I reproduce the table in this post made ​​by Pádraig Brady and published on its official website ( http://www.pixelbeat.org ). The table shows some of the major commands to administer a Linux server, with a brief explanation and - in some cases - links to pages of detail.

This is a linux command line reference for common operations. Examples marked with • are valid / safe to paste without modification into a terminal, so you may want to keep a terminal window open while reading this so you can cut & paste . All These commands sono stati Both tested on Fedora and Ubuntu.

Command Description
• apropos whatis Show commands pertinent to string. See also threadsafe
• man -t man | ps2pdf -> man.pdf make a pdf of a manual page
Which command Show full path name of command
time command See how long a command takes
• time cat Start stopwatch. Ctrl-d to stop. See also sw
• nice info Run a low priority command (The "info" reader in this case)
• renice 19-p $ $ Make shell (script) low priority. Use for non interactive tasks
dir navigation
• cd - Go to previous directory
• CD Go to $ HOME directory
(Cd dir && command) Go to dir, execute command and return to current dir
• pushd. Put current dir on stack so you can popd back to it
• alias l = 'ls-l-color = auto' quick dir listing
• ls-lrt List files by date. See also newest and find_mm_yyyy
• ls / usr / bin | pr-T9-W $ COLUMNS Print in 9 columns to width of terminal
find-name '*. [ch]' | xargs grep-E 'expr' Search 'expr' in this dir and below. See also findrepo
find-type f-print0 | xargs-r0 grep-F 'example' Search all regular files for 'example' in this dir and below
find-maxdepth 1-type f | xargs grep-F 'example' Search all regular files for 'example' in this dir
find-maxdepth 1-type d | while read dir; do echo $ dir echo cmd2; done Process Each item with multiple commands (in while loop)
• find-type f! -Perm -444 Find files not readable by all (useful for web site)
• find-type d! -Perm -111 Find dirs not accessible by all (useful for web site)
• locate-r 'file [^ /] * \. txt' Search cached index for names. This re is like glob * file *. Txt
• reference look Quickly search (sorted) dictionary for prefix
• grep -color reference / usr / share / dict / words Highlight occurances of regular expression in dictionary
archives and compression
gpg-c file Encrypt files
gpg file.gpg Decrypt files
tar-c dir / | bzip2> dir.tar.bz2 Make compressed archive of dir /
dir.tar.bz2 bzip2-dc | tar-x Extract archive (use gzip instead of bzip2 for tar.gz files)
tar-c dir / | gzip | gpg-c | ssh user @ remote 'dd of = dir.tar.gz.gpg' Make encrypted archive of dir / on remote machine
find dir /-name '*. txt' | tar-c-files-from = - | bzip2> dir_txt.tar.bz2 Make archive of subset of dir / and below
find dir /-name '*. txt' | xargs cp-a-target-directory = dir_txt /-parents Make copy of subset of dir / and below
(Tar-c / dir / to / copy) | (cd / where / to / && tar-x-p) Copy (with permissions) copy / dir to / where / to / dir
(Cd / dir / to / copy && tar-c.) | (Cd / where / to / && tar-x-p) Copy (with permissions) contents of copy / dir to / where / to /
(Tar-c / dir / to / copy) | ssh-C user @ remote 'cd / where / to / && tar-x-p' Copy (with permissions) copy / dir to remote :/ where / to / dir
dd bs = 1M if = / dev / sda | gzip | ssh user @ remote 'dd of = sda.gz' Backup harddisk to remote machine
rsync (Network efficient file copier: Use the-dry-run option for testing)
rsync-P rsync :/ / rsync.server.com / path / to / file file Only get diffs. Do multiple times for troublesome downloads
rsync-bwlimit = 1000 fromfile tofile Locally copy with rate limit. It's like nice for I / O
rsync-az-e ssh-delete ~ / public_html / remote.com: '~ / public_html' Mirror web site (using compression and encryption)
rsync-e ssh-AUZ remote :/ dir /. && rsync-e ssh-AUZ. remote :/ dir / Synchronize current directory with remote one
ssh (Secure SHell)
ssh $ USER @ $ HOST command Run command on $ HOST as $ USER (default command = shell)
• ssh-f-Y $ USER @ $ HOSTNAME xeyes Run GUI command on $ HOSTNAME as $ USER
scp-p-r $ USER @ $ HOST: file dir / Copy with permissions to $ USER's home directory on $ HOST
ssh-g-L 8080: localhost: 80 root @ $ HOST Forward connections to $ HOSTNAME: 8080 out to $ HOST: 80
ssh-R 1434: imap: 143 root @ $ HOST Forward connections from $ HOST: 1434 in to imap: 143
wget (multi purpose download tool)
• (Cd cli && wget-nd-pHEKk http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html) Store local browsable version of a page to the current dir
wget-c http://www.example.com/large.file Continue downloading a partially downloaded file
wget-r-nd-np-l1-A '*. jpg' http://www.example.com/dir/ Download a set of files to the current directory
wget ftp://remote/file [1-9]. iso / Directly Supports FTP globbing
• wget-q-O-http://www.pixelbeat.org/timeline.html | grep 'a href' | head Process Output Directly
echo 'wget url' | at 01:00 Download url at 1AM to current dir
wget-limit-rate = 20k url Do a low priority download (limit to 20 KB / s in this case)
wget-nv-spider-force-html-i bookmarks.html Check links in a file
wget-mirror http://www.example.com/ Efficiently update a local copy of a site (handy from cron)
networking (Note ifconfig, route, mii-tool, nslookup commands are obsolete)
ethtool eth0 Show status of ethernet interface eth0
ethtool-change eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full Manually September ethernet interface speed
iwconfig eth1 Show status of wireless interface eth1
iwconfig eth1 rate 1Mb / s fixed Manually Sept. speed wireless interface
• iwlist scan List wireless networks in range
• ip link show List network interfaces
ip link set dev eth0 name wan Rename interface eth0 to wan
ip link set dev eth0 up Bring interface eth0 up (or down)
• ip addr show List addresses for interfaces
ip addr add 1.2.3.4/24 brd + dev eth0 Add (or del) ip and mask (255.255.255.0)
• ip route show List routing table
ip route add default via 1.2.3.254 Set default gateway to 1.2.3.254
• tc qdisc add dev lo root handle 1:0 netem delay 20msec Add 20ms latency to loopback device (for testing)
• tc qdisc dev of the root Remove latency added above
• host pixelbeat.org Lookup DNS ip address for name or vice versa
• hostname-i Lookup local ip address (equivalent to host `hostname`)
• whois pixelbeat.org Lookup whois info for hostname or ip address
• netstat-tupl List internet services on a system
• netstat-tup List active connections to / from system
windows networking (Note samba is the package That Provides all this windows specific networking support)
• smbtree Find windows machines. See also findsmb
nmblookup-A 1.2.3.4 Find the windows (netbios) name Associated with ip address
smbclient-L windows_box List shares on windows machine or samba server
mount-t smbfs-o fmask = 666, guest / / windows_box / share / mnt / share Mount a windows share
echo 'message' | smbclient-M windows_box Send popup to windows machine (off by default in XP sp2)
text manipulation (Note sed uses stdin and stdout, so if you want to edit files, append <oldfile> newfile)
sed 's/string1/string2/g' Replace string1 with string2
sed 's / \ (. * \) 1 / \ 12 / g' Modify anystring1 to anystring2
sed '/ * # / d / ^ * $ / d' Remove comments and blank lines
sed ': a; / \ \ $ / N; s / \ \ \ n / /; ta' Concatenate lines with trailing \
sed 's / [\ t] * $ / /' Remove trailing spaces from lines
sed 's / \ ([\ \ `\ \" $ \ \ \ \] \) / \ \ \ 1 / g' Escape shell metacharacters active Within double quotes
• seq 10 | sed 's / ^ / /, s / * \ (. \ {7 \} \) / \ 1 / " Right align numbers
sed-n '1000p; 1000q ' Print 1000th line
sed-n '10, 20p, 20q ' Print lines 10 to 20
sed-n 's /. <title> * \ (. * \) <\ / title>. * / \ 1/ip, T, q' Extract title from HTML web page
sort-t. -K1, 1n-k2, 2n-k3, 3n-k4, 4n Sort IPV4 ip addresses
• echo 'Test' | tr '[: lower:]' '[: upper:]' Case conversion
• tr-dc '[: print:]' </ dev / urandom Filter non printable characters
• history | wc-l Count lines
September operations (Note you can export LANG = C for speed. Also assume no duplicate lines Within These files)
sort file1 file2 | uniq Union of unsorted files
sort file1 file2 | uniq-d Intersection of unsorted files
sort file1 file1 file2 | uniq-u Difference of unsorted files
sort file1 file2 | uniq-u Symmetric Difference of unsorted files
join-a1-a2 file1 file2 Union of sorted files
join file1 file2 Intersection of sorted files
join-v2 file1 file2 Difference of sorted files
join-v1-v2 file1 file2 Symmetric Difference of sorted files
math
• echo '(1 + sqrt (5)) / 2' | bc-l Quick math (Calculate φ). See also bc
• echo 'pad = 20, min = 64, (100 * 10 ^ 6) / ((min + pad) * 8)' | bc More complex (int) This shows g max packet rate Faste
• echo 'pad = 20, min = 64, print (100E6) / ((min + pad) * 8)' | python Python handles scientific notation
• echo 'pad = 20; plot [64:1518] (100 * 10 ** 6) / ((x + pad) * 8)' | gnuplot-persist Plot Faste packet rate vs. packet size
• echo 'obase = 16; ibase = 10; 64206' | bc Base conversion (decimal to hexadecimal)
• echo $ ((0x2dec)) Base conversion (hex to dec) ((shell arithmetic expansion))
• units-t '100m / 9.72s' 'miles / hour' Unit conversion (metric to imperial)
• '500GB units-t '' GiB ' Unit conversion (SI to IEC prefixes)
• units-t '1 googol ' Definition lookup
• seq 100 | (tr '\ n' + echo 0) | bc Add a column of numbers. See also add and funcpy
calendar
• cal -3 Display calendar
• cal 9 1752 Display calendar month for a year particolare
• date-d fri What date is it this friday. See also day
• date-date = '25 Dec '+% A What day does xmas fall on, this year
• date-date = '@ 2147483647' Convert seconds since the epoch (UTC 01/01/1970) to date
• TZ = ': America / Los_Angeles' date What time is it on West coast of U.S. (use tzselect to find TZ)
echo "mail-s 'get the train' P@draigBrady.com </ dev / null" | at 17:45 Email reminder
• echo "DISPLAY = $ DISPLAY xmessage cooker" | at "NOW + 30 minutes" Popup reminder
locales
• printf "% 'd \ n" 1234 Print number with Thousands grouping appropriate to local
• BLOCK_SIZE = \ '1 ls-l Thousands get ls to do grouping to appropriate local
• echo "I live in` locale `Territory ' Extract info from locale database
• LANG = en_IE.utf8 local int_prefix Lookup Local info for specific country. See also ccodes
• Local | cut-d =-f1 | xargs locale-kc | less List fields available in the local database
recode (Obsoletes iconv, dos2unix, unix2dos)
• recode-l | less Show available conversions (aliases on Each Line)
recode windows-1252 .. file_to_change.txt Windows "ansi" to local charset (auto does CRLF conversion)
utf-8/CRLF recode .. file_to_change.txt Windows utf8 to local charset
recode iso-8859-15 .. utf8 file_to_change.txt Latin9 (western europe) to utf8
recode .. / b64 <file.txt> file.b64 Base64 encode
recode / qp .. <File.txt> file.qp Quoted printable decode
recode .. HTML <file.txt> file.html Text to HTML
• recode-lf windows-1252 | grep euro Lookup table of characters
• echo-n 0 × 80 | recode latin-9/x1..dump Show what a code Represents in latin-9 charmap
• echo-n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..latin-9/x Show latin-9 encoding
• echo-n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..utf-8/x Show utf-8 encoding
CDs
gzip </ dev / cdrom> cdrom.iso.gz Save copy of data cdrom
mkisofs-V LABEL-r dir | gzip> cdrom.iso.gz Create cdrom image from contents of dir
cdrom.iso mount-o loop / mnt / dir Mount the cdrom image at / mnt / dir (read only)
cdrecord-v dev = / dev / cdrom blank = fast Clear a CDRW
gzip-dc cdrom.iso.gz | cdrecord-v dev = / dev / cdrom - Burn cdrom image (use dev = ATAPI-scanbus to confirm dev)
cdparanoia-B Rip audio tracks from CD to wav files in current dir
cdrecord-v dev = / dev / cdrom-audio *. wav Make audio CD from all wavs in current dir (see also cdrdao)
oggenc-tracknum = 'track' track.cdda.wav-o 'track.ogg' Make ogg file from wav file
disk space (See also fslint )
• ls-LSR Show files by size, biggest last
• du-s * | sort-k1, 1RN | head Show top disk users in current dir. See also dutop
• df-h Show free space on mounted filesystems
• df-i Show free inodes on mounted filesystems
• fdisk-l Show disks partitions sizes and types (run as root)
• rpm -q-a-qf '% 10 {SIZE} \ t% {NAME} \ n' | sort-k1, 1n List all packages by installed size (Bytes) on rpm distros
• dpkg -query-W-f = '$ {Installed-Size; 10} \ t $ {Package} \ n' | sort-k1, 1n List all packages by installed size (KBytes) on deb distros
• dd bs = 1 seek = 2TB if = / dev / null of = ext3.test Create a large test file (taking no space). See also truncate
monitoring / debugging
• tail-f / var / log / messages Monitor messages in a log file
• strace-c ls> / dev / null Summarise / profile system calls made by command
• strace-f-e open ls> / dev / null List system calls made by command
• ltrace-f-e getenv ls> / dev / null List library calls made by command
• lsof-p $ $ List Paths That process id has open
• lsof ~ That list processes have specified path open
• tcpdump not port 22 Show network traffic except ssh. See also tcpdump_not_me
• ps-e-o pid, args-forest List processes in a hierarchy
• ps-e-o PCPU, cpu, nice, state, cputime, args-sort PCPU | sed '/ ^ 0.0 / d' List processes by% cpu usage
• ps-e-orss =, args = | sort-b-k1, 1n | pr-TW $ COLUMNS List processes by mem usage. See also ps_mem.py
• ps-C firefox-bin-L-o pid, tid, PCPU, were List all threads for a process particolare
• ps-p 1.2 List info for particolare process IDs
• last reboot Show system reboot history
• free-m Show amount of (Remaining) RAM (-m displays in MB)
• watch-n.1 'cat / proc / interrupts' Watch Continuously changeable date
system information (see also sysinfo ) ('#' means-root access is required)
• uname-a Show kernel version and system architecture
• head-n1 / etc / issue Show name and version of distribution
• cat / proc / partitions Show all partitions registered on the system
• MemTotal grep / proc / meminfo Show RAM total seen by the system
• grep "model name" / proc / cpuinfo Show CPU (s) info
• lspci-tv Show PCI info
• lsusb-tv Show USB info
• mount | column-t List mounted filesystems on the system (and align output)
# dmidecode-q | less Display SMBIOS / DMI information
# smartctl-A / dev / sda | grep Power_On_Hours How long has this disk (system) Been powered on in total
# hdparm-i / dev / sda Show info about disk sda
# hdparm-tT / dev / sda Do a read speed test on disk sda
# badblocks-s / dev / sda Test for unreadable blocks on disk sda
interactive (see also linux keyboard shortcuts)
• readline Line editor used by bash, python, bc, gnuplot, ...
• Screen Virtual terminals with detach capability, ...
• mc Powerful File Manager That can browse rpm, tar, ftp, ssh, ...
• gnuplot Interactive / scriptable graphing
• links Web browser
• xdg-open http://www.pixelbeat.org/ open a file or url with the registered desktop application
miscellaneous
• alias hd = 'od-Ax-tx1z-v' Handy hexdump. (Eg usage: • hd / proc / self / cmdline | less)
• alias realpath = 'readlink-f' Canonicalize path. (Eg usage: • realpath ~ / .. / $ USER)
• set | grep $ USER Search current environment
touch-c-t 0304050607 file Set file timestamp (YYMMDDhhmm)
• python-c "import SimpleHTTPServer as ws; ws.test ()" Serve current directory tree at http:// $ HOSTNAME: 8000 /
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