Common Linux Ubuntu Commands Overview

Prepared by: Ameer Sameer Hamood

University of Babylon - Iraq
Information Technology - Information Networks
 System Information

 pwd
Print working directory, i.e., display the name of my current directory on
the screen.
 hostname
Print the name of the local host (the machine on which you are working).
Use netconf (as root) to change the name of the machine.
 id username
Print user id (uid) and his/her group id (gid), effective id (if different than
the real id) and the supplementary groups.
 date
Print or change the operating system date and time. E.g., I could change
the date and time to 2000-12-31 23:57 using this command:
date 123123572000
To set the hardware (BIOS) clock from the system (Linux) clock, use the
command (as root) setclock
 System Information

 who
Determine the users logged on the machine.
 finger user_name
System info about a user. Try: finger root . displays the user's login name,
real name, terminal name and write status (as a ``*'' after the terminal
name if write permission is denied), idle time, login time, office location .
 history | more
Show the last (1000 or so) commands executed from the command line
on the current account. The "| more" causes the display to stop after each
screenful.
 Basic operations

 any_command --help |more

Display a brief help on a command (works with most commands). "--help"
works similar to DOS "/h" switch. The "more" pipe is needed if the output
is longer than one screen.
 man topic
Display the contents of the system manual pages (help) on the topic.
 Info topic
 information pages, which are generally more in-depth than man pages.
 List Command

 ls - Short listing of directory contents

 -a list hidden files
 -d list the name of the current directory
 -F show directories with a trailing '/'
 executable files with a trailing '*'
 -g show group ownership of file in long listing
 -i print the inode number of each file
 -l long listing giving details about files and directories
 -R list all subdirectories encountered
 -t sort by time modified instead of name
 Copy files

 cp file1 file2
 or
 cp myfile yourfile
 Copy the files "myfile" to the file "yourfile" in the current working
directory. This command will create the file "yourfile" if it doesn't exist. It
will normally overwrite it without warning if it exists.
 cp -i myfile yourfile
 With the "-i" option, if the file "yourfile" exists, you will be prompted
before it is overwritten.
 mv source destination
Move or rename files. The same command is used for moving and
renaming files and directories. Ex: mv testdir newnamedir
 Copy files

 rm files
Remove (delete) files. You must own the file in order to be able to remove
it. On many systems, you will be asked or confirmation of deleation, if you
don't want this, use the "-f" (=force) option, e.g., rm -f * will remove all
files in my current working directory, no questions asked.
 mkdir directory
Make a new directory.
 rmdir directory
Remove an empty directory.
 rm -r files
(recursive remove) Remove files, directories, and their subdirectories.
Careful with this command as root--you can easily remove all files on the
system with such a command executed on the top of your directory tree,
and there is no undelete in Linux (yet). But if you really wanted to do it
(reconsider), here is how (as root): rm -rf /*
 Copy files

 cat filename
 View the content of a text file called "filename"
 find / -name filename
Find the file called "filename" on your file system starting the search from
the root directory "/". The "filename" may contain wildcards (*,?).ex: find
/ -name "file.text"
 locate filename
Find the file name of which contains the string "filename". Easier and
faster than the previous command but depends on a database that
normally rebuilds at night.
 Basic Administration Commands

 adduser user_name
Create a new account (you must be root). E.g., adduser barbara Don't
forget to set up the password for the new user in the next step. The user
home directory is /home/user_name.
 useradd user_name
The same as the command " adduser user_name ".
 userdel user_name
Remove an account (you must be a root). The user's home directory and
the undelivered mail must be dealt with separately (manually because you
have to decide what to do with the files).
 groupadd group_name
Create a new group on your system. Non-essential but can be handy even
on a home machine with a small number of users.
 passwd user_name
Change the password on your current account. If you are root, you can
change the password for any user using: passwd user_name
 Permissions

 File Permissions
 chmod perm filename
 chmod command sets the permission of a file or folder. chmod command
uses three digit code as an argument and the file or folder location.
 In the example,
 7 – Owner(current user)
 5 – Group(set by owner)
 4 – anyone else
 The fundamental concept:
 Execute is 1, Write is 2 and Read is 4.
 Permissions

 Sum of these basic ones makes combination of permissions:

 0 – no permission, this person cannot read, write or execute
 1 – execute only
 2 – write only
 3 – execute and write only (1 + 2)
 4 – read only
 5 – execute and read only (1 + 4)
 6 – write and read only (2 + 4)
 7 – execute, write and read (1 + 2 + 4)
 Account Permissions

 examples:
 sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash user_Name
 explain: -s User's login shell (default /bin/bash)
 -m Create the home directory
 -M Do not create the home directory
 2- sudo passwd user_Name
 3- unlock
 sudo passwd -u user_Name
 4- Add Full Name
 sudo usermod -c "Full Name" user_Name
 Account Permissions

 5- add group
 sudo groupadd group_Name
 add user to group
 sudo usermod -G group_Name user_Name
 6- Delete a user
 userdel -r user_Name
 id Print user and group id's
 Pipe

 The pipe allows us to change this paradigm, whereby the output of one
program becomes the input of another program.
 Example1 :
 I would do that by using the | character — which is called, appropriately
enough, the pipe — as follows:
 $ ls -l | less
 This tells BASH to do the following:
 1-Execute the ls command, with the parameter -l as input
 2-Take the results of executing that command — the output — and pass
them as input to the less command
 3-Send the output of the less command to the monitor as usual
 Pipe

 Example2 :
 $ ls -l | grep 'init' | less
 List all of the files, using the -l option
 Search the results of that file listing for the string init
 Send the results of that search to less
 Redirection

 Redirection is similar to pipes except using files rather than another

program. The standard output for a program is the screen. Using the >
(greater than) symbol the output of a program can be sent to a file. Here
is a directory listing of /dev again but this time redirected to a file called
listing.txt
 ls -la > listing.txt
 There won’t be anything displayed on the terminal as everything was sent
to the file. You can take a look at the file using the cat command (which
can be piped into more) or for convenience you can just use the more
command on its own:
 more listing.txt
 If listing.txt had already existed, it will be overwritten. But you can append
to an existing file using >> like this:
 ls -la /home > listing.txt
ls -la /dev >> listing.txt
 Search Command

 Grep command
 How do I use grep with other commands?
 The syntax is:
 command | grep 'search-pattern'
 command1 | command2 | grep 'search-pattern'
 In this example, run ls command and search for the string/pattern called
resume.pdf:
 ls | grep resume.pdf
 ls -l | grep resumd.pdf
 ls -l *.mov | grep 'birthday'
 ls -l *.mov | grep -i 'birthday'
 Find Command

 The Linux Find Command is one of the most important and much used
command in Linux systems. Find command used to search and locate list
of files and directories based on conditions you specify for files that match
the arguments. Find can be used in variety of conditions like you can find
files by permissions, users, groups, file type, date, size and other possible
criteria
 Example1
 Find all the files whose name is tecmint.txt in a current working directory.
 # find . -name tecmint.txt.
 Find all php files in a directory.
 Example 2:
 # find . -type f -name "*.php"
 ./tecmint.php
 ./login.php
 ./index.php
 Network

 ping Test a network connection

 ping user_Name
 ets…..
 Nmap ("Network Mapper") is an open source tool for network exploration
and security auditing.
 sudo apt-get install nmap
 To quickly identify all available Ethernet interfaces, you can use the
ifconfig command as shown below.
 ifconfig -a | grep eth
 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:15:c5:4a:16:5a
 ethtool is a program that displays and changes Ethernet card settings such
as auto-negotiation, port speed, duplex mode, and Wake-on-LAN. It is not
installed by default, but is available for installation in the repositories.
 Network

 sudo apt-get install ethtool

 The following is an example of how to view supported features and
configured settings of an Ethernet interface.
 sudo ethtool eth0
 To temporarily configure an IP address, you can use the ifconfig command
in the following manner. Just modify the IP address and subnet mask to
match your network requirements.
 sudo ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0
 To verify the IP address configuration of eth0, you can use the ifconfig
command in the following manner.
 ifconfig eth0
 To verify your default gateway configuration, you can use the route
command in the following manner.
 route –n
 Display Information of All Network Interfaces
 Network

 ifconfig eth0
 To verify your default gateway configuration, you can use the route
command in the following manner.
 route –n
 Display Information of All Network Interfaces
 ifconfig –a
 How to Disable an Network Interface
 ifconfig eth0 down
 OR
 ifdown eth0
 How to Assign a IP Address to Network Interface
 ifconfig eth0 172.16.25.125
 Tcpdump Commands – A Network Sniffer Tool

tcpdump is a most powerful and widely used command-line packets 

sniffer or package analyzer tool which is used to capture or filter TCP/IP
packets that received or transferred over a network on a specific
interface.
How to Install tcpdump in Linux 
Many of Linux distributions already shipped with tcpdump tool, if in case 
you don’t have it on systems, you can install it using following Yum
command.
# yum install tcpdump 
1. Capture Packets from Specific Interface 
 tcpdump -i eth0
 Tcpdump Commands – A Network Sniffer Tool

2. Capture Only N Number of Packets 

tcpdump -c 5 -i eth0 
3. Display Available Interfaces 
tcpdump -D 
4.Capture IP address Packets 
tcpdump -n -i eth0 
5. Capture only TCP Packets. 
tcpdump -i eth0 tcp 
6. Capture Packets from source IP 
tcpdump -i eth0 src 192.168.0.2 
7. Capture Packets from destination IP 
tcpdump -i eth0 dst 50.116.66.139 
 install , remove App in linux

 1- install :
 sudo apt-get install Package_Name
 2- remove :
 apt-get remove package_Name
 To remove any unused packages, use the “autoremove” command, as
shown in the following command.
 sudo apt-get autoremove
 You can combine the two commands for removing a program and
removing dependencies that are no longer being used into one, as shown
below (again, two dashes before “auto-remove”).
 sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove gimp
 If you’re short on space, you can use the “clean” command to remove
downloaded archive files, as shown below.
 sudo apt-get clean
 print

 echo Display message on screen •

 File Compression

 gzip Compress files

 (GNU Zip)
 compress Compress files (Unix)
 bzip2 Compress files (BZip2)
 zip Compress files
 (Windows Zip)
 Disks and Filesystems

 df Show free disk space

 mount Make a disk accessible
 fsck Check a disk for errors
 sync Flush disk caches
 Backups and Remote Storage

 mt Control a tape drive

 dump Back up a disk
 restore Restore a dump
 tar Read/write tape archives
 cdrecord Burn a CD
 rsync Mirror a set of files
 File Properties

 stat Display file attributes

 wc Count bytes/words/lines
 du Measure disk usage
 file Identify file types
 touch Change file timestamps
 chown Change file owner
 chgrp Change file group
 chmod Change file protections
 chattr Change advanced file
 attributes
 lsattr List advanced file
 attributes
 File Viewing

 cat View files

 less Page through files
 head View file beginning
 tail View file ending
 nl Number lines
 od View binary data
 xxd View binary data
 gv View Postscript/PDF files
 xdvi View TeX DVI files
 File Location

 find Locate files

 slocate Locate files via index
 which Locate commands
 whereis Locate standard files
 File/Directory Basics

 ls List files
 cp Copy files
 mv Rename files
 rm Delete files
 ln Link files
 cd Change directory
 pwd Print current directory
 name
 mkdir Create directory
 rmdir Delete directory
 Printing

 lpr Print files

 lpq View print queue
 lprm Remove print jobs
 Spelling Operations

 look Look up spelling

 aspell Check spelling
 interactively
 spell Check spelling in batch
 Processes

 ps List all processes

 w List users’ processes
 uptime View the system load
 top Monitor processes
 xload Monitor system load
 free Display free memory
 kill Terminate processes
 nice Set process priorities
 renice Change process priorities
 Scheduling Jobs

 sleep Wait for some time

 watch Run programs at set
 intervals
 at Schedule a job
 crontab Schedule repeated jobs
 Hosts

 uname Print system information

 hostname Print the system’s
 hostname
 ifconfig Set/display network
 information
 host Look up DNS
 whois Look up domain
 registrants
 ping Check if host is reachable
 traceroute View network path to
 a host
 Audio and Video

 grip Play CDs and rip MP3s

 xmms Play audio files
 cdparanoia Rip audio
 audacity Edit audio
 xcdroast Burn CDs
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