LINUX COMMANDS CHEAT SHEET

System File Commands

uname => Displays Linux system information ls -al => Lists files - both regular & hidden files
and their permissions as well.
uname -r => Displays kernel release information
pwd => Displays the current directory file path
uptime => Displays how long the system has been running
including load average mkdir ‘directory_ => Creates a new directory
name’
hostname => Shows the system hostname
rm file_name => Removes a file
hostname -i => Displays the IP address of the system
rm -f filename => Forcefully removes a file
last reboot => Shows system reboot history
rm -r directory_ => Removes a directory recursively
date => Displays current system date and time name
timedatectl => Query and change the System clock rm -rf directory_ => Removes a directory forcefully and
name recursively
cal => Displays the current calendar month and day
cp file1 file2 => Copies the contents of file1 to file2
w => Displays currently logged in users in the system
cp -r dir1 dir2 => Recursively Copies dir1 to dir2. dir2 is
whoami => Displays who you are logged in as created if it does not exist
finger username => Displays information about the user mv file1 file2 => Renames file1 to file2
ln -s /path/to/ => Creates a symbolic link to file_name
file_name link_
Hardware name
touch file_name => Creates a new file
dmesg => Displays bootup messages cat > file_name => Places standard input into a file
cat /proc/cpuinfo => Displays more information about CPU e.g model, more file_name => Outputs the contents of a file
model name, cores, vendor id
head file_name => Displays the first 10 lines of a file
cat /proc/meminfo => Displays more information about hardware mem-
ory e.g. Total and Free memory tail file_name => Displays the last 10 lines of a file

lshw => Displays information about system’s hardware gpg -c file_ => Encrypts a file
configuration name

lsblk => Displays block devices related information gpg file_name. => Decrypts a file
gpg
free -m => Displays free and used memory in the system (-m
flag indicates memory in MB) wc => Prints the number of bytes, words and
lines in a file
lspci -tv => Displays PCI devices in a tree-like diagram
xargs => Executes commands from standard input
lsusb -tv => Displays USB devices in a tree-like diagram
dmidecode => Displays hardware information from the BIOS
Process Related
hdparm -i /dev/ => Displays information about disk data
xda
hdparm -tT /dev/ => Conducts a read speed test on device xda ps => Display currently active processes
xda
badblocks -s /dev/ => Tests for unreadable blocks on disk ps aux | grep => Searches for the id of the process
xda ‘telnet’ ‘telnet’
pmap => Displays memory map of processes

top => Displays all running processes

Users
kill pid => Terminates process with a given pid

killall proc => Kills / Terminates all processes named

id => Displays the details of the active user e.g. uid, proc
gid, and groups pkill process-name => Sends a signal to a process with its
last => Shows the last logins in the system name

who => Shows who is logged in to the system bg => Resumes suspended jobs in the back-
ground
groupadd “admin” => Adds the group ‘admin’
fg => Brings suspended jobs to the fore-
adduser “Sam” => Adds user Sam ground
userdel “Sam” => Deletes user Sam fg n => Brings job n to the foreground
usermod => Used for changing / modifying user information lsof => Lists files that are open by processes

renice 19 PID => Makes a process run with very low

priority
pgrep firefox => Find Firefox process ID

pstree => Visualizing processes in tree model

 LINUX COMMANDS CHEAT SHEET
File Permission Install Source (Compilation)

chmod octal => Change file permissions of the file to octal ./configure
filename
make
Example
make install
chmod 777 /data/ => Set rwx permissions to owner, group and
test.c everyone (everyone else who has access to
the server) Search
chmod 755 /data/ => Set rwx to the owner and r_x to group and
test.c everyone
chmod 766 /data/ => Sets rwx for owner, rw for group and everyone grep ‘pattern’ files => Search for a given pattern in files
test.c grep -r pattern dir => Search recursively for a pattern in a
chown owner => Change ownership of the file given directory
user-file locate file => Find all instances of the file
chown owner- => Change owner and group owner of the file find /home/ -name => Find file names that begin with ‘index’
user: owner-group “index” in /home folder
file_name
find /home -size => Find files greater than 10000k in the
chown owner- => Change owner and group owner of the +10000k home folder
user:owner-group- directory
directory

Login
Network
ssh user@host => Securely connect to host as user
ip addr show => Displays IP addresses and all the network ssh -p port_number => Securely connect to host using a
interfaces user@host specified port
ip address add => Assigns IP address 192.168.0.1 to interface ssh host => Securely connect to the system via
192.168.0.1/24 eth0 SSH default port 22
dev eth0
telnet host => Connect to host via telnet default port
ifconfig => Displays IP addresses of all network interfaces 23
ping host => ping command sends an ICMP echo request to
establish a connection to server / PC
File Transfer
whois domain => Retrieves more information about a domain
name
dig domain => Retrieves DNS information about the domain scp file1.txt server2/tmp => Securely copy file1.txt to server2 in /
tmp directory
dig -x host => Performs reverse lookup on a domain
rsync -a /home/apps / => Synchronize contents in /home/apps
host google.com => Performs an IP lookup for the domain name backup/ directory with /backup directory
hostname -i => Displays local IP address
wget file_name => Downloads a file from an online source Disk Usage
netstat -pnltu => Displays all active listening ports
df -h => Displays free space on mounted
systems
Compression / Archives
df -i => Displays free inodes on filesystems
fdisk -l => Shows disk partitions, sizes, and types
tar -cf home.tar => Creates archive file called ‘home.tar’ from
du -sh => Displays disk usage in the current
home file ‘home’
directory in a human-readable format
tar -xf files.tar => Extract archive file ‘files.tar’
findmnt => Displays target mount point for all
tar -zcvf home.tar.gz => Creates gzipped tar archive file from source filesystems
source-folder folder mount device-path => Mount a device
gzip file => Compression a file with .gz extension mount-point

Install Packages Directory Traverse

rpm -i pkg_name.rpm => Install an rpm package cd .. => Move up one level in the directory tree
structure
rpm -e pkg_name => Removes an rpm package cd => Change directory to $HOME directory
dnf install pkg_name => Install package using dnf utility cd /test => Change directory to /test directory