Basic LINUX commands that a DBA should

know
groupadd
This is the command used to create new group. At OS level group is used
to give and take pivillages.
Syntax : groupadd <group name>
Ex : [root@rac5 ~]# groupadd group1
View : [root@rac5 ~]# cat /etc/group -This command used to
view which user belongs to which group.
Output: group1:x:607:

useradd
This is the command used to create a new user in a group.
Syntax : useradd -g <group name> <user name>
Ex : [root@rac5 ~]# useradd -g group1 user1

passwd
This is the command used to give password for create use or to update
the password.
Syntax : passwd <user name>
Ex: [root@rac5 ~]# passwd user1
Output :
[root@rac5 ~]# Changing password for user soufir.
New UNIX password:
BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

date

a. This is the command used to view the current system date.

Syntax : date
Output : Wed Oct 27 21:55:36 IST 2010
b. In order to update the date we can give :
Syntax : [root@rac5 ~]# date -s "2 OCT 2010 14:00:00" OR
[root@rac5 ~]# date --set="27 OCT 2010 21:56:00"
Output : Sat Oct 2 14:00:00 IST 2010

cal

This command shows the calender of current year or any.

Ex : [root@rac5 ~]# Cal
Output : [root@rac5 ~]#
October 2010
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31

pwd
This command is to view the present working directory.
Ex : [root@rac5 ~]# pwd
Output : [root@rac5 ~]# /root.

cd
a.This is the command used to change a directory
Ex : [oracle@rac5 ~]$ ls
authorized_keys file
file2 oraInventory
authorized-keys file1 file3 soufir
[oracle@rac5 ~]$ cd soufir
[oracle@rac5 soufir]$
b.This is used to go back to parent directory
Ex : cd ..

mkdir

This command is used for make a new directory.

Ex : mkdir dir1

rmdir
This commad is used for remove a directory.
Ex : rmdir dir1

rm -rf

stand.ora

This command is used to forcefully remove a direcory.

Ex : rm -fr dir1

man
This command is used to show the online manual pages of related
commands
Ex : man ls

ls

This command is used to list all contents of directories

Ex : ls

ls -lt
This command is used to list lot of information about contents of
directories
Ex
: ls
-lt
The permissions are the first 10 characters of the line (-rwxrwx---) and
can be broken down as follows.
-

rwx

r--

r--

root

root

765

Apr 23

File type

Owner

Group

All

Links

Owner

Group

Size

Mod date

touch

This
command
Ex : touch file1

is

used

create

an

cat

empty

file

This command is used to create and view files of directories

Ex
: cat
file1
cat file1 > newfile
// owerwrite newfile with file1
cat file1 >> newfile // append newfile the contents with
file1

cp

This command is used to copy a file from one to another

Ex : cp file1 filenew

mv
This command is used to rename the name of a file to other
Ex : mv file1 filenew

su
This command is used to switch one user to other. it doesnot change the
current working directory. so you cant access the /usr/sbin directories.
Ex : su soufir

su -

This command is used to switch one user with changing current working
directory.
Ex : su - soufir

50 Most Frequently Used UNIX /

Linux Commands (With
Examples)
by

RAME SH NATARAJAN

on NOVEMBER 8, 2010

This article provides practical

examples for 50 most frequently used commands in Linux /
UNIX.
This is not a comprehensive list by any means, but this should
give you a jumpstart on some of the common Linux
commands. Bookmark this article for your future reference.
Did I miss any frequently used Linux commands? Leave a
comment and let me know.
1. tar command 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

More tar examples: The Ultimate Tar Command Tutorial with

10 Practical Examples
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" *

More grep examples: Get a Grip on the Grep! 15 Practical

Grep Command Examples
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

More find examples: Mommy, I found it! 15 Practical Linux

Find Command Examples
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

More ssh examples: 5 Basic Linux SSH Client Commands

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/ /'

More sed examples: Advanced Sed Substitution Examples

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

More awk examples: 8 Powerful Awk Built-in Variables FS,

OFS, RS, ORS, NR, NF, FILENAME, FNR
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

More vim examples: How To Record and Play in Vim Editor

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

More diff examples: Top 4 File Difference Tools on UNIX /

Linux Diff, Colordiff, Wdiff, Vimdiff
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 | grep ORACLE

declare -x ORACLE_BASE="/u01/app/oracle"

declare -x ORACLE_HOME="/u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0"

declare -x ORACLE_SID="med"

declare -x 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

More ls examples: Unix LS Command: 15 Practical Examples

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
More cd examples: 6 Awesome Linux cd command Hacks
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 ratio uncompressed_name

97975 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

More bzip2 examples: BZ is Eazy! bzip2, bzgrep, bzcmp,

bzdiff, bzcat, bzless, bzmore examples
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

---- ----

Name

----

40995 11-30-98 23:50 META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

32169 08-25-98 21:07 classes_

15964 08-25-98 21:07 classes_names

10542 08-25-98 21:07 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

More ftp examples: FTP and SFTP Beginners Guide with 10

Examples
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

More crontab examples: Linux Crontab: 15 Awesome Cron

Job Examples
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:

used

3566408

free

1580220

shared

1986188

902960

-/+ buffers/cache:

Swap:

4000176

473272

3093136

4000176

buffers

cached

203988

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:

used

-/+ buffers/cache:

Swap:

free

shared

buffers

cached

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

free

shared

buffers

cached

Mem:

3566408

1592148

1974260

204260

912556

-/+ buffers/cache:

Swap:

Total:

4000176

7566584

475332

1592148

3091076

4000176

5974436

24. top command examples

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

= Process Id

d: UID

= User Id

v: nDRT

y: WCHAN

= Dirty Pages count

= Sleeping in

Function

e: USER

= User Name

z: Flags

= 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

More top examples: Can You Top This? 15 Practical Linux Top
Command Examples
25. df command examples

Displays the file system disk space usage. By default df -k

displays output in bytes.

$ df -k

Filesystem

1K-blocks

/dev/sda1

29530400 3233104 24797232 12% /

/dev/sda2

Used Available Use% Mounted on

120367992 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

Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda1

ext4

/dev/sda2

ext4 120367992 50171596 64082060 44% /home

29530400 3233120 24797216 12% /

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 9 22:43 pts/2

$ kill -9 7243

00:00:00 vim

More kill examples: 4 Ways to Kill a Process kill, killall,

pkill, xkill
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

30. cat command examples

You can view multiple files at the same time. Following

example prints the content of file1 followed by file2 to stdout.
$ cat file1 file2

While displaying the file, following cat -n command will

prepend the line number to each line of the output.
$ cat -n /etc/logrotate.conf

/var/log/btmp {

missingok

monthly

create 0660 root utmp

rotate 1

31. mount command examples

To mount a file system, you should first create a directory and

mount it as shown below.
# mkdir /u01

# mount /dev/sdb1 /u01

You can also add this to the fstab for automatic mounting. i.e
Anytime system is restarted, the filesystem will be mounted.

/dev/sdb1 /u01 ext2 defaults 0 2

32. chmod command examples

chmod command is used to change the permissions for a file

or directory.
Give full access to user and group (i.e read, write and execute )
on a specific file.
$ chmod ug+rwx file.txt

Revoke all access for the group (i.e read, write and execute )
on a specific file.
$ chmod g-rwx file.txt

Apply the file permissions recursively to all the files in the

sub-directories.
$ chmod -R ug+rwx file.txt

More chmod examples: 7 Chmod Command Examples for

Beginners
33. chown command examples

chown command is used to change the owner and group of a

file. \
To change owner to oracle and group to db on a file. i.e
Change both owner and group at the same time.
$ chown oracle:dba dbora.sh

Use -R to change the ownership recursively.

$ chown -R oracle:dba /home/oracle

34. passwd command examples

Change your password from command line using passwd.

This will prompt for the old password followed by the new
password.
$ passwd

Super user can use passwd command to reset others

password. This will not prompt for current password of the
user.
# passwd USERNAME

Remove password for a specific user. Root user can disable

password for a specific user. Once the password is disabled,
the user can login without entering the password.
# passwd -d USERNAME

35. mkdir command examples

Following example creates a directory called temp under your

home directory.
$ mkdir ~/temp

Create nested directories using one mkdir command. If any of

these directories exist already, it will not display any error. If
any of these directories doesnt exist, it will create them.

$ mkdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/

36. ifconfig command examples

Use ifconfig command to view or configure a network

interface on the Linux system.
View all the interfaces along with status.
$ ifconfig -a

Start or stop a specific interface using up and down command

as shown below.
$ ifconfig eth0 up

$ ifconfig eth0 down

More ifconfig examples: Ifconfig: 7 Examples To Configure

Network Interface

37. uname command examples

Uname command displays important information about the

system such as Kernel name, Host name, Kernel release
number,
Processor type, etc.,
Sample uname output from a Ubuntu laptop is shown below.
$ uname -a

Linux john-laptop 2.6.32-24-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Thu Aug 19

01:12:52 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

38. whereis command examples

When you want to find out where a specific Unix command

exists (for example, where does ls command exists?), you can
execute the following command.
$ whereis ls

ls: /bin/ls /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz

/usr/share/man/man1p/ls.1p.gz

When you want to search an executable from a path other

than the whereis default path, you can use -B option and give
path as argument to it. This searches for the executable lsmk
in the /tmp directory, and displays it, if it is available.
$ whereis -u -B /tmp -f lsmk

lsmk: /tmp/lsmk

39. whatis command examples

Whatis command displays a single line description about a

command.
$ whatis ls

ls

(1) - list directory contents

$ whatis ifconfig

ifconfig (8)

- configure a network interface

40. locate command examples

Using locate command you can quickly search for the location
of a specific file (or group of files). Locate command uses the
database created by updatedb.
The example below shows all files in the system that contains
the word crontab in it.
$ locate crontab

/etc/anacrontab

/etc/crontab

/usr/bin/crontab

/usr/share/doc/cron/examples/crontab2english.pl.gz

/usr/share/man/man1/crontab.1.gz

/usr/share/man/man5/anacrontab.5.gz

/usr/share/man/man5/crontab.5.gz

/usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/crontab.vim

41. man command examples

Display the man page of a specific command.

$ man crontab

When a man page for a command is located under more than

one section, you can view the man page for that command
from a specific section as shown below.
$ man SECTION-NUMBER commandname

Following 8 sections are available in the man page.

1. General commands
2. System calls

3. C library functions
4. Special files (usually devices, those found in /dev) and
drivers
5. File formats and conventions
6. Games and screensavers
7. Miscellaneous
8. System administration commands and daemons
For example, when you do whatis crontab, youll notice that
crontab has two man pages (section 1 and section 5). To view
section 5 of crontab man page, do the following.
$ whatis crontab

crontab (1)

- maintain crontab files for individual users (V3)

crontab (5)

- tables for driving cron

$ man 5 crontab

42. tail command examples

Print the last 10 lines of a file by default.

$ tail filename.txt

Print N number of lines from the file named filename.txt

$ tail -n N filename.txt

View the content of the file in real time using tail -f. This is
useful to view the log files, that keeps growing. The command
can be terminated using CTRL-C.
$ tail -f log-file

More tail examples: 3 Methods To View tail -f output of

Multiple Log Files in One Terminal
43. less command examples

less is very efficient while viewing huge log files, as it doesnt

need to load the full file while opening.

$ less huge-log-file.log

One you open a file using less command, following two keys
are very helpful.
CTRL+F forward one window

CTRL+B backward one window

More less examples: Unix Less Command: 10 Tips for

Effective Navigation
44. su command examples

Switch to a different user account using su command. Super

user can switch to any other user without entering their
password.
$ su - USERNAME

Execute a single command from a different account name. In

the following example, john can execute the ls command as raj

username. Once the command is executed, it will come back

to johns account.
[john@dev-server]$ su - raj -c 'ls'

[john@dev-server]$

Login to a specified user account, and execute the specified

shell instead of the default shell.
$ su -s 'SHELLNAME' USERNAME

45. mysql command examples

mysql is probably the most widely used open source database

on Linux. Even if you dont run a mysql database on your
server, you might end-up using the mysql command ( client )
to connect to a mysql database running on the remote server.
To connect to a remote mysql database. This will prompt for a
password.

$ mysql -u root -p -h 192.168.1.2

To connect to a local mysql database.

$ mysql -u root -p

If you want to specify the mysql root password in the

command line itself, enter it immediately after -p (without
any space).
46. yum command examples

To install apache using yum.

$ yum install httpd

To upgrade apache using yum.

$ yum update httpd

To uninstall/remove apache using yum.

$ yum remove httpd

47. rpm command examples

To install apache using rpm.

# rpm -ivh httpd-2.2.3-22.0.1.el5.i386.rpm

To upgrade apache using rpm.

# rpm -uvh httpd-2.2.3-22.0.1.el5.i386.rpm

To uninstall/remove apache using rpm.

# rpm -ev httpd

More rpm examples: RPM Command: 15 Examples to Install,

Uninstall, Upgrade, Query RPM Packages
48. ping command examples

Ping a remote host by sending only 5 packets.

$ ping -c 5 gmail.com

More ping examples: Ping Tutorial: 15 Effective Ping

Command Examples
49. date command examples

Set the system date:

# date -s "01/31/2010 23:59:53"

Once youve changed the system date, you should syncronize

the hardware clock with the system date as shown below.
# hwclock systohc

# hwclock --systohc utc

50. wget command examples

The quick and effective method to download software, music,

video from internet is using wget command.
$ wget
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios3.2.1.tar.gz

Download and store it with a different name.

$ wget -O taglist.zip
http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=7701