Linux Commands


1. Uptime Command
In Linux uptime command shows since how long your system is running and the number of users are currently logged in and also displays load average for 1,5 and 15 minutes intervals.
# uptime

08:16:26 up 22 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.22
Check Uptime Version
Uptime command don’t have other options other than uptime and version. It gives information only inhours:mins if it less than 1 day.
[tecmint@tecmint ~]$ uptime -V
procps version 3.2.8
2. W Command
It will displays users currently logged in and their process along-with shows load averages. also shows the login name, tty name, remote host, login time, idle time, JCPU, PCPU, command and processes.
# w

08:27:44 up 34 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.08
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
tecmint  pts/0    192.168.50.1     07:59    0.00s  0.29s  0.09s w
Available options
§  -h : displays no header entries.
§  -s : without JCPU and PCPU.
§  -f : Removes from field.
§  -V : (upper letter) – Shows versions.
3. Users Command
Users command displays currently logged in users. This command don’t have other parameters other than help and version.
# users

tecmint
4. Who Command
who command simply return user name, date, time and host information. who command is similar to wcommand. Unlike w command who doesn’t print what users are doing. Lets illustrate and see the different between who and w commands.
# who

tecmint  pts/0        2012-09-18 07:59 (192.168.50.1)
# w

08:43:58 up 50 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.64, 0.18, 0.06
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
tecmint  pts/0    192.168.50.1     07:59    0.00s  0.43s  0.10s w
Who command Options
§  -b : Displays last system reboot date and time.
§  -r : Shows current runlet.
§  -a, –all : Displays all information in cumulatively.
5. Whoami Command
whoami command print the name of current user. You can also use “who am i” command to display the current user. If you are logged in as a root using sudo command “whoami” command return root as current user. Use “who am i” command if you want to know the exact user logged in.
# whoami

tecmint
6. ls Command
ls command display list of files in human readable format.
# ls -l

total 114
dr-xr-xr-x.   2 root root  4096 Sep 18 08:46 bin
dr-xr-xr-x.   5 root root  1024 Sep  8 15:49 boot
Sort file as per last modified time.
# ls -ltr

total 40
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  6546 Sep 17 18:42 install.log.syslog
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 22435 Sep 17 18:45 install.log
-rw-------. 1 root root  1003 Sep 17 18:45 anaconda-ks.cfg
7. Crontab Command
List schedule jobs for current user with crontab command and -l option.
# crontab -l

00 10 * * * /bin/ls >/ls.txt
Edit your crontab with -e option. In the below example will open schedule jobs in VI editor. Make a necessary changes and quit pressing :wq keys which saves the setting automatically.
# crontab -e
8. Less Command
less command allows quickly view file. You can page up and down. Press ‘q‘ to quit from less window.
# less install.log

Installing setup-2.8.14-10.el6.noarch
warning: setup-2.8.14-10.el6.noarch: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID c105b9de: NOKEY
Installing filesystem-2.4.30-2.1.el6.i686
Installing ca-certificates-2010.63-3.el6.noarch
Installing xml-common-0.6.3-32.el6.noarch
Installing tzdata-2010l-1.el6.noarch
Installing iso-codes-3.16-2.el6.noarch
9. More Command
more command allows quickly view file and shows details in percentage. You can page up and down. Press ‘q‘ to quit out from more window.
# more install.log

Installing setup-2.8.14-10.el6.noarch
warning: setup-2.8.14-10.el6.noarch: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID c105b9de: NOKEY
Installing filesystem-2.4.30-2.1.el6.i686
Installing ca-certificates-2010.63-3.el6.noarch
Installing xml-common-0.6.3-32.el6.noarch
Installing tzdata-2010l-1.el6.noarch
Installing iso-codes-3.16-2.el6.noarch
--More--(10%)
10. CP Command
Copy file from source to destination preserving same mode.
# cp -p fileA fileB
You will be prompted before overwrite to file.
# cp -i fileA fileB
11. MV Command
Rename fileA to fileB. -i options prompt before overwrite. Ask for confirmation if exist already.
# mv -i fileA fileB
12. Cat Command
cat command used to view multiple file at the same time.
# cat fileA fileB
You combine more and less command with cat command to view file contain if that doesn’t fit in single screen / page.
# cat install.log | less

# cat install.log | more
13. Cd command (change directory)
with cd command (change directory) it will goes to fileA directory.
# cd /fileA
14. pwd command (print working directory)
pwd command return with present working directory.
# pwd

/root
15. Sort command
Sorting lines of text files in ascending order. with -r options will sort in descending order.
#sort fileA.txt

#sort -r fileA.txt
16. VI Command
Vi is a most popular text editor available most of the UNIX-like OS. Below examples open file in read only with -Roption. Press ‘:q‘ to quit from vi window.
# vi -R /etc/shadows
17. SSH Command (Secure Shell)
SSH command is used to login into remote host. For example the below ssh command will connect to remote host (192.168.50.2) using user as narad.
# ssh narad@192.168.50.2
To check the version of ssh use option -V (uppercase) shows version of ssh.
# ssh -V

OpenSSH_5.3p1, OpenSSL 1.0.0-fips 29 Mar 2010
18. Ftp or sftp Command
ftp or sftp command is used to connect to remote ftp host. ftp is (file transfer protocol) and sftp is (secure file transfer protocol). For example the below commands will connect to ftp host (192.168.50.2).
# ftp 192.168.50.2

# sftp 192.168.50.2
Putting multiple files in remote host with mput similarly we can do mget to download multiple files from remote host.
# ftp > mput *.txt

# ftp > mget *.txt
19. Service Command
Service command call script located at /etc/init.d/ directory and execute the script. There are two ways to start the any service. For example we start the service called httpd with service command.
# service httpd start
OR
# /etc/init.d/httpd start
20. Free command
Free command shows free, total and swap memory information in bytes.
# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1030800     735944     294856          0      51648     547696
-/+ buffers/cache:     136600     894200
Swap:      2064376          0    2064376
Free with -t options shows total memory used and available to use in bytes.
# free -t
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1030800     736096     294704          0      51720     547704
-/+ buffers/cache:     136672     894128
Swap:      2064376          0    2064376
Total:     3095176     736096    2359080
21. Top Command
top command displays processor activity of your system and also displays tasks managed by kernel in real-time. It’ll show processor and memory are being used. Use top command with ‘u‘ option this will display specific User process details as shown below. Press ‘O‘ (uppercase letter) to sort as per desired by you. Press ‘q‘ to quit from top screen.
# top -u tecmint

top - 11:13:11 up  3:19,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 116 total,   1 running, 115 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.3%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.7%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1030800k total,   736188k used,   294612k free,    51760k buffers
Swap:  2064376k total,        0k used,  2064376k free,   547704k cached

PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
1889 tecmint   20   0 11468 1648  920 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.59 sshd
1890 tecmint   20   0  5124 1668 1416 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.44 bash
6698 tecmint   20   0 11600 1668  924 S  0.0  0.2   0:01.19 sshd
6699 tecmint   20   0  5124 1596 1352 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.11 bash
22. Tar Command
tar command is used to compress files and folders in Linux. For example the below command will create a archive for /home directory with file name as archive-name.tar.
# tar -cvf archive-name.tar /home
To extract tar archive file use the option as follows.
# tar -xvf archive-name.tar
23. Grep Command
grep search for a given string in a file. Only tecmint user displays from /etc/passwd file. we can use -i option for ignoring case sensitive.
# grep tecmint /etc/passwd

tecmint:x:500:500::/home/tecmint:/bin/bash
24. Find Command
Find command used to search files, strings and directories. The below example of find command searchtecmint word in ‘/‘ partition and return the output.
# find / -name tecmint

/var/spool/mail/tecmint
/home/tecmint
/root/home/tecmint
25. lsof Command
lsof mean List of all open files. Below lsof command list of all opened files by user tecmint.
# lsof -u tecmint

COMMAND  PID    USER   FD   TYPE     DEVICE SIZE/OFF   NODE NAME
sshd    1889 tecmint  cwd    DIR      253,0     4096      2 /
sshd    1889 tecmint  txt    REG      253,0   532336 298069 /usr/sbin/sshd
sshd    1889 tecmint  DEL    REG      253,0          412940 /lib/libcom_err.so.2.1
sshd    1889 tecmint  DEL    REG      253,0          393156 /lib/ld-2.12.so
sshd    1889 tecmint  DEL    REG      253,0          298643 /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0
sshd    1889 tecmint  DEL    REG      253,0          393173 /lib/libnsl-2.12.so
sshd    1889 tecmint  DEL    REG      253,0          412937 /lib/libkrb5support.so.0.1
sshd    1889 tecmint  DEL    REG      253,0          412961 /lib/libplc4.so
26. last command
With last command we can watch user’s activity in the system. This command can execute normal user also. It will display complete user’s info like terminal, time, date, system reboot or boot and kernel version. Useful command to troubleshoot.
# last

tecmint  pts/1        192.168.50.1     Tue Sep 18 08:50   still logged in
tecmint  pts/0        192.168.50.1     Tue Sep 18 07:59   still logged in
reboot   system boot  2.6.32-279.el6.i Tue Sep 18 07:54 - 11:38  (03:43)
root     pts/1        192.168.50.1     Sun Sep 16 10:40 - down   (03:53)
root     pts/0        :0.0             Sun Sep 16 10:36 - 13:09  (02:32)
root     tty1         :0               Sun Sep 16 10:07 - down   (04:26)
reboot   system boot  2.6.32-279.el6.i Sun Sep 16 09:57 - 14:33  (04:35)
narad    pts/2        192.168.50.1     Thu Sep 13 08:07 - down   (01:15)
You can use last with username to know for specific user’s activity as shown below.
# last tecmint

tecmint  pts/1        192.168.50.1     Tue Sep 18 08:50   still logged in
tecmint  pts/0        192.168.50.1     Tue Sep 18 07:59   still logged in
tecmint  pts/1        192.168.50.1     Thu Sep 13 08:07 - down   (01:15)
tecmint  pts/4        192.168.50.1     Wed Sep 12 10:12 - 12:29  (02:17)
27. ps command
ps command displays about processes running in the system. Below example show init process only.
# ps -ef | grep init

root         1     0  0 07:53 ?        00:00:04 /sbin/init
root      7508  6825  0 11:48 pts/1    00:00:00 grep init
28. kill command
Use kill command to terminate process. First find process id with ps command as shown below and kill process with kill -9 command.
# ps -ef | grep init
root         1     0  0 07:53 ?        00:00:04 /sbin/init
root      7508  6825  0 11:48 pts/1    00:00:00 grep init

# kill- 9 7508
29. rm command
rm command used to remove or delete a file without prompting for confirmation.
# rm filename
Using -i option to get confirmation before removing it. Using options ‘-r‘ and ‘-f‘ will remove the file forcefully without confirmation.
# rm -i test.txt

rm: remove regular file `test.txt'?
30. mkdir command example.
mkdir command is used to create directories under Linux.
# mkdir directoryname

Wget
 It  retrieves files from World Wide Web (WWW) using widely used protocols like HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. Wget utility is freely available package and license is under GNU GPL License. This utility can be installing any Unix-like Operating system including Windows and MAC OS. It’s a non-interactive command line tool. Main feature of Wget of it’s robustness. It’s designed in such way so that it works in slow or unstable network connections. Wget automatically start download where it was left off in case of network problem. Also downloads file recursively. It’ll keep trying until file has been retrieved completely.

1. Single file download

The command will download single file and stores in a current directory. It also shows download progress, size,date and time while downloading.
# wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.5.3.tar.gz

2. Download file with different name

Using -O (uppercase) option, downloads file with different file name. Here we have given wget.zip file name as show below.
# wget -O wget.zip http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.5.3.tar.gz 
--2012-10-02 11:55:54--  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.5.3.tar.gz
Resolving ftp.gnu.org... 208.118.235.20, 2001:4830:134:3::b
Connecting to ftp.gnu.org|208.118.235.20|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 446966 (436K) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: wget.zip
100%[===================================================================================>] 446,966     60.0K/s   in 7.5s
2012-10-02 11:56:02 (58.5 KB/s) - wget.zip

3. Download multiple file with http and ftp protocol

Here we see how to download multiple files using HTTP and FTP protocol with wget command at ones.
# wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.5.3.tar.gz ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.10.1.tar.gz.sig

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