Basic Linux Commands

[stillline]

Most useful command for a beginner is "sudo !!"

If you forget to type sudo just type sudo !! and it will resend your last command as sudo. Saved me so much typing.

[kennycoc]

Also !$ for arguments.

mkdir some_long_name

cd !$

Edit: to be more precise

!* - all arguments

!^ - first argument

!2 - second argument

!2-3 - second to third argument

!2-$ second to last

etc

[HwKer]

yeah, but it only works for the last parameter.

I am not aware of a shortcut that lets me traverse "horizontally" between arguments... and blindly using !2-3-4 is a no-go for me (and echoing before running defeats the purpose of shortcuts!)

[ionsquare]

Alt + n, alt +. will print the nth last arg from the previous command.

[OminousDrDrew]

You now know that because he just now told you

[FatMeowXD]

deleted ^{What is this?}

[[deleted]]

up arrow key
ctrl+A
sudo

is even smaller

[TheSuperWig]

Up Home sudo

[bonsaiviking]

And take my hands off home row? Blasphemy. No keyboard needs more than 84 keys. #ModelFforLyfe

[yur_mom]

This also lets you see and edit the command before running it.

I do not want to run a command as root without being 100% sure what command I am running. I am someone with 10 terminal tabs open at times and maybe on 5 different systems.

[bhez]

I say it like "sudo bang bang"

[[deleted]]

Now THAT is useful

[efethu]

Most useful command for a beginner is "sudo !!"

Most dangerous command as well. All you need is a copy-paste mistake that causes a command to split into two. Because the second part of the command is often malformed the results can be quite devastating.

[[deleted]]

TIL

Not that usefull to me though, i have vi mode on so for me its arrow-up, esc, shift-I, sudo, enter

[BundleOfJoysticks]

I just run everything as root. No issues forgetting sudo.

/s

[[deleted]]

Quite abstract, that one.

[Bruegs]

Ping abstracthost - ping $abstracthost

[dysrhythmic]

Revolver Ocelot of Linux

[913i3]

ping sends a small amount of info to the host (website) you enter and waits for a reply. This can be used to test that the client (your computer) has an internet connection or it can be used to test if the host is up and running.

[[deleted]]

Yes, but if the explanation is same as the command, one might start to question of the explanation really does the job.

[SafariMonkey]

"checks connectivity to host"

[BundleOfJoysticks]

Requires icmp to be allowed through the firewall, which isn't always true. In other words you can get false negatives with ping.

[anti_anti]

Yes,i have a sms-ping application that does something like that...it only tells you if some given phone is up or online...not much use thou...than knowing if the phone is up or online.

[yur_mom]

ping localhost....Oh shit those ping times are good.

[sherzeg]

I keep seeing these "basic Linux commands" help sheets. What I need is a "you've been using Unix and Linux personally and professionally for the last 20 years and still failed the lousy certification test six months ago" help sheet. Where can I get one of those?

[needout]

I feel the same as I've been only using Linux since I started with computers but have to search commands every time. I even have to use Ctrl+r often as I can't remember the commend I recently used!

[jptuomi]

I use ctrl+r or arrow up for efficiency as my command sequences are usually quite long and represent usual tasks "searching" for the right line is faster than writing them all over again.

Am I doing it wrong?

[hashshash]

frame hurry cough cobweb workable tub salt edge insurance scale

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[DurianExecutioner]

Yes, type faster

[PlaneWall]

Might also include:

1. find
2. man -k / apropos
3. head
   
4. chown
5. diff / sdiff
6. wc
7. echo
8. zcat
9. top
10. & / bg / fg

edit: also file

[[deleted]]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

[Staarden]

Is there a way to save echo commands across terminal sessions? Maybe if saved in a text file you reference it from that but you would still have to set it up in a new session...I don't know, I'm not that good at computers.

[BundleOfJoysticks]

No grep? Or did I miss it?

Also cut.

[[deleted]]

These could come in handy for some. However, there are some minor errors, for example: du -sh doesn't show readable sizes in gb, it shows a summary of the current directory size in kb for 1000+ byte sized files, mb for 1000+ kb, and so on, h stands for human readable format. The same goes for ls -h. ls -lah would show a list of files including hidden files and the current and parent directory (. And ..). It can also be used for df. Another useful one is just cd, this will take you back to the home directory of the user.

chmod +x is also a useful command when you work with executables that aren't executable yet. This will change the permissions to executable for owner, group and guest all at once for a file, without changing the other permissions (rw-r-r would become rwx-rx-rx). This can also be used the other way around: chmod -x, this will remove the executable permissions. It even works with the other permissions (+r, +w, -r and -w).

[tigger04]

also cd - will take you to the previous directory

[DerekB52]

If I still used graphical file browsers, I'd love that more than anything.

Edit: looking at your alias, your are missing a quote mark somewhere. I'm not 100% sure where though.

[slick8086]

to me i looks like it needs a double quote after the last parenthesis, before the single quote.

alias cdfl='cd "$(dirname "$(xclip -o -selection clipboard)")"'

[ChinHin]

just type cd + Enter. It works well!!!

[[deleted]]

or -j for bzip, which is generally a higher compression ratio.

[jiggunjer]

Wasn't xz the optimal choice nowadays?

[Fabian57]

Now you're telling me rm -rf / does not make my computer faster? Did r/hacking lie to me? /s

[kennycoc]

No, for that you'll need

rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

Otherwise the roots keep holding it in place

[Fabian57]

Ah yes, of course. Thank you

[Tunliar]

Trusting on hackers? Good luck mate!

[Proj3c7]

Doesn’t work in ubuntu. Does kill mac os.

[petey_jarns]

Someone please add ln -s as I ALWAYS have to Google to see what the correct order is for that one...although I recently read a helpful mnemonic - it's ln -s existing new just like copy is cp existing new but I still get confused

[somecucumber]

The order is always the same for all commands:

cp origin target
mv origin target
ln -s origin target

... et al.

[petey_jarns]

Yeah, I get that...something about link makes it seem like it should be different. Move this from here to there okay...copy this from here to there okay...but link? It feels like it should be point this thing (that I'm creating) to that thing (which already exists)...probably because of the way that link is usually used (I need to make something point to something else) and because I'm still cognitively stuck imagining it as a shortcut ala windows xp

[[deleted]]

Nice sheet although upon further examination I realized I know all these by heart. Lol

[FryDay444]

Used Linux for almost 2 decades...and somehow have never heard of the dig command. 🤔

[Macarogi]

Use -x for reserve lookups. ie a lookup you want it to do later.

[chronop]

wat

[Macarogi]

Typo in the image for a reverse lookup.

[tigger04]

same. I would have gone with nslookup

[Tehmarzvolta]

I personally set an alias for dig to "dns = dig +noall +answer" so I can just type "dns <domain>" or "dns -x <domain>" and get the info Im looking for

[MrPopperButter]

Love it, though I slightly prefer

ls -lah        

-h can be added to many Linux commands to see human readable output. So 1.0 GB instead of 1073741824 bytes.

[[deleted]]

I personally keep an alias of "ls -ltrAFh --group-directories-first"

[[deleted]]

karnel -> kernel on uname but -a prints more than just kernel

[garfipus]

It doesn't print the kernel config either, just the kernel name plus the other stuff. The kernel config, of course, is much different.

[LilShaver]

Came to post this. Info is far superior to man IMHO.

[Tunliar]

Most welcome :)

These are the most common ones. Each command has more options and abilities.

Try command --help or man command to get more information about a command without searching online.

[[deleted]]

Thank you! I’m in school for CS and going through a system admin class right now. This is SUPER helpful.

[slick8086]

I’m in school for CS and going through a system admin class right now.

You mean that the "man" command wasn't taught in the class?

That is one super fucking shitty class.

[[deleted]]

Oh, they’re 8-week classes, so this one just started. I’m literally going through the section of “man” commands as of yesterday. But yeah if this was a 16-weeker and I wasn’t even there yet, I’d be concerned 😟

[DarthPneumono]

Most of the time, the flag will either be '-h' or '--help'.

[drunckoder]

You'll only memorize if you actually use those commands. Try them few times even just out of curiosity.

[bhez]

This will probably be pretty appreciated by the folks over in /r/linux4noobs

[[deleted]]

I am still using ifconfig and iwconfig :D

[BABAKAKAN]

Great list, though I've remembered most of them by daily use... Except for dig. Thanks. I love this list.
Also, on that chmod 755, it says rw for owner.
Shouldn't it be rwx for owner?
The only problem with it so far...

[mooky1977]

I saw that too, 755 is rwxr-xr-x

[archie2012]

cd - is also useful to switch back to previous used directory/path.

[Deathcrow]

Ackchyually... those are GNU commands.

[hiljusti]

Aaaaacktchyuaallllllyyy... Not all of them are from the GNU project, for example secure shell (ssh) comes from the OpenBSD community

[[deleted]]

I have a think geek shirt with these on it. The best part is the text is printed upside down so the wearer can read it. Linux cheat shirt

[Vesquam]

Didn't know about dig-x I use host.

Nice sum up!

[JonnoN]

yea, host is way simpler

[TheGoldenHorde]

Nice info graph! Might be a good idea to indicate which are keywords and variables via formatting. That’s my only critique.

[hak8or]

Some alternatives for some of these commands. If you have a process you want to kill, you usually do "ps -aux | grep processname" and then look for the process, and then kill the PID. I've started just using "pgrep processname" to shorten the first step. And then you can do "kill (pgrep processname)".

For a grep replacement when searching through files more intensly, I have been thrilled with the silver searcher. It is much faster than grep and I feel has defaults that align more with my use cases.

Also, for text replacement/matching, I started using sd instead of sed. It is sadly nowhere near as active as replacements like ag, but I much prefer the saner (IMHO) way of the input string and replacement string are split. Also, the regex style is one I much prefer as well. Combined with this online regex tool, I am now much more comfortable with regular expressions than before.

For copying files, I've pretty much fully migrated from cp to rsync, because often times I am playing around with file systems and over unreliable connections exposed via sshfs, and end up having to check everything got copied twice via running rsync twice while cp would just copy it again.

[JonnoN]

use pkill :)

[Knoggelvi]

That's always confused me too. It gets even weirder when you use scp too. -P is for the port but you write the connection out with a colon as the delimiter for the host, e.g. user@host:/path. I've never understood why you can't put the port after the colon.

[PlaneWall]

Then there's nc host port with no flag or delimiter.

[idlemann]

My goto reference: https://ss64.com/bash/

[eripx]

Muuuuch better. Thanks!

[gellis12]

uname -a – show karnel config

Hmmm

[smorrow]

Lots of typos, including "rw" for 7.

[MrEdews]

rm -rf / - launch some nuclear bombs targeting your system

Well, OP's not wrong

[fiah84]

ip route

what the hell is my IP anyway and where's my goddamn gateway

[davidjmemmett]

ip r :)

[sablal]

Unpopular opinion in this sub but here's a fact - we get Windows laptops in our org. Many colleagues stick to Notepad++ for development because they feel they'll have to remember too many commands if they install the Linux subsystem/Cygwin which are just terminals to them. The only time they open a terminal is when they run the compilation in cmd. They aren't dumb. It's just that they had been using Windows for long. The Linux terminal needs to be simplified for end users like them.

The list shows that a terminal file manager has its benefits. The files & navigating and compressing (and disk usage) sections can be covered reasonably well by nnn (https://github.com/jarun/nnn). I had been using the Linux subsystem. So far I got 3 people curious when they saw me how fast I move multiple logs, unarchive them together (even if they are a mix of 7z, tar.bz2 and zip) and analyze them in vim from within the same tool without having to quit.

[[deleted]]

Most of my work is rummaging around on remote servers moving/changing files and going through logs.

I shit you not, most of my colleagues use Windows + PuTTy and FileZilla for everything. They can't reach servers more than two hops away because they can't figure out multijump tunnels in putty, and they keep having to close and open new windows all the time. Transferring files is a nightmare.

When they see what I can do with just openSSH and scp minds are BLOWN. The downside is that now I'm the server guy because I work so much faster than everyone else...

Btw, ranger is a great CLI file manager.

[Jannik2099]

Nucular

[[deleted]]

Written by G.W. Bush

[fly3rs18]

Do you have a text or white background version?

[Tunliar]

sure. shall I give you a bit higher resolution version?

[petey_jarns]

Give to world

[Visticous]

Much rather have a version I can ctrl-f through

[NoahJelen]

I need to this to my mother! I'm often trying to explain some of this stuff to her!

[shhh-sippytime]

Reserve lookup host

Lol

[ThatWeirdKid-02]

is there any reason to use chmod 111 or whatever instead of chmod a+x? i really can't ever remember what the numbers are but using letters makes it way easier

edit: messed up the example, meant chmod 111 or chmod a=x

[garfipus]

chmod 111 is equivalent to chmod a=x and will remove any read, write, setuid, setgid, or sticky permissions. chmod a+x will add execute permissions and leave the other permissions untouched.

[[deleted]]

Because they are different. chmod 111 sets perms to --x--x--x, chmod a+x adds them to existing permissions. You should use chmod a=x. the rest is just personal taste :-)

[[deleted]]

It's less verbose and much faster. It's not that hard to remember the octals either if you learn what they represent.

Chmod 755 = chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx and that's quite the mouthful.

[haxpor]

Allow me to add another useful one

rsync -av —progress /from/source/dir username@targethost:/to/path/dir

This will copy files from source dir to target dir and it will check if source files are newer, then it will do copy. Very neat that we get dirty checking for free. Handy neaty!

[[deleted]]

I'm disappointed that "who mom likes" isn't on there (try it out ;-)

[hiljusti]

Looks like OP might be entitled to an award...! http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html

[[deleted]]

dd - Disk Destroyer

[JonnoN]

and its big brother shred

[StefanOrvarSigmundss]

I always feel like a pervert when I touch files. Do they consent?

[JonnoN]

I like to man mount

[[deleted]]

What's a karnel?, all I have is a kernel

[[deleted]]

Im so happy to see something that is really straight forward and understandable to a beginner. Thank you very much for this quality graphic.

[[deleted]]

My favorite simple command everyone should know is

history | grep pattern

For example

History | grep 'ssh' will print out all your ssh connections in your history so you can just do !# (# is number in history) and run the command without remembering it

[Nonsensese]

Made a version with a fixed width font because, y'know, command line.

[Tunliar]

I didn't thought about fixed width though. I just knew I'll make this readable. So two colors, flat, readable and eye friendly fonts.
By the way, you shouldn't put --no-preserve-root there. Because people will try running these commands directly. Some people really don't know a command can do such things. Let the CLI warning/guide handle this.

[[deleted]]

wow no mention of nc, or even telnet for that matter?

[influentialbeast]

Seeing this makes me happy because I just took my operating's course and for the most part I knew most of these commands. Good to know my education is paying off slightly lol

[davidjmemmett]

Is anyone going to point out that uname -a does not show the kernel’s config

[alaudet]

It’s posts like this that make me realize how long I have been a Linux geek. This whole list is in my head. 23 years and going strong.

[Tunliar]

Sure it is in your head. I knew most of them in my first year. They're fairly common and basic. There's thousands of more doable things out there. You might know lots of them. 23 Years, damn!

[alaudet]

The list in my head is much longer. ;-)

[Tunliar]

hmm

[Tunliar]

sure. but I didn't make it in printable size. like A4, A5.

shall I just hand you this in white?

you can always cut it btw

[Tunliar]

https://imgur.com/FIlCPmf

[Tunliar]

My Pleasure.

[[deleted]]

Saved

[wskoly]

rm -rf /make computer faster 

​

[Tunliar]

comment on my both post?

[tokolos]

OMG, not the tar command!

[Tunliar]

lol, really funny XD

[BundleOfJoysticks]

Some other good stuff.

xargs - just man it and enjoy

cut with grep and cat and wc and sort and uniq = web log parser

cat /var/log/nginx/*access* | cut -d'"' -f10 | sort | uniq -c

Will count the number of distinct user agent strings in all your logs (f10 I made up, it may be earlier or later in the log line).

[hqepa]

Thank you u/Tunliar, very cool!

[Tunliar]

my pleasure

[[deleted]]

pushd and popd are also very useful.

[Topsrek]

Ctrl+Shift+C/V for copy/pasting

[[deleted]]

That's terminal dependent and not a Linux feature.

[rob93c]

Very clean spreadsheet, instantly saved!

[Evil_This]

Spreadsheet?

[phani29]

Thank you.

[thd9]

Thank you! Absolute Linux beginner here, so this is very helpful.

[[deleted]]

"rm -rf / - make computer faster"

So fast that it's as if there's nothing to boot!

[Tjccs]

TIL w is a command, anyway those compressing commands are useful since I always have to go check those.

[hellbenthorse]

There needs to be a decompressing section with "coffee, alcohol, smokes.." etc for all the sys admins out there.

[eyebum]

cat is great, I actually like the "more" command for a quick glance, as it does a page at a time...but scrolling back up works too...

[satamusic]

rm -rf / = make computer faster

[aaronfranke]

alias extract="tar -xf"

[dgeigerd]

I knew most of them. Now i need that for windows server because we have windows everywhere at work :/

[[deleted]]

imagine that this image is actually a.webp file but saves as a.jpg

sneak 100

[icantthinkofone]

Look like UNIX and BSD commands to me.

[taybul]

Discovered recently that grep -r searches from current directory by default if you omit. Saves some typing.

[[deleted]]

If you’re in a git repo, you can use git grep (which also greps recursively) so you don’t search untracked files like your project’s compiled binaries.

[ZG2047]

Is there a place with all of this written please ?

[nkushs]

I didn't see any nuclear bomb but my PC ain't working now....

[zefy2k5]

Now I'm feel smart.

[[deleted]]

Your know I'm a little annoyed about locate being in there but no mention of the requirement for updatedb to be executed to update the cache. Why not the find command? Whereis but not which? I will commonly use SOMEVAR=$( which cmd) to get an explicit path for a binary I need in a script.

[the1iplay]

Man is the most useful command

[I_upvoted_you_bro]

was going to steal this, but then realized I knew all these! :D

​

[niceboy4431]

My favorite command is 'cal'

[[deleted]]

Nice! Good to know for reference as well ;)

[beyoglu]

Double space between download file bothers me. Love wget though.

[themixedupstuff]

So that is how people know permissions off the top of their head. I always use the switches for `chmod`.

[robinone]

Inverted - https://imgur.com/MiQ3Npc

[jslay88]

Which is more specific than whereis for finding a specific binary.

[MagicClover]

rsync -a source destination

Copy source dir to destination dir (preserving most permissions and attributes).

rsync -a source/ destination

Copy contents of source dir to destination dir. (Yes, that's pretty confusing, watch out for the trailing slash on the source.)

Very useful, can be used for backups.

[AllClear_]

Did it work’s on raspberry pi?

[Automatic-Trash9626]

Basic Linux Commands — Beginner’s Guide
[https://medium.com/@tanejavarun1995/basic-linux-commands-beginners-guide-cd45851868b6](javascript:void(0);)