Linux Commands

Useful Linux Commands

You can use man [command] to get information about a command, but that is more programmer-centric. You are generally better off going to a search engine and searching for [command] examples.

Disk Commands

Returns a quick overview of what disks are mounted and how full they are in human readable formatting.

df -h

Directory Commands

Directory details

Returns a total size of the directories under where this command was run and sorts by size. Warning: May take a long time.

du -hsx * | sort -rh | head -10

File List

Return a list of files in a directory. This always works (shows file size in bytes)

ls -s

This is a SLES alias of the above

l

File size in human-readable values (K,M,G)

l -h

Sorted by size ascending human-readable

l -Srh

Sorted by time ascending human-readable

l -trh

Create a directory

md [directory name]
mkdir [directory name]

File Commands

Find a file

find / -name "fileName"

Using find to recursively unzip all items in a directory structure called zippedDir to the current directory.

find /zippedDir -name "*.zip" -exec unzip {} \;

Copy a file

cp origin /destination/file

To copy particular files recursively

cp -r *.txt /destination

To copy to the current directory

cp /software/origin.file .

Network

Download the Latest Version of Retain

wget "http://download.gwava.com/download.php?product=Retain&version=current"

Find the IP address of the server

ifconfig

look up mx records

host -t MX [domain.com]

Determine hosts

cat /etc/resolv.conf 

DNS

nslookup "Enter"
server "Enter"

Trace the route to a server

traceroute [domain.com]