Unix Commands Tutorial

Unix commands are the first thing needed by a unix sysadmin who are starting to work in unix

operating system . Unix operating systems comes with online manual system which can be

used to see the command details , syntax options and examples on while working on a unix

system. Unix manual can be accessed using man and it requires the man package installed

and MANPATH set to man directories. The manual page directories may differ in different unix

operating systems and man package may not be installed in all systems .

Following is a unix command tutorial with some of the most popular and useful commands

used in unix operating system arranged by functionality .

* The * wildcard character substitutes for one or more

characters in a filename. For instance, to list all the files in
your directory that end with .c, enter the command
ls *.c
? ? (question mark) serves as wildcard character for
any onecharacter in a filename. For instance, if you have files
namedprog1, prog2, prog3 , and prog3 in your directory,
the Unix command:
ls prog?

directory

Change cd dir Change to directory d

Make mkdir dir Create new directory d
Move mv dir1 dir2 Rename directory d1 as d2
Remove rmdir dir Remove directory d
file
list , no details only names ls filename , filename with wildcard character/s.
list , details ls -1 filename , filename with wildcard character/s.
move to directory mv filename dirname (wildcard character/s supported)
copy file to other/current
cp file directory/newfile or cp directory/oldfile .
directory
rm file , rm -rf directory - Recursively remove files &
Delete the file
directly without any warning.
file file filename , file command tries to determine the file type ,
text , executable etc after comparing the values in /etc/magic .
File edit/create/view

vi - vi full screen editor vi filename , Opens a existing file or creates

ed - Line Text editor ed filename
count – Line, word, & char wc filename
Text content display - List
cat filename
contents of file at once
Text content display by
screen : List contents of more filename
file screen by screen
Concatenate – file1 &
cat file1 file2 >file3
file2 into file3

File operation

Change read/write/execute
chmod mode file
mode of fil
chown chown [-R] [-h] owner[:group] file
move (rename ) file mv file1 file2 Rename file file1 as file2
Remove rm file Delete (remove) file f
Compare two files cmp file1 file2
Copy file file1 into file2 cp file1 file2
Sort Alphabetically sort file
Sort Numerically sort -n file
Split f into n-line pieces split [-n] f
match pattern grep pattern file Outputs lines that
Lists file differences diff file1 file2
head f Output beginning
head file
of file
Output end of file tail file

PROCESS

Suspend current process CTRL/z *

Interrupt processes CTRL/c *
Stop screen scrolling CTRL/s *
Resume screen scrolling CTRL/q *
Sleep for n seconds sleep n
Print list of jobs jobs
Kill job n kill %
Remove process n kill -9 n
status process status stats ps
Resume background job n bg [%n]
Resume foreground job n fg [%n]
Exit from shell exit

User admin

add a new user login to # useradd -u 655 -g 20 -d /home/ttes testlogin loginname

the system -u is userid , if not specified system takes highest available .
-g group id should be existing in /etc/group , if not specified
other or user is assigned.
-d home directory , default is to use user as the directory
name under the home directory.
loginname – new login name to be created .
#useradd testlogin will create a user by the name ‘testlogin’ with all default
values .

password Change passwd <user>

alias (csh/tcsh) – Create
alias name1 name2
command
alias (ksh/bash) – Create
alias name1=”name2″
alias command
alias – Remove alias unalias name1[na2...]
printer
Output file f to line
p -d printer file
printer

System Status

Display disk quota quota

Print date & time date
List logged in users who
Display current user whoami
Output user information finger [username]
Display recent commands history

Environment Variable

set command alone displays the environment variables, it is

set
used to set options in ksh like set -o vi
export export variable , export makes variable visible in sub shells.
Set environment
variable(csh/tcsh) to value sentenv name v
v
Set environment
variable(ksh/bash) to value export name=v example : export TERM=vt100
v

Connectivity

Connecting to a remote $telnet hostname/ip address or $telnetTelnet brings up the

host login prompt of remote host and expects you to enter your
user name & password .Without argument it enters command
mode (telnet>) and accepts command listed by ? at telnet>
prompt. Communication is not encrypted between two hosts.
Securely connecting to a ssh username@hostname or ssh -l username hostname
remote host Depending on ssh setting for your account you may or may
not be asked a password to login. Your login/passwd will be
same login password as you would use with telnet
connection.
Communication is encrypted between two hosts so if
someone intercepts your communication he will not be able
to use it.
Copy files from/to remote ftp hostname
host ftp expects you to enter your username/passwd or if it is ftp
only account it will require ftp account password .
put , mput ( multiple put ) command is used to transfer files
to remote host.
get , mget ( multiple put) command is used to transfer files
from remote host.
ftp allows some limited number of commands to be executed
at ftp> prompt & summary of ftp command can be found by
using ? at ftp> prompt
Securely copy files sftp username@hostname:remotefile
from/to remote host localfile Communication is encrypted between two hosts.
Test the tcp/ip ping hostname
connectivity between two If you can ping a host the host is reachable from the machine
hosts that you are using .
Router/firewall configuration may prevent ping to succeed .

Backup and Restore

backup and restore using tar tvf filename.tar — View the table of content of a tar
tar , TApeaRchive archive
tar xvf filename.tar — Extract content of a tar archive
tar cvf filename.tar file1 file2 file3 — Create a tar archive
called filename.tar using file1, file2,file3 .
tar can’t copy the special files , device files .Not suitable for
taking root backup.
backup and restore using cpio is mostly used in conjunction with other commands to
cpio , CopyInputOutput generate a list of files to be copied :
#ls | cpio -o > /dev/rmt/c0t0d0 — Copy the contents of a
directory into a tape archive:
#find . -depth -print | cpio -pd newdir — copy entire
directory to other place:
#find . -cpio /dev/rmt/c0t0d0 — Copy files in current
directory to a tape
cpio can copy special files and hence useful in taking root
backup containing device file.
Find files , directories
find files , directories Find command is used to find the files , directories and to run
commands on the list of files thus generated .By default, find
does not follow symbolic links.
find . -name *.log -print — Simple find to list log files
find . -name ‘*.log’ -exec rm {} \; — Simple find to find log
files and delete them .
find accepts a long list of options to find the files based on
different parameters such as create time , modified time , of
certain size etc. Please refer to man find for more option.