1.

File and Directory Management

 ls – List directory contents
 cd – Change directory
 pwd – Print working directory
 cp – Copy files and directories
 mv – Move or rename files and directories
 rm – Remove files or directories
 mkdir – Make directories
 rmdir – Remove empty directories
 touch – Change file timestamps or create empty files
 find – Search for files in a directory hierarchy
 locate – Find files by name
 tree – Display directories in a tree-like format
 chmod – Change file permissions
 chown – Change file owner and group
 chgrp – Change group ownership
 stat – Display file or file system status

2. File Viewing and Editing

 cat – Concatenate and display file content
 tac – Concatenate and display file content in reverse
 more – View file content interactively (page by page)
 less – View file content interactively (scrollable)
 head – Output the first part of a file
 tail – Output the last part of a file
 nano – Text editor (terminal-based)
 vim / vi – Advanced text editors
 emacs – Text editor
 grep – Search text using patterns
 sed – Stream editor for filtering and transforming text
 awk – Pattern scanning and processing language
 cut – Remove sections from each line of files
 sort – Sort lines of text files
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 uniq – Report or omit repeated lines

3. Process Management
 ps – Report a snapshot of current processes
 top – Display Linux tasks
 htop – Interactive process viewer (advanced top)
 kill – Send a signal to a process, typically to terminate
 killall – Terminate processes by name
 bg – Resume a suspended job in the background
 fg – Bring a job to the foreground
 jobs – List active jobs
 nice – Run a program with modified scheduling priority
 renice – Alter priority of running processes
 uptime – Show how long the system has been running
 time – Measure program running time

4. Disk Management
 df – Report file system disk space usage
 du – Estimate file space usage
 fdisk – Partition table manipulator for Linux
 lsblk – List information about block devices
 mount – Mount a file system
 umount – Unmount a file system
 parted – A partition manipulation program
 mkfs – Create a file system
 fsck – File system consistency check and repair
 blkid – Locate/print block device attributes

5. Networking
 ifconfig – Configure network interfaces
 ip – Show/manipulate routing, devices, and tunnels
 ping – Send ICMP Echo requests to network hosts
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 netstat – Network statistics
 ss – Socket statistics (faster than netstat)
 traceroute – Trace the route packets take to a network host
 nslookup – Query Internet name servers interactively
 dig – DNS lookup utility
 wget – Non-interactive network downloader
 curl – Transfer data with URLs
 scp – Secure copy files between hosts
 ssh – Secure shell for remote login
 ftp – File Transfer Protocol client

6. User and Group Management

 useradd – Add a user to the system
 usermod – Modify a user account
 userdel – Delete a user account
 groupadd – Add a group to the system
 groupdel – Delete a group
 passwd – Change user password
 chage – Change user password expiry information
 whoami – Print the current logged-in user
 who – Show who is logged in
 w – Show who is logged in and what they’re doing
 id – Display user and group information
 groups – Show user’s groups

7. System Information and Monitoring

 uname – Print system information
 hostname – Show or set the system’s hostname
 uptime – How long the system has been running
 dmesg – Boot and system messages
 free – Display memory usage
 top – Display Linux tasks
 vmstat – Report virtual memory statistics
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  lscpu – Display information about the CPU architecture
 lsusb – List USB devices
 lspci – List PCI devices
 lshw – List hardware configuration

8. Archiving and Compression

 tar – Archive files
o tar -czf archive.tar.gz /path/to/directory – Compress files

using gzip
o tar -xzf archive.tar.gz – Extract gzipped tarball

o tar -cf archive.tar /path/to/directory – Create a tarball

o tar -xf archive.tar – Extract tarball

 zip – Package and compress files into a ZIP archive

 unzip – Extract files from a ZIP archive
 gzip – Compress files using the gzip algorithm
 gunzip – Decompress files compressed with gzip
 bzip2 – Compress files using the bzip2 algorithm
 bunzip2 – Decompress files compressed with bzip2
 xz – Compress files using the xz algorithm
 unxz – Decompress files compressed with xz

Red Hat-based (e.g., CentOS, Fedora)

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 Type your text

 yum – Package manager for RPM-based systems

o yum install <package> – Install a package
Type your text
o yum update – Update installed packages

o yum remove <package> – Remove a package

 dnf – Next-generation package manager (Fedora, CentOS 8+)

o dnf install <package> – Install a package

o dnf update – Update installed packages

o dnf remove <package> – Remove a package

General Commands
 rpm – RPM package manager
o rpm -i <package.rpm> – Install an RPM package

o rpm -e <package> – Remove an RPM package

 dpkg – Debian package manager

o dpkg -i <package.deb> – Install a Debian package

o dpkg -r <package> – Remove a Debian package

10. System Services and Daemon Management

 systemctl – Control the systemd system and service manager
o systemctl start <service> – Start a service

o systemctl stop <service> – Stop a service

o systemctl restart <service> – Restart a service

o systemctl enable <service> – Enable a service to start on boot

o systemctl disable <service> – Disable a service from starting

on boot
o systemctl status <service> – Check service status

 service – Older service management command (used in non-

systemd systems)
o service <service> start – Start a service

o service <service> stop – Stop a service

o service <service> restart – Restart a service

o service <service> status – Check service status

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 11. Scheduling Tasks
 cron – Daemon for running scheduled commands
o crontab -e – Edit cron jobs for the current user

o crontab -l – List the current user’s cron jobs

o crontab -r – Remove the current user's cron jobs

 at – Run commands at a specified time

o at 09:00 – Schedule a command to run at 09:00 AM

 batch – Run commands when the system load is low

 sleep – Delay for a specified time
o sleep 5s – Sleep for 5 seconds

12. File Permissions and Security

 chmod – Change file permissions
 chown – Change file owner and group
 chgrp – Change the group ownership of a file
 umask – Set default permissions for new files
 setfacl – Set file access control lists (ACL)
 getfacl – Get file access control lists (ACL)
 sudo – Execute a command as another user (usually root)
 visudo – Edit the sudoers file safely
 passwd – Change a user’s password
 sudoers – Manage sudo access for users
 gpasswd – Administer group password
 ss – Display socket statistics (for secure network connections)

13. System Backup and Restore

 rsync – Remote file and directory synchronization
o rsync -avz source/ destination/ – Synchronize files

o rsync -avz -e ssh source/ user@remote:/destination/ – Sync

over SSH
 cpio – Copy files to and from archives
 dd – Low-level copying and backup of entire filesystems
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 o dd if=/dev/sda of=/path/to/backup.img – Backup a
disk/partition
o dd if=/path/to/backup.img of=/dev/sda – Restore a
disk/partition

14. System Diagnostics and Troubleshooting

 dmesg – Print the kernel ring buffer messages (system boot and
hardware-related messages)
 journalctl – Query and view logs from systemd’s journal
 strace – Trace system calls and signals
o strace <command> – Trace a command’s system calls

 lsof – List open files (useful for debugging)

o lsof <file> – Show processes using a specific file

 vmstat – Report virtual memory statistics

 iostat – Report CPU and I/O statistics
 mpstat – Report CPU usage statistics
 pidstat – Report statistics by process
 free – Display memory usage
 uptime – How long the system has been running
 watch – Execute a program periodically, showing output
o watch -n 1 free – Watch memory usage every second

 lshw – List hardware configuration

 htop – Interactive process viewer (better than top)
 netstat – Network statistics (deprecated in favor of ss)
 ss – Show socket statistics (more efficient than netstat)

15. Networking & Remote Management

 ifconfig – Configure network interfaces (older command,
replaced by ip)
 ip – A more modern alternative for managing network interfaces
and routing
o ip addr – Show IP addresses

o ip link – Show or manipulate network interfaces

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 o ip route – Show or manipulate routing tables
 ss – Display socket statistics (useful for diagnosing network
issues)
 nmap – Network exploration tool (can be used for security
auditing)
 telnet – User interface to the TELNET protocol (less common
nowadays)
 nc (Netcat) – Network utility for reading and writing from network
connections
o nc -l -p 1234 – Listen on port 1234

o nc <host> <port> – Connect to a host and port

 iptables – Administration tool for IPv4 packet filtering and NAT

(Network Address Translation)
 firewalld – Frontend for managing firewall rules (used in some
distros like Fedora and CentOS)
 ufw – Uncomplicated firewall (front-end for iptables)
o ufw enable – Enable firewall

o ufw allow <port> – Allow traffic on a specific port

 tcpdump – Command-line packet analyzer

 curl – Transfer data from or to a server using various protocols
(HTTP, FTP, etc.)
 wget – Download files from the web via HTTP, HTTPS, FTP
 scp – Secure copy over SSH (used to copy files between systems)
o scp file.txt user@remote:/path/to/destination/ – Copy file to

remote server
 rsync – Remote file and directory synchronization (often used for
backups)
o rsync -avz /local/path/ remote:/remote/path/ – Sync

directories

16. Text Processing Utilities

 grep – Search for patterns within files
o grep 'pattern' file.txt – Search for a pattern in a file

o grep -r 'pattern' /dir/ – Recursively search for a pattern

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 sed – Stream editor for filtering and transforming text
o sed 's/old/new/g' file.txt – Replace old with new globally

 awk – A powerful text processing language

o awk '{print $1}' file.txt – Print the first column of each line in

a file
 cut – Remove sections from each line of a file
o cut -d ':' -f 1 /etc/passwd – Print the first field of each line,

delimited by ":"
 sort – Sort lines of text files
o sort file.txt – Sort file content in ascending order

 uniq – Report or omit repeated lines in a file

o sort file.txt | uniq – Sort and remove duplicate lines

 tee – Read from standard input and write to standard output and
files
o echo "text" | tee file.txt – Write to file and show output on

screen
 tr – Translate or delete characters
o echo "hello" | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z' – Convert lowercase to uppercase

 paste – Merge lines of files

o paste file1.txt file2.txt – Combine lines of file1 and file2 side

by side
 wc – Word, line, character, and byte count
o wc -l file.txt – Count lines in a file

o wc -w file.txt – Count words in a file

17. System Shutdown and Reboot

 shutdown – Shut down the system
o shutdown -h now – Immediately shut down

o shutdown -r now – Reboot the system

o shutdown -h +10 – Shut down after 10 minutes

 reboot – Reboot the system

 halt – Halt the system immediately (equivalent to turning off
power)
 poweroff – Power off the system
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 init – Change the runlevel (old-style system manager)
o init 0 – Shutdown

o init 6 – Reboot

18. File System Mounting and Management

 mount – Mount a file system
o mount /dev/sda1 /mnt – Mount partition to a directory

 umount – Unmount a file system

o umount /mnt – Unmount the file system mounted at /mnt

 fstab – File system table (configuration file for mounting file

systems)
o /etc/fstab – View and configure persistent mount points

 blkid – Display block device attributes

 fsck – Check and repair a file system
o fsck /dev/sda1 – Check and repair /dev/sda1

19. Filesystem Permissions and Security

 chmod – Change file permissions
o chmod 755 file.txt – Give read, write, and execute

permissions to owner, and read-execute permissions to

others
 chown – Change file owner and group
o chown user:group file.txt – Change owner and group of a file

 chgrp – Change group ownership of a file

o chgrp group file.txt – Change the group of a file

 umask – Set default permissions for new files

o umask 022 – Set default permissions for newly created files

to 755
 setfacl – Set access control lists (ACL) for file permissions
 getfacl – Get access control lists (ACL) for file permissions

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