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Linux Basic Commands Cheat Sheet by [deleted]

Linux most basic commands

Basic comands

cat file1 file2 ...
Print the contents of
file1
,
file2
, ...
ls
List the contents of a directory.
ls -l
Use a long listing format
ls -a
Do not ignore entries starting with
.
cp file1 file2
Copy
file1
to
file2
cp file1 ... fileN dir
Copy a number of files to a directory
mv file1 file2
Rename
file1
to
file2
mv file1 ... fileN dir
Move a number of files to a directory
touch file
Create a file. If the file already exists,
touch
does not change it
rm file
Remove a file
rm -r dir
Recurs­ively remove all files and subdir­ect­ories in dir
echo
Print
echo
's arguments to the standard output
pwd
Print working directory
pwd -P
Print true full path, not path of symbolic link
sudo command
Run
command
as root

Navigating Direct­ories

cd dir
Change the shell's current working directory
mkdir dir
Create a new directory
rmdir dir
Remove the directory dir if dir is empty
Linux has a directory hierarchy starts at
/
(root directory).
Directory separator is the slash (
/
).
Two dots (
..
) refers to the parent of a directory.
One dot (
.
) refers to the current directory.

Shell Globbing (Wildc­ards)

*
A number of any characters
?
A single character
[]
Specify a range.
[ab]
can become:
a
,
b
.
[a-c]
can become:
a
,
b
,
c
[!a-c]
Any single character except
a
,
b
,
c
Globbing is the operation that expands a wildcard pattern into the list of pathnames
It is applied on each of the components of a pathname separa­tely.
/
in a pathname cannot be matched.
If filename starts with
.
,
.
must be matched explic­itly.
Wildcard patterns are not regular expres­sions, they match filenames, not text.

Search files

grep RegEx file
Search for regular expression pattern in file
grep -i
Case-i­nse­nsitive search
grep -v
Print all lines that don't match
find dir -name file -print
Find
file
in
dir
and display the pathname of it
locate file
Search an index that the system builds period­ically

Display a file

less file
Display the contents of
file
one screenful at a time
 
spacebar
Go forward one screenful
 
b
Skip back one screenful
 
/word
Search forward for
word
 
?word
Search backward for
word
 
q
Quit
less
head file
Display the first 10 lines of
file
tail file
Display the last 10 lines of
file

Differ­ences between text files

diff file1 file2
Print differ­ences between two text files
diff --color
Print differ­ences with color
diff -y
Print differ­ences side by side
diff -c
View differ­ences in context mode
diff -i
Ignore case differ­ences
diff -w
Ignore all white space
diff
gives the instru­ctions on how to change the first file to make it match the second file.
<
denotes lines in
file1
.
>
denotes lines in
file2
.
Change command
LaR
: Add the lines in range R of the second file after line L of the first file.
FcT
: Replace the lines in range F of the first file with lines in range T of the second file.
RdL
: Delete the lines in range R from the first file so that both the files sync up at line L.

Enviro­nment and Shell Variables

stuff=blah
Create a shell variab­le/­Assign a value to a variable
PATH=$PATH:dir
Appends "
:dir
" to the end of
PATH
variable
$STUFF
Access a variable
export STUFF
Make
$STUFF
shell variable into an enviro­nment variable
unset STUFF
Delete variable
STUFF
env
Prints enviro­nment variables
Shell variables are variables whose scope is in the current shell session.
Enviro­nment variables are shell variables which has been exported. Children processes get their own copy of the parent variables so they can never change the enviro­nment variables in their parent process. Enviro­nment variables must be
name=value
pair.
Command path
PATH
is enviro­nment variable that contains command path (list of system direct­ories that the shell searches when trying to locate a command).

Comman­d-Line Editing

CTRL-B
Move the cursor left
CTRL-F
Move the cursor right
CTRL-A
Move the cursor to the beginning of the line
CTRL-E
Move the cursor to the end of the line
CTRL-W
Erase the preceding word
CTRL-U
Erase from cursor to beginning of line
CTRL-K
Erase from cursor to end of line
CTRL-Y
Paste erased text
CTRL-D
Stop the current standard input entry from the terminal
 

Getting Online Help

man command
Show manual page for
command
man -k keyword
Search for a manual page by
keyword
man n command
Show manual page for
command
from section
n
Online Manual Sections
1
User commands
2
System calls
3
Higher­-level Unix progra­mming library docume­ntation
4
Device interface and driver inform­ation
5
File descri­ptions (system config­uration files)
6
Games
7
File formats, conven­tions, and encodings (ASCII, suffixes, and so on)
8
System commands and servers
Manual pages cover the essent­ials, but there are many more ways to get online help. Try entering a command name followed by
--help
or
-h
to look for a certain option for a command

Shell Input and Output

command > file
Send the output of
command
to a file
command >> file
Append output to the
file
command < file
Channel a file to a program's standard input
command1 | command2
Send the standard output of
command1
to the standard input of
command2
command 2> file
Redirect the standard error (
2
is standard error stream ID)
command &> file
Redirect the all output to
file
command 2>&1
Send standard error to the same place as standard output

Listing and Manipu­lating Processes

ps
List processes owned by root
ps x
List all processes owned by you
ps ax
List all processes on the system
ps u
Include more detailed inform­ation on processes
ps w
Show full command names
   
top
Show real-time view of running system
   
kill pid
Send
TERM
inate signal to the process with ID
pid
kill -STOP pid
or CTRL-Z
Send
STOP
(freeze) signal to the process
kill -CONT pid
CONT
inue running the process again
kill -INT pid
or CTRL-C
End process with
INT
errupt signal
kill -KILL pid
Terminate the process and forcibly remove it from memory
   
jobs -l
List the active jobs with their status and pid (
-l
)
fg %n
Move job that have job number
n
to the foreground
bg %n
Move job that have job number
n
to the background
command &
Run
command
in background
The
ps
command has many options. Options can be specified in three different styles­—Unix, BSD, and GNU. Above commands use BSD style.

File Modes and Permis­sions

File's mode represents the file's permission and some extra inform­ation. There is 4 parts to the mode. First character is file type. The rest contains the permis­sions, which break down into three sets: user, group, other, in that order. Each set can contain four basic repres­ent­ations:
r
Means that the file is readable
w
Means that the file is writable
x
Means that the file is executable
-
Means nothing
Modifying Permis­sions
chmod ugo+r file
Add (
+
) owner (
u
), group (
g
) and other users (
o
) read (
r
) permis­sions to
file
chmod 644 file
Set
file
mode to absolute permission mode
644
Symbolic links
A symbolic links is a file that points to another file or a directory
ln -s target linkname
Create a symbolic link from
target
to
linkname

Archiving and Compre­ssing Files

gzip file
Compress
file
to
file.gz
gunzip file.gz
or
gzip -d
Uncompress
file.gz
and remove the suffix
tar cf archiv­e.tar file1 file2
Create (
c
) an archive name (
f
)
archiv­e.tar
contains
file1
,
file2
tar xf archiv­e.tar
Unpack (
x
)
archiv­e.tar
tar tf archiv­e.tar
List the contents (
t
) of
archiv­e.tar
gunzip -c file.tar.gz | tar xf -

zcat file.tar.gz | tar xf -

tar zxf file.tar.gz
Unpack compressed archive
file.t­ar.gz
gunzip -c
uncomp­resses archive then sends the result to standard output.
tar xf -
uses standard input instead of a given filename.

Some subdir­ect­ories in root

/bin
Contains ready-­to-run programs including most of the basic Linux commands
/dev
Contains device files
/etc
Core system config­uration directory that contains the user password, boot, device, networ­king, and other setup files
/home
Holds personal direct­ories for regular users
/lib
Holds library files
/proc
Provices system statistics
/sys
Provides a device and system interface
/sbin
Place for system management programs
/tmp
Storage area for temporary files
/usr
Other bulk of Linux system
/var
Where programs record runtime inform­ation
/boot
Contains kernel boot loader files
/media
A base attachment point for removable media
/opt
This may contain additional third-­party software
/vmlinuz

or
/boot/vmlinuz
Kernel location
The reason that the root directory does not contain the complete system but other parts stored in
/usr
is primarily histor­ic—in the past, it was to keep space requir­ements low for the root
       
 

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