Linux Commands - A practical reference

http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html

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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 have been tested both on Fedora and Ubuntu. Command apropos whatis man -t man | ps2pdf - > man.pdf which command time command time cat nice info renice 19 -p $$ dir navigation cd cd (cd dir && command) pushd . file searching alias l='ls -l --color=auto' ls -lrt ls /usr/bin | pr -T9 -W$COLUMNS find -name '*.[ch]' | xargs grep -E 'expr' Description Show commands pertinent to string. See also threadsafe make a pdf of a manual page Show full path name of command See how long a command takes Start stopwatch. Ctrl-d to stop. See also sw Run a low priority command (The "info" reader in this case) Make shell (script) low priority. Use for non interactive tasks Go to previous directory Go to $HOME directory Go to dir, execute command and return to current dir Put current dir on stack so you can popd back to it

quick dir listing List files by date. See also newest and find_mm_yyyy Print in 9 columns to width of terminal Search 'expr' in this dir and below. See also findrepo Search all regular files for 'example' in this dir and find -type f -print0 | xargs -r0 grep -F 'example' below find -maxdepth 1 -type f | xargs grep -F 'example' Search all regular files for 'example' in this dir Process each item with multiple commands (in while find -maxdepth 1 -type d | while read dir; do echo $dir; echo cmd2; done 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) Search cached index for names. This re is like glob locate -r 'file[^/]*\.txt' *file*.txt look reference 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 file gpg file.gpg Decrypt file tar -c dir/ | bzip2 > dir.tar.bz2 Make compressed archive of dir/ Extract archive (use gzip instead of bzip2 for tar.gz bzip2 -dc dir.tar.bz2 | tar -x 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 Copy (with permissions) contents of copy/ dir to ( cd /dir/to/copy && tar -c . ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p ) /where/to/ Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to remote:/where/to/ ( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ssh -C user@remote 'cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p' 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) Only get diffs. Do multiple times for troublesome rsync -P rsync://rsync.server.com/path/to/file file downloads rsync --bwlimit=1000 fromfile tofile Locally copy with rate limit. It's like nice for I/O

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Linux Commands - A practical reference

http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html

rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~/public_html/ remote.com:'~/public_html' rsync -auz -e ssh remote:/dir/ . && rsync -auz -e ssh . remote:/dir/ ssh (Secure SHell) ssh $USER@$HOST command ssh -f -Y $USER@$HOSTNAME xeyes scp -p -r $USER@$HOST: file dir/ ssh -g -L 8080:localhost:80 root@$HOST ssh -R 1434:imap:143 root@$HOST wget (multi purpose download tool) (cd dir/ && wget -nd -pHEKk http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html)

Mirror web site (using compression and encryption) Synchronize current directory with remote one Run command on $HOST as $USER (default command=shell) Run GUI command on $HOSTNAME as $USER Copy with permissions to $USER's home directory on $HOST Forward connections to $HOSTNAME:8080 out to $HOST:80 Forward connections from $HOST:1434 in to imap:143

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/ FTP supports globbing directly 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 Do a low priority download (limit to 20KB/s in this wget --limit-rate=20k url case) wget -nv --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html Check links in a file Efficiently update a local copy of a site (handy from wget --mirror http://www.example.com/ 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 set ethernet interface speed iwconfig eth1 Show status of wireless interface eth1 iwconfig eth1 rate 1Mb/s fixed Manually set wireless interface speed List wireless networks in range iwlist scan 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 del dev lo 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 Find the windows (netbios) name associated with ip nmblookup -A 1.2.3.4 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 Send popup to windows machine (off by default in XP echo 'message' | smbclient -M windows_box sp2) text manipulation (Note sed uses stdin and stdout. Newer versions support inplace editing with the -i option) 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

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Linux Commands - A practical reference

http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html

sed 's/\([`"$\]\)/\\\1/g' Escape shell metacharacters active within double quotes seq 10 | sed "s/^/ /; s/ *\(.\{7,\}\)/\1/" Right align numbers sed -n '1000{p;q}' 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 sed -i 42d ~/.ssh/known_hosts Delete a particular line 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 set operations (Note you can export LANG=C for speed. Also these assume no duplicate lines within a file) Union of unsorted files sort file1 file2 | uniq sort file1 file2 | uniq -d Intersection of unsorted files Difference of unsorted files sort file1 file1 file2 | uniq -u sort file1 file2 | uniq -u Symmetric Difference of unsorted files join -t'\0' -a1 -a2 file1 file2 Union of sorted files join -t'\0' file1 file2 Intersection of sorted files join -t'\0' -v2 file1 file2 Difference of sorted files join -t'\0' -v1 -v2 file1 file2 Symmetric Difference of sorted files math echo '(1 + sqrt(5))/2' | bc -l Quick math (Calculate ). See also bc More complex (int) e.g. This shows max FastE packet echo 'pad=20; min=64; (100*10^6)/((pad+min)*8)' | bc rate echo 'pad=20; min=64; print (100E6)/((pad+min)*8)' | python Python handles scientific notation echo 'pad=20; plot [64:1518] (100*10**6)/((pad+x)*8)' | gnuplot -persist Plot FastE packet rate vs packet size echo 'obase=16; ibase=10; 64206' | bc Base conversion (decimal to hexadecimal) Base conversion (hex to dec) ((shell arithmetic echo $((0x2dec)) expansion)) units -t '100m/9.58s' 'miles/hour' Unit conversion (metric to imperial) units -t '500GB' '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 a calendar cal 9 1752 Display a calendar for a particular month year date -d fri What date is it this friday. See also day [ $(date -d "tomorrow" +%d) = "01" ] || exit exit a script unless it's the last day of the month date --date='25 Dec' +%A What day does xmas fall on, this year Convert seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 UTC) to date --date='@2147483647' date What time is it on west coast of US (use tzselect to find TZ='America/Los_Angeles' date TZ) What's the local time for 9AM next Friday on west coast date --date='TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 09:00 next Fri' US echo "mail -s 'get the train' [email protected] < /dev/null" | at 17:45 Email reminder echo "DISPLAY=$DISPLAY xmessage cooker" | at "NOW + 30 minutes" Popup reminder locales Print number with thousands grouping appropriate to printf "%'d\n" 1234 locale BLOCK_SIZE=\'1 ls -l get ls to do thousands grouping appropriate to locale echo "I live in `locale territory`" Extract info from locale database LANG=en_IE.utf8 locale int_prefix Lookup locale info for specific country. See also ccodes locale | cut -d= -f1 | xargs locale -kc | less List fields available in locale database recode (Obsoletes iconv, dos2unix, unix2dos) recode -l | less Show available conversions (aliases on each line) Windows "ansi" to local charset (auto does CRLF recode windows-1252.. file_to_change.txt conversion) recode utf-8/CRLF.. file_to_change.txt Windows utf8 to local charset

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Linux Commands - A practical reference

http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html

recode iso-8859-15..utf8 file_to_change.txt recode ../b64 < file.txt > file.b64 recode /qp.. < file.qp > file.txt recode ..HTML < file.txt > file.html recode -lf windows-1252 | grep euro echo -n 0x80 | recode latin-9/x1..dump echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..latin-9/x echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..utf-8/x CDs gzip < /dev/cdrom > cdrom.iso.gz mkisofs -V LABEL -r dir | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz mount -o loop cdrom.iso /mnt/dir cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast gzip -dc cdrom.iso.gz | cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom cdparanoia -B cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -audio -pad *.wav oggenc --tracknum='track' track.cdda.wav -o 'track.ogg' disk space (See also FSlint) ls -lSr du -s * | sort -k1,1rn | head df -h df -i fdisk -l rpm -q -a --qf '%10{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n' | sort -k1,1n dpkg-query -W -f='${Installed-Size;10}\t${Package}\n' | sort -k1,1n dd bs=1 seek=2TB if=/dev/null of=ext3.test > file monitoring/debugging tail -f /var/log/messages strace -c ls >/dev/null strace -f -e open ls >/dev/null ltrace -f -e getenv ls >/dev/null lsof -p $$ lsof ~ tcpdump not port 22 ps -e -o pid,args --forest ps -e -o pcpu,cpu,nice,state,cputime,args --sort pcpu | sed '/^ 0.0 /d' ps -e -orss=,args= | sort -b -k1,1n | pr -TW$COLUMNS ps -C firefox-bin -L -o pid,tid,pcpu,state ps -p 1,2 last reboot free -m watch -n.1 'cat /proc/interrupts' system information (see also sysinfo) ('#' means root access is required) uname -a head -n1 /etc/issue cat /proc/partitions grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo grep "model name" /proc/cpuinfo lspci -tv lsusb -tv

Latin9 (western europe) to utf8 Base64 encode Quoted printable decode Text to HTML Lookup table of characters Show what a code represents in latin-9 charmap Show latin-9 encoding Show utf-8 encoding Save copy of data cdrom Create cdrom image from contents of dir Mount the cdrom image at /mnt/dir (read only) Clear a CDRW Burn cdrom image (use dev=ATAPI -scanbus to confirm dev) Rip audio tracks from CD to wav files in current dir Make audio CD from all wavs in current dir (see also cdrdao) Make ogg file from wav file Show files by size, biggest last Show top disk users in current dir. See also dutop Show free space on mounted filesystems Show free inodes on mounted filesystems Show disks partitions sizes and types (run as root) List all packages by installed size (Bytes) on rpm distros List all packages by installed size (KBytes) on deb distros Create a large test file (taking no space). See also truncate truncate data of file or create an empty file Monitor messages in a log file Summarise/profile system calls made by command List system calls made by command List library calls made by command List paths that process id has open List processes that have specified path open Show network traffic except ssh. See also tcpdump_not_me List processes in a hierarchy List processes by % cpu usage List processes by mem (KB) usage. See also ps_mem.py List all threads for a particular process List info for particular process IDs Show system reboot history Show amount of (remaining) RAM (-m displays in MB) Watch changeable data continuously Show kernel version and system architecture Show name and version of distribution Show all partitions registered on the system Show RAM total seen by the system Show CPU(s) info Show PCI info Show USB info

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Linux Commands - A practical reference

http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html

mount | column -t grep -F capacity: /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info # dmidecode -q | less # smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep Power_On_Hours # hdparm -i /dev/sda # hdparm -tT /dev/sda # badblocks -s /dev/sda interactive (see also linux keyboard shortcuts) readline screen mc gnuplot links xdg-open . miscellaneous alias hd='od -Ax -tx1z -v' alias realpath='readlink -f' set | grep $USER touch -c -t 0304050607 file python -m SimpleHTTPServer

List mounted filesystems on the system (and align output) Show state of cells in laptop battery Display SMBIOS/DMI information How long has this disk (system) been powered on in total Show info about disk sda Do a read speed test on disk sda Test for unreadable blocks on disk sda Line editor used by bash, python, bc, gnuplot, ... Virtual terminals with detach capability, ... Powerful file manager that can browse rpm, tar, ftp, ssh, ... Interactive/scriptable graphing Web browser open a file or url with the registered desktop application Handy hexdump. (usage e.g.: hd /proc/self/cmdline | less) Canonicalize path. (usage e.g.: realpath ~/../$USER) Search current environment Set file timestamp (YYMMDDhhmm) Serve current directory tree at http://$HOSTNAME:8000/

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