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Useful Linux Commands

// December 18th, 2008 // No Comments » // Commands, General, Howto, Linux, Technology

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Here I have compiled a fairly short list of useful terminal commands. Most of these I use on a daily basis to administer my Linux box, some of them are just for fun or to find out useful information about your Linux box. If I missed a command you would like to have added, leave me a comment.

How to read this list:

System Information <—– The Command Category

Find the Process ID of a running program <—– Description of the command

• pidof program <—– The terminal command (Italic means to insert your own value)

System Information

Show system uptime

• uptime

Show computer stats

• lspci

Show a list of all running processes

• ps aux

Kill a process using the PID (Process ID)

• kill PID

Find the Process ID of a running program

• pidof program

Killing a process by name

• killall program

View the current time, date, and year

• date

Find the processor architecture

• arch

Show the amount of disk space in use and available on the system

• df

Show amount of free and used memory in the system

• free

Show hostname of the machine on the network

• hostname

Show operating system, hostname, kernel version, date, time, and processor

• uname –a

Show the username of the current account

• whoami

Modify Files

Change the access permissions of a file

• chmod +x /where/the/file/is

Change the owner and group of a file

• chown newowner /where/the/file/is

Copy a file

• cp /original/file /new/location/of/file

Move a file

• mv /original/location/file /new/location/file

Remove a file

• rm /directory/file

Modify Directories

Make a directory

• mkdir /new/directory/

Remove directory

• rmdir /directory/to/remove/

Interact With Terminal

Clear the terminal window

• clear

Change the working directory of the terminal

• cd /new/directory/

List the contents of the current directory

• ls

Exit the terminal

• exit

Search for files

• find filename

Interact With The System

Shutdown the system

• shutdown now

Talk to another user on the system

• talk USERNAME message to user

Read your fortune

• fortune