Linux Commands

ls
ls with no option list files and directories in bare format where we won’t be able to view details like file
types, size, modified date and time, permission and links etc.

1) To list Hidden Files ls -a

2) List files and directories in long format (more detailed list) ls -l
3) List Files with Human Readable Format with option -lh ls -lh
4) List files and directories in reverse order ls -lr
5) List files and directories in reverser last modified order ls -lrt
(recent will come at the end)

cat
cat (short for “concatenate“) allows us to create single or multiple files, view contain of file, concatenate
files and redirect output in terminal or files.

1) Display Contents of File Cat <file_name>

2) View Contents of Multiple Files in terminal Cat <file1> <file2>

Or
Cat <file1>; cat <file2>

3) Create a File with Cat Command cat >file

4) Display Line Numbers for the content in File while printing cat -n file

more to view a text file one page at a time, press spacebar to go to the next page
more file.txt # show the document one page at a time
more -num filename # show the document page few lines as specified (-num)

less less is much the same as more command except:

a) You can navigate the page up/down using the less command and not possible in more
command.
b) You can search a string in less command. (use /keyword to search)
c) “more” was fairly limited, and additional development on “more” had stopped
d) it uses same functions as vi editor
head a) head -n n file.txt The head command, as the name implies, print the top N number of
lines of the given input. By default, it prints the first 10 lines of the specified files.
head -n 5 file.txt (or) head -5 file.txt
# Prints first 5 line of file.txt

b) head -c num file.txt Prints the first ‘num’ bytes from the file specified. Newline count
as a single character, so if head prints out a newline, it will count it as a byte. num is
mandatory to be specified in command otherwise displays an error.
head -c 6 file.txt

tail a) tail -n n file.txt The tail command, as the name implies, print the last N number of lines
of the given input. By default, it prints the first 10 lines of the specified files.
tail -n 5 file.txt (or) tail -5 file.txt
# Prints last 5 line of file.txt

b) tail -c num file.txt Prints the last ‘num’ bytes from the file specified. Newline count as a
single character, so if tail prints out a newline, it will count it as a byte. num is mandatory
to be specified in command otherwise displays an error.
tail -c 6 file.txt
c) To continuously print a file which is getting updated like log file.
tail -f filename

cd Use the "cd" command to go to a directory/change the current directory. For example, if you
are in the home folder, and you want to go to the downloads folder, then you can type in “cd
downloads”.

mkdir Use the mkdir command when you need to create a folder or a directory.
mkdir /home/sample

rmdir rmdir is use to delete empty directory, to remove non-empty directory use rm

rm Use the rm command to delete files and directories. But rm cannot simply delete a directory.
Use “rm -r” to delete a directory. In this case, it deletes both the folder and the files in it.

rm file_name
rm -r directory

touch The touch command is used to create a file. It can be anything, from an empty txt file to an
empty zip file.
touch filename.txt

To create randomly 1 to 100 files

touch filename{1..100}.txt

pwd Command to know present working directory. When you first open the terminal, you are in
the home directory of your user. To know which directory you are in, you can use
the “pwd” command. It gives us the full path, which means the path that starts from the root.
mv mv command to move files through the command line. We can also use the mv command to
rename a file.
mv old_filename new_filename
move all files from source to destination
mv /source_path/*.* /destination_path/

locate The locate command is used to locate a file in a Linux system, just like the search command in
Windows. This command is useful when you don't know where a file is saved or the actual
name of the file. Using the -i argument with the command helps to ignore the case

locate file_name

cp cp command used to copy files from source location to destination. It takes two arguments:
The first is the location of the file to be copied, the second is where to copy.

cp /source_path/filename /destination_path/

rev To reverse print line or string

cat filename | rev
echo “linux” | rev
 grep
‘global search for the regular expression’: The grep command is a filter that is used to search for lines
matching a specified pattern and print the matching lines to standard output.
1) Anchor Characters: ‘^’ and ‘$’ at the beginning and end of the pattern are used to anchor the pattern
to the start of the line, and to the end of the line respectively.
Example: “^Name” matches all lines that start with the string “Name”. The strings “\<” and “\>” are
used to anchor the pattern to the start and end of a word respectively.
2) Wildcard Character: ‘.’ Is used to match any character.
Example: “^.$” will match all lines with any single character.
3) Escaped Characters: Any of the special characters can be matched as a regular character by escaping
them with a ‘\’.
Example: “\$\*” will match the lines that contain the string “$*”
4) Character Range: A set of characters enclosed in a ‘[‘ and ‘]’ pair specify a range of characters to be
matched.
Example: “[aeiou]” will match all lines that contain a vowel. A hyphen can be used while specifying a
range to shorten a set of consecutive characters. E.g. “[0-9]” will match all lines that contain a digit. A
carat can be used at the beginning of the range to specify a negative range. E.g. “[^xyz]” will match all
lines that do not contain x, y or z.
5) Repetition Modifier: A ‘*’ after a character or group of characters is used to allow matching zero or
more instances of the preceding pattern.
? The preceding item is optional and matched at most once.
* The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
+ The preceding item will be matched one or more times.
{n} The preceding item is matched exactly n times.
{n,} The preceding item is matched n or more times.
{,m} The preceding item is matched at most m times.
{n,m} The preceding item is matched at least n times, but not more than m times.
The grep command supports a number of options for additional controls on the matching:
-i: performs a case-insensitive search.
-n: displays the lines containing the pattern along with the line numbers.
-v: displays the lines not containing the specified pattern.
-c: displays the count of the matching patterns.
1) Match all lines that start with ‘hello’. E.g: “hello there”
grep “^hello” file1
2) Match all lines that end with ‘done’. E.g: “well done”
grep “done$” file1
3) Match all lines that contain any of the letters ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’ or ‘e’.
grep “[a-e]” file1
4) Match all lines that do not contain a vowel
grep “[^aeiou]” file1
5) Match all lines that start with a digit following zero or more spaces. E.g: “ 1.” or “2.”
grep “ *[0-9]” file1
6) Searching in all files recursively using grep -r
grep -r "ramesh" *
7) Search multiple patterns
grep -v -e "pattern" -e "pattern"
8) Show only the matched string
grep -o "is.*line" demo_file
9) Show line number while displaying the output using grep -n
grep -n "pattern" file_name
10) Checking for the given string in multiple file patterns (demo_file, demo_file1)
grep "this" demo_*
11) pattern that starts with “lines” and ends with “empty” with anything in-between
grep "lines.*empty" demo_file
12) Checking for full words, not for sub-strings using grep -w
grep -iw "is" demo_file
13) Displaying lines before/after/around the match using grep -A, -B and -C
a. Display N lines after match
grep -A <N> -i "string" FILENAME
b. Display N lines before match
grep -B <N> -i "string" FILENAME
c. Display N lines around match
grep -C 2 -i "Example" demo_text

14) Searching with logical operators

a. Grep OR Using \|
grep 'pattern1\|pattern2' filename
grep -E 'pattern1|pattern2' filename
grep -e pattern1 -e pattern2 filename
b. Grep AND using -E ‘pattern1.*pattern2’
grep -E 'pattern1.*pattern2' filename
grep -E 'pattern1.*pattern2|pattern2.*pattern1' filename
grep -E 'pattern1' filename | grep -E 'pattern2'
 sed
SED command in UNIX is stands for stream editor and it can perform lots of function on file like, searching, find
and replace, insertion or deletion. Though most common use of SED command in UNIX is for substitution or for
find and replace. By using SED you can edit files even without opening it, which is much quicker way to find and
replace something in file, than first opening that file in VI Editor and then changing it.

Using below file for example:

cat > file.txt

unix is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.

learn operating system.
unix linux which one you choose.
unix is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.

1) Replacing or substituting string

sed 's/unix/linux/' file.txt

by default, Replace/substitute only the first occurance of string (unix -> linux) in each line

output:
linux is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.
learn operating system.
linux linux which one you choose.
linux is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.

2) Replacing the nth occurrence of a pattern in a line

sed 's/unix/linux/2' file.txt

Use the /1, /2 etc flags to replace the first, second occurrence of a pattern in a line.
Replace/substitute only the second occurance of string (unix -> linux) in each line

output:
unix is great os. linux is opensource. unix is free os.
learn operating system.
unix linux which one you choose.
unix is easy to learn.linux is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.

3) Replacing all the occurrence of the pattern in a line

sed 's/unix/linux/g' file.txt
The substitute flag /g (global replacement) specifies the sed command to replace all the
occurrences of the string in the line.
you may want to consider using gi instead of g in order to ignore character case:
 sed 's/unix/linux/gi' file.txt

output:
linux is great os. linux is opensource. linux is free os.
learn operating system.
linux linux which one you choose.
linux is easy to learn.linux is a multiuser os.Learn linux .linux is a powerful.

4) Replacing from nth occurrence to all occurrences in a line

sed 's/unix/linux/3g' file.txt

The above sed command replaces the third, fourth, fifth… “unix” word with “linux” word in a
line. (from 3rd occurance to all till end of line)

output:

unix is great os. unix is opensource. linux is free os.

learn operating system.
unix linux which one you choose.
unix is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn linux .linux is a powerful.

5) Replacing string on a specific line number

sed '3 s/unix/linux/' file.txt
restricting the sed command to replace the string on a specific line number (3th line)
output:
unix is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.
learn operating system.
linux linux which one you choose.
unix is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.

6) Duplicating the replaced line with /p flag

sed 's/unix/linux/p' file.txt

The /p print flag prints the replaced line twice on the terminal. If a line does not have the
search pattern and is not replaced, then the /p prints that line only once.

output:
linux is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.
linux is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.
learn operating system.
linux linux which one you choose.
linux linux which one you choose.
linux is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.
 linux is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.

7) Printing only the replaced lines

sed -n 's/unix/linux/p' file.txt

Use the -n option along with the /p print flag to display only the replaced lines. Here the -n
option suppresses the duplicate rows generated by the /p flag and prints the replaced lines
only one time.

output:
linux is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.
linux linux which one you choose.
linux is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.

8) Write a sed command to print the lines that do not contain the word "run"?
sed -n '/run/!p' file.txt

9) Replacing string on a range of lines

sed '1,3 s/unix/linux/' file.txt

Here the sed command replaces the lines with range from 1 to 3.

Output:

linux is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.

learn operating system.
linux linux which one you choose.
unix is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful.
sed '2,$ s/unix/linux/' file.txt
Here $ indicates the last line in the file. So the sed command replaces the text from second line
to last line in the file.

Output:

unix is great os. unix is opensource. unix is free os.

learn operating system.
linux linux which one you choose.
linux is easy to learn.unix is a multiuser os.Learn unix .unix is a powerful

10) Deleting lines from a particular file

• To Delete a particular line, say 5 in this example

sed '5d' file.txt

 • To Delete a last line

sed '$d' file.txt

• To Delete line from range x to y

sed '3,6d' file.txt

• To Delete from nth to last line

sed '12,$d' file.txt

• To Delete pattern matching line
sed '/pattern/d' file.txt
11) Write A Command to Replace the Word "apple" With "(apple)" In A
File?sed s/apple/(&)/ < file.txt
12) Write A Command to Switch the Two Consecutive Words "apple" And "mango" In A

File?sed 's/(apple) (mango)/2 1/' < file.txt

13) Write a command to replace the character '/' with ',' in a file?
sed 's/\//,/' < file.txt (or) sed 's|/|,|' < file.txt

14) Replace a line with line number with newline in a file

sed 'Nc <newline text>' <file_name>
where, N is the line number
Example: replace 5th line with newline in a file
Sed ‘5c This is the new line to be replaced’ test.txt
 find
find can be used to find files and directories and perform subsequent operations on them. It supports
searching by file, folder, name, creation date, modification date, owner and permissions. By using the ‘-exec’
other commands can be executed on files or folders found.
SYNTAX: find <location_to_find> [options]

. current directory

.. One previous directory from current

1) Search a file with specific name.

find . -name file.txt

2) search a files in multiple directories.

find . /home /user -name file.txt

3) Search a file with specific name with ignore case

find . -iname file.txt

4) Search only files containing name

find . -type f -iname file.txt

5) Search only directories containing name

find . -type d -iname file.txt

6) Search for empty files and directories.

find . -empty

7) Search for file with entered permissions (655).

Find . -perm 655

8) Search text within multiple files.

find ./ -type f -name "*.txt" -exec grep 'search_string' {} \;

9) find files by last modification time

find . -mtime days
find . -mtime 1 # 24 hours
find . -mtime -7 # modified less than 7 days (7 days to till)
find . -mtime 7 # modified before 7 days (all files modified before 7 days )
find . -mtime +50 –mtime -100 # Last 50-100 Days Modified Files
find . -mtime -7 -type f # just files last 7 days
find . -mtime -7 -type d # just dirs. Last 7days\

10) Find Last 50 Days Accessed Files

find . -atime 50
11) Find Changed Files in Last 1 Hour
find / -mmin -60

12) Find Accessed Files in Last 1 Hour

find / -amin -60

13) find and copy

find . -type f -name "*.mp3" -exec cp {} /tmp/MusicFiles \;
# cp *.mp3 files to /tmp/MusicFiles

14) Find Files Without 655 Permissions

find . -type f ! -perm 655 (or) find . -type f -not -perm 655

15) Find Single File Based on User

find . -user root -name file.txt

16) Find all Files Based on Group

find . -group developer

17) Find Files by memory

Find 50MB Files find / -size 50M

Find Size between 50MB – 100MB find / -size +50M -size -100M
Find and Delete 100MB Files find / -size +100M -exec rm -rf {} \;

18) Find files between date

find -type f -newermt "2011-12-22" \! -newermt "2011-12-24"
(or)
find -type f -newermt "2011-12-22 00:00:00" \! -newermt "2011-12-24 13:23:00"

19) Find files by user

find /home -user $USER -mtime -90
 CUT
The cut command in UNIX is a command for cutting out the sections column with using delimiter from each
line of files and writing the result to standard output.
cut -d "delimiter" -f (field number) file.txt
a) To cut the data with “ “ (space) as delimiter and print first column data
cut -d " " -f 1 state.txt
b) To cut the data with “ “ (space) as delimiter and print first to fourth column data
cut -d " " -f 1-4 state.txt

awk
The awk command in UNIX is a command for cutting out the sections column with using field separator from
each line of files and writing the result to standard output.
WHAT ARE THE OPERATIONS OF AWK?
a) Scans a file line by line
b) Splits each input line into fields
c) Compares input line/fields to pattern
d) Performs actions on matched lines

Useful For:
a) Transform data files
b) Produce formatted reports

Programming Constructs:
a) Format output lines
b) Arithmetic and string operations
c) Conditionals and loops

Consider the following text file as the input file for all cases below.
$cat > employee.txt
ajay manager account 45000
sunil clerk account 25000
varun manager sales 50000
amit manager account 47000
 1) Default behavior of Awk: By default Awk prints every line of data from the space separated field of file.
awk '{print $1}' employee.txt
(or)
awk -f “ “ ‘{print $1}’ employee.txt
Output:
Ajay
Sunil
Varun
Amit

2) To print the last column of a file using NF – Number of Fields/Columns

How to get the last word from a line in file.

awk ‘{print $NF}’ employee.txt

Output:
45000
25000
50000
47000
3) print all columns except the first one column:
awk '{$1=""; print $0}' file

4) print all columns except the last one column:

awk '{$NF=""; print $0}' file
Alternative: rev file | cut -f2- | rev

5) Print the lines which matches with the given pattern

awk '/manager/ {print}' employee.txt
(or)
awk '/manager/ {print $0}' employee.txt

Output:
ajay manager account 45000
varun manager sales 50000
amit manager account 47000

NR NR command keeps a current count of the number of input records. Remember that records are
usually lines. Awk command performs the pattern/action statements once for each record in a file.

NF NF command keeps a count of the number of fields within the current input record.

FS FS command contains the field separator character which is used to divide fields on the input line.
The default is “white space”, meaning space and tab characters. FS can be reassigned to another
character (typically in BEGIN) to change the field separator.
RS RS command stores the current record separator character. Since, by default, an input line is the
input record, the default record separator character is a newline.

OFS OFS command stores the output field separator, which separates the fields when Awk prints them.
The default is a blank space. Whenever print has several parameters separated with commas, it will
print the value of OFS in between each parameter.

ORS ORS command stores the output record separator, which separates the output lines when Awk
prints them. The default is a newline character. print automatically outputs the contents of ORS at
the end of whatever it is given to print.

6) Another use of NR built-in variables (Display Line From 3 to 6)

awk 'NR==2, NR==3 {print NR,$0}' employee.txt
Output:
2 sunil clerk account 25000
3 varun manager sales 50000

7) To find the length of the longest line present in the file:

awk '{ if (length($0) > max) max = length($0) } END { print max }' employee.txt
8) To count the lines in a file using awk
awk 'END { print NR }' employee.txt
9) Printing lines with more than 10 characters:
awk 'length($0) > 10' employee.txt
10) To find/check for any string in any column:
awk '{ if($3 == "B6") print $0;}' geeksforgeeks.txt
11) To print any non-empty line if present
awk 'NF > 0' geeksforgeeks.txt
12) To print all columns from the nth to the last
awk '{for(i=3;i<=NF;++i)print $i}'
13) To print variables in awk
awk -v a="$var1" -v b="$var2" 'BEGIN {print a,b}'
 date
date command is used to display the system date and time. date command is also used to set date and time of
the system. By default the date command displays the date in the time zone on which unix/linux operating
system is configured. You must be the super-user (root) to change the date and time.
date
Output:
Tue Oct 10 22:55:01 PDT 2017
1) Using –date option for displaying past dates:

COMMAND OUTPUT

a) Date and time of 2 years ago. date --date="2 year ago" Sat Oct 10 23:42:15 PDT 2015

b) Date and time of 5 seconds ago. date --date="5 sec ago" Tue Oct 10 23:45:02 PDT 2017

c) Date and time of previous day. date --date="yesterday" Mon Oct 9 23:48:00 PDT 2017

d) Date and time of 2 months ago. date --date="2 month ago" Thu Aug 10 23:54:51 PDT 2017

e) Date and time of 10 days ago. date --date="10 day ago" Sat Sep 30 23:56:55 PDT 2017

2) Using –date option for displaying future date:

COMMAND OUTPUT

a) Date and time of upcoming date --date="next tue" Tue Oct 17 00:00:00 PDT 2017
particular week day.

b) Date and time after two days. date --date="2 day" Fri Oct 13 00:05:52 PDT 2017

c) Date and time of next day. date --date="tomorrow" Thu Oct 12 00:08:47 PDT 2017

d) Date and time after 1 year on the date --date="1 year" Thu Oct 11 00:11:38 PDT 2018
current day.

3) -s or –set Option: To set the system date and time -s or –set option is used.
date --set="date to be set"
date --set="Tue Nov 13 15:23:34 PDT 2018"
date
Output:
Tue Nov 13 15:23:34 PDT 2018
4) List of Format specifiers used with date command:

%D Display date as mm/dd/yy.

%d Display the day of the month (01 to 31).
%a Displays the abbreviated name for weekdays (Sun to Sat).
%A Displays full weekdays (Sunday to Saturday).
%h Displays abbreviated month name (Jan to Dec).
%b Displays abbreviated month name (Jan to Dec).
%B Displays full month name(January to December).
%m Displays the month of year (01 to 12).
%y Displays last two digits of the year(00 to 99).
%Y Display four-digit year.
%T Display the time in 24 hour format as HH:MM:SS.
%H Display the hour.
%M Display the minute.
%S Display the seconds.
%D Display date as mm/dd/yy.
%d Display the day of the month (01 to 31).

COMMAND OUTPUT
date "+%D" 10/11/17
date "+%D %T" 10/11/17 16:13:27
date "+%Y-%m-%d" 2017-10-11
date "+%Y/%m/%d" 2017/10/11
date "+%A %B %d %T %y" Thursday October 07:54:29 17
 Special Variables
These are special shell variables which are set internally by the shell and which are available to the user:

VARIABLE DESCRIPTION

$0 The filename of the current script.

These variables correspond to the arguments with which a script was invoked. Here n
is a positive decimal number corresponding to the position of an argument (the first
$n
argument is $1, the second argument is $2, and so on). User flower braces for double or
more digits like ${10}, ${100}

The process ID of the current shell. For shell scripts, this is the process ID under which
$$
they are executing.

$# The number of arguments supplied to a script.

All the arguments are individually double quoted. If a script receives two arguments,
$@
$@ is equivalent to $1 $2.

All the arguments are double quoted. If a script receives two arguments, $* is
$*
equivalent to $1 $2.

$? The exit status of the last command executed.

$! The process ID of the last background command.

$_ The last argument of the previous command.

 Crontab (Job Scheduler)
The crontab is a list of commands that you want to run on a regular schedule, and also the name of the command
used to manage that list. Crontab stands for “cron table, ” because it uses the job scheduler cron to execute tasks;
cron itself is named after “chronos, ” the Greek word for time.cron is the system process which will
automatically perform tasks for you according to a set schedule. The schedule is called the crontab, which is
also the name of the program used to edit that schedule.
Linux Crontab Format: * * * * * command to execute
MIN HOUR DOM MON DOW CMD

FIELD DESCRIPTION ALLOWED VALUE

MIN Minute field 0 to 59
HOUR Hour field 0 to 23
DOM Day of Month 1-31
MON Month field 1-12
DOW Day Of Week 0-6
CMD Command Any command to be executed.

To view the Crontab entries: crontab -l

To edit Crontab Entries: crontab -e
To edit crontab entries of other Linux users: crontab -u username -e

1) To schedule a job for every minute using Cron

* * * * * command/script
2) How to Execute a Linux Cron Jobs Every Second Using Crontab.
You cannot schedule an every-second cronjob. Because in cron the minimum unit you can
specify is minute. In a typical scenario, there is no reason for most of us to run any job every
second in the system.

3) To schedule a background Cron job for every 10 minutes.

*/10 * * * * /home/maverick/check-disk-space

4) Schedule a Job for More Than One Instance (e.g. Twice a Day)
executes the specified script at 11:00 and 16:00 on every day
00 11,16 * * * /home/ramesh/bin/incremental-backup

5) Schedule a Job for Specific Range of Time (e.g. Only on Weekdays)

This example checks the status of the database everyday (including weekends) during the working
hours 9 a.m – 6 p.m
00 09-18 * * * /home/ramesh/bin/check-db-status

6) Cron job to run on the last day of the month

55 23 28-31 * * [[ "$(date --date=tomorrow +\%d)" == "01" ]] && myscript.sh
0 23 28-31 * * [ $(date -d +1day +%d) -eq 1 ] && myscript.sh
7) Cron special keywords and its meaning
Keyword Equivalent
@yearly 0011*
@daily 00***
@hourly 0****
@reboot Run at startup.

a) To schedule a job for first minute of every year using @yearly

@yearly /home/maverick/bin/annual-maintenance
b) To schedule a Cron job beginning of every month using @monthly
@monthly /home/maverick/bin/tape-backup
c) To schedule a background job every day using @daily
@daily /home/maverick/bin/cleanup-logs "day started"
d) To execute a linux command after every reboot using @reboot
@reboot CMD
 Network Commands
Default PORTS:

Service name / Protocols PORT

1) File Transfer Protocol (FTP) 20, 21
2) Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) 69
3) Secure Shell (SSH) 22
4) Telnet 23
5) HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 80
6) HTTP with Secure Sockets Layer (HTTPS/SSL) 443
7) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) 25
8) Domain Name System (DNS) 53
9) Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) 67, 68
10) Post Office Protocol (POP3) 110
11) Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP4) 143
12) Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) 389
13) Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) 3389

SSH The ssh command provides a secure encrypted connection between two hosts over an insecure
network. This connection can also be used for terminal access, file transfers, and for tunneling
other applications.

1) Normal ssh command

ssh username@hostname

username – username of the other server that we are connection

hostname – ip-address / the domain name to the server which we want to
connect

Note: after running the above command new to enter the password through console and you get
successfully logged-in to another server.

2) To make password less connection use ssh-keygen

Ssh-keygen is a tool for creating new authentication key pairs for SSH. Such key pairs are
used for automating logins, single sign-on, and for authenticating hosts.

Let server1 - 192.168.0.1 and server2 - 192.168.0.2

STEP 1: Create Authentication SSH-Keygen Keys on 192.168.0.1

ssh-keygen -t rsa
It will ask for inputs like pass phrase at that time just press enter

STEP 2: Create .ssh Directory on – 192.168.0.2

Do normal ssh to server 2 and create .ssh directory
(or)
Create .ssh directory directly using ssh command from server1
ssh server1@192.168.0.1 mkdir -p .ssh

STEP 3: Upload Generated Public in server1 to server2 – from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.2

 cat .ssh/key.pub | ssh user@192.168.0.2'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'

STEP 4: Set Permissions of authorized_keys on server1 and server2

ssh user@192.168.0.2 "chmod 700 .ssh; chmod 640 .ssh/authorized_keys"

STEP 5: Login from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.2 Server without Password

ssh username@192.168.0.2

To run command directly on remote SERVER

ssh username@IP_address ‘commands to run on remote’
ssh username@192.168.0.2 ‘ls -lrt’
ssh username@192.168.0.2 ‘df -h’

ping Ping a remote host by sending packets. Used to check whether the remote server is up and
running.
ping hastname
ping IP_addres

curl curl is a tool to transfer data from or to a server, using one of the supported protocols (HTTP, HTTPS,
FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, DICT, TELNET, LDAP or FILE). The command is designed to work without
user interaction. It offers proxy support, user authentication, FTP uploading, HTTP posting, SSL
connections, cookies, file transfer resume, Metalink, and many other features, listed below

1) View curl Version

The -V or --version options will not only return the version, but also the supported protocols and
features in your current version.
curl –version

2) Download a File
If you want to download a file, you can use curl with the -O or -o options. The former will save
the file in the current working directory with the same name as in the remote location, whereas
the latter allows you to specify a different filename and/or location.
curl -O http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.tar.gz # Save as yourfile.tar.gz
curl -o newfile.tar.gz http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.tar.gz # Save as newfile.tar.gz

3) Resume an Interrupted Download

If a download was interrupted for some reason (for example, using Ctrl + c), you can resume it
very easily. The use of -C – (dash C, space dash) tells curl to resume the download beginning
where it left off.
curl -C - -O http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.tar.gz

4) Download Multiple Files

With the following command you will download info.html and about.html from
http://yoursite.com and http://mysite.com, respectively, in one go.
curl -O http://yoursite.com/info.html -O http://mysite.com/about.html

5) Download URLs From a File

If you combine curl with xargs, you can download files from a list of URLs in a file.
xargs -n 1 curl -O < listurls.txt

6) Use a Proxy with or without Authentication

 If you are behind a proxy server listening on port 8080 at proxy.yourdomain.com, do.
curl -x proxy.yourdomain.com:8080 -U user:password -O http://your.com/yourfile.tar.gz

7) Query HTTP Headers

HTTP headers allow the remote web server to send additional information about itself along
with the actual request. This provides the client with details on how the request is being
handled.
To query the HTTP headers from a website, do:
curl -I www.tecmint.com

8) Make a POST request with Parameters

The following command will send the firstName and lastName parameters, along with their
corresponding values, to https://yourdomain.com/info.php.
curl --data "firstName=John&lastName=Doe" https://yourdomain.com/info.php

9) Download Files from an FTP Server with or without Authentication

If a remote FTP server is expecting connections at ftp://yourftpserver, the following command
will download yourfile.tar.gz in the current working directory.
curl -u username:password -O ftp://yourftpserver/yourfile.tar.gz

10) Upload Files to an FTP server with or without Authentication

To upload a local file named mylocalfile.tar.gz to ftp://yourftpserver using curl, do:
curl -u username:password -T mylocalfile.tar.gz ftp://yourftpserver

11) Specify User Agent

The user agent is part of the information that is sent along with an HTTP request. This indicates
which browser the client used to make the request. Let’s see what our current curl version uses
as default, and let’s change it later to “I am a new web browser”:
curl -I http://localhost --user-agent "I am a new web browser"

12) Store Website Cookies

Want to see which cookies are downloaded to your computer when you browse to
https://www.cnn.com? Use the following command to save them to cnncookies.txt. You can
then use cat command to view the file.
curl --cookie-jar cnncookies.txt https://www.cnn.com/index.html -O

netstat 1) List all tcp ports - netstat -at

2) To show both listening and open ports - netstat -a
3) List all udp ports – netstat -au
4) List only listening ports – netstat -l
5) List only listening TCP ports – netstat -lt
6) List the statistics/details for all ports - netstat -s
7) Check port open or not - netstat -tulpn | grep LISTEN | grep ‘<port_number>’
8) List all connections to a port: netstat -a | grep ‘<port_number>’
 Memory related Commands
free Free command used to check the used and available space of physical
memory and swap memory (ram memory) in KB. The free command displays:
• Total amount of free and used physical memory
• Total amount of swap memory in the system
• Buffers and caches used by the kernel

free

total used free shared buffers cached

Mem: 1021628 912548 109080 0 120368 655548
-/+ buffers/cache: 136632 884996
Swap: 4194296 0 4194296

To see the size of the memory in (MB) Megabytes use option as -m.

free -m

total used free shared buffers cached

Mem: 997 891 106 0 117 640
-/+ buffers/cache: 133 864
Swap: 4095 0 4095

top The top command also gives you a real-time update on how much of your swap
space is being used.
One of the things top is very good for is discovering Process ID (PID) numbers of
services that might have gotten out of hand. With those PIDs, you can then set
about to troubleshoot (or kill) the offending tasks.

vmstat Another very handy tool to have at your disposal is vmstat. This particular
command is a one-trick pony that reports virtual memory statistics. The vmstat
command will report stats on: Processes, Memory, Paging, Block IO, Traps, Disks
and CPU

/proc/meminfo The next way to check memory usage is to read the /proc/meminfo file. Know
that the /proc file system does not contain real files. They are rather virtual files
that contain dynamic information about the kernel and the system.

du “du” (Disk Usage) is a standard Unix/Linux command, used to check the

information of disk usage of files and directories on a machine.
1) Using “-h” option with “du” command provides results in “Human
Readable Format“. Means you can see sizes in Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes,
Gigabytes etc.
du -h
2) The “-c” flag provides a grand total usage disk space at the last line.
du -ch
df A quick way to get a summary of the available and used disk space on your Linux
system is to type in the df command in a terminal window. The command df stands
for "disk filesystem". With the -h option (df -h) it shows the disk space in "human
readable" form, which in this case means, it gives you the units along with the
numbers.
The output of the df command is a table with four columns. The first column
contains the file system path, which can be a reference to a hard disk or another
storage device, or a file system connected to the network. The second column
shows the capacity of that file system. The third column shows the available space,
and the last column shows the path on which that file system is mounted. The
mount point is the place in the directory tree where you can find and access that
file system.
df -h #Print memory details in human readable format
df - -total -h #prints total memory of system at the end

mount To mount a file system, you should first create a directory and mount it as shown
below.

# mkdir /u01
# mount /dev/sdb1 /u01

1) Mount the device of devicename devicename, of type type, at filesystem

location destination_directory.
# mount -t type devicename destination_directory
2) Display all current mounts
# Mount
3) List all current mounts of type tmpfs
# mount -l -t tmpfs
4) List all mounts
# mount -a

unmount umount /mnt/usb

 PROCESS RELATED COMMANDS
ps ps command is used to display information about the processes that are running
in the system.
ps -ef # To view current running processes.
ps -efH # To view current running processes in a tree
structure. H option stands for process
hierarchy.

kill Use kill command to terminate a process. First get the process id using ps -ef
command, then use kill -9 to kill the running Linux process as shown below. You
can also use killall, pkill, xkill to terminate a unix process.

Before kill first get the pid (process id to kill)

ps -ef | grep process_name
OUTPUT:
user 7243 7222 9 22:43 pts/2 00:00:00 process

To kill the above process

kill -9 7243
kill (kill -s TERM or kill -15 ) vs kill -9
Kill -9 : It doesn't give the process a chance to cleanly not graceful close:
1) shut down socket connections
2) clean up temp files
3) inform its children that it is going away
4) reset its terminal characteristics
and so on and so on and so on.
Kill: will generate a SIGTERM signal asking a process to kill itself gracefully i.e ,
free memory or take care of other child processes. Killing a process using kill will
not have any side effects like unreleased memory because it was gracefully killed
and also wait 1 or 2 seconds to close the process.

bg bg sends the specified jobs to the background. A background job is executed

simultaneously with fish, and does not have access to the keyboard. If no job is
specified, the last job to be used is put in the background. The PID of the desired
process is usually found by using process expansion.

To put the job with job/process/group id 0 in the background.

bg %0

To run a command / script in background put & at the end

./script.sh &
sleep 10 &

To list all jobs

jobs

Fg Bring a background process to the foreground

fg pid
nohup Most of the time your login into remote server via ssh. If you start a shell script or command
and you exit (abort remote connection), the process / command will get killed. Sometime
job or command takes a long time. If you are not sure when the job will finish, then it is better
to leave job running in background. But, if you log out of the system, the job will be stopped and
terminated by your shell. What do you do to keep job running in the background when process
gets SIGHUP? The answer is simple, use nohup command line-utility which allows to run
command/process or shell script that can continue running in the background after you log out
from a shell:
nohup command-name &
nohup /path/to/command-name arg1 arg2 &
Where,
command-name is name of shell script or command name. You can pass argument to
command or a shell script.
& nohup does not automatically put the command it runs in the background; you must do that
explicitly, by ending the command line with an & symbol.
Use jobs -l command to list all jobs running in background:
jobs -l
exit To fail a shell script programmatically
exit 0 Success
exit 1 General errors, Miscellaneous errors, such as "divide by zero" and other
impermissible operations
exit 2 Misuse of shell builtins (according to Bash documentation)

1) See all process crated by user: ps -u username , top -U

2) List Open Files for Process:
First use ps command to get PID of process, enter: ps -aef | grep {process-name}, ps -C firefox -o pid=
Next pass this PID to pfiles command: pfile {PID}, ls -l /proc/7857/fd

lsof
1) List User Specific Opened Files: lsof -u tecmint
2) Find Processes running on Specific Port: lsof -i TCP:22
3) List Open Files of TCP Port ranges 1-1024: lsof -i TCP:1-1024
4) Find Out who’s Looking (which user) What Files and Commands: lsof -i -u username
5) List all Network Connections ‘LISTENING & ESTABLISHED’: lsof -i
6) List open files by pid: lsof -p 351
7) List processes using a particular file: lsof filename (or) fuser filename
 Permission and user related commands
chmod
chmod is used to change the permissions of files or directories.
User Group Other Chmods:
Read 4 4 4 777 = rwxrwxrwx
Write 2 2 2 755 = rwxr-xr-x
Execute 1 1 1 644 = rw-r--r--
U G O 700 = rwx------
X X X 750 = rwxr-x---

1. Deny execute permission to everyone. : chmod a-x file.txt

2. Allow read permission to everyone. : chmod a+r file.txt

3. Make a file readable and writable by the group and others. : chmod go+rw file.txt
4. Make a shell script executable by the user/owner. : chmod u+x file.sh
5. Allow everyone to read, write, and execute the file and turn on the set : chmod =rwx,g+s file.sh
group-ID.
6. Recursively (-R) Change the permissions of the directory myfiles, and : chmod -R 755 folder
all folders and files it contains, to mode 755: User can read, write, and
execute; group members and other users can read and execute, but
cannot write.
7. Set the permission of file.txt to "read and write by everyone." : chmod 666 file.txt

Chown
chown command is used to change the owner and group of a file or directory.

1) To change owner to oracle and group to dba on a file. i.e Change both owner and group at the same
time.
chown oracle:dba dbora.sh

2) Use -R to change the ownership recursively.

chown -R oracle:dba /home/oracle

adduser / useradd

To add/create a new user, all you’ve to follow the command ‘useradd‘ or ‘adduser‘ with ‘username’. The
‘username’ is a user login name, that is used by user to login into the system.
Only one user can be added and that username must be unique (different from other username already
exists on the system).

For example, to add a new user called ‘newuser‘, use the following command.
Passwd
useradd newuser

1) Create a User with Different Home Directory

By default ‘useradd‘ command creates a user’s home directory under /home directory with username.
Thus, for example, we’ve seen above the default home directory for the user ‘newuser‘ is ‘/home/
newuser ‘.
However, this action can be changed by using ‘-d‘ option along with the location of new home directory
(i.e. /data/projects). For example, the following command will create a user ‘username‘ with a home
directory ‘/data/projects‘.
useradd -d /data/projects username
2) Add a User to Multiple Groups
useradd -G admins,webadmin,developers username

• -c comment: Add a comment for the user

• -d home-directory: Create a new home-directory
• -e yyyy-mm-dd: Date for the account to be disabled
• -f days: Number of days after the password expires until the account is disabled. (If 0 is specified, the
account is disabled immediately after the password expires. If -1 is specified, the account is not be
disabled after the password expires.)
• -g group-name: Primary Group name or group number for the user’s default group (group name must
exist)
• -G group-list: List of secondary additional (other than default) group names or group numbers,
separated by commas, of which the user is a member (group name must exist)
• -m: Create the home directory
• -M: Do not create the home directory
• -s: User’s login shell (default /bin/bash)

passwd
1) change your password from command line using passwd. This will prompt for the old password
followed by the new password.
passwd

2) Super user can use passwd command to reset others password. This will not prompt for current
password of the user.
passwd USERNAME

3) Remove password for a specific user. Root user can disable password for a specific user. Once the
password is disabled, the user can login without entering the password.
passwd -d USERNAME

Linux list all users command

cat /etc/passwd
 INFO COMMANDS
uname uname command displays important information about the system such as — Kernel name,
Host name, Kernel release number, Processor type, etc.,

To check the linux version

cat /etc/os-release (or) lsb_release -a

whereis When you want to find out where a specific Unix command exists (for example, where does
ls command exists?), you can execute the following command.

whatis Whatis command displays a single line description about a command.

who who command is used to find out the following information:

1. Time of last system boot
2. Current run level of the system
3. List of logged in users and more.

a) To display all details of current logged in user: who -a

b) To display current run level of the system: who -r
c) To show time of the system when it booted last time: who -b -H
d) To show list of users logged in to system: who -u

whoami To display system’s username

w To display list of users and their activities

 Archive (tarbal, zip, gzip)
1) Create tar Archive File
tar -cvf sample.tar
<source_location>c – Creates a
new .tar archive file.
v – Verbosely show the .tar file
progress.f – File name type of the
archive file.

2) Untar tar Archive File

a. Untar files in Current Directory
tar -xvf sample.tar <source_location>
b. Untar files in specified Directory
tar -xvf public_html-14-09-12.tar -C
/home/public_html/videos/x-extract archive

3) Create tar.gz Archive File (compressed )

tar -cvzf sample.tar.gz <source_location>

4) Uncompress tar.gz Archive File

tar -xvf thumbnails-14-09-12.tar.gz

5) To zip files
zip [options] zipfile files_list
zip myfile.zip filename1.txt filename2.txt …..

6) Extracting files from zip file

unzip myfile.zip
 Linux boot process and Run levels
The stages involved in Linux Booting Process are:
1) BIOS
2) Boot Loader
a. MBR
b. GRUB
3) Kernel
4) Init
5) Runlevel scripts
6) User Interface

STEP 1: BIOS
BIOS determine all the list of bootable devices available in the system. Prompts to select bootable device
which might be Hard Disk, CD/DVD-ROM, Floppy Drive, USB Flash Memory Stick etc. Operating System tries to boot
from Hard Disk where the MBR contains primary boot loader.

STEP 2: Boot Loader

To be very brief this phase includes loading of the boot loader (MBR and GRUB/LILO) into memory to bring
up the kernel.

MBR (Master Boot Record)

It is the first sector of the Hard Disk with a size of 512 bytes. The first 434 - 446 bytes are the primary boot
loader, 64 bytes for partition table and 6 bytes for MBR validation timestamp.
NOTE: Now MBR directly cannot load the kernel as it is unaware of the file system concept and requires a boot
loader with file system driver for each supported file systems, so that they can be understood and accessed by the
boot loader itself. To overcome this situation GRUB is used with the details of the file system in /boot/grub.conf and
file system drivers

GRUB (Grand unified Boot Loader)

This loads the kernel in 3 stages.
GRUB Stage 1:
The primary boot loader takes up less than 512 bytes of disk space in the MBR - too small a space to contain
the instructions necessary to load a complex operating system. Instead the primary boot loader performs the
function of loading either the stage 1.5 or stage 2 boot loader.
GRUB Stage 1.5:
Stage 1 can load the stage 2 directly, but it is normally set up to load the stage 1.5. This can happen when
the /boot partition is situated beyond the 1024-cylinder head of the hard drive. GRUB Stage 1.5 is located in the
first 30 KB of Hard Disk immediately after MBR and before the first partition. This space is utilized to store file
system drivers and modules. This enabled stage 1.5 to load stage 2 to load from any known location on the file
system i.e. /boot/grub

GRUB Stage 2:
This is responsible for loading kernel from /boot/grub/grub.conf and any other modules needed and Loads a GUI
interface i.e. splash image located at /grub/splash.xpm.gz with list of available kernels where you can manually
select the kernel or else after the default timeout value the selected kernel will boot The original file is
/etc/grub.conf of which you can observe a symlink file at /boot/grub/grub.conf

STEP 3: Kernel
This is the heart of operating system responsible for handling all system processes. Kernel is loaded in the following
stages: Kernel as soon as it is loaded configures hardware and memory allocated to the system. Next it
uncompresses the initrd image (compressed using zlib into zImage or bzImage formats) and mounts it and loads
all the necessary drivers. Loading and unloading of kernel modules is done with the help of programs like insmod,
and rmmod present in the initrd image. Looks out for hard disk types be it a LVM or RAID. Unmounts initrd image
and frees up all the memory occupied by the disk image. Then kernel mounts the root partition as specified in
grub.conf as read-only. Next it runs the init process

STEP 4: Init Process

Executes the system to boot into the run level as specified in /etc/inittab You can check current runlevel details of
your system using below command on the terminal Next as per the fstab entry file system's integrity is checked and
root partition is re-mounted as read-write (earlier it was mounted as read-only).

STEP 5: Runlevel Scripts.

Depending on your default init level setting, the system will execute the programs from one of the following
directories.
▪ Run level 0 ( init0 ) – /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/ System halt (Shutdown) - no activity, the system can be safely
powered down.
▪ Run level 1 ( init1 ) – /etc/rc.d/rc1.d/ Single user - rarely used.
▪ Run level 2 ( init2 ) – /etc/rc.d/rc2.d/ Multiple users - no NFS (network filesystem); also used rarely.
▪ Run level 3 ( init3 ) – /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/ Multiple users - command line (i.e., all-text mode) interface; the
standard runlevel for most Linux-based server hardware.
▪ Run level 4 ( init4 )– /etc/rc.d/rc4.d/ User-definable
▪ Run level 5 ( init5 ) – /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/ Multiple users - GUI (graphical user interface); the standard runlevel
for most Linux-based desktop systems.
▪ Run level 6 ( init6 ) – /etc/rc.d/rc6.d/ Reboot - used when restarting the system.
 Security and Firewall
Iptables and firewall
Iptables is a Linux command line firewall that allows system administrators to manage incoming and outgoing
traffic via a set of configurable table rules.
There are currently 3 types of tables:

1) FILTER – this is the default table, which contains the built-in chains for:
▪ INPUT – packages destined for local sockets
▪ FORWARD – packets routed through the system
▪ OUTPUT – packets generated locally

2) NAT – a table that is consulted when a packet tries to create a new connection. It has the following built-in:
▪ PREROUTING – used for altering a packet as soon as it’s received
▪ OUTPUT – used for altering locally generated packets
▪ POSTROUTING – used for altering packets as they are about to go out

3) MANGLE – this table is used for packet altering. Until kernel version 2.4 this table had only two chains, but
they are now 5:
▪ PREROUTING – for altering incoming connections
▪ OUTPUT – for altering locally generated packets
▪ INPUT – for incoming packets
▪ POSTROUTING – for altering packets as they are about to go out
▪ FORWARD – for packets routed through the box

1) Start/Stop/Restart Iptables Firewall

Sudo systemctl start iptables
Sudo systemctl stop iptables
Sudo systemctl restart iptables

2) Check all IPtables Firewall Rules

iptables -L -n -v

3) Block Specific IP Address in IPtables Firewall

iptables -A INPUT -s xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -j DROP

4) Unblock IP Address in IPtables Firewall

iptables -D INPUT -s xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -j DROP

5) Block Specific Port on IPtables Firewall

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport xxx -j DROP