Linux Commands

LINUX COMMANDS
Linux Commands

Shell
The shell sits between you and the operating
system, acting as a command interpreter.

It reads your terminal input and translates the

commands into actions taken by the system. The
shell is analogous to command.com in DOS.

When you log into the system you are given a

default shell.

When the shell starts up it reads its startup files

and may set environment variables, command
search paths, and command aliases, and executes
any commands specified in these files.
Linux Commands

Shell
The original shell was the Bourne shell, sh.
Every Unix platform will either have the Bourne shell,
or a Bourne compatible shell available.
The default prompt for the Bourne shell is $ (or #, for
the root user).
Another popular shell is C Shell. The default prompt
for the C shell is %.
Linux Commands

Shell
Numerous other shells are available from the network.
Almost all of them are based on either sh or csh with
extensions to provide job control to sh, allow in-line
editing of commands, page through previously executed
commands, provide command name completion and
custom prompt, etc.
Some of the more well known of these may be on your
favorite Unix system: the Korn shell, ksh, by David Korn
and
the Bourne Again SHell, bash, from the Free Software
Foundations GNU project, both based on sh,
the T-C shell, tcsh, and the extended C shell, cshe, both
based on csh.
Linux Commands

Shell Programming
You can write shell programs by creating scripts
containing a series of shell commands.

The first line of the script should start with #!

which indicates to the kernel that the script is
directly executable.

You immediately follow this with the name of the

shell, or program (spaces are allowed), to execute,
using the full path name. So to set up a Bourne
shell script the first line would be: #! /bin/sh
Linux Commands

Shell Programming
The first line is followed by commands
Within the scripts # indicates a comment from that
point until the end of the line, with #! being a
special case if found as the first characters of the
file.
#!/bin/bash

You also need to specify that the script is

executable by setting the proper bits on the file
with chmod, e.g.:
$ chmod +x shell_script
Linux Commands

Help Facilities for Commands

To understand the working of the command and
possible options use (man command)
Using the GNU Info System (info, info command)
Listing a Description of a Program (whatis command)
Many tools have a long−style option, `−−help', that
outputs usage information about the tool, including
the options and arguments the tool takes. Ex:
whoami --help
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

File and Directory management

cd Change the current directory. With no arguments "cd"

changes to the users home directory. (cd <directory path>)
chmod Change the file permissions.
Ex: chmod 751 myfile : change the file permissions to rwx for
owner, rx for group and x for others
Ex: chmod go=+r myfile : Add read permission for the group
and others (character meanings u-user, g-group, o-other, +
add permission,-remove,r-read,w-write,x-exe)
Ex: chmod +s myfile - Setuid bit on the file which allows the
program to run with user or group privileges of the file.
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

There are three such special permissions within Linux. They are:
setuid — used only for applications, this permission indicates that the
application is to run as the owner of the file and not as the user executing the
application. It is indicated by the character s in place of the x in the owner
category. If the owner of the file does not have execute permissions, the S is
capitalized to reflect this fact.
setgid — used primarily for applications, this permission indicates that the
application is to run as the group owning the file and not as the group of the user
executing the application. The setgid permission is indicated by the character s
in place of the x in the group category. If the group owner of the file or directory
does not have execute permissions, the S is capitalized to reflect this fact.
sticky bit — used primarily on directories, this bit dictates that a file created in
the directory can be removed only by the user that created the file. It is indicated
by the character t in place of the x in the everyone category. If the everyone
category does not have execute permissions, the T is capitalized to reflect this
fact.
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

chown Change owner.
Ex: chown <owner1> <filename> : Change ownership of
a file to owner1.
chgrp Change group.
Ex: chgrp <group1> <filename> : Change group of a file
to group1.
cp Copy a file from one location to another.
Ex: cp file1 file2 : Copy file1 to file2
Ex: cp –R dir1 dir2 : Copy dir1 to dir2
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

ls List contents of a directory.
Ex: ls, ls –l , ls –al, ls –ld, ls –R
(-rwxrwxr-x 1 juan juan 0 Sep 26 12:25 foo )
|more will list page wise
mkdir Make a directory.
Ex: mkdir <directory name> : Makes a directory
mv Move or rename a file or directory.
Ex: mv <source> <destination>
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

find Find files (find <start directory> -name <file name> -
print)

Ex: find /home –name readme -print

(Search for readme starting at home and output full path.)
“/home" = Search starting at the home directory and proceed
through all its subdirectories
"-name readme" = Search for a file named readme
"-print" = Output the full path to that file

locate File locating program that uses the slocate database.

Ex: locate –u to create the database,
locate <file/directory> to find file/directory
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

pwd Print or list the present working directory with full
path.
rm Delete files (Remove files). (rm –rf <directory/file>)
rmdir Remove a directory. The directory must be empty.
(rmdir <directory>)
touch Change file timestamps to the current time. Make
the file if it doesn't exist. (touch <filename>)
whereis Locate the binary and man page files for a
command. (whereis <program/command>)
which Show full path of commands where given
commands reside. (which <command>)
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

File viewing and editing
emacs Full screen editor.
pico Simple text editor.
vi Editor with a command mode and text mode. Starts in
command mode.
gedit GUI Text Editor
tail Look at the last 10 lines of a file.
Ex: tail –f <filename> ,
Ex: tail -100 <filename>
head Look at the first 10 lines of a file. (head <filename>)
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

File compression, backing up and restoring
compress Compress data.
uncompress Expand data.
cpio Can store files on tapes. to/from archives.
gzip - zip a file to a gz file.
gunzip - unzip a gz file.
tar Archives files and directories. Can store files and
directories on tapes.
Ex: tar -zcvf <destination> <files/directories> - Archive copy
groups of files. tar –zxvf <compressed file> to uncompress
zip – Compresses a file to a .zip file.
unzip – Uncompresses a file with .zip extension.
Linux Commands

Linux File Management and Viewing

grep List all files with the specified expression.
(grep pattern <filename/directorypath>)
Ex: ls –l |grep sidbi : List all lines with a sidbi in them.
Ex: grep " R " : Search for R with a space on each side
sleep Delay for a specified amount of time.
sort Sort a file alphabetically.
uniq Remove duplicate lines from a sorted file.
wc Count lines, words, characters in a file. (wc –c/w/l
<filename>).