UNIX/Linux Commands

-Mangesh Kaldhone

Jan 2015

Contents

Shell Intro
Command Format
Shell I/O
Command I/O
Command Overview

Jan 2015

Shell Intro
A system program that allows a user to execute:
shell functions (internal commands)
other programs (external commands)
shell scripts

Linux/UNIX has a bunch of them, the most

common are
tcsh, an expanded version of csh (Bill Joy, Berkley, Sun)
bash, one of the most popular and rich in functionality
shells, an expansion of sh (AT&T Bell Labs)
ksh, Korn Shell
zhs
...

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Command Format

Format: command name and 0 or more arguments:

% commandname [arg1] ... [argN]
By % sign I mean prompt here and hereafter.
Arguments can be
options (switches to the command to indicate a mode of
operation) ; usually prefixed with a hyphen (-) or two (--) in
GNU style
non-options, or operands, basically the data to work with
(actual data, or a file name)

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Shell I/O

Shell is a power-user interface, so the user interacts with

the shell by typing in the commands.
The shell interprets the commands, that may produce some
results, they go back to the user and the control is given back
to the user when a command completes (in general).
In the case of external commands, shell executes actual
programs that may call functions of the OS kernel.
These system commands are often wrapped around a socalled system calls, to ask the kernel to perform an operation
(usually privileged) on your behalf.

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Command I/O

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Input to shell:
Command name and arguments typed by the user
Input to a command:
Keyboard, file, or other commands
Standard input: keyboard.
Standard output: screen.
These STDIN and STDOUT are often together referred to as a
terminal.
Both standard input and standard output can be redirected
from/to a file or other command.
File redirection:
< input
>> output append
> output

man

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Manual Pages
The first command to remember
Contains info about almost everything :-)
other commands
system calls
c/library functions
other utils, applications, configuration files
To read about man itself type:
% man man
NOTE: unfortunately theres no
% man woman ...

which

Displays a path name of a command.

Searches a path environmental variable for the command and
displays the absolute path.
To find which tcsh and bash are actually in use, type:
% which tcsh
% which bash
% man which for more details

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chsh

Jan 2015

Change Login Shell

Login shell is the shell that interprets commands after
you logged in by default.
You can change it with chsh (provided that your system
admin allowed you to do so).
To list all possible shells, depending on implementation:
% chsh -l
% cat /etc/shells
% chsh with no arguments will prompt you for the shell.

whereis

Display all locations of a command (or some other binary,

man page, or a source file).
Searchers all directories to find commands that match
whereis argument
% whereis tcsh

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General Commands

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passwd

Change your login password.

A very good idea after you got a new one.
Its usually a paranoid program asking your password to have
at least 6 chars in the password, at least two alphabetical and
one numerical characters. Some other restrictions (e.g.
dictionary words or previous password similarity) may apply.
Depending on a privilege, one can change users and group
passwords as well as real name, login shell, etc.
% man passwd

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date

Guess what :-)

Displays dates in various formats
% date
% date -u
in GMT
% man date

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cal

Calendar
for month
entire year
Years range: 1 - 9999
No year 0
Calendar was corrected
in 1752 - removed 11
days

Jan 2015

% cal
% cal
year
% cal
% cal
% cal
% cal
% cal

2 2000

current month
Feb 2000, leap

2 2100
2 2400
9 1752
0
2002

not a leap year

leap year
11 days skipped
error
whole year

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clear

Clears the screen

Theres an alias for it: Ctrl+L
Example sequence:
% cal
% clear
% cal
Ctrl+L

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sleep

Sleeping is doing nothing for some time.

Usually used for delays in shell scripts.
% sleep 2 2 seconds pause

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Command Grouping

Semicolon: ;
Often grouping acts as if it were a single command, so an
output of different commands can be redirected to a file:
% (date; cal; date) > out.txt

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alias

Defined a new name for a command

% alias
with no arguments lists currently active aliases
% alias newcommand oldcommand
defines a newcommand
% alias cl cal 2003
% cl

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unalias

Removes alias
Requires an argument.
% unalias cl

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history

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Display a history of
recently used commands
% history
all commands in the
history
% history 10
last 10
% history -r 10
reverse order
% !!
repeat last command

% !n
repeat command n in the
history
% !-1
repeat last command = !!
% !-2
repeat second last
command
% !ca
repeat last command that
begins with ca
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redirect

Standard Output : Most command line programs that

display their results onstandard output. This can be
redirected using > character. When >> is used the results are
appended, the new results are added to the end of the file.
ls > filename
ls >> filename
Standard Input : Many commands can accept input from a
facility calledstandard input, but like standard output, it can
be redirected using < character
sort < file_list.txt
sort < file_list.txt > sorted_file.txt

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Pipes
What's a pipe?

is a method of interprocess communication (IPC)

in shells a '|' symbol used
it means that the output of one program (on one
side of a pipe) serves as an input for the
program on another end.
a set of "piped" commands is often called a
pipeline

Why it's useful?

Because by combining simple OS utilities one

can easily solve more complex tasks

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ps

Theps(i.e.,process status)commandis used to provide

information about the currently runningprocesses, including
theirprocess identification numbers(PIDs).
A process, also referred to as atask, is anexecuting(i.e.,
running) instance of a program. Every process is assigned a
unique PID by the system. The basic syntax of ps is
ps [options]
The four items are displayed PID, TTY, TIME and CMD. TIME
is the amount of CPU time process has been running. CMD is
the name of the command that launched the process. TTY is
the name of theconsoleorterminal.
-a all users; -u detailed info.

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top

topprovides an ongoing look at processor activity in real

time. It displays a listing of the most CPU-intensive tasks on
the system, and can provide an interactive interface for
manipulating processes.
It can sort the tasks by CPU usage, memory usage and
runtime, can be better configured than the standard top from
the procps suite.
Most features can either be selected by an interactive
command or by specifying the feature in the personal or
system-wide configuration file.
-d delay between scrren update; -p pid to monitor.

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tee

Tee command is used to store and view (both at the same

time) the output of any other command.
Tee command writes to the STDOUT, and to a file at a time.
ls
=> will display output
ls > file
=> will send output to file
ls | tee file
=> will display output and send it to file
ls -l | tee file.txt | sed 's/old/new/
Will send ls output to file and to sed too.

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kill

Thekillcommandis used onLinuxand otherUnix-likeoperating

systemsto terminateprocesseswithout having to log out
orreboot(i.e., restart) the computer.
The syntax for kill is
kill [signaloroption] PID(s)
Process Identification Number.
The kill command has a misleading name because it does not
actuallykillprocesses. Rather, it sends signals to them. Each
process is supplied with a set of standardsignal handlersby the
operating system in order to deal with incoming signals. When
no signal is explicitly included in the command,signal 15,
named SIGTERM, is sent by default. If this fails, the
strongersignal 9, called SIGKILL, should be used. For example,
the following command would nearly guarantee that process 485
would be killed:
kill -9 485

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apropos

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Search man pages for a

substring.
% apropos word
Equivalent:
% man -k word

% apropos date
% man -k date
% apropos password

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exit / logout

Exit from your login session.

% exit
% logout

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shutdown

Causes system to shutdown or reboot cleanly.

May require superuser privileges
% shutdown -h now
- stop
% shutdown -r now
- reboot

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Files

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ls
List directory contents
Has whole bunch of
options, see man ls for
details.
% ls
all files except those
starting with a .

% ls -a
all

% ls -A
all without . and ..
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% ls -F
append / to dirs and *
to executables

% ls -l
long format

% ls -al
% ls -lt
sort by modification time
(latest - earliest)

% ls -ltr
reverse
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cat
Display and concatenate files.
% cat

Will read from STDIN and print to STDOT every line you
enter.

% cat file1 [file2] ...

Will concatenate all files in one and print them to

STDOUT

% cat > filename

Will take whatever you type from STDIN and will put it
into the file filename

To exit cat or cat > filename type Ctrl+D to

indicate EOF (End of File).
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more / less

Pagers to display contents of large files page by page or scroll

line by line up and down.
Have a lot of viewing options and search capability.
Interactive. To exit: q

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less
less ("less is more") a bit more smart than the more
command
to display contents of a file:
% less filename

To display line numbers:

% less -N filename

To display a prompt:

% less -P"Press 'q' to quit" filename

Combine the two:

% less -NP"Blah-blah-blah" filename

For more information:

% man less

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touch

By touching a file you either create it if it did not exists (with 0

length).
Or you update its last modification and access times.
There are options to override the default behavior.
% touch file
% man touch

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cp

Copies files / directories.

% cp [options] <source> <destination>
% cp file1 file2
% cp file1 [file2] /directory
Useful option: -i to prevent overwriting existing files and prompt
the user to confirm.

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mv
Moves or renames files/directories.
% mv <source> <destination>
The <source> gets removed

% mv file1 dir/
% mv file1 file2
rename

% mv file1 file2 dir/

% mv dir1 dir2
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rm

Removes file(s) and/or directories.

% rm file1 [file2] ...

% rm -r dir1 [dir2] ...
% rm -r file1 dir1 dir2 file4 ...

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script
Writes a log (a typescript) of whatever
happened in the terminal to a file.
% script [file]
% script
all log is saved into a file named typescript

% script file
all log is saved into a file named file

To exit logging, type:

% exit
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find
Looks up a file in a directory tree.
% find . -name name
% find . \(-name w* -or -name W* \)

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mkdir

Creates a directory.
% mkdir newdir
Often people make an alias of md for it.

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cd

Changes your current directory to a new one.

% cd /some/other/dir
Absolute path
% cd subdir
Assuming subdir is in the current directory.
% cd
Returns you to your home directory.

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pwd

Displays personal working directory, i.e. your current

directory.
% pwd

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rmdir

Removes a directory.
% rmdir dirname
Equivalent:
% rm -r dirname

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ln

Symbolic link or a shortcut in M$ terminology.

% ln s <real-name> <fake-name>

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chmod
Changes file permissions
Possible invocations
% chmod 600 filename
-rw------- 1 user group 2785 Feb 8 14:18
filename
(a bit not intuitive where 600 comes from)
% chmod u+rw filename
(the same thing, more readable)
For the assignment:
% chmod u+x myshellscript
(mysshellscript is now executable)
-rwx------ 1 user group 2785 Feb 8 14:18 myshellscript
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grep
Searches its input for a pattern.
The pattern can be a simple substring or a complex
regular expression.
If a line matches, its directed to STDOUT;
otherwise, its discarded.
% echo blah-foo | grep blah
Will print the matching line

% echo blah-foo | grep zee

Will not.

See a separate grep tutorial.

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.login and .shrc

You have two special files in your directory which make

customizing your session easy: .login, which is read every
time you log in; and .cshrc, which is read each time you begin
a new csh or tcsh shell.
In home directory, simple .login and .cshrc files may have
been installed for you by the system administrators; you are
free to change these files.
If they aren't already in place, you can put them there simply
by creating a text file with those names.
A pound sign (#) indicates comments and are not read by the
system.

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cont

the.cshrcfileall commands that need to be executed in each

new shell:
allsetcomands, including path setting
allsetenvcommands
aliascommands
aumaskcommand
Some Suggestions for your .cshrc file
set autolist
alias h history
alias work cd /proj/myproj/mangeshk/
alias ll ls lrt

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Thank you

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