~
List processes that have
specified path open
tcpdump not port 22
Show network traffic except
ssh. See
also tcpdump_not_me
ps -e -o pid,args --forest List processes in a hierarchy
ps -e -o pcpu,cpu,nice,state,cputime,args --sort pcpu | sed '/^ 0.0
/d'
List processes by % cpu
usage
ps -e -orss=,args= | sort -b -k1,1n | pr -TW$COLUMNS
List processes by mem (KB)
usage. See also ps_mem.py
ps -C firefox-bin -L -o pid,tid,pcpu,state
List all threads for a
particular process
ps -p 1,$$ -o etime=
List elapsed wall time 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
udevadm monitor
Monitor udev events to help
configure rules
system information (see also sysinfo) ('#' 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 (see also linux keyboard shortcuts)
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 .
open a file or url with the
registered desktop
application