Handy Unix commands for a DBA

Note: Proofread any scripts before using. Always try scripts on a test instance
first. This Blog is not responsible for any damage.
Crontab Syntax:
"crontab -e" to edit the cron entries and "crontab -l" to list the cron entries
*
*
* *
*
command to be executed
- |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
+----- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
|
|
| +------- month (1 - 12)
|
|
+--------- day of month (1 - 31)
|
+----------- hour (0 - 23)
+------------- min (0 - 59)
For example:
A line in crontab file like below:
To submit a task to run every hour at 15 minutes past the hour on weekdays (days
1-5)
15 * 1-5 * * /oracle/scripts/truncate_listener.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
To submit a task to run every 15 minuteson weekends (days 6 and 0)
00,15,30,45 * 0,6 * * /oracle/scripts/truncate_listener.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
Changing the parameter values as below will cause this command to run at differe
nt time schedule below :
min
hour
day/month
month day/week
Execution time
30
0
1
1,6,12 *

00:30 Hrs on 1st of Jan, June & Dec.

0
.

20

5,10
0
very month

10

1-5

8.00 PM every weekday (Mon-Fri) only in Oct

1,10,15 *

midnight on 1st ,10th & 15th of month

10

At 12.05,12.10 every Monday & on 10th of e

File permission details

Owner
---------7 (u+rwx)
6 (u+wx)
5 (u+Rx)
4 (u+r)
2 (u+w)
1 (u+x)

Group
---------7 (g+rwx)
6 (g+wx)
5 (g+Rx)
4 (g+r)
2 (g+w)
1 (g+x)

World
---------7 (o+rwx)
6 (o+wx)
5 (o+Rx)
4 (o+r)
2 (o+w)
1 (o+x)

Permission
----------------------read + write + execute
write + execute
read + execute
read only
write only
execute only

Displays the full path of (shell) commands

which zip
How to kill all similar processes with single command (in this case devusr)
ps -ef | grep devusr | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -i kill -9 {}
Locating Files under a particular directory
find . -print | grep -i test.sql
Find/Zip/Move/Delete files older than one day

Finds and lists the files

: find ./ -name "*.ARC" -mtime +1 -exec ls -l {
} \;
Finds and removes the files : find ./ -name "*.ARC" -mtime +1 -exec rm {} \;
Finds and zips the files
: find ./ -name "*.ARC" -mtime +1 -exec gzip {}
\;
Finds and moves the files
: find ./ -name "*.arc" -mtime +1 -exec mv {} /ora
cle/backup/;
Remove DOS style CR/LF characters (^M) from UNIX files
sed -e 's/^M$//' filename > tempfile
Using AWK in UNIX
To get a specific column of output from a UNIX command
for example to determine th
e UNIX process ids for all Oracle processes on server (second column)
ps -ef | grep -i oracle | awk '{ print $2 }'
Changing the standard prompt for Oracle Users - Edit the .profile for the oracle
user
PS1="`hostname`*$ORACLE_SID:$PWD>"
Display top 10 CPU consumers using the ps command
/usr/ucb/ps auxgw | head -11
Show number of active Oracle dedicated connection users for a particular ORACLE_
SID
ps -ef | grep $ORACLE_SID | grep -v grep | grep -v ora_ | wc -l
Delete the 500 oldest files
rm -f `ls -tr | head -500`
Check all logs for ORA- errors
grep ^ORA- *log | cut -f2 -d"-" | cut -f1 -d: | awk '{print "ORA-" $1}' | sort u
For Find and grep
find ./ -grep <what> {} \; -print 2>/dev/null
(or) find ./ -exec grep -l "string" {} \;
Display only directiories details
ls -l | grep ^d
Display the number of CPU's
Solaris : psrinfo -v | grep "Status of processor"|wc -l
Aix : lsdev -C | grep Process | wc -l
Display RAM Memory size on Solaris
prtconf | grep -i mem
Display RAM memory size on AIX
First determine name of memory device
lsdev -C | grep mem
then assuming the name of the memory device is 'mem0'
lsattr -El mem0
Swap space allocation and usage
Solaris : swap -s or swap -l
Aix : lsps -a
Total number of semaphores held by all instances on server
ipcs -as | awk '{sum += $9} END {print sum}'

View allocated RAM memory segments

ipcs -pmb
Manually deallocate shared memeory segments
ipcrm -m '<ID>'
Show mount points for a disk in AIX
lspv -l hdisk13
Display amount of occupied space (in KB) for a file or collection of files in a
directory or sub-directory
du -ks * | sort -n | tail
Display total file space in a directory
du -ks .
Cleanup any unwanted trace files more than seven days old
find . *.trc -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;
Locate Oracle files that contain certain strings
find . -print | xargs grep rollback
Locate recently created UNIX files (in the past one day)
find . -mtime -1 -print
Finding large files on the server (more than 100MB in size)
find . -size +102400 -print
vi delete commands - reference
A lot of times all people need is a quick reference, so I'll start with a refere
nce of vi/vim delete commands:
x - delete current character
dw - delete current word
dd - delete current line
5dd - delete five lines
d$ - delete to end of line
d0 - delete to beginning of line
:1,.d
delete to beginning of file
:.,$d
delete to end of file