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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.
More tar examples: The Ultimate Tar Command Tutorial with 10 Practical Examples
Print the matched line, along with the 3 lines after it.
$ grep -r "ramesh" *
More grep examples: Get a Grip on the Grep! – 15 Practical Grep Command Examples
More find examples: Mommy, I found it! — 15 Practical Linux Find Command Examples
$ ssh -V
OpenSSH_3.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.7a Feb 19 2003
Print all lines from /etc/passwd that has the same uid and gid
More awk examples: 8 Powerful Awk Built-in Variables – FS, OFS, RS, ORS, NR, NF, FILENAME, FNR
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$ vim -R /etc/passwd
2c2,3
< John Doe --- > John M Doe
> Jason Bourne
More diff examples: Top 4 File Difference Tools on UNIX / Linux – Diff, Colordiff, Wdiff, Vimdiff
$ sort -r names.txt
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Order Files Based on Last Modified Time (In Reverse Order) Using ls -ltr
$ ls -ltr
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.
$ gzip test.txt
$ gzip -d test.txt.gz
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bzip2 -d test.txt.bz2
More bzip2 examples: BZ is Eazy! bzip2, bzgrep, bzcmp, bzdiff, bzcat, bzless, bzmore examples
# shutdown -r now
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
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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.
Restart a service.
# service ssh restart
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.
$ ps -ef | more
To view current running processes in a tree structure. H option stands for process hierarchy.
$ ps -efH | more
This command is used to display the free, used, swap memory available in the system.
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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 used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3 1 1 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 0 2
Swap: 3 0 3
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 0 204260 912556
-/+ buffers/cache: 475332 3091076
Swap: 4000176 0 4000176
Total: 7566584 1592148 5974436
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
Displays the file system disk space usage. By default df -k displays output in bytes.
$ df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 29530400 3233104 24797232 12% /
/dev/sda2 120367992 50171596 64082060 44% /home
df -h displays output in human readable form. i.e size will be displayed in GB’s.
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
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ramesh@ramesh-laptop:~$ df -T
Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 ext4 29530400 3233120 24797216 12% /
/dev/sda2 ext4 120367992 50171596 64082060 44% /home
$ kill -9 7243
More kill examples: 4 Ways to Kill a Process – kill, killall, pkill, xkill
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
$ cp -p file1 file2
Copy file1 to file2. if file2 exists prompt for confirmation before overwritting it.
$ cp -i file1 file2
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
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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
1 /var/log/btmp {
2 missingok
3 monthly
4 create 0660 root utmp
5 rotate 1
6 }
To mount a file system, you should first create a directory and mount it as shown below.
# mkdir /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
Give full access to user and group (i.e read, write and execute ) on a specific file.
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
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
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
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 doesn’t exist, it will create them.
$ mkdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/
Start or stop a specific interface using up and down command as shown below.
$ ifconfig eth0 up
Uname command displays important information about the system such as — Kernel name, Host name, Kernel
release number,
Processor type, etc.,
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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
$ whatis ls
ls (1) - list directory contents
$ whatis ifconfig
ifconfig (8) - configure a network interface
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
$ 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.
1. General commands
2. System calls
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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, you’ll 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
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
less is very efficient while viewing huge log files, as it doesn’t 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.
More less examples: Unix Less Command: 10 Tips for Effective Navigation
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 john’s account.
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[john@dev-server]$
Login to a specified user account, and execute the specified shell instead of the default shell.
$ su -s 'SHELLNAME' USERNAME
If you want to specify the mysql root password in the command line itself, enter it immediately after -p (without
any space).
More rpm examples: RPM Command: 15 Examples to Install, Uninstall, Upgrade, Query RPM Packages
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Once you’ve changed the system date, you should syncronize the hardware clock with the system date as shown
below.
# hwclock –systohc
The quick and effective method to download software, music, video from internet is using wget command.
$ wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-3.2.1.tar.gz
More wget examples: The Ultimate Wget Download Guide With 15 Awesome Examples
Did I miss any frequently used Linux commands? Leave a comment and let me know.
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Previous Comments
thanks a lot.
Link
adom blessing August 20, 2014, 7:52 am
Link
dev rajbhar September 10, 2014, 9:47 pm
Link
John September 13, 2014, 11:25 am
Maybe it would be interesting to differ between using Linux/Unix as an admin or as a non-admin, since
some commands are useless for a non-admin
Link
chandru September 18, 2014, 11:56 am
Hi,
I am using toshiba satellite laptop. After installing redhatlinux 6 in my laptop ethernet not detected.
Kindly help
My hardare information:
Processor: intel pentium cpu B960 2.20GHZ 2100.00mhz
Ehternet: 03:00.0 ehternet controller atheros communications inc device 10a0(rev 10).
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Nicholas Lee Fagan September 20, 2014, 2:26 pm
51.) Rsync
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dhiren October 7, 2014, 3:11 am
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mrutyunjay October 9, 2014, 12:31 am
Link
Jim O'Reilly October 22, 2014, 7:03 am
wc
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nnsense November 27, 2014, 8:28 am
“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.”
Can be said that pwd -P shows the real path if you cd into a link..
Example
$ cd /home/user
$ ln -s ./Public ./Pub
$ cd Pub
$ pwd
/home/user/Pub
$ pwd -P
/home/nnsense/Public
Link
krupali December 7, 2014, 12:27 am
Write a shell script to display all lines of a file from bottom to top.
Link
Tim Chase December 8, 2014, 10:43 pm
Krupali,
You can use the fairly standard “tac” utility (in Debian’s “coreutils” package). There are plenty of other
ways to do it, but that’s the most straightforward.
Link
Santhosh K December 26, 2014, 3:58 am
Krupali,
Have you been able to script to display all lines of a file from bottom to top? I tried with no luck..
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Link
Santhosh K December 26, 2014, 8:23 am
Krupali,
#!/bin/sh
cp file.txt temp.txt
n=`cat file.txt | wc -l`
while [ $n -ge 0 ]
do
tail -1 temp.txt >> result.txt
sed -i ‘$ d’ temp.txt
n=`expr $n – 1`
done
rm -f temp.txt
cat result.txt
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Preeti Shrivastava December 29, 2014, 5:31 am
Link
Eirik B. January 3, 2015, 10:24 pm
Link
shilpa January 30, 2015, 4:38 am
thanks a lot
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Charles Beaton February 2, 2015, 7:31 am
Link
DG February 25, 2015, 4:01 pm
Link
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The list is fine, however, I think that ‘man’ should be on top. You know why
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madhu April 11, 2015, 12:01 am
good stuff
Link
kiran April 22, 2015, 8:08 pm
I want a script where i need to take the list of files of particular date and put them in archieve(any from
archieve 1 to 8)
Link
Anonymous April 29, 2015, 12:20 am
Link
Anonymous May 13, 2015, 2:52 am
thanks
Link
Anonymous May 27, 2015, 7:16 am
Usefull Collection:)
Link
Yuti July 24, 2015, 3:46 am
THANK YOU!
Link
Lalu July 28, 2015, 4:00 am
Link
Anonymous July 28, 2015, 10:16 am
Link
Anonymous July 29, 2015, 2:58 am
very good
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sanjay September 10, 2015, 3:05 am
thanks
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Avinash September 16, 2015, 10:28 am
Link
JRoberts September 29, 2015, 7:44 am
Thanks for all the hard work. This web site is great!
In number 49, there is a dash missing for the first hwclock command.
As shown:
hwclock -systohc
Should be:
hwclock –systohc
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Shiva Prabhu Shivanoori November 15, 2015, 8:51 am
Good Information.
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V.Balaviswanathan November 26, 2015, 1:34 am
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pari November 29, 2015, 8:51 am
Link
shali December 3, 2015, 1:51 am
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Anonymous December 18, 2015, 1:16 am
thanx
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Amanadh Atmakur December 24, 2015, 5:56 am
Thanks…
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vamsi January 12, 2016, 1:29 am
Thank you
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Ade Ngeno January 23, 2016, 12:43 am
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Leo February 2, 2016, 5:09 am
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Priya Verma February 3, 2016, 10:36 am
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happy boy February 11, 2016, 3:37 am
very informative
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Suraj February 29, 2016, 12:24 am
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Mishu March 14, 2016, 4:16 pm
Hey, a little description of what these do at the beginning would be really helpful! Some are obvious, but
from the examples, I could not figure out what ‘awk’ actually does!
Still very helpful list, thank you!
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bhaskar.dadimi April 4, 2016, 1:05 am
Thank you ….
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Manoj April 11, 2016, 8:02 pm
I have executed
chown manoj:group1 /data
For suppose If I create a new directory under /data by default the persimission should be manoj:group1
But when I create a child directory /apps under /data as root , the permission shows root:root
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nupur April 13, 2016, 4:04 pm
Hi, just a little mistake i came across.. the ping command explained..
to ping a remote host by sending only 5 packets.. the correct way to do is:
ping -n 5 gmail.com
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Link
E.O.Taiwo April 17, 2016, 10:08 am
good stuff
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nitin kharat April 19, 2016, 6:37 am
how to see script execution from one server to another server in unix
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SSan May 6, 2016, 4:30 am
@nupur
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Karthik July 9, 2016, 5:27 am
Hi,
I have difficulty to upgrade my Red hat 5.6 Server’s Php version 5.1.6 to 5.5. Can anyone guide me the
steps which I should follow.
I have downloaded .tar file, unzipped then ran the configure and make install commands. Then it shows
php 5.5 when I’m running php -v command. But running the script for finding php details in browser its
still showing 5.1.6 .
Link
sandip Wankhede January 11, 2017, 2:54 pm
Thank you for providing such awesome article, It’s help me lot.
Keep it up !!!
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Ray January 14, 2017, 2:59 pm
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shivam January 20, 2017, 3:26 am
thanx alot
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vaibhav January 26, 2017, 4:04 am
alias cmd we can use it for a way to run a command or a series of unix command using shorter name
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William Mimart February 18, 2017, 8:38 am
Link
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Nice.. If you explain options meaning like -v (verbose). Then it will be one of the best tutorial for
beginners.
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Anonymous May 16, 2017, 7:38 am
nice post
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Madhavi ala June 18, 2017, 3:53 pm
Link
jessy June 27, 2017, 3:05 am
Link
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