Whether you're a Linux or an OS/X user, you often ends up starting a terminal and typing some shell commands.
Following is a list of some commands I often use, and they're by no means exhaustive. They are given as examples, and a second list will include other topics like benchmarking, network, or performance. Some require the root password or at least be part of the sudoers.
Be warned these are mainly Linux commands, used from a Linux Mint 19.3 machine. My advice is to man each one (when available) to list all the numerous possibilities for a specific command. man is always your friend and you can often discover the missing parameter you need to solve your problem.
Dealing with hardware
list your hardware configuration (the most comprehensive): inxi -Fxz
disks
| what? | command |
|---|---|
| list all hard disks | lsblk -o NAME,TYPE,SIZE,MODEL,SERIAL,VENDOR -d |
| get information on a disk | sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda |
| list partitions | sudo sfdisk -l /dev/sda |
| mounted disks | df -T -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs |
| sanitize or partition | dcfldd if=/dev/urandom od=/dev/sdX |
| copy a disk or partition to a file image | dcfldd if=/dev/sdX of=image.img hash=sha1 conv=sync,noerror |
| list usb devices | lsusb |
| list PCI devices | lspci |
Files
Listing files with ls
| list | command |
|---|---|
| sort by size (largest first) | ls -lS |
| sort by time (newest first) | ls -lt |
| reverse sorting order | add the -r flag |
| recursive | ls -lR |
| sort by extension | ls -lX |
Using the tree command
If not installed: sudo apt-get install tree
| list | command |
|---|---|
| only directories | tree -d |
| full path with files | tree /usr -f |
| on the current filesystem only | tree . -x |
| only subdirectories | tree . -L 1 |
| only files with pattern | tree . -P ".jpg"* |
| without indentation (like find) | tree . -i -f |
| output as a JSON object | tree . -J |
| output as an XML object | tree . -X |
Finding files
find is a very feature rich command and not easy to master at first. man find is your friend!
| find | command |
|---|---|
| files matching a pattern | find . -name '.jpg'* |
| files matching a pattern (case insensitive) | find . -iname '.jpg'* |
| files only on current mounted filesystems | find . -mount -name ".jpg"* |
| owned by userID | find . -user 1000 |
| whose permissions are 644 | find . -perm 644 |
| greater than 50M | find / -size +50M |
| modified more than 1 day | find . -mtime +1 |
| only directories | find . -type d |
| only (regular) files | find . -type f |
| executable files | find . -executable -type f |
| using a regex | find . -regextype posix-extended -regex "(..jpg |
Open files
lsof is a very powerful and versatile command.
| find | command |
|---|---|
| open files for a list of users | lsof -u johndoe,1000 |
| open files by a list of processes | lsof -p 1999,2050 |
| on a specific fiessystem | lsof /dev/sdb1 |
Photo by Barn Images on Unsplash
Top comments (2)
I'd have started with saying that the
mancommand is your friend, because it provides you with the manual pages for each of these commands. It's meta-powerful :-)Great and concise summary!
I would add
find -deleteoption in the list.Also for disk usage I discovered
ncduwhich a nice command line tool.