8.1 KiB
translating by liuxinyu123
Useful Linux Commands that you should know
If you are Linux system administrator or just a Linux enthusiast/lover, than you love & use command line aks CLI. Until some years ago majority of Linux work was accomplished using CLI only & even there are some limitations to GUI . Though there are plenty of Linux distributions that can complete tasks with GUI but still learning CLI is major part of mastering Linux.
To this effect, we present you list of useful Linux commands that you should know.
Note:- There is no definite order to all these commands & all of these commands are equally important to learn & master in order to excel in Linux administration. One more thing, we have only used some of the options for each command for an example, you can refer to 'man pages' for complete list of options for each command.
1- top command
'top' command displays the real time summary/information of our system. It also displays the processes and all the threads that are running & are being managed by the system kernel.
Information provided by top command includes uptime, number of users, Load average, running/sleeping/zombie processes, CPU usage in percentage based on users/system etc, system memory free & used, swap memory etc.
To use top command, open terminal & execute the comamnd,
$ top
To exit out the command, either press 'q' or 'ctrl+c'.
2- free command
'free' command is used to specifically used to get the information about system memory or RAM. With this command we can get information regarding physical memory, swap memory as well as system buffers. It provided amount of total, free & used memory available on the system.
To use this utility, execute following command in terminal
$ free
It will present all the data in kb or kilobytes, for megabytes use options '-m' & '-g ' for gb.
3- cp command
'cp' or copy command is used to copy files among the folders. Syntax for using 'cp' command is,
$ cp source destination
4- cd command
'cd' command is used for changing directory . We can switch among directories using cd command.
To use it, execute
$ cd directory_location
5- ifconfig
'Ifconfig' is very important utility for viewing & configuring network information on Linux machine.
To use it, execute
$ ifconfig
This will present the network information of all the networking devices on the system. There are number of options that can be used with 'ifconfig' for configuration, in fact they are some many options that we have created a separate article for it ( Read it here ||IFCONFIG command : Learn with some examples ).
6- crontab command
'Crontab' is another important utility that is used schedule a job on Linux system. With crontab, we can make sure that a command or a script is executed at the pre-defined time. To create a cron job, run
$ crontab -e
To display all the created jobs, run
$ crontab -l
You can read our detailed article regarding crontab ( Read it here || Scheduling Important Jobs with Crontab )
7- cat command
'cat' command has many uses, most common use is that it's used to display content of a file,
$ cat file.txt
But it can also be used to merge two or more file using the syntax below,
$ cat file1 file2 file3 file4 > file_new
We can also use 'cat' command to clone a whole disk ( Read it here || Cloning Disks using dd & cat commands for Linux systems )
8- df command
'df' command is used to show the disk utilization of our whole Linux file system. Simply run.
$ df
& we will be presented with disk complete utilization of all the partitions on our Linux machine.
9- du command
'du' command shows the amount of disk that is being utilized by the files & directories on our Linux machine. To run it, type
$ du /directory
( Recommended Read :Use of du & df commands with examples )
10- mv command
'mv' command is used to move the files or folders from one location to another. Command syntax for moving the files/folders is,
$ mv /source/filename /destination
We can also use 'mv' command to rename a file/folder. Syntax for changing name is,
$ mv file_oldname file_newname
11- rm command
'rm' command is used to remove files\folders from Linux system. To use it, run
$ rm filename
We can also use '-rf' option with 'rm' command to completely remove a file\folder from the system but we must use this with caution.
12- vi/vim command
VI or VIM is very famous & one of the widely used CLI-based text editor for Linux. It takes some time to master it but it has a great number of utilities, which makes it a favorite for Linux users.
For detailed knowledge of VIM, kindly refer to the articles Beginner 's Guide to LVM (Logical Volume Management) & Working with Vi/Vim Editor : Advanced concepts.
13- ssh command
SSH utility is to remotely access another machine from the current Linux machine. To access a machine, execute
$ ssh[email protected] OR machine_name
Once we have remote access to machine, we can work on CLI of that machine as if we are working on local machine.
14- tar command
'tar' command is used to compress & extract the files\folders. To compress the files\folders using tar, execute
$ tar -cvf file.tar file_name
where file.tar will be the name of compressed folder & 'file_name' is the name of source file or folders. To extract a compressed folder,
$ tar -xvf file.tar
For more details on 'tar' command, read Tar command : Compress & Decompress the files\directories
15- locate command
'locate' command is used to locate files & folders on your Linux machines. To use it, run
$ locate file_name
16- grep command
'grep' command another very important command that a Linux administrator should know. It comes especially handy when we want to grab a keyword or multiple keywords from a file. Syntax for using it is,
$ grep 'pattern' file.txt
It will search for 'pattern' in the file 'file.txt' and produce the output on the screen. We can also redirect the output to another file,
$ grep 'pattern' file.txt > newfile.txt
17- ps command
'ps' command is especially used to get the process id of a running process. To get information of all the processes, run
$ ps -ef
To get information regarding a single process, executed
$ ps -ef | grep java
18- kill command
'kill' command is used to kill a running process. To kill a process we will need its process id, which we can get using above 'ps' command. To kill a process, run
$ kill -9 process_id
19- ls command
'ls' command is used list all the files in a directory. To use it, execute
$ ls
20- mkdir command
To create a directory in Linux machine, we use command 'mkdir'. Syntax for using 'mkdir' is
$ mkdir new_dir
These were some of the useful linux commands that every System Admin should know, we will soon be sharing another list of some more important commands that you should know being a Linux lover. You can also leave your suggestions and queries in the comment box below.
via: http://linuxtechlab.com/useful-linux-commands-you-should-know/