Linux Commands
Linux is a Unix-Like operating system. All the Linux/Unix commands are run in the
terminal provided by the Linux system. This terminal is just like command prompt of
Windows OS. Linux/Unix commands are case-sensitive. The terminal can be used to
accomplish all Administrative tasks. This includes package installation, file manipulation,
and user management. Linux terminal is user-interactive. The terminal outputs the
results of commands which are specified by the user itself. Execution of typed
command is done only after you press the Enter key.
COMMANDS DESCRIPTION
Used to check whether the calling program has access to a specified file.
access It can be used to check whether a file exists or not
Used to turn on or turn off the process for accounting or change info
accton process accounting file
aclocal Used to automatically generate aclocal.m4 files from configure.in file
acpi Used to display the battery status and other ACPI information
Tests whether ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface)
acpi_available subsystem is available or not
It provides intelligent power management on a system and is used to
acpid notify the user-space programs about the ACPI events
addr2line Used to convert addresses into file names and line numbers
It is a Linux version of getty, which is a Unix program running on a host
computer that manages physical or virtual terminals to allow multi-user
agetty access
Instructs the shell to replace one string with another string while
alias executing the commands
It is a command-line mixer for ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound
amixer Architecture) sound-card driver
Used to play standard MIDI(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files,
by sending the content of a MIDI file to an ALSA(Advanced Linux
aplaymidi Sound Architecture) MIDI port
It helps the user when they don’t remember the exact command but
knows a few keywords related to the command that define its uses or
apropos functionality
Provides a high-level CLI (Command Line Interface) for the package
management system and is intended as an interface for the end user
which enables some options better suited for interactive usage by default
apt compared to more specialized APT tools like apt-cache and apt-get
apt-get It is a command-line tool which helps in handling packages in Linux
Opens up a highly built-in interface to interact with the package manager
aptitude of the machine
ar Used to create, modify and extract the files from the archives
arch Used to print the computer architecture
It manipulates the System’s ARP cache. It also allows a complete dump
arp of the ARP cache
aspell Used as a spell checker in Linux
atd It is a job scheduler daemon that runs jobs scheduled for later execution
Used to remove the specified jobs. To remove a job, its job number is
atrm passed in the command
atq It displays the list of pending jobs which are scheduled by the user
autoconf Used in Linux to generate configuration scripts
Used to create a template file of C “#define” or any other template
autoheader header for configure to use
Used for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant with the
automake set GNU Coding Standards
autoreconf Used to create automatically buildable source code for Unix-like systems
Used to update configure.in file in our Linux system to a newer
autoupdate Autoconf.
It is a scripting language used for manipulating data and generating
awk reports
banner Used to print the ASCII character string in large letter to standrad output
It strips directory information and suffixes from file names i.e. it prints
basename the file name NAME with any leading directory components removed
Used to read commands from standard input or a specified file and
execute them when system load levels permit i.e. when the load average
batch drops below 1.5
bc Used for command line calculator
bg Used to place foreground jobs in background
A mail notification system for unix that notifies the user at the command
biff line when new mail arrives and tells from whom it is
bind Used to set Readline key bindings and variables
bison It is basically a parser generator similar to yacc
break Used to terminate the execution of for loop, while loop and until loop
builtin Used to run a shell builtin, passing it arguments(args), and also to get the
exit status
bzcmp Used to invoke the cmp utility on bzip2 compressed files
bzdiff Used to compare the bzip2 compressed files
Used to search for a pattern or an expression but inside a bzip2-
bzgrep compressed file
bzip2 Used to compress and decompress the files
It does not have to read the entire input file before starting, so with a
bzless large file, it starts up faster
Used as a filter for CRT viewing of bzip2 compressed files, which are
bzmore saved with .bz2 suffix
Used to see the calendar of a specific month or a whole year. By default,
cal it shows current month’s calendar as output
It is the best alternative when we had to use multiple if/elif on a single
case variable
Reads data from file and gives their content as output. It helps us to
cat create, view, concatenate files
cc It is used to compile the C language codes and create executables
ccrypt It is a command line tool for encryption and decryption of data
Known as change directory command. It is used to change current
cd working directory
It displays or manipulates the disk partition table by providing a text-
cfdisk based “graphical” interface
chage Used to view and change the user password expiry information
chattr It is a file system command which is used for changing the attributes of a
file in a directory
It allows you to change a user’s name and other details easily. chfn
chfn stands for Change finger
chgrp Used to change the group ownership of a file or directory
Used to list all available services and view or update their run level
chkconfig settings
chmod Used to change the access mode of a file
chown Used to change the file Owner or group
chpasswd Used to change password for multiple users at a time
chroot Used to change the root directory
chrt Used for manipulating the real-time attributes of a process
chsh Used to change the user’s login shell(currently login shell)
Used to switch between the different TTY (TeleTYpewriter) terminals
chvt available
Used to display a CRC(Cyclic Redundancy Check) value, the byte size
cksum of the file and the name of the file to standard output
clear Used to clear the terminal screen
Used to compare the two files byte by byte and helps you to find out
cmp whether the two files are identical or not
It is used to filter out reverse line feeds. The col utility simply reads from
col the standard input and writes to standard output
Used to format the text processor output so that it can be viewed on
colcrt Cathode Ray Tube displays
colrm Removes selected columns from a file
column Used to display the contents of a file in columns
Compares two sorted files line by line and write to standard output; the
comm lines that are common and the lines that are unique
Used to reduce the file size. After compression, the file will be available
compress with an added .Z extension
continue Used to skip the current iteration in for, while and until loop
cp Used to copy files or group of files or directory
cpio stands for “copy in, copy out“. It is used for processing the archive
files like *.cpio or *.tar. This command can copy files to and from
cpio archives
It is automatically used by C compiler to transform your program before
cpp compilation
A software utility, offered by Linux-like operating system which
cron automates the scheduled task at a predetermined time
A list of commands that you want to run on a regular schedule, and also
crontab the name of the command used to manage that list
csplit Used to split any file into many parts as required by the user
It allows quick access across the files (For example quickly seeing
ctags definition of a function)
It is a type of scheduler for CUPS (Common Unit Printing System). It
implements the printing system on the basis of the Internet Printing
cupsd Protocol
A tool to transfer data to or from a server, using any of the supported
curl protocols
cut For cutting out the sections from each line of files and writing the result
to standard output
Used to store the history of a file. Whenever a file gets corrupted or
anything goes wrong “cvs” help us to go back to the previous version
cvs and restore our file
Used to display the system date and time. It is also used to set date and
date time of the system
Used to evaluate arithmetic expressions. It evaluates expressions in the
dc form of a postfix expression
It is a command-line utility for Unix and Unix-like operating systems
dd whose primary purpose is to convert and copy files
Used to declare shell variables and functions, set their attributes and
declare display their values
Used to generate a list of dependency description of kernel modules and
depmod its associated map files
Used to display information related to file systems about total space and
df available space
Used to display the differences in the files by comparing the files line by
diff line
diff3 Used to compare the three files line by line
dir Used to list the contents of a directory
Used to remove the trailing forward slahes “/” from the NAME and
dirname prints the remaining portion
dirs Used to display the list of currently remembered directories
disable Used to stop the printers or classes
Used to examine the kernel ring buffer and print the message buffer of
dmesg kernel
Used when the user wants to retrieve system’s hardware related
information such as Processor, RAM(DIMMs), BIOS detail, etc. of
dmidecode Linux system in a readable format
Used to return the Network Information System (NIS) domain name of
domainname the host
dos2unix Converts a DOS text file to UNIX format
Diagnoses MS-DOS file system for problems and attempts to repair
dosfsck them
Used to track the files and directories which are consuming excessive
du amount of space on hard disk drive
dump Used to backup the filesystem to some storage device
Used to print the super block and blocks group information for the
dumpe2fs filesystem present on device
dumpkeys Used for the dump keyboard translation tables
echo Used to display line of text/string that are passed as an argument
Used for launching the ed text editor which is a line-based text editor
with a minimal interface which makes it less complex for working on
ed text files i.e creating, editing, displaying and manipulating files
It treats the pattern as an extended regular expression and prints out the
egrep lines that match the pattern
eject It allows ejecting a removable media (typically a CD-ROM, floppy disk,
tape, or JAZ or ZIP disk) using the software
It is a editor having simple user interface. Also, there is no insert mode
emacs in this editor. It only have editing mode.
enable Used to start the printers or classes
Used to either print environment variables. It is also used to run a utility
env or command in a custom environment
eval Built-in command used to execute arguments as a shell command
It is a text editor in Linux which is also termed as the line editor mode of
ex the vi editor
exec Used to execute a command from the bash itself
exit Used to exit the shell where it is currently running
Allows you to convert tabs into spaces in a file and when no file is
expand specified it reads from standard input
This command or scripting language works with scripts that expect user
expect inputs. It automates the task by providing inputs
It is bash shell BUILTINS commands, which means it is part of the
shell. It marks an environment variables to be exported to child-
export processes
expr It evaluates a given expression and displays its corresponding output
Used to print the prime factors of the given numbers, either given from
factor command line or read from standard input
Used to list, edit or re-execute the commands previously entered into an
fc interactive shell
fc-cache It scans the font directories and build font cache for applications which
use fontconfig for their font handling
It is used to list the available fonts and font styles. Using the format
fc-list option, the list of all fonts can be filtered and sorted out
Format disk is a dialog-driven command in Linux used for creating and
fdisk manipulating disk partition table
fg Used to put a background job in foreground
fgrep Used to search for the fixed-character strings in a file
Used to determine the type of a file. .file type may be of human-
readable(e.g. ‘ASCII text’) or MIME type(e.g. ‘text/plain; charset=us-
file ascii’)
Used to find files and directories and perform subsequent operations on
find them
fmt Works as a formatter for simplifying and optimizing text files
It wraps each line in an input file to fit a specified width and prints it to
fold the standard output
Used to repeatedly execute a set of command for every element present
for in the list
Displays the total amount of free space available along with the amount
of memory used and swap memory in the system, and also the buffers
free used by the kernel
Fun Used to draw various type of patterns on the terminal
function Used to create functions or methods
Used for preprocessing, compilation, assembly and linking of source
g++ code to generate an executable file
gawk Used for pattern scanning and processing language
GNU Compiler Collections is used to compile mainly C and C++
gcc language. It can also be used to compile Objective C and Objective C++
GNU Debugger tool helps to debug the programs written in C, C++,
gdb Ada, Fortran, etc.
Used to get the entries in a number of important text files called
getent databases
gpasswd Used to administer the /etc/group and /etc/gshadow
Searches a file for a particular pattern of characters, and displays all lines
grep that contain that pattern
groupadd Used to create a new user group
groupdel Used to delete a existing group
groupmod Used to modify or change the existing group on Linux system
Groups are the collection of users. Groups make it easy to manage users
groups with the same security and access privileges
It is used to convert to shadow groups. The grpconv command creates a
grpconv gshadow from the group and an optionally existing gshadow
This command invokes Ghostscript, which is an interpreter of Adobe
gs Systems PostScript and Portable Document Format(PDF) languages
gunzip Used to compress or expand a file or a list of files in Linux
Used to compress executable files and also used to automatically
gzexe uncompress and execute the files
This command compresses files. Each single file is compressed into a
gzip single file.
Used to instruct the hardware to stop all the CPU functions. Basically, it
halt reboots or stops the system.
hash Used to maintain a hash table of recently executed programs
Used to get statistics about the hard disk, alter writing intervals, acoustic
hdparm management, and DMA settings
Head Prints the top N number of data of the given input
help Displays information about shell built-in commands
Used to filter and display the specified files, or standard input in a
hexdump human readable specified format
history Used to view the previously executed command
host Used for DNS (Domain Name System) lookup operations
hostid Used to displays the Host’s ID in hexadecimal format
Used to obtain the DNS(Domain Name System) name and set the
hostname system’s hostname or NIS(Network Information System) domain name.
Provides a proper API used to control Linux system hostname and
hostnamectl change its related settings
It is a command line utility that allows the user to interactively monitor
htop the system’s vital resources or server’s processes in real time
Utility for accessing the hardware clock, also called Real Time Clock
hwclock (RTC)
iconv Used to convert some text in one encoding into another encoding
Used to find out user and group names and numeric ID’s (UID or group
id ID) of the current user or any other user in the server
if Used to execute commands based on conditions
ifconfig Used to configure the kernel-resident network interfaces.
It basically brings the network interface up, allowing it to transmit and
ifup receive data
Used for capturing a screenshot for any of the active pages we have and
import it gives the output as an image file
Reads documentation in the info format. It will give detailed information
info for a command when compared with the main page
insmod Used to insert modules into the kernel
install Used to copy files and set attributes
Used for monitoring system input/output statistics for devices and
iostat partitions
ip Used for performing several network administration tasks
Used to remove some IPC(Inter-Process Communication) resources. It
eliminates the IPC objects and their associated data structure form the
ipcrm system
Shows information on the inter-process communication facilities for
ipcs which the calling process has read access
Used to set up and maintain tables for the Netfilter firewall for IPv4,
iptables included in the Linux kernel
It will save the current iptables rules in a user specified file, that can be
iptables-save used later when the user wants
Used to display the parameters, and the wireless statistics which are
iwconfig extracted from /proc/net/wireless
join It is a command line utility for joining lines of two files based on a key
field present in both the files
Used to terminate processes manually. kill command sends a signal to a
kill process which terminates the process
Used to display the list of all the users logged in and out since the file
last /var/log/wtmp was created
less Used to read contents of text file one page(one screen) per time
let Used to evaluate arithmetic expressions on shell variables
ln Used to create links between files
locate Used to find the files by name
look Shows the lines beginning with a given string
Used to generate the detailed information of the system’s hardware
lshw configuration from various files in the /proc directory
Used to display the status of modules in the Linux kernel. It results in a
lsmod list of loaded modules
lsof Provides a list of files that are opened
Used to display the information about USB buses and the devices
lsusb connected to them
Used to display the user manual of any command that we can run on the
man terminal
md5sum To verify data integrity using MD5 (Message Digest Algorithm 5)
Allows the user to create directories. This command can create multiple
mkdir directories at once
modinfo Used to display the information about a Linux Kernel module
Used to view the text files in the command prompt, displaying one
more screen at a time in case the file is large (For example log files)
Used to mount the filesystem found on a device to big tree
mount structure(Linux filesystem) rooted at ‘/‘
Used to move one or more files or directories from one place to another
mv in file system like UNIX
Displays various network related information such as network
connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections,
netstat multicast memberships, etc.
Used for controlling NetworkManager. nmcli commnad can also be used
to display network device status, create, edit, activate/deactivate, and
nmcli delete network connections
It is a network administration tool for querying the Domain Name
System (DNS) to obtain domain name or IP address mapping or any
nslookup other specific DNS record
Used to convert the content of input in different formats with octal
od format as the default format
passwd Used to change the user account passwords
Used to join files horizontally (parallel merging) by outputting lines
consisting of lines from each file specified, separated by tab as delimiter,
paste to the standard output
ping Used to check the network connectivity between host and server/host
Used to display the memory map of a process. A memory map indicates
pmap how memory is spread out
poweroff Sends an ACPI signal which instructs the system to power down
Used to display the given string, number or any other format specifier on
printf the terminal window
Used to list the currently running processes and their PIDs along with
ps some other information depends on different options
pwd It prints the path of the working directory, starting from the root
ranlib Used to generate index to archive
rcp Used to copy files from one computer to another computer
Reads up the total number of bytes from the specified file descriptor into
read the buffer
readlink Used to print resolved symbolic links or canonical file names
reboot Instructs the system to restart or reboot
Used to rename the named files according to the regular expression
rename perlexpr
Used to initialize the terminal. This is useful once a program dies leaving
reset a terminal in an abnormal state
restore Used for restoring files from a backup created using dump
return Used to exit from a shell function.
rev Used to reverse the lines characterwise
Used to remove objects such as files, directories, symbolic links and so
rm on from the file system like UNIX
rmdir Used to remove empty directories from the filesystem in Linux
rmmod Used to remove a module from the kernel
It is a software utility for Unix-Like systems that efficiently sync files
rsync and directories between two hosts or machines
Used to monitor Linux system’s resources like CPU usage, Memory
sar utilization, I/O devices consumption, etc.
scp Used to copy file(s) between servers in a secure way.
Provides the ability to launch and use multiple shell sessions from a
screen single ssh session
script Used to make typescript or record all the terminal activities
Used to replay a typescript/terminal_activity stored in the log file that
scriptreplay was recorded by the script command
Used to compare two files and then writes the results to standard output
sdiff in a side-by-side format
Used for finding, filtering, text substitution, replacement and text
sed manipulations like insertion, deletion search etc.
select Used to create a numbered menu from which a user can select an option
Used to generate numbers from FIRST to LAST in steps of
seq INCREMENT
setsid Used to run a program in a new session
prints to standard output either the scan codes or the key code or the
showkey `ascii’ code of each key pressed
shutdown Used to shutdown the system in a safe way
sleep Used to create a dummy job. A dummy job helps in delaying the
execution
Used to read and execute the content of a file(generally set of
source commands), passed as an argument in the current shell script
sort Used to sort a file, arranging the records in a particular order
ssh Protocol used to securely connect to a remote server/system
stty Used to change and print terminal line settings
Used as a prefix of some command that only superuser are allowed to
sudo run
sum Used to find checksum and count the blocks in a file
sync Used to synchronize cached writes to persistent storage
Used to examine and control the state of “systemd” system and service
systemctl manager
tac Used to concatenate and print files in reverse
Tail Prints the last N number of data of the given input
tar Used to create Archive and extract the Archive files
Reads the standard input and writes it to both the standard output and
tee one or more files
Used to execute a command and prints a summary of real-time, user
CPU time and system CPU time spent by executing a command when it
time terminates
top Provides a dynamic real-time view of the running system
touch Used to create, change and modify timestamps of a file
tr It is a command line utility for translating or deleting characters
tracepath Used to traces path to destination discovering MTU along this path
traceroute Prints the route that a packet takes to reach the host
A recursive directory listing program that produces a depth-indented
Tree listing of files
It displays the information related to terminal. It basically prints the file
tty name of the terminal connected to standard input
Used to describe how its argument would be translated if used as
type commands
uname Displays the information about the system
Converts each spaces into tabs writing the produced output to the
unexpand standard output
It is a command line utility that reports or filters out the repeated lines in
uniq a file
unix2dos Converts a Unix text file to DOS format
Used to execute a set of commands as long as the final command in the
until ‘until’ Commands has an exit status which is not zero
Uptime Used to find out how long the system is active (running)
Used to show the user names of users currently logged in to the current
users host
userdel Used to delete a user account and related files
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It is the default editor that comes with the UNIX operating system is
vi called visual editor.
vmstat It is a performance monitoring command of the system as it gives the
information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, disk and CPU
scheduling
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w Used to show who is logged on and what they are doing
Displays a message, or the contents of a file, or otherwise its standard
wall input, on the terminals of all currently logged in users
watch Used to execute a program periodically, showing output in fullscreen
Used to find out number of lines, word count, byte and characters count
wc in the files specified in the file arguments
Used to download files from the server even when the user has not
logged on to the system and it can work in background without
Wget hindering the current process
whatis Used to get a one-line manual page descriptions
Used to locate the executable file associated with the given command by
which searching it in the path environment variable
Used to repeatedly execute a set of command as long as the
while COMMAND returns true
who Used to get information about currently logged in user on to system
whoami Displays the username of the current user when this command is invoked
Allows a user to communicate with other users, by copying lines from
write one user’s terminal to others
Used to build and execute commands from standard input. It converts
xargs input recieved from standard input into arguments of a command
xdg-open Used to open a file or URL in the user’s preferred application
Used to print a continous output stream of given STRING. If STRING is
yes not mentioned then it prints ‘y’
zdiff Used to invoke the diff program on files compressed via gzip
Used to print the current time in the specified zone or you can say prints
zdump the current time in each zonename named on the command line
Used to search out expressions from a given a file even if it is
zgrep compressed
It is a compression and file packaging utility for Unix. Each file is stored
zip in single .zip {.zip-filename} file with the extension .zip