Unix/Linux command line

concepts
Jan 24, 2012 Juche 101
Artem Nagornyi
 Chapter 1

ls, mkdir, cd, pwd

1.1 Listing files and directories

$ ls The ls command (lowercase

L and lowercase S) lists the
contents of your current
working directory.
...

$ ls -a Lists all files in the current

directory including those
whose names begin with a
dot (.) which are considered
as "hidden".
1.2 Making directories

$ mkdir dirname This will create a new sub-

directory in the current
directory.
1.3 Changing to a different directory

$ cd mydir Changes the current working

directory to mydir directory.

$ cd /local/usr/bin You can also use full path of

the directory.
1.4 The directories . and ..

$ cd . In UNIX, (.) means the

current directory, so typing
this command means stay
where you are (the current
directory).
$ cd ..
(..) means the parent of the
current directory, so typing
this command will take you
one directory up the
$ cd ./mydir/innerdir hierarchy.
$ ls ./mydir/innerdir
$ cd ../../anotherdir Feel free to use (.) and (..)
$ ls ../../anotherdir symbols when changing and
1.5 Pathnames

$ pwd Prints path of the current

directory (working directory).
1.6 Home directory

~ This is the symbol of your

home directory. Each user of
the Unix system has its own
username and own home
directory under /home.
For example these are home
dirs: /home/artem,
/home/john
$ ls ~/mydir
Will list the contents of mydir
sub-directory of your home
directory, no matter where
you currently are in the file
system.
 Chapter 2

cp, mv, rm, rmdir, cat, less, head,

tail, grep, wc
2.1 Copying files

$ cp ./myfile /home/artem Copies myfile file from the

current directory to
/home/artem directory.

$ cp myfile /home/artem/mf2 Copies myfile file from the

current directory to
/home/artem directory,
renaming it to mf2.

$ cp /usr/local/myfile . Copies /usr/local/myfile to the

current directory.
...

$ ln -s /usr/local/ff/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

This command will make a symbolic link /usr/bin/firefox to the

file /usr/local/ff/firefox
Symbolic links have l symbol in the beginning of 'ls -l' output
string.

$ ln /usr/local/ff/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

This will make a hard link. The difference between a symbolic

link and a hard link is that a hard link to a file is
indistinguishable from the original directory entry; just consider
it as a file alias. Hard links may not normally refer to directories.
...

$ ln myfile hlink This experiment proves that a

hard link is just another name
$ rm myfile for a file. Even after deleting
original file it still exists
$ cat hlink because we haven't deleted
the hard link. Simply there is
really no such thing as "hard
link", we just create another
name for a file.
2.2 Moving files

$ mv ./myfile /home/artem Moves myfile file from the

current directory to
/home/artem directory.

$ mv myfile /home/artem/mf2 Moves myfile file from the

current directory to
/home/artem directory,
renaming it to mf2.

$ mv /usr/local/myfile . Moves /usr/local/myfile to the

current directory.
2.3 Removing files and directories

$ rm myfile Removes myfile file in the

current directory.

$ rm /usr/local/myfile Removes /usr/local/mydir file.

$ rm -R mydir Removes mydir sub-directory

in the current directory.

$ rmdir mydir Removes mydir sub-directory

in the current directory.
2.4 Displaying the contents of a file on
the screen
$ clear Will clear screen.

$ cat myfile Will display the content of a

file on the screen.

$ less myfile Will display the content of a

file page-by-page.

$ head myfile Will display the first 10 lines

of myfile on the screen.

$ head -5 myfile Will display the first 5 lines.

$ tail -5 myfile Will display the last 5 lines.

2.5 Searching the contents of a file

$ less myfile This will display the contents

of myfile page-be-page.

Then, still in less, type a

forward slash [/] followed by
the word to search. less finds
and highlights the keyword.

Type [n] to search for the

next occurrence of the word.
...

$ grep Science myfile This will print each line of

myfile containing the word
Science (it is case-sensitive).

$ grep 'spinning top' myfile To search for a phrase or

pattern, you must enclose it
in single quotes.

$ grep -i Science myfile Key -i will ignore upper/lower

case in the search results.
...

Some of the other options of grep are:

-v display those lines that do NOT match

-n precede each matching line with the line number
-c print only the total count of matched lines
...

$ wc -w myfile Will return the number of

words in myfile.

$ wc -l myfile Will return the number of

lines in myfile.
 Chapter 3

>, >>, <, |, sort, who

3.1 Redirection

$ cat Type cat without specifing a

file to read. Then type a few
words on the keyboard and
press the [Return] key.
Finally hold the [Ctrl] key
down and press [d] (written
as ^D for short) to end the
input.

It reads the standard input

(the keyboard), and on
receiving the 'end of file'
(^D), copies it to the standard
output (the screen).
...

$ cat > myfile Type something, then press

[Ctrl-d] to end the input.

The output will be redirected

to myfile.

If the file already contains

something, it will be
overwritten.
...

$ cat >> myfile Type something, then press

[Ctrl-d] to end the input.

The output will be redirected

and appended to myfile.

If the file already contains

something, it will be
appended.
...

$ cat myfile1 myfile2 > file3 This will join (concatenate)

myfile1 and myfile2 into a
new file called file3.

What this is doing is reading

the contents of myfile1 and
myfile2 in turn, then
outputting the text to the file
file3.
3.3 Redirecting the input

$ sort Enter this command. Then

type in the names of some
animals. Press [Return] after
each one.
dog
cat
bird
ape
[Ctrl-d]
The output will be:
ape
bird
cat
dog
...

$ sort < file1 > file2 Input redirection is <

In this command we use both

input and output redirection.
The unsorted list will be taken
from file1 and already sorted
list will be redirected to file2.
3.4 Pipes

$ who > usernames who command returns the

$ sort < usernames list of all users currently
logged in the system. This is
a method to get a sorted list
of names by using a
temporary file usernames.

$ who | sort This way we can avoid

temporary file creation. Here
we connect the output of the
who command directly to the
input of the sort command.
This is exactly what pipes do.
Pipe symbol is |
...

$ who | wc -l And this is the way to find out

how many users are logged
in. We are using a pipe
between who and wc
commands.
$ cat myfile | grep science
This displays the line of
myfile that contains 'science'
string. We are using pipe
between cat and grep
commands.
 Chapter 4

*, ?, man, whatis, apropos

4.1 Wildcards

The character * is called a

wildcard, and will match
against none or more
character(s) in a file (or
directory) name.

$ ls list* This will list all files in the

current directory starting with
list...

$ ls *list This will list all files in the

current directory ending with
...list
...

The character ? will match

exactly one character.

$ ls ?ouse So ?ouse will match files like

house and mouse, but not
grouse.
4.2 Unix filename conventions

Unix-legitimate filenames are any combination of these three

classes of characters:
1. Upper and lower case letters: A - Z and a - z (national
characters are also supported in Unicode and other
encodings)
2. Numbers 0 - 9
3. Periods, underscores, hyphens . _ -

Some other characters can be also supported, but they are not
recommended to use.
4.3 Getting help

$ man wc This will display the manual

page for wc command.

$ whatis wc Gives a one-line description

of the command, but omits
any information about options
etc.
...

$ apropos -s "1" copy If you are not sure about the

exact name of the command,
this will give you the list of
commands with keyword in
their manual page header.

-s key defines section of Unix

manual:
1. General commands
2. System calls
3. Library functions
4. Special files
5. File formats and conventions
6. Games and screensavers
7. Miscellanea
8. System administration commands and
daemons
 Chapter 5

ls -lag, chmod, command &, bg,

jobs, fg, kill, ps
5.1 File system access rights

$ ls -l
● The left group of 3 gives the file
permissions for the user that owns the Owner of the
file
Size
Modification
date
file (or directory) (artem in the above
example). File -rw-rw-r-- 1 artem softserve 83 Feb 3 1995 myfile
permissions
● The middle group of 3 gives the
permissions for the group of people to Number of
Group of
subdirectories (1 Filename
whom the file (or directory) belongs for a file)
the owner

(softserve in the above example);

● The rightmost group of 3 gives the
permissions for all others.

The symbol in the beginning of the string indicates whether this is a file, directory or a
link:
'd' indicates a directory, '-' indicates a file, 'l' indicates a symbolic link.

The permissions r, w, x (read, write, execute) have slightly different meanings depending
on whether they refer to a simple file or to a directory.
...

Access rights on files

● r indicates read permission (or otherwise), that is, the presence or absence of
permission to read and copy the file
● w indicates write permission (or otherwise), that is, the permission (or otherwise) to
change a file
● x indicates execution permission (or otherwise), that is, the permission to execute a file,
where appropriate

Access rights on directories

● r allows users to list files in the directory;
● w means that users may delete files from the directory or move files into it;
● x means the right to access files in the directory. This implies that you may read files in
the directory provided you have read permission on the individual files.

So, in order to read a file, you must have execute permission on the directory containing
that file, and hence on any directory containing that directory as a subdirectory, and so on,
up the tree.
Also file can be written if its permissions allow Write, but it can only be deleted if its
directory's permissions allow Write.
5.2 Changing access rights

Access classes: Examples:

u (user) chmod a+r myfile
add permission for everyone to read a
g (group) file (or just: chmod +r myfile)
o (other)
a (all: u, g and o) chmod go-rw myfile
remove read and write permission for
group and other users
Operators:
+ (add access) chmod a-w+x myfile
- (remove access) remove write permission and add
execute for all users
= (set exact access)
chmod go=r myfile
explicitly state that group and other
users' access is set only to read
...

The other way to use the chmod command is the absolute form. In this
case, you specify a set of three numbers that together determine all
the access classes and types. Rather than being able to change only
particular attributes, you must specify the entire state of the file's
permissions.

The three numbers are specified in the order: user (or owner), group,
other. Each number is the sum of values that specify: read (4), write
(2), and execute (1) access, with 0 (zero) meaning no access. For
example, if you wanted to give yourself read, write, and execute
permissions on myfile; give users in your group read and execute
permissions; and give others only execute permission, the appropriate
number would be calculated as (4+2+1)(4+0+1)(0+0+1) for the three
digits 751. You would then enter the command as:
chmod 751 myfile
5.2.1 Changing owner of the file

$ sudo chown artem myfile Change the owner of myfile

to artem.
We are using sudo before
chown to temporarily give
the current user
administrative permissions
(you will need to enter the
root user password).
$ sudo chown -hR artem
myfolder Change the owner of
myfolder folder to artem
including all nested sub-
directories and files
recursively.
5.2.2 Changing file timestamps

$ touch -d "2005-02-03 14: This command will set both

04:25" myfile modification and access
date/time for the file or
directory.

$ touch -md "2005-02-03 14: Set only modification

04:25" myfile date/time for the file or
directory.
$ touch -ad "2005-02-03 14:
04:25" myfile Set only access date/time for
the file or directory.
$ touch myfile
Will create a new empty file
'myfile' if it doesn't exist.
5.3 Processes and jobs

$ ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
...

This command lists all currently running processes in the system.Output columns (this is
Linux, output on other Unixes may slightly differ):

USER = user owning the process

PID = process ID of the process
%CPU = it is the CPU time used divided by the time the process has been running
%MEM = ratio of the process’s resident memory size to the physical memory
VSZ = virtual memory usage of entire process (including swapped memory)
RSS = resident set size, the non-swapped physical memory that a task has used
TTY = controlling tty (terminal)
STAT = multi-character process state (running, sleeping, zombie, etc.)
START = starting time or date of the process
TIME = cumulative CPU time
COMMAND = command with all its arguments
...

$ ps aux | more This will allow listing long list

of processes page-by-page.

$ ps aux | grep pname_or_id This is the way to search for

a given process name or
process id in the list of
processes. Only the lines
containing the process name
or id will be displayed.
...

$ sleep 5 This will wait 5 seconds and

then return the command line
prompt.

$ sleep 5 & This will run the sleep

command in background and
return the command line
prompt immediately, allowing
you do run other programs
while waiting for that one to
finish.
...

$ sleep 15 You can suspend the process

running in the foreground by
typing ^Z, i.e.hold down the
[Ctrl] key and type [z]. Then
to put it in the background,
type 'bg' and [Enter].
5.4 Listing suspended and background
processes
$ jobs When a process is running,
backgrounded or stopped, it will be
entered onto a list along with a job
number.The output of this command
will be such as this:
[1] Stopped sleep 1000
[2] Running vim
[3] Running matlab

This will foreground the process

$ fg %2 number 2.

This will resume and foreground the

$ fg %1 stopped process number 1.
5.5 Killing/signalling a process

$ sleep 5 [Ctrl+c] combination will kill

[Ctrl+c] the foreground process.

$ kill pid This will kill the process using

its process id (you can get it
from the output of ps
command).

$ kill -9 pid This will forcibly kill the

process even if it hanged (or
just stopped).
$ kill n
This will kill the job with
number n from background.
...

$ sleep 15 This will stop (temporarily

[Ctrl+z] suspend) the process.

$ kill -stop pid This will stop (temporarily

suspend) the process.

$ kill -cont pid This will resume the stopped

process.

$ pkill processname To kill all processes with the

name processname.

$ killall processname To kill all processes with the

name processname.
 Chapter 6

df, du, gzip, zcat, file, diff, find,

history
6.1 Other useful Unix commands

$ df -h This will show the amount of

used/available space on all
mounted filesystems.

$ df -h . This will show the amount of

used/available space only on
the current filesystem.

$ du -ahc mydir This will show the disk usage

of each subdirectory and file
of mydir directory, and mydir
directory itself.
...

$ gzip myfile This will compress myfile

using Gzip compressing tool.
The original file will be
deleted.
$ gunzip myfile
This will uncompress myfile.
$ zcat myfile.gz
This will read gzipped files
without needing to
uncompress them first.
$ zcat myfile.gz | less
And now you can view the
gzipped file page-by-page.
...

$ file * Classifies the named files in

the current directory
according to the type of data
they contain, for example
ASCII text, pictures,
compressed data, directory,
etc.
$ diff file1 myfile2
Compares the contents of
two files and displays the
differences. Lines beginning
with a < denotes file1, while
lines beginning with a >
denotes file2.
...
$ find . -name "*.txt" -print
$ find . -size +1M -ls
Searches for all files with the
extension .txt, starting at the
current directory (.) and
working through all sub-
directories, then printing the
name of the file to the screen
(simple output).
To find files over 1Mb in size,
and display the result as a
long listing (similar to ls
command output).
...

$ history | less This will give an ordered list

of all the commands that you
have entered. Piping the
output to less command
allows both forward and
backward scrolling of the list
(more command only allows
forward scrolling).

$ set history=100 This way you can change the

size of the history buffer (set
command changes runtime
parameters).
 Chapter 7

export, printenv, unset, .bashrc,

source, ssh, mount, reboot,
shutdown, crontab
6.2 Environment variables

$ export MYVAR=myvalue Adds a new environment

variable MYVAR with value
value myvalue (export
command works for
Debian/Ubuntu Linux).

$ printenv Prints all environment

variables.

$ printenv | grep MYPAR Displays the value of MYVAR

environment variable.

$ unset MYVAR Unsets (deletes) environment

variable MYVAR.
...

$ export $PATH:/mydir This way we can add new

directories in the end of
PATH environment variable
(all directories are divided by
: symbol).
...

$ vi ~/.bashrc This way we can add

environment variables on
permanent basis. Just insert
export MYVAR=myvalue in
the end of file opened in VI.
This variable will be loaded
automatically at shell start.

$ source ~/.bashrc Force reload of environment

variables from ~/.bashrc file.

Note: This is for Bash, if you

use a different shell, you
should use another file.
6.3 Remote shell

$ ssh user@host This way we can connect to

another Unix machine that
has OpenSSH server running
and port 22 opened. Upon
connect you will be asked to
enter a password for user.
host parameter can be a
hostname or IP address.

$ exit You can leave the remote

shell by entering exit
command.
6.4 Mounting filesystems

$ mkdir mydir
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 mydir

This way we can create a mount point and mount FAT32

filesystem to this mount point (only root user can do this).

$ umount mydir

And now we have unmounted the filesystem, the directory will

be empty.
Noticed /dev/sdc1 ? This is a device file for the filesystem. If it
exists, than the filesystem is physically present, but not
mounted until we execute the mount command.
Other fs types exist (-t option): ext3, ext4, reiserfs, ntfs, etc.
...

$ mkdir alpha
$ sudo mount -t smbfs //alpha.softservecom.com/install alpha
-o username=yourusername,password=yourpassword

This way we can mount remote SMB network filesystem,

providing credentials for authentication.

If you want the filesystem to be mounted automatically, then

you need to edit /etc/fstab file that has its own format (see the
man page for details).
6.5 Shutdown and Reboot

$ sudo reboot Reboot the system

immediately.

$ sudo shutdown -h now Shutdown the system

immediately.

$ sudo shutdown -h 18:45 Shutdown the system at 18:

"Server is going down for 45.
maintenance"
6.6 Scheduling

$ crontab -e
This command opens crontab file where you can schedule commands
execution. (use sudo if you need the command to be executed with
root permissions)

The format of a line is:

minute (0-59), hour (0-23, 0 = midnight), day (1-31), month (1-12),
weekday (0-6, 0 = Sunday), command

Example:
01 04 1 1 1 /usr/bin/somedirectory/somecommand

The above example will run /usr/bin/somedirectory/somecommand

at 4:01am on January 1st plus every Monday in January.
...

An asterisk (*) can be used so that every instance (every hour, every
weekday, every month, etc.) of a time period is used. Example:
01 04 * * * /usr/bin/somedirectory/somecommand

This command will run /usr/bin/somedirectory/somecommand

at 4:01am on every day of every month.

Comma-separated values can be used to run more than one instance

of a particular command within a time period. Dash-separated values
can be used to run a command continuously. Example:
01,31 04,05 1-15 1,6 * /usr/bin/somedirectory/somecommand

The above example will run /usr/bin/somedirectory/somecommand at

01 and 31 past the hours of 4:00am and 5:00am on the 1st
through the 15th of every January and June.
...
string meaning
@reboot Run once, at startup.
@yearly Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 *".
@annually (same as @yearly)
@monthly Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *".
@weekly Run once a week, "0 0 * * 0".
@daily Run once a day, "0 0 * * *".
@midnight (same as @daily)
@hourly Run once an hour, "0 * * * *".

Usage: "@reboot /path/to/executable" will execute

/path/to/executable when the system starts.
The end.