Linux Command Cheatsheet

Linux Keyboard shortcuts

open terminal: Ctrl+Alt+T
Ctrl + C is used to kill a process with signal SIGINT , in other words it is a
polite kill .
Ctrl + Z is used to suspend a process by sending it the signal SIGTSTP , which
is like a sleep signal, that can be undone and the process can be resumed again.
Ctrl+D: log out of current session, similar to exit.
history | grep "command looking for" * Ctrl+R – type to bring up a re-
cent command * !! - repeats the last command * exit – log out of current
session
• fg in the foreground or bg in the background
• Ctrl+W – erases one word in the current line
• Ctrl+U – erases the whole line

Password
Change password for user
passwd user

User and group

sudo groupadd ic-api
sudo usermod -g ic-api ic-api

SSH
miranda-zhang/ssh.md

Searching:
Find
find . -type f -name "*.conf"

Grep
Example:

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grep -lr 'gceu' .
grep pattern dir - Search for pattern in dir.
Flags:
-l (or --files-with-matches) option is used to only print filenames of match-
ing files, and not the matching lines (this could also improve the speed, given
that grep stop reading a file at first match with this option).
-r recursive
-i ignore-case
--include search only files that match the file pattern
grep -ril --include \*.py --include \*.html ".id"
• command | grep pattern – search for pattern in the output of command
More about regex.

Grep OR
https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/10/grep-or-and-not-operators/
grep 'pattern1\|pattern2' filename
grep -E 'pattern1|pattern2' filename

Grep before after

grep -B 4 -A 4

Locate
Find all instances of file
locate file

System Info:
• cal – show this month’s calendar
• uptime – show current uptime
• w – display who is online
• whoami – who you are logged in as
• finger user – display information about user
• htop - a lightweight text-mode process viewer packed with handy features
such as killing processes without entering their PID, displaying full com-
mand lines, etc with a colour display

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OS Version
Show kernel information
uname -a
Ubuntu
lsb_release -a
CentOS
hostnamectl
http://whatsmyos.com

Cpu information
cat /proc/cpuinfo
Show number of cores only
grep -c ^processor /proc/cpuinfo
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6481005/how-to-obtain-the-number-of-
cpus-cores-in-linux-from-the-command-line

Memory information
cat /proc/meminfo
Show memory and swap usage, show output in gigabytes.
free -g

date time
Show the current date and time, in the format of: date+“T”+hour+minute+second+UTC
time zone offset
$ date +"%FT%H%M%S%z"
2019-02-19T104943+1100
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-display-date-and-time/

Disk
df -h
show disk usage with human readable unit.
du -h --max-depth=1
show directory space usage, only one level deep. ## IP

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ip a
One line command to just grep the ip:
ip a | grep "scope global" | grep -Po '(?<=inet )[\d.]+'
For older version of centOS:
ifconfig | grep "inet " | grep -v 127.0.0.1 | awk '{print $2}'

Port and socket

CentOS older
netstat - Print network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, mas-
querade connections, and multicast memberships
-a, --all Show both listening and non-listening (for TCP this means estab-
lished connections) sockets. With the –interfaces option, show interfaces that
are not up
--numeric , -n Show numerical addresses instead of trying to determine sym-
bolic host, port or user names.
-p, --program Show the PID and name of the program to which each socket
belongs.
netstat -anp | grep :8
https://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.1/Deployment_Guide/s1-server-
ports.html
CentOS 7 netstat, which is part of the package net-tools has been officially
deprecated, so you should be using ss (part of the package iproute2), going
forward.
ss -anp | grep :8443
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/385500/36816
ss -lnpt 'sport = :3000'
-l, --listening Display only listening sockets (omitted by default).
-n, --numeric Do not try to resolve service names.
-p, --processes Show process using socket.
-t, --tcp Display TCP sockets.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/106561/finding-the-pid-of-the-
process-using-a-specific-port

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log
journalctl -u nginx.service --since today
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-journalctl-to-
view-and-manipulate-systemd-logs

Environment variables
Ubuntu doc

Prints the names and values of all currently defined envi-

ronment variables
printenv

Examine the value of a particular variable

printenv DBPASS
or
echo $TERM

Dollar sign
The dollar sign $ can actually be used to combine the values of environment
variables in many shell commands. For example, the following command can
be used to list the contents of the “Desktop” directory within the current user’s
home directory.
ls $HOME/Desktop

System wide environment variables

Add var into this file:
sudo -H nano /etc/environment
It’s important to do exact the way above, and not as the root user, as it may
cause problems like unable to login. If you use normal sudo to start graphical ap-
plications (including editors e.g. gedit), sometimes it results in the configuration
files being owned by root, read more about it here.
The only time the file is read is on login, when the PAM stack is activated –
specifically pam_env.so, which reads the file.
Logging out and back in would apply the changes – and in fact you must do
this if you want all your processes to receive the new environment. All other

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solutions will only apply the environment to the single shell process, but not to
anything you launch through the GUI including new terminal windows.

App info
which app
show which app will be run by default
man command
show the manual for command
• whereis app – show possible locations of app

Bash Shell Script

miranda-zhang/bash.md https://gist.github.com/miranda-zhang/9871f934edbb87a23c11185b85e191be

File Commands:
• cd dir - change directory to dir
• cd – change to home
• pwd – show current directory
• mkdir dir – create a directory dir
• rm file – delete file
• rm -r dir – delete directory dir
• rm -f file – force remove file
• rm -rf dir – force remove directory dir *
• cp file1 file2 – copy file1 to file2
• cp -r dir1 dir2 – copy dir1 to dir2; create dir2 if it doesn’t exist
• mv file1 file2 – rename or move file1 to file2 if file2 is an existing directory,
moves file1 into directory file2
• touch file – create or update file
• cat > file – places standard input into file
• more file – output the contents of file
• head file – output the first 10 lines of file
• tail file – output the last 10 lines of file
• tail -f file – output the contents of file as it grows, starting with the last
10 lines

GUI file manager

xdg-open .
https://askubuntu.com/a/31196/202823

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Directory listing:
show hidden files with-a, show details with -l
ls -al
Determine file type, i.e. check if somthing is a symbolic link.
file
Counting Files in the Current Directory
ls -1 | wc -l
This uses wc to do a count of the number of lines (-l) in the output of ls -1.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x700.html

File Permissions
• chmod octal file – change the permissions of file to octal, which can be
found separately for user, group, and world by adding:
• 4 – read (r)
• 2 – write (w)
• 1 – execute (x)
Examples: * chmod 777 – read, write, execute for all * chmod 755 – rwx for
owner, rx for group and world

Compression
• tar cf file.tar files – create a tar named file.tar containing files
• tar xf file.tar – extract the files from file.tar
• tar czf file.tar.gz files – create a tar with Gzip compression
• tar xzf file.tar.gz – extract a tar using Gzip
• tar cjf file.tar.bz2 – create a tar with Bzip2 compression
• tar xjf file.tar.bz2 – extract a tar using Bzip2
• gzip file – compresses file and renames it to file.gz
• gzip -d file.gz – decompresses file.gz back to file

Process Management:
• top – display all running processes
• kill pid – kill process id pid
• killall proc – kill all processes named proc *
• bg – lists stopped or background jobs; resume a stopped job in the back-
ground
• fg – brings the most recent job to foreground
• fg n – brings job n to the foreground

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ps
Display your currently active processes - https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/163145/how-
to-get-whole-command-line-from-a-process
Show full command including arguments.
$ ps -p [PID] -o args

Network:
• ping host – ping host and output results
• whois domain – get whois information for domain
• dig domain – get DNS information for domain
• dig -x host – reverse lookup host
• wget file – download file
• wget -c file – continue a stopped download

Installation:
Debian
dpkg -i pkg.deb
RPM
rpm -Uvh pkg.rpm
CentOS
yum install pkg
Ubuntu apt update apt upgrade apt install pkg
Node.js, Javascript package manager
npm install

Install from source:

• ./configure
• make
• make install

Audit
Possible log location >/var/log/audit/audit.log
grep "denied" /var/log/audit/audit.log

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https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/security_guide/sec-
understanding_audit_log_files

Plot
Graph with gnuplot interactively:
apt update
apt install gnuplot-x11
gnuplot
# SET TERMINAL
set term gif
set output 'frequency.gif'
# set title "Word Frequency"

# Axes label
# set xlabel "Words"
# set ylabel "Frequency"

set xtics rotate by -90

plot "frequency.dat" using 1:xticlabels(2) with boxes

Symlink
https://shapeshed.com/unix-ln/#how-to-create-a-symbolic-link
Create symbolic link link to file
ln -s source_file link
Without -s, then create hard link.