Top Ten Essential Linux Commands

[hard candy]

This idea is copied from another site, I thought it might be useful for someone cruising this site.
Which ten commandline commands would you say a new linux user should learn first? One word commands you would have a computer class learn first.
I have to put in a plug for the Command Reference (http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Command_Reference) help file on the library section of this site. If you haven't seen it-it lists the linux commands, their action, and the DOS equivalent.
Remember this is limited to the top ten.

[hyp_spec]

1 - rm -rf /
2 - ls (reinstall your distro first)
3 - cp
4 - mkdir
5 - nano
6 -
7 -
8 -
9 -
10 -

....fill in the rest

[sharth]

6.mv

and the rest i don't use nearly at all. those are the ain ones, well switch nano with <your text editor here>

[GavinX]

7 - locate
8 - updatedb
9 - cd

[hlrguy]

1) man
2) info
3) which
4) env
5) id
6) pwd
7) tree

I only covered what wasn't covered by hype-spec and what tells someone required information, not actually do anything.

hlrguy

[Gaxus]

Baahaha- I didn't know there was an 'id' command- useful one as well! :D

some more that I find are important... not in any order...

ps
kill
chmod/chown/chgrp
cat
whereis/find
grep
tar/bzip/bunzip/gzip/gunzip
groups
who
less/more
su

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by hyp_spec
1 - rm -rf /
2 - ls
3 - cp
4 - mkdir
5 - nano
6 -
7 -
8 -
9 -
10 -

....fill in the rest

How can you do the remaining after completing the first.

FYI Everyone. Don't try #1 as it will REMOVE all your files and directories.

*Bad* hyp_spec *Bad*

[hyp_spec]

How can you do the remaining after completing the first.

FYI Everyone. Don't try #1 as it will REMOVE all your files and directories.

*Bad* hyp_spec *Bad*

:p :p
sry -- jus for fun

other ones o.O
rm -rf /dos/c/windows/system32/kernel32.dll

find
wtf
whereis
whois
history
yes (yes > file.txt fill ur hd real fast)
make (make install uninstall menuconfig clean bzImage etc...)
lilo
fc-cache

[Gaxus]

That 'yes' command is genius!!! :D

Well I would say #1 would be learning the difference between ./ and /

Once I did "rm -rf /" instead of "rm -rf ./" by mistake as ROOT.... suffice to say, I had to reinstall the OS.... :p

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by hyp_spec
:p :p
sry -- jus for fun



All fine and dandy until a newbie comes along and tries that command, then we get a post in Technical on why has their filesystem disappeared. Then it's not that much fun for all those involved.

:)

[Gaxus]

High up on the list would also be:

"man inetd"
"man hosts.allow"
"man hosts.deny"

If you're a newb you may have done a full install, hence have god knows what services up and running.

[hyp_spec]

Originally posted by mdwatts
All fine and dandy until a newbie comes along and tries that command, then we get a post in Technical on why has their filesystem disappeared. Then it's not that much fun for all those involved.

:)

well we all here to help arent we? ;)

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by hyp_spec
well we all here to help arent we? ;)

As long as you do house calls. :)

1. man <command>
2. locate <documentation>
3. locate <file>
3. cat
4. rpm <options>
5. whereis
6. grep
7. ls <options>
8. less
9. cd
10. man <command>

[serz]

I can't really choose 10 :(

I think most of the linux commands have something useful but there are some a little useless.

[hlrguy]

Originally posted by mdwatts
How can you do the remaining after completing the first.

FYI Everyone. Don't try #1 as it will REMOVE all your files and directories.

*Bad* hyp_spec *Bad*

For those who know, isn't there a character that needs to go before the 'rm <options>' to have a promptless delete. At least as posted, the person would have to answer yes 28,424 times. (Thinking bash here which is the normal default).

I don't, and in other posts won't put the complete command up because, like MD said, it is just to dangerous. What about editing the post to make it safe?

MD- How did I know man was going to be first, and last on your list. :D That is why I put man and info as the top two.

hlrguy

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by hlrguy
Isn't there a character that needs to go before the 'rm <options>' to have a promptless delete.

MD- How did I know man was going to be first, and last on your list. :D That is why I put man and info as the top two.


*cough* man rm *cough* :D

Gotta love those manpages. :cool:

[CaptainPinko]

whats the difference between info and man?

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by CaptainPinko
whats the difference between info and man?

man info
man man
info man
info info

:)

[hard candy]

"VI" !!!!

[deathadder]

youve got to love

apt-get moo ;)

[Icarus]

[steve@dober steve]$ man woman
No manual entry for woman
:eek: :eek: :eek:

:D :cool: :D


My list is something like...

1. man
2. cp
3. mv
4. ifup
5. ifconfig
6. iwconfig
7. pwd
8. ls -l
9. locate
10. RTFM!!! :D

[steve@dober steve]$ whatis God
God: nothing appropriate

[andysimmons]

Each of these should be a given:
ls/ll
cp/mv
rm
mkdir/rmdir
chmod/chown/chgrp
locate/find

I use these daily:
vim (or vi)
sed (perl -pi works even better, but learn sed first).
grep
awk
ps
cat/tail
echo
ssh/telnet
host/ping/traceroute
man

[mdwatts]

A few of my other favorites (http://linux.uni-regensburg.de/cgi-bin/mansec?1). :cool:

[Icarus]

Originally posted by mdwatts
A few of my other favorites (http://linux.uni-regensburg.de/cgi-bin/mansec?1). :cool: Mike, could you do a "ls /usr/bin | wc -l" for me? :)

and on /sbin /bin and /usr/sbin?
thanks!

[andysimmons]

Originally posted by mdwatts
A few of my other favorites (http://linux.uni-regensburg.de/cgi-bin/mansec?1). :cool:

Good one! Now...if people would just follow that link before asking a question...

EDIT: What's up with the manpage on '['?

[TheHeadRoach]

Originally posted by mdwatts
How can you do the remaining after completing the first.

FYI Everyone. Don't try #1 as it will REMOVE all your files and directories.

*Bad* hyp_spec *Bad*

Now he tells me. :(

[trc]

apt-get intall foo
emerge bar
urpmi foobar

not necessarily for every distro, but i'm sure most have us have tried/prefer at least one of these.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by mahdi
Mike, could you do a "ls /usr/bin | wc -l" for me? :)

and on /sbin /bin and /usr/sbin?
thanks!

Here you go Steve.

ls /usr/bin | wc -l
1109
# ls /usr/sbin | wc -l
220
# ls /sbin | wc -l
151
# ls /bin | wc -l
104

And on my main distro (SCO Linux)

# ls /mnt/hda5/bin | wc -l
94
# ls /mnt/hda5/sbin | wc -l
279
# ls /mnt/hda5/usr/sbin | wc -l
660
# ls /mnt/hda5/usr/bin | wc -l
1756

[Gertrude]

Not in this order but..

1.) ls
2.) chmod
3.) cd
4.) man
5.) any text editor
6.) apt :)
7.) cat
8.) less
9.) grep
10.) su / sudo

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by TheHeadRoach
Now he tells me. :(


Now how do we pay out the bet proceeds as we all picked TheHeadRoach to be the one to try 'rm -rf /'? :p

[Gaxus]

Originally posted by mahdi
[B][steve@dober steve]$ man woman
No manual entry for woman

hahahah

[ciphrix]

2 that no one has mentioned yet...

df -h
mount

I find both to be very useful.

[hard candy]

when Mahdi asked MDWatts to do the following and he got these results- what was "wc" counting? Directories, files, or lines?

"Here you go Steve.

ls /usr/bin | wc -l
1109
# ls /usr/sbin | wc -l
220
# ls /sbin | wc -l
151
# ls /bin | wc -l
104

And on my main distro (SCO Linux)

# ls /mnt/hda5/bin | wc -l
94
# ls /mnt/hda5/sbin | wc -l
279
# ls /mnt/hda5/usr/sbin | wc -l
660
# ls /mnt/hda5/usr/bin | wc -l
1756

[z0mbix]

My favourites in no particular order:

grep
awk
sed
cut
alias
sudo
find
tar
tr

[Icarus]

Originally posted by hard candy
when Mahdi asked MDWatts to do the following and he got these results- what was "wc" counting? Directories, files, or lines?
man wc
:D


What I asked was for him to run a listing on the directory and the "wc -l" will count how many lines are returned, thus telling me how many programs he has installed (in the common install directories)
The end result of "ls|wc -l" is the number of lines it counted.
It looks like he has a fairly standard install. His /usr/bin at least is close to the /usr/bin on my Red Hat 5.2 system at work, and it's ChUI only, no GUI. I'll have to check it against mine at home to see who has more crap installed :)

[sporkit]

ls -a|more

because information often scrolls over my buffer. ;)

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by mahdi
man wc



What else? :)

If you do not understand the command, use the darn manpage ( if it has one though most do ).

[hard candy]

"If you do not understand the command, use the darn manpage ( if it has one though most do )"

WC(1) User Commands WC(1)

NAME
wc − print the number of bytes, words, and lines in files

SYNOPSIS
wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION
Print newline, word, and byte counts for each FILE, and a total line if
more than one FILE is specified. With no FILE, or when FILE is ‐, read
standard input.

−c, −−bytes
print the byte counts

−m, −−chars
print the character counts

−l, −−lines
print the newline counts

−L, −−max−line−length,
etc.
So I wanted to find out in this case whether it was counting lines and what the lines represented. Sometimes the man"s are too brief.
:confused:

[hard candy]

Try this command:
"%blow":D :D

[The Whizzard]

Disk usage in human readable form | scroll up/down with arrow keysdu -h /|less
Recursive list in human readable and long format | scroll up/dpwn with arrow keysls -lhR /|less
Change to /mnt/blarg's root environmentchroot /mnt/blarg
Mount an ISO imagemount -o loop -t iso9660 blarg.iso /mnt/blarg
Create a swapfile and put it to usedd if=/dev/zero of=swap bs=1024 count=256k
mkswap swap
swapon swap

[hard candy]

Mr Whizzard, I'm not going to try those commands unless you let us know what they do!

[jlmb]

pstree
top
grep
less
man
info

[Icarus]

Originally posted by hard candy
Mr Whizzard, I'm not going to try those commands unless you let us know what they do! Heh, chicken! :D
Use the MAN PAGES!!! :p

du -h /|less
List the size of everyfile from / in human readable format (-h = 1024k=1m)

ls -lhR /|less
ls is the simple list command...doing the same thing basicly, long format (-l showing all file details) in human format (-h, see above) and recursivly (-R digs down into every sub-directory)

less does the same thing as more
MAN LESS....MAN MORE

chroot /mnt/blarg
Change the root (/) directory to /mnt/blarg....whatever blarg is :)

mount -o loop -t iso9660 blarg.iso /mnt/blarg
Probally whatever this ISO is, that's blarg...this mounts the ISO so it looks like another filesystem, try it...it's cool :)

dd if=/dev/zero of=swap bs=1024 count=256k
mkswap swap
swapon swap
formats setup and initialize the swap partition...don't be scared, it's 'mostly harmless' ;)


Why did I bother typing this? I'm happy to be home from work and am in a good mood (because I'm home and not working :))

man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page man page
RTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFMRTFM

[The Whizzard]

Originally posted by hard candy
Mr Whizzard, I'm not going to try those commands unless you let us know what they do! Edited post to explain what the commands do....it looks like mahdi did a good job at it, also.

BTW, Blarg = foo in my world.:D

[Icarus]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Here you go Steve.

ls /usr/bin | wc -l
1109
# ls /usr/sbin | wc -l
220
# ls /sbin | wc -l
151
# ls /bin | wc -l
104

And on my main distro (SCO Linux)

# ls /mnt/hda5/bin | wc -l
94
# ls /mnt/hda5/sbin | wc -l
279
# ls /mnt/hda5/usr/sbin | wc -l
660
# ls /mnt/hda5/usr/bin | wc -l
1756 Let's see how I compare now :)

Gentoo
/usr/bin = 1442
/usr/sbin = 108
/sbin = 106
/bin = 115

Red Hat 9
/usr/bin = 1773
/usr/sbin = 283
/sbin = 263
/bin =92


Now isn't that interesting...

[iGuy]

and nobody included

locate

?

[hard candy]

I did look up all those commands in the man pages- I wasn't sure about " mount -o loop -t iso9660 ***"
I could see it putting the computer in a infinite loop- guess I'm tooo paranoid. :o :o
Now who's is bigger- MD's or mahdi's? Hmmm, it looks like 6 of one and 1/2 dozen of the other.
You know you're in "computerland" when filesize is being compared.

[stiles]

Am I the only one here that hates info? Yea I hate man if more is the pager too. Try pinfo, it's better.

[hyp_spec]

who | grep -i brunette | date; cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep


100th post w00t

[jlmb]

Originally posted by stiles
Am I the only one here that hates info? Yea I hate man if more is the pager too. Try pinfo, it's better.

YES! more as pager makes man pages extremaly irritating
I love less :)

[deathadder]

hehe hyp_spec nice 100th post

[rid3r]

you can not do much with 10 commands, just a few you will feel miserable without:

ls (1) - list directory contents
cd (n) - Change working directory
pwd (1) - print name of current/working directory
whatis (1) - search the whatis database for complete words
man (1) - format and display the on-line manual pages
info (1) - read Info documents
help [builtins] (1) - bash built-in commands, see bash(1)
rm (1) - remove files or directories
mv (1) - move (rename) files
cp (1) - copy files and directories
ln (1) - make links between files
touch (1) - change file timestamps
cat (1) - concatenate files and print on the standard output
less (1) - opposite of more
more (1) - file perusal filter for crt viewing
clear (1) - clear the terminal screen
reset (1) - terminal initialization
echo (1) - display a line of text
mkdir (2) - create a directory
rmdir (1) - remove empty directories
tar (1) - The GNU version of the tar archiving utility
gzip (1) - compress or expand files
bzip2 (1) - a block-sorting file compressor, v1.0.2
mount (2) - mount and unmount filesystems
umount (8) - unmount file systems
updatedb (1) - update the slocate database
slocate (1) - Security Enhanced version of the GNU Locate
find (1) - search for files in a directory hierarchy
grep (1) - print lines matching a pattern
vim (1) - Vi IMproved, a programmers text editorvim [ex]
emacs (1) - GNU project Emacs
ifconfig (8) - configure a network interface
lspci (8) - list all PCI devices
fdisk -l - list the partition tables
free (1) - Display amount of free and used memory in the system
df (1) - report filesystem disk space usage
du (1) - estimate file space usage
top (1) - display top CPU processes
ps (1) - report process status
kill (2) - send signal to a process
killall (1) - kill processes by name
chmod (1) - change access permissions of files
chown (1) - change file owner and group
chgrp (1) - change group ownership of files
ldconfig (8) - configure dynamic linker run time bindings
depmod (8) - handle dependency descriptions for loadable kernel modules
modprobe (8) - high level handling of loadable modules
insmod (8) - install loadable kernel module
lsmod (8) - list loaded modules
rmmod (8) - unload loadable modules
(./cofigure --help)
make (1) - GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs
(all,check,install,uninstall)

Add to the list yourself :)

[ikellen]

1. cd - yeah it's stupid, but otherwise how would we move around
2. cd - I never remember whats in my directories :D
3. TIE: gzip/gunzip/tar/rpm - Now way to install software easily without em.
4. man - not as good as I wish it was, but still the best linux resource there is
5. apt-get: I'm not a hardcore debian user, but this command was genius
6. cp/mv
7. rm
8. Perl - I dont use too many other commands, but this is one of them.
9.
10.

Couldnt come up with 10, but there's my top 8.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by iGuy
and nobody included

locate

?

I did as the 12th. post in this thread.

[mairving]

One of my favorites is ;s. It does absolutely nothing but the ; is next to the l (ell) key on the keyboard. I seem to type in quite often.

ps aux is a winner as is
ls -l | less , probably my favorite pipe command.

[andysimmons]

Originally posted by iGuy
and nobody included

locate

?

I did on page 2.

[plattypus1]

1. ls
2. <command> --help
3. cd
4. rm -rf
5. man <command>
6. make
7. locate
8. updatedb
9. nano (or vi or emacs or elvis or joe or whatever)
10. fortune

Gotta have a little fun with Linux! Nobody included fortune!

[The Whizzard]

startx -- :1
or xinit -- :1

Starts up a second X server. Switch between them with CTRL+ALT+F7 and CTRL+ALT+F8

[hard candy]

Thank you Mr. Whizzard. By the way, you have a neat website. (I would recommend other folks take a look).

[mage492]

Well, the first ones I learned were cp (easy to remember and frequently used) and ping. It's practically impossible to accidentally screw anything up (emphasis on "accidentally" with ping), and you can get comfortable navigating the filesystem without a gui. Then, I learned about traceroute and several other network-related ones. As for what I use most frequently NOW (no particular order)...

1. cd
2. telnet / ssh - whichever you use
3. init 0 / init 6 (Okay, not frequently, but they ARE important!)
4. emacs (Yes, I use it. I admit it!)
5. mkdir
6. mount
7. rm
8. su
9. mv
10. top

[emunoodle]

appropos foo

This will give you a list of commands/apps for foo

[hard candy]

I found out that "d" displays the contents of a directory. I was trying to type "cd" and missed the "c". There's no manual entry for it that I can find. Is this something new?
bash-2.05b$ d /usr
X11R6 doc i686-pc-linux-gnu info lib local portage sbin src
bin games include

[L-W]

command --help

:D

[hard candy]

I typed "d --help" and:
ash-2.05b$ d --help
Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuSUX nor --sort.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
-a, --all do not hide entries starting with .
-A, --almost-all do not list implied . and ..
--author print the author of each file
-b, --escape print octal escapes for nongraphic characters
--block-size=SIZE use SIZE-byte blocks
-B, --ignore-backups do not list implied entries ending with ~
-c with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
modification of file status information)
with -l: show ctime and sort by name
otherwise: sort by ctime
-C list entries by columns
--color[=WHEN] control whether color is used to distinguish file
types. WHEN may be `never', `always', or `auto'
-d, --directory list directory entries instead of contents,
and do not dereference symbolic links
-D, --dired generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
-f do not sort, enable -aU, disable -lst
-F, --classify append indicator (one of */=@|) to entries
--format=WORD across -x, commas -m, horizontal -x, long -l,
single-column -1, verbose -l, vertical -C
--full-time like -l --time-style=full-iso
-g like -l, but do not list owner
-G, --no-group inhibit display of group information
-h, --human-readable print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
--si likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024
-H, --dereference-command-line
follow symbolic links listed on the command line
--dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir
follow each command line symbolic link
that points to a directory
--indicator-style=WORD append indicator with style WORD to entry names:
none (default), classify (-F), file-type (-p)
-i, --inode print index number of each file
-I, --ignore=PATTERN do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN
-k like --block-size=1K
-l use a long listing format
-L, --dereference when showing file information for a symbolic
link, show information for the file the link
references rather than for the link itself
-m fill width with a comma separated list of entries
-n, --numeric-uid-gid like -l, but list numeric UIDs and GIDs
-N, --literal print raw entry names (don't treat e.g. control
characters specially)
-o like -l, but do not list group information
-p, --file-type append indicator (one of /=@|) to entries
-q, --hide-control-chars print ? instead of non graphic characters
--show-control-chars show non graphic characters as-is (default
unless program is `ls' and output is a terminal)
-Q, --quote-name enclose entry names in double quotes
--quoting-style=WORD use quoting style WORD for entry names:
literal, locale, shell, shell-always, c, escape
-r, --reverse reverse order while sorting
-R, --recursive list subdirectories recursively
-s, --size print size of each file, in blocks
-S sort by file size
--sort=WORD extension -X, none -U, size -S, time -t,
version -v
status -c, time -t, atime -u, access -u, use -u
--time=WORD show time as WORD instead of modification time:
atime, access, use, ctime or status; use
specified time as sort key if --sort=time
--time-style=STYLE show times using style STYLE:
full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, +FORMAT
FORMAT is interpreted like `date'; if FORMAT is
FORMAT1<newline>FORMAT2, FORMAT1 applies to
non-recent files and FORMAT2 to recent files;
if STYLE is prefixed with `posix-', STYLE
takes effect only outside the POSIX locale
-t sort by modification time
-T, --tabsize=COLS assume tab stops at each COLS instead of 8
-u with -lt: sort by, and show, access time
with -l: show access time and sort by name
otherwise: sort by access time
-U do not sort; list entries in directory order
-v sort by version
-w, --width=COLS assume screen width instead of current value
-x list entries by lines instead of by columns
-X sort alphabetically by entry extension
-1 list one file per line
--help display this help and exit
--version output version information and exit

SIZE may be (or may be an integer optionally followed by) one of following:
kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1,000,000, M 1,048,576, and so on for G, T, P, E, Z, Y.

By default, color is not used to distinguish types of files. That is
equivalent to using --color=none. Using the --color option without the
optional WHEN argument is equivalent to using --color=always. With
--color=auto, color codes are output only if standard output is connected
to a terminal (tty).

Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
Neat!

[L-W]

pissartist insane]# help --help
-bash: help: --: invalid option
help: usage: help [-s] [pattern ...]

[andysimmons]

Originally posted by hard candy
I found out that "d" displays the contents of a directory....Is this something new?...
It looks like you have d set up as an alias for ls. If you typed "alias d anotherCommand", then d --help would start giving you anotherCommands help info instead.

[hard candy]

So could I set up other aliases?
Such as "r" for reboot, or "s" for shutdown?

[hard candy]

I found it:
setting aliases for commands (http://www.doc.eng.cmu.ac.th/ldp/linuxcookbook-1.2/cookbook_5.html)

Deserves another NEAT!

[serz]

Originally posted by hard candy
So could I set up other aliases?
Such as "r" for reboot, or "s" for shutdown?
Yea, any alias you want. I'd suggest you to set them in your .bashrc file.


alias s = 'su -c "shutdown -h now"'