Linux Commands List for DevOps

Being proficient in Linux commands is essential for any developer, sysadmin, or IT professional in
today’s fast-paced world of DevOps. I hope you will find all the necessary commands in this list that
will help you become more productive and efficient at work

File and Disk Management Commands

Here, I have included all commands that you will need for navigation through files and
directories, displaying contents, changing permissions, and extracting information about disks and
files.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

ls Lists files and directories in current directory

Lists files and directories with information such as

ls -l permissions, ownership, size, and modification
date

ls -a Lists all files and directories including hidden ones

cat -b Inserts line numbers to non-blank lines

cat -n Inserts line numbers to all lines

Squeezes multiple blank lines into a single blank

cat -s
line while displaying the file contents

Displays contents of a file ending with a $ symbol

cat –E
in each line

chmod Changes permissions of a file or directory

chown Changes ownership of a file or directory

tail Displays last 10 lines of a specified file

dd Copies raw data from one file/ device to another

find Finds files and directories based on specific criteria

Copies securely files between hosts on a network

scp
using SSH (Secure Shell) protocol
 df Estimates space used by entire file system

Displays the amount of disk space used by

du
individual file

User and Group Management Commands

You will find these commands useful for managing user accounts and groups. You will be able
to control access to files, directories, and other resources on the system. Also, some commands
allow you to verify user and group information, troubleshoot permissions issues, and manage user
and group access to resources on a system.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

Creates a new user

sudo useradd <username> account with the
specified username

Changes the password

sudo passwd <username>
for the specified user

Deletes the specified

sudo userdel <username> user account from the
system.

Creates a new group

sudo groupadd <groupname> with the specified group
name

Deletes the specified

sudo groupdel <groupname>
group from the system

Modifies the primary

sudo usermod -g <groupname> group of the specified
<username> user to the specified
group

Displays the user ID (uid)

id and group ID (gid) of the
current user

Displays the group ID

id -g <groupname> (gid) of the specified
group
 Displays the user ID (uid)
id -u <username>
of the specified user

Displays the user ID (uid),

group ID (gid), and
id <username> supplementary group IDs
(sgid) of the specified
user

System Monitoring Commands

As a DevOps professional, you will use these commands for troubleshooting issues related to file
access and identifying processes and files that are opened.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

Lists all files opened by any process of a

lsof
system

lsof -u username Lists all files opened by a user

Text Searching Commands

In case of searching for a specific pattern in files, you may find this grep command a versatile one.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

grep -i Performs a case-insensitive search

Displays the line numbers of the matched

grep -n
pattern

Inverts the search and displays all lines

grep -v
that do not match the pattern

Shows a count of the number of lines that

grep -c
match the pattern

Network Configuration and Monitoring Commands

You are going to need these commands to troubleshoot network-related issues and gather
information about the configuration of a system.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

ifconfig Displays network interface configuration

 information, such as IP address, netmask,
and broadcast address

Displays all interface available even if

ifconfig -a
those are down

ifconfig -s Displays short list of network interface

Displays and manages routing, devices,

ip
and tunnels

Displays all IP addresses related with all

ip address
network devices

Shows all network interfaces available on

ip link
the system

Queries the DNS server for information

nslookup
about a domain name or IP address

Facilitates the transfer of data to or from a

server, using any of the protocols it
curl
supports, such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS,
SCP, SFTP, TFTP, DICT, TELNET, LDAP, or FILE

Client-server protocol used to establish a

telnet
connection to a remote computer

Displays network connections and

network statistics, such as active sockets,
netstat
routing tables, and network interface
statistics

Creates a pair of public and private

ss-keygen
authentication keys

route Access the Linux kernel’s routing tables

Scans hosts and services on a network,

and provides information about operating
nmap
systems, open ports, and services running
on the hosts
 Sets up, maintains, and inspects the tables
iptables of IPv4/IPv6 packet filter rules in the Linux
kernel firewall

System Information Commands

I have listed some commands in this section that you will need to manage and maintain computer
systems and software development.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

unmae -o Displays the operating system name

uname -m Displays the machine hardware name

uname -r Displays the kernel release number

lshw Lists hardware information of the system.

lscpu Displays information about the CPU

Displays the list of previously executed

history
commands

Displays the amount of free and used

free
memory in the system

Text Manipulation Commands

Suppose you want to manage a large amount of data and want to automate tasks in a DevOps
environment. Then you should learn these commands for file manipulation and organization.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

sort -r Sorts the output in reverse order

sort -f Sorts the output ignoring the case

sort -n Sorts the output numerically.

Extracts specific portion from a file or

cut
input stream

diff Compares two files and displays the

 differences between them

sed Editor used for modifying text

Translates or deletes characters from

tr standard input and writes to standard
output

uniq Filters out duplicate lines in a file

Process Management Commands

To manage processes in real-time and list out running packages, you can learn commands given
below.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

Interactive process viewer that displays

htop
system resource usage in real-time

Lists information about currently running

ps
processes

kill Sends a signal to a process to terminate it

Package Management Commands

If you want to install, search or remove a package in your system, these commands can be very
useful.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

Handles packages on Ubuntu-based

apt -get
systems

Searches for packages matching a given

apt search
package name

sudo apt-get remove Removes a package from the system

Miscellaneous Commands

In this section, I am going to discuss some miscellaneous commands as well as some commands that
can be used to manage docker containers.
 COMMAND DESCRIPTION

Retrieves entries from databases, such as the user and

getent group database or the Domain Name System (DNS)
database

docker ps Lists all active Docker containers

docker
Lists all Docker images on user’s machine
images

docker
Builds a Docker image from a Dockerfile
build

docker run Runs a Docker container

docker stop Stops an active Docker container

docker-
Starts containers defined in a docker-compose.yml file
compose up

docker-
Stops and removes containers defined in a docker-
compose
compose.yml file
down

Git Commands

You must keep all of your communication in Version Control if you want to be successful with
DevOps. Here comes the role of Git, an open-source distributed version control system. Here, I have
discussed the git commands that you will find essential.

COMMAND DESCRIPTION

git init Initializes a new and empty Git repository.

Creates a copy of a Git repository in a new

git clone
directory from an existing URL

Adds changes to the staging area in

git add preparation for committing them to the
repository

git commit Records changes to the repository with a

 message describing the changes

Shows the current status of the repository,

git status including any changes that have been made
but not yet committed

Displays information about a specific

git show
commit or object

Removes files from the repository and

git rm
stages the deletion

Connects remote server with the local

git remote
repository

Sends committed changes to a remote

git push
repository

Fetches changes from a remote repository

git pull
and merges them into the local repository

Lists, creates, or deletes branches within

git branch
the repository

Switches between different branches or

git checkout
creates a branch and switches to it

Combines specified branch’s history into the

git merge
current one

Moves all work from the current to the

git rebase
master branch