10/10/2017 A - Z Linux Commands - Overview with Examples


Commands
Linux
A-Z
A – Z LINUX COMMANDS – OVERVIEW WITH EXAMPLES

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LINUX COMMANDS CHEAT SHEET

Linux Commands Cheat Sheet

There are a countless number of

commands in Linux. We are bound to use
On this page
a number of them on a daily routine or adduser/addgroup
numerous times to perform common agetty
tasks than others. It is important to note alias
that certain commands are “distro-based” anacron
– they can only be found in speci c apropos
distros. While others are generic apt
Unix/Linux commands that you’ll nd in all apt-get
if not most mainstream distros. aptitude
arch
In this article, we will introduce you a list
arp
of most frequently used Linux commands
at
with their examples for easy learning. You
atq
can nd the actual description of each
atrm
Linux command in their manual page
awk
which you can access like this:
batch
basename
$ man command-name
bc
bg
bzip
adduser/addgroup cal
Command cat
chgrp
The adduser and addgroup commands
chmod
are used to add a user and group to the
chown
system respectively according to the

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10/10/2017 A - Z Linux Commands - Overview with Examples

default con guration speci ed in cksum

/etc/adduser.conf le. clear
cmp
$ sudo adduser tecmint comm
cp
date
For more adduser and addgroup
dd
commands: 15 Practical Examples on
df
adduser Command in Linux
diff
dir
agetty Command dmidecode
agetty is a program which manages du
physical or virtual terminals and is invoked echo
by init. Once it detects a connection, it eject
opens a tty port, asks for a user’s login env
name and calls up the /bin/login exit
command. Agetty is a substitute of Linux expr
getty: factor
nd
free
$ agetty -L 9600 ttyS1 vt100
grep
groups
alias Command gzip
gunzip
alias is a useful shell built-in command for head
creating aliases (shortcut) to a Linux history
command on a system. It is helpful for hostname
creating new/custom commands from hostnamectl
existing Shell/Linux commands (including hwclock
options): hwinfo
id
$ alias home='cd /home/tecmint/public_html' ifcon g
ionice
iostat
The above command will create an alias ip
called home for iptables
/home/tecmint/public_html directory, so iw
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whenever you type home in the terminal iwlist

prompt, it will put you in the kill
/home/tecmint/public_html directory. killall
kmod
anacron Command last
ln
anacron is a Linux facility used to run
locate
commands periodically with a frequency
login
de ned in days, weeks and months.
ls
Unlike its sister cron; it assumes that a lshw
system will not run continuously, therefore lscpu
if a scheduled job is due when the system lsof
is off, it’s run once the machine is lsusb
powered on. man
mdsum
For more information about anacron and mkdir
cron read: Cron Vs Anacron: How to more
Schedule Jobs Using Anacron on Linux mv
nano
apropos Command nc/netcat
netstat
apropos command is used to search and
nice
display a short man page description of a
nmap
command/program as follows.
nproc
openssl
$ apropos adduser
passwd
pidof

apt Command ping

ps
apt tool is a relatively new higher-level pstree
package manager for Debian/Ubuntu pwd
systems: rdiff-backup
reboot
$ sudo apt update rename
rm
rmdir
scp
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For more apt usage read: 15 Useful shutdown

Examples on APT Command sleep
sort
apt-get Command split
ssh
apt-get is a powerful and free front-end
stat
package manager for Debian/Ubuntu
su
systems. It is used to install new software
sudo
packages, remove available software
sum
packages, upgrade existing software
tac
packages as well as upgrade entire
tail
operating system.
talk
tar
$ sudo apt-get update tee
time
For more apt-get usage, read: 25 Useful top
Commands of APT-GET for Package touch
Management tr
uname
aptitude Command uniq
uptime
aptitude is a powerful text-based interface users
to the Debian GNU/Linux package vim/vi
management system. Like apt-get and w
apt; it can be used to install, remove or wall
upgrade software packages on a system. watch
wc
$ sudo aptitude update wget
whatis
which
For more usage on aptitude, read: Learn
who
Debian Package Management with
whereis
Aptitude Command
xargs

arch Command yes

youtube-dl
arch is a simple command for displaying zcmp/zdiff
machine architecture or hardware name zip
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(similar to uname -m): zz

$ arch

arp Command
ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is a protocol that maps IP network
addresses of a network neighbor with the hardware (MAC) addresses in
an IPv4 network.

You can use it as below to nd all alive hosts on a network:

$ sudo arp-scan --interface=enp2s0 --localnet

at Command
at command is used to schedule tasks to run in a future time. It’s an
alternative to cron and anacron, however, it runs a task once at a given
future time without editing any con g les:

For example, to shutdown the system at 23:55 today, run:

$ sudo echo "shutdown -h now" | at -m 23:55

atq Command
atq command is used to view jobs in at command queue:

$ atq

atrm Command
atrm command is used to remove/deletes jobs (identi ed by their job
number) from at command queue:

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$ atrm 2

For more usage about at command, read: How to Use ‘at’ Command to
Schedule a Task in Linux

awk Command
Awk is a powerful programming language created for text processing and
generally used as a data extraction and reporting tool.

$ awk '//{print}'/etc/hosts

For more Awk concepts (basic and advance) with simple and easy-to-
understand, we’ve created a book that contains 13 chapters with a total of
41 pages, which covers all Awk basic and advance usage with practical
examples: Awk Getting Started Guide for Beginners

batch Command
batch is also used to schedule tasks to run a future time, similar to the at
command.

basename Command
basename command helps to print the name of a le stripping of
directories in the absolute path:

$ basename bin/findhosts.sh

bc Command
bc is a simple yet powerful and arbitrary precision CLI calculator language
which can be used like this:

$ echo 20.05 + 15.00 | bc

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bg Command
bg is a command used to send a process to the background.

$ tar -czf home.tar.gz .

$ bg
$ jobs

To learn more about bg command, read: Start Linux Command in

Background and Detach Process in Terminal

bzip2 Command
bzip2 command is used to compress or decompress le(s).

$ bzip2 -z filename #Compress

$ bzip2 -d filename.bz2 #Decompress

To learn more examples on bzip2, read: How to Compress and

Decompress a .bz2 File in Linux

cal Command
The cal command print a calendar on the standard output.

$ cal

cat Command
cat command is used to view contents of a le or concatenate les, or
data provided on standard input, and display it on the standard output.

$ cat file.txt

To learn more about cat command, read: 13 Useful Cat Command

Examples on Linux

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chgrp Command
chgrp command is used to change the group ownership of a le. Provide
the new group name as its rst argument and the name of le as the
second argument like this:

$ chgrp tecmint users.txt

chmod Command
chmod command is used to change/update le access permissions like
this.

$ chmod +x sysinfo.sh

chown Command
chown command changes/updates the user and group ownership of a
le/directory like this.

$ chmod -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

To learn more about chgrp, chmod and chwon commands, read:

Managing Users & Groups, File Permissions & Attributes in Linux

cksum Command
cksum command is used to display the CRC checksum and byte count of
an input le.

$ cksum README.txt

clear Command
clear command lets you clear the terminal screen, simply type.

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$ clear

cmp Command
cmp performs a byte-by-byte comparison of two les like this.

$ cmp file1 file2

comm Command
comm command is used to compare two sorted les line-by-line as shown
below.

$ comm file1 file2

cp Command
cp command is used for copying les and directories from one location to
another.

$ cp /home/tecmint/file1 /home/tecmint/Personal/

For more information on how to copy les in Linux, read:

How to Copy a File to Multiple Directories in Linux

Advanced Copy Command – Shows Progress Bar While Copying
Large Files/Folders in Linux
Progress – A Tiny Tool to Monitor Progress for (cp, mv, dd, tar, etc.)
Commands in Linux

date Command
date command displays/sets the system date and time like this.

$ date
$ date --set="8 JUN 2017 13:00:00"

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To learn more about how to set date in Linux, read: How to Set System
Date in Linux

dd Command
dd command is used for copying les, converting and formatting
according to ags provided on the command line. It can strip headers,
extracting parts of binary les and so on.

The example below shows creating a boot-able USB device:

$ dd if=/home/tecmint/kali-linux-1.0.4-i386.iso of=/dev/sdc1 bs=512M; sync

df Command
df command is used to show le system disk space usage as follows.

$ df -h

For more usage on df command, read: 12 Useful ‘df’ Command Examples

to Check Disk Space

diff Command
diff command is used to compare two les line by line. It can also be used
to nd the difference between two directories in Linux like this:

$ diff file1 file2

Some useful diff tools for Linux: 8 Best File Comparison and Difference
(Diff) Tools for Linux

dir Command

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dir command works like Linux ls command, it lists the contents of a

directory.

$ dir

dmidecode Command
dmidecode command is a tool for retrieving hardware information of any
Linux system. It dumps a computer’s DMI (a.k.a SMBIOS) table contents in
a human-readable format for easy retrieval.

To view your system hardware info, you can type:

$ sudo dmidecode --type system

Some useful tools to nd out Linux system hardware info: 10 Useful

Commands to Get Linux Hardware Information

du Command
du command is used to show disk space usage of les present in a
directory as well as its sub-directories as follows.

$ du /home/aaronkilik

echo Command
echo command prints a text of line provided to it.

$ echo “This is TecMint - Linux How Tos”

eject Command
eject command is used to eject removable media such as DVD/CD ROM
or oppy disk from the system.

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$ eject /dev/cdrom
$ eject /mnt/cdrom/
$ eject /dev/sda

env Command
env command lists all the current environment variables and used to set
them as well.

$ env

Learn more on How to Set and Unset Environment Variables in Linux

exit Command
exit command is used to exit a shell like so.

$ exit

expr Command
expr command is used to calculate an expression as shown below.

$ expr 20 + 30

factor Command
factor command is used to show the prime factors of a number.

$ factor 10

nd Command
nd command lets you search for les in a directory as well as its sub-
directories. It searches for les by attributes such as permissions, users,

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groups, le type, date, size and other possible criteria.

$ find /home/tecmint/ -name tecmint.txt

Learn more on how to nd les in Linux:

How to Use ‘ nd’ Command to Search for Multiple Filenames

(Extensions)
How to Find Number of Files in a Directory and Subdirectories
How to Find Today’s Modi ed Files in Linux
How to Find and Sort Files Based on Modi ed Date and Time
How to Find Top Directories and Files (Disk Space) in Linux

free Command
free command shows the system memory usage (free, used, swapped,
cached, etc.) in the system including swap space. Use the -h option to
display output in human friendly format.

$ free -h

Learn more on how to nd memory usage in Linux.

Find Top Running Processes by Highest Memory and CPU Usage in

Linux
Smem – Reports Memory Consumption Per-Process and Per-User
Basis in Linux
How to Clear RAM Memory Cache, Buffer and Swap Space on Linux

grep Command
grep command searches for a speci ed pattern in a le (or les) and
displays in output lines containing that pattern as follows.

$ grep ‘tecmint’ domain-list.txt

Learn more about grep command usage in Linux.

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What’s Difference Between Grep, Egrep and Fgrep in Linux?

12 Basic Linux ‘Grep’ Command Examples in Linux
11 Advanced Linux ‘Grep’ Commands in Linux

groups Command
groups command displays all the names of groups a user is a part of like
this.

$ groups
$ groups tecmint

gzip Command
Gzip helps to compress a le, replaces it with one having a .gz extension
as shown below:

$ gzip passwds.txt
$ cat file1 file2 | gzip > foo.gz

gunzip Command
gunzip expands or restores les compressed with gzip command like this.

$ gunzip foo.gz

head Command
head command is used to show rst lines (10 lines by default) of the
speci ed le or stdin to the screen:

# ps -eo pid,ppid,cmd,%mem,%cpu --sort=-%mem | head

history Command

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history command is used to show previously used commands or to get

info about command executed by a user.

$ history

Learn more about Linux history command.

The Power of Linux “History Command” in Bash Shell

Set Date and Time for Each Command You Execute in Bash History
How to Use ‘Yum History’ to Find Out Installed/Removed Packages
Info

hostname Command
hostname command is used to print or set system hostname in Linux.

$ hostname
$ hostname NEW_HOSTNAME

hostnamectl Command
hostnamectl command controls the system hostname under systemd. It
is used to print or modify the system hostname and any related settings:

$ hostnamectl
$ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname NEW_HOSTNAME

hwclock
hwclock is a tool for managing the system hardware clock; read or set the
hardware clock (RTC).

$ sudo hwclock
$ sudo hwclock --set --date 8/06/2017

hwinfo Command
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hwinfo is used to probe for the hardware present in a Linux system like
this.

$ hwinfo

Learn more about how to get Linux hardware info.

I-Nex – An Advanced Tool to Collect System/Hardware Information

in Linux
9 Useful Tools to Get System Information in Linux

id Command
id command shows user and group information for the current user or
speci ed username as shown below.

$ id tecmint

ifcon g Command
ifcon g command is used to con gure a Linux systems network
interfaces. It is used to con gure, view and control network interfaces.

$ ifconfig
$ sudo ifconfig eth0 up
$ sudo ifconfig eth0 down
$ sudo ifconfig eth0 172.16.25.125

ionice Command
ionice command is used to set or view process I/O scheduling class and
priority of the speci ed process.

If invoked without any options, it will query the current I/O scheduling
class and priority for that process:

$ ionice -c 3 rm /var/logs/syslog

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To understand how it works, read this article: How to Delete HUGE (100-
200GB) Files in Linux

iostat Command
iostat is used to show CPU and input/output statistics for devices and
partitions. It produces useful reports for updating system con gurations
to help balance the input/output load between physical disks.

$ iostat

ip Command
ip command is used to display or manage routing, devices, policy routing
and tunnels. It also works as a replacement for well known ifcon g
command.

This command will assign an IP address to a speci c interface (eth1 in

this case).

$ sudo ip addr add 192.168.56.10 dev eth1

iptables Command
iptables is a terminal based rewall for managing incoming and outgoing
tra c via a set of con gurable table rules.

The command below is used to check existing rules on a system (using it

may require root privileges).

$ sudo iptables -L -n -v

Learn more about iptables rewall in Linux.

How to Start/Stop and Enable/Disable FirewallD and Iptables in

Linux
Basic Guide on IPTables (Linux Firewall) Tips / Commands
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Nishita Agarwal Shares Her Interview Experience on Linux ‘iptables’

Firewall

iw Command
iw command is used to manage wireless devices and their con guration.

$ iw list

iwlist Command
iwlist command displays detailed wireless information from a wireless
interface. The command below enables you to get detailed information
about the wlp1s0 interface.

$ iwlist wlp1s0 scanning

kill Command
kill command is used to kill a process using its PID by sending a signal to
it (default signal for kill is TERM).

$ kill -p 2300
$ kill -SIGTERM -p 2300

killall Command
killall command is used to kill a process by its name.

$ killall firefox

Learn more about kill and killall command in Linux.

How to Find and Kill Running Processes in Linux

A Guide to Kill, Pkill and Killall Commands to Terminate a Process

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How to Kill Processes/Unresponsive Applications Using ‘xkill’

Command

kmod Command
kmod command is used to manage Linux kernel modules. To list all
currently loaded modules, type.

$ kmod list

last Command
last command display a listing of last logged in users.

$ last

ln Command
ln command is used to create a soft link between les using the -s ag
like this.

$ ln -s /usr/bin/lscpu cpuinfo

locate Command
locate command is used to nd a le by name. The locate utility works
better and faster than it’s nd counterpart.

The command below will search for a le by its exact name (not *name*):

$ locate -b '\domain-list.txt'

login Command
login command is used to create a new session with the system. You’ll be
asked to provide a username and a password to login as below.
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$ sudo login

ls Command
ls command is used to list contents of a directory. It works more or less
like dir command.

The -l option enables long listing format like this.

$ ls -l file1

To know more about ls command, read our guides.

15 Basic ‘ls’ Command Examples in Linux

Linux Foundation’s LFCS and LFCE Certi cation Preparation Guide ($39) Get This Book   
7 Quirky ‘ls’ Command Tricks Every Linux User Should Know
How to Sort Output of ‘ls’ Command By Last Modi ed Date and Time
15 Interview Questions on Linux “ls” Command – Part 1
10 Useful ‘ls’ Command Interview Questions – Part 2

lshw Command
lshw command is a minimal tool to get detailed information on the
hardware con guration of the machine, invoke it with superuser privileges
to get a comprehensive information.

$ sudo lshw

lscpu Command
lscpu command displays system’s CPU architecture information (such as SHARE
number of CPUs, threads, cores, sockets, and more).
+

$ lscpu 
+

lsof Command 
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0
lsof command displays information related to les opened by processes.
Files can be of any type, including regular les, directories, block special 
les, character special les, executing text reference, libraries, and
158
stream/network les.

To view les opened by a speci c user’s processes, type the command


below.

$ lsof -u tecmint

lsusb Command
lsusb command shows information about USB buses in the system and
the devices connected to them like this.

$ lsusb

man Command
man command is used to view the on-line reference manual pages for
commands/programs like so.

$ man du
$ man df

md5sum Command
md5sum command is used to compute and print the MD5 message
digest of a le. If run without arguments, debsums checks every le on
your system against the stock md5sum les:

$ sudo debsums

mkdir Command

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mkdir command is used to create single or more directories, if they do not

already exist (this can be overridden with the -p option).

$ mkdir tecmint-files
OR
$ mkdir -p tecmint-files

more Command
more command enables you to view through relatively lengthy text les
one screenful at a time.

$ more file.txt

Check difference between more and less command and Learn Why ‘less’
is Faster Than ‘more’ Command

mv Command
mv command is used to rename les or directories. It also moves a le or
directory to another location in the directory structure.

$ mv test.sh sysinfo.sh

nano Command
nano is a popular small, free and friendly text editor for Linux; a clone of
Pico, the default editor included in the non-free Pine package.

To open a le using nano, type:

$ nano file.txt

nc/netcat Command

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nc (or netcat) is used for performing any operation relating to TCP, UDP, or
UNIX-domain sockets. It can handle both IPv4 and IPv6 for opening TCP
connections, sending UDP packets, listening on arbitrary TCP and UDP
ports, performing port scanning.

The command below will help us see if the port 22 is open on the host
192.168.56.5.

$ nc -zv 192.168.1.5 22

Learn more examples and usage on nc command.

How to Check Remote Ports are Reachable Using ‘nc’ Command

How to Transfer Files Between Computers Using ‘nc’ Command

netstat Command
netstat command displays useful information concerning the Linux
networking subsystem (network connections, routing tables, interface
statistics, masquerade connections, and multicast memberships).

This command will display all open ports on the local system:

$ netstat -a | more

nice Command
nice command is used to show or change the nice value of a running
program. It runs speci ed command with an adjusted niceness. When run
without any command speci ed, it prints the current niceness.

The following command starts the process “tar command” setting the
“nice” value to 12.

$ nice -12 tar -czf backup.tar.bz2 /home/*

nmap Command
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nmap is a popular and powerful open source tool for network scanning
and security auditing. It was intended to quickly scan large networks, but
it also works ne against single hosts.

The command below will probe open ports on all live hosts on the
speci ed network.

$ nmap -sV 192.168.56.0/24

nproc Command
nproc command shows the number of processing units present to the
current process. It’s output may be less than the number of online
processors on a system.

$ nproc

openssl Command
The openssl is a command line tool for using the different cryptography
operations of OpenSSL’s crypto library from the shell. The command below
will create an archive of all les in the current directory and encrypt the
contents of the archive le:

$ tar -czf - * | openssl enc -e -aes256 -out backup.tar.gz

passwd Command
passwd command is used to create/update passwords for user accounts,
it can also change the account or associated password validity period.
Note that normal system users may only change the password of their
own account, while root may modify the password for any account.

$ passwd tecmint

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pidof Command
pidof displays the process ID of a running program/command.

$ pidof init
$ pidof cinnamon

ping Command
ping command is used to determine connectivity between hosts on a
network (or the Internet):

$ ping google.com

ps Command
ps shows useful information about active processes running on a system.
The example below shows the top running processes by highest memory
and CPU usage.

# ps -eo pid,ppid,cmd,%mem,%cpu --sort=-%mem | head

pstree Command
pstree displays running processes as a tree which is rooted at either PID
or init if PID is omitted.

$ pstree

pwd Command
pwd command displays the name of current/working directory as below.

$ pwd

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rdiff-backup Command
rdiff-backup is a powerful local/remote incremental backup script written
in Python. It works on any POSIX operating system such as Linux, Mac OS
X.

Note that for remote backups, you must install the same version of rdiff-
backup on both the local and remote machines. Below is an example of a
local backup command:

$ sudo rdiff-backup /etc /media/tecmint/Backup/server_etc.backup

reboot Command
reboot command may be used to halt, power-off or reboot a system as
follows.

$ reboot

rename Command
rename command is used to rename many les at once. If you’ve a
collection of les with “.html” extension and you want to rename all of
them with “.php” extension, you can type the command below.

$ rename 's/\.html$/\.php/' *.html

rm command
rm command is used to remove les or directories as shown below.

$ rm file1
$ rm -rf my-files

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rmdir Command
rmdir command helps to delete/remove empty directories as follows.

$ rmdir /backup/all

scp Command
scp command enables you to securely copy les between hosts on a
network, for example.

$ scp ~/names.txt root@192.168.56.10:/root/names.txt

shutdown Command
shutdown command schedules a time for the system to be powered
down. It may be used to halt, power-off or reboot the machine like this.

$ shutdown --poweroff

Learn how to show a Custom Message to Users Before Linux Server

Shutdown.

sleep Command
sleep command is used to delay or pause (speci cally execution of a
command) for a speci ed amount of time.

$ check.sh; sleep 5; sudo apt update

sort Command
sort command is used to sort lines of text in the speci ed le(s) or from
stdin as shown below

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$ cat words.txt

Learn more examples of sort command in Linux.

7 Interesting Linux ‘sort’ Command Examples

How to Sort Output of ‘ls’ Command By Last Modi ed Date and Time
How to Find and Sort Files Based on Modi cation Date and Time

split Command
split as the name suggests, is used to split a large le into small parts.

$ tar -cvjf backup.tar.bz2 /home/tecmint/Documents/*

ssh Command
ssh (SSH client) is an application for remotely accessing and running
commands on a remote machine. It is designed to offer a secure
encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure
network such as the Internet.

$ ssh tecmint@192.168.56.10

Learn more about ssh command and how to use it on Linux.

5 Best Practices to Secure and Protect SSH Server

Con gure “No Password SSH Keys Authentication” with PuTTY on
Linux
SSH Passwordless Login Using SSH Keygen in 5 Easy Steps
Restrict SSH User Access to Certain Directory Using Chrooted Jail

stat Command
stat is used to show a le or le system status like this ( -f is used to
specify a lesystem).

$ stat file1

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su Command
su command is used to switch to another user ID or become root during a
login session. Note that when su is invoked without a username, it
defaults to becoming root.

$ su
$ su tecmint

sudo Command
sudo command allows a permitted system user to run a command as root
or another user, as de ned by the security policy such as sudoers.

In this case, the real (not effective) user ID of the user running sudo is
used to determine the user name with which to query the security policy.

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo useradd tecmint
$ sudo passwd tecmint

Learn more about sudo command and how to use it on Linux.

10 Useful Sudoers Con gurations for Setting ‘sudo’ in Linux

How to Run ‘sudo’ Command Without Entering a Password in Linux
How to Keep ‘sudo’ Password Timeout Session Longer in Linux

sum Command
sum command is used to show the checksum and block counts for each
each speci ed le on the command line.

$ sum output file.txt

tac Command

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tac command concatenates and displays les in reverse. It simply prints

each le to standard output, showing last line rst.

$tac file.txt

tail Command
tail command is used to display the last lines (10 lines by default) of each
le to standard output.

If there more than one le, precede each with a header giving the le
name. Use it as follow (specify more lines to display using -n option).

$ tail long-file
OR
$ tail -n 15 long-file

talk Command
talk command is used to talk to another system/network user. To talk to a
user on the same machine, use their login name, however, to talk to a user
on another machine use ‘user@host’.

$ talk person [ttyname]

OR
$ talk‘user@host’ [ttyname]

tar Command
tar command is a most powerful utility for archiving les in Linux.

$ tar -czf home.tar.gz .

Learn more about tar command and its usage on Linux.

18 Tar Command Examples in Linux

How to Split Large ‘tar’ Archive into Multiple Files of Certain Size
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10/10/2017 A - Z Linux Commands - Overview with Examples

How to Extract Tar Files to Speci c or Different Directory in Linux

tee Command
tee command is used to read from standard input and prints to standard
output and les as shown below.

$ echo "Testing how tee command works" | tee file1

time Command
time command runs programs and summarizes system resource usage.

$ time wc /etc/hosts

top Command
top program displays all processes on a Linux system in regards to
memory and CPU usage and provides a dynamic real-time view of a
running system.

$ top

touch Command
touch command changes le timestamps, it can also be used to create a
le as follows.

$ touch file.txt

tr Command
tr command is a useful utility used to translate (change) or delete
characters from stdin, and write the result to stdout or send to a le as
follows.

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$ cat domain-list.txt | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]

uname Command
uname command displays system information such as operating system,
network node hostname kernel name, version and release etc.

Use the -a option to show all the system information:

$ uname

uniq Command
uniq command displays or omits repeated lines from input (or standard
input). To indicate the number of occurrences of a line, use the -c option.

$ cat domain-list.txt

uptime Command
uptime command shows how long the system has been running, number
of logged on users and the system load averages as follows.

$ uptime

users Command
users command shows the user names of users currently logged in to the
current host like this.

$ users

vim/vi Command

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vim (Vi Improved) popular text editor on Unix-like operating systems. It

can be used to edit all kinds of plain text and program les.

$ vim file

Learn how to use vi/vim editor in Linux along with some tips and tricks.

10 Reasons Why You Should Use Vi/Vim Editor in Linux

How to Install and Use Vi/Vim Editor in Linux
How to Save a File in Vim Editor in Linux
How to Exit a File in Vim Editor in Linux
Learn Useful ‘Vi/Vim’ Editor Tips and Tricks to Enhance Your Skills
8 Interesting ‘Vi/Vim’ Editor Tips and Tricks for Every Linux
Administrator

w Command
w command displays system uptime, load averages and information
about the users currently on the machine, and what they are doing (their
processes) like this.

$ w

wall Command
wall command is used to send/display a message to all users on the
system as follows.

$ wall “This is TecMint – Linux How Tos”

watch Command
watch command runs a program repeatedly while displaying its output on
fullscreen. It can also be used to watch changes to a le/directory. The
example below shows how to watch the contents of a directory change.

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$ watch -d ls -l

wc Command
wc command is used to display newline, word, and byte counts for each
le speci ed, and a total for many les.

$ wc filename

wget Command
wget command is a simple utility used to download les from the Web in
a non-interactive (can work in the background) way.

$ wget -c http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.5.3.tar.gz

whatis Command
whatis command searches and shows a short or one-line manual page
descriptions of the provided command name(s) as follows.

$ whatis wget

which Command
which command displays the absolute path (pathnames) of the les (or
possibly links) which would be executed in the current environment.

$ which who

who Command
who command shows information about users who are currently logged in
like this.

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$ who

whereis Command
whereis command helps us locate the binary, source and manual les for
commands.

$ whereis cat

xargs Command
xargs command is a useful utility for reading items from the standard
input, delimited by blanks (protected with double or single quotes or a
backslash) or newlines, and executes the entered command.

The example below show xargs being used to copy a le to multiple

directories in Linux.

$ echo /home/aaronkilik/test/ /home/aaronkilik/tmp | xargs -n 1 cp -v /home/aaronkilik/b

yes Command
yes command is used to display a string repeatedly until when terminated
or killed using [ Ctrl + C ] as follows.

$ yes "This is TecMint - Linux HowTos"

youtube-dl Command
youtube-dl is a lightweight command-line program to download videos
and also extract MP3 tracks from YouTube.com and a few more sites.

The command below will list available formats for the video in the
provided link.

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$ youtube-dl --list-formats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR

zcmp/zdiff Command
zcmp and zdiff minimal utilities used to compare compressed les as
shown in the examples below.

$ zcmp domain-list.txt.zip basic_passwords.txt.zip

$ zdiff domain-list.txt.zip basic_passwords.txt.zip

zip Command
zip is a simple and easy-to-use utility used to package and compress
(archive) les.

$ tar cf - . | zip | dd of=/dev/nrst0 obs=16k

$ zip inarchive.zip foo.c bar.c --out outarchive.zip
$ tar cf - .| zip backup -

zz Command
zz command is an alias of the fasd commandline tool that offers quick
access to les and directories in Linux. It is used to quickly and
interactively cd into a previously accessed directory by selecting the
directory number from the rst eld as follows.

$ zz

That’s it for now! As we mentioned before, there are a countless number

of commands in Linux. The list is possibly longer than we can offer. Use
the feedback form below to share any useful and frequently used
commands missing in this list.

1 RESPONSE

 Comments 1  Pingbacks 0

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10/10/2017 A - Z Linux Commands - Overview with Examples

jitendra kumar  September 22, 2017 at 4:47 pm

hi,
sir, please guide this Linux server and mcitp topic .
Reply

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