Unix Linux Commands Presentation 2013

The Unix and GNU/Linux
commands
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Training contents
Shells, Filesystem and file handling
Everything is a file
GNU / Linux filesystem structure
Command line interpreters
Handling files and directories
Displaying, scanning and sorting files
Symbolic and hard link
File access rights
Standard I/O, redirections, pipes
Standard input/output, redirecting to files.
Pipes: redirecting standard output to other
commands
Standard error
Miscellaneous
Text editors
Compressing and archiving
Printing files
Comparing files and directories
Looking for files
User information.
Task control
Full control on tasks
Executing in background,
suspending, resuming and
aborting
List of active tasks
Killing processes
Environment variables
PATH environment variables
Shell aliases, .bashrc file

Unix file system
Almost everything in Unix is a file!
Regular files
Directories : Directories are just files
listing a set of files
Symbolic links : Files referring to the
name of another file
Devices and peripherals
 Read & write from devices
As with regular files
 Pipes Used to cascade programs
(e.x ) cat *.log | grep error
Sockets ( Inter process communication)
File names
File names
• Case sensitive
• No obvious length limit
Can contain any character (including
whitespace, except /).
File types stored in the file (“magic
numbers”).
File name extensions not needed and
not interpreted. Just
used for user convenience.
Examples: README .bashrc
Windows Buglist index.htm
index.html index.html.old

File paths
A path is a sequence of nested
directories with a file or directory
at the end, separated by the /
character
Relative path:
documents/fun/microsoft.html
Relative to the current directory
Absolute path:
/home/bill/bugs/crash94020311
/ : root directory.
Start of absolute paths for all files
on the system (even for files on
removable devices or network
shared).
/tmp/ Temporary files
/usr/ Regular user tools (not essential to
the system)
e.x /usr/bin/, /usr/lib/, /usr/sbin...
/usr/local/ Specific software installed by
the sysadmin (preferred to /opt/)
/var/ Data used by the system/system
servers
/var/log/, /var/spool/mail (incoming
mail), /var/spool/lpd (print jobs)...
The Unix filesystem structure is defined
by the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
(FHS):
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

GNU / Linux file system structure
Not imposed by the system. Can vary from one system to the other, even between two
GNU/Linux installations!
/ Root directory
/bin/ Basic, essential system commands
/boot/ Kernel images, initrd and configuration files
/dev/ Files representing devices
/dev/hda: First IDE hard disk
/etc/ System configuration files
/home/ User directories
/lib/ Basic system shared libraries
/lost+found Corrupt files the system tried to recover
/media Mount points for removable media: /media/usbdisk, /media/cdrom
/mnt/ Mount points for temporarily mounted filesystems
/opt/ Specific tools installed by the sysadmin
/usr/local/ often used instead
/proc/ Access to system information (/proc/cpuinfo, /proc/version ...
/root/ root user home directory
/sbin/ Administratoronly commands
/sys/ System and device controls (cpu frequency, device power)

Shells and file handling
 Shells: tools to execute user commands
 Called “shells” because they hide the
details on the underlying operating
system under the shell's surface.
 Commands are input in a text terminal,
either a window in a graphical
environment or a text-only console.
 Results displayed on the terminal. No
graphics needed at all.
 Shells can be scripted: provide all the
resources to write complex programs
(variable, conditionals, iterations...)
Well known shells
Most famous and popular shells
sh: The Bourne shell (obsolete)
Traditional, basic shell found on Unix
systems, by Steve Bourne.
csh: The C shell (obsolete)
Once popular shell ( Clike syntax )
tcsh: The TC shell (still very popular)
A C shell compatible implementation with
evolved features(command completion,
history editing & more...)
bash: The Bourne Again shell (most
popular) An improved implementation of sh
with lots of added features too.

ls command
Lists the files in the current directory, in alphanumeric order, except files starting
with the ―.‖ character.
ls -a (all)
Lists all the files (including .* files)
ls -l (long)
Long listing (type, date, size, owner,
permissions)
ls -t (time)
Lists the most recent files first
ls –S (size)
Lists the biggest files first
ls –r (reverse)
Reverses the sort order
ls –ltr (options can be combined)
Long listing, most recent files at the end
Better introduced by examples!
ls *txt
The shell first replaces *txt by all the file and
directory names ending by txt (including .txt),
except those starting with ., and then executes
the ls command line.
ls –d .*
Lists all the files and directories starting with
-d tells ls not to display the contents of
directories.
cat ?.log
Displays all the files which names start by 1
character and
end by .log

Special directories
~/
Not a special directory indeed. Shells just
substitute it by the home directory of the
current user.
Cannot be used in most programs, as it is not
a real directory.
~sydney/
Similarly, substituted by shells by the home
directory of the sydney user.
cd <dir>
Changes the current directory to <dir>.
cd –
Gets back to the previous current directory.
pwd
Displays the current directory ("working
directory").
./
The current directory. Useful for
commands taking a directory argument.
Also sometimes useful to run commands in
the current directory .
So ./readme.txt and readme.txt are
equivalent.
../
The parent (enclosing) directory. Always
belongs to the . directory (see ls a).
Only reference to the parent directory.
Typical usage:
cd ..

The cp command
cp <source_file> <target_file>
cp file1 file2 file3 ... dir
Copies the files to the target
cp –I (interactive)
Asks for user confirmation if the target file
already exists
cp –r <source_dir> <target_dir>
(recursive)
Copies the whole directory.
mv and rm commands
Creating and removing directories
 mv and rm commands
 mv <old_name> <new_name> (move)
 Renames the given file or directory.
 mv –i (interactive)
 If the new file already exits, asks for user
confirm
 rm file1 file2 file3 ... (remove)
 Removes the given files.
 rm –i (interactive)
 Always ask for user confirm.
 rm –r dir1 dir2 dir3 (recursive)
 Removes the given directories with all
their contents
mkdir dir1 dir2 dir3 ... (make dir)
Creates directories with the given names.
rmdir dir1 dir2 dir3 ... (remove dir)
Removes the given directories
Safe: only works when directories and
empty.
Alternative: rm –r
(doesn't need empty directories).

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Displaying file contents
Displaying the contents of files.
 cat file1 file2 file3 ... (concatenate)
Concatenates and outputs the contents of the
given files.
 more file1 file2 file3 ...
After each page, asks the user to hit a key to
continue.Can also jump to the first occurrence
of a keyword (/ command).
 less file1 file2 file3 ...
Does more than more with less.
Doesn't read the whole file before starting.
Supports backward movement in the file (?
command).
The head and tail commands
 head [< n>] <file>
Displays the first <n> lines (or 10 by default)
of the given file. Doesn't have to open the
whole file to do this!
 tail [< n>] <file>
Displays the last <n> lines (or 10 by default)
of the given file.No need to load the whole
file in RAM! Very useful for huge files.
 tail –f <file> (follow)
Displays the last 10 lines of the given file and
continues to display new
lines when they are appended to the file.
 Examples
1) head windows_bugs.txt
2) tail –f outlook_vulnerabilities.txt

grep command
 grep <pattern> <files>
Scans the given files and displays the
lines which match the given pattern.
 grep error *.log
Displays all the lines containing error in
the *.log files
 grep –i error *.log
Same, but case insensitive.
 grep –ri error .
Same, but recursively in all the files in .
and its subdirectories
 grep –v info *.log
Outputs all the lines in the files except
those containing info.
The sort command
sort <file>
Sorts the lines in the given file
in character order and outputs
them.
sort –r <file>
Same, but in reverse order.
sort –ru <file>
u: unique. Same, but just
outputs identical lines once.
More possibilities described
later!

Symbolic links
A symbolic link is a special file
which is just a reference to the name
of another one (file or directory):
Useful to reduce disk usage and
complexity when 2 files have the
same content.
Example:
anakin_biography > darth_biagraphy
How to identify symbolic links:
ls –l displays -> and the linked file
name.
GNU ls displays links with a
different color.
Creating symbolic links
To create a symbolic link (same order as in cp):
 ln –s file_name link_name
To create a link with to a file in another
directory, with the
same name:
 ln –s ../README.txt
To create multiple links at once in a given
directory:
 ln –s file1 file2 file3 ... dir
To remove a link:
 rm link_name
Of course, this doesn't remove the linked file!

Hard links
The default behavior for ln is to create
hard links
A hard link to a file is a regular file with
exactly the same physical contents
While they still save space, hard links
can't be distinguished from the original
files.
If you remove the original file, there is
no impact on the hard link contents.
The contents are removed when there are
no more files (hard links) to them.
Files names and inodes
Makes hard and symbolic (soft) links
easier to understand!

Command documentation
Some Unix commands and most GNU /
Linux commands offer at least one help
argument:
-h (- is mostly used to introduce 1
character options)
--help (-- is always used to introduce
the corresponding “long” option name,
which makes scripts easier to
understand).
You also often get a short summary of
options when you input an invalid
argument.
Command help
Manual pages
man <keyword>
Displays one or several manual pages
for <keyword>
man manS
Most available manual pages are about
Unix commands, but some are also
about C functions, headers or data
structures,
or even about system configuration
files!
man stdio.h
man fstab (for /etc/fstab)
Manual page files are looked for in the
directories specified by
the MANPATH environment variable.

Users and permissions
Use ls –l to check file access rights
3 types of access rights
Read access (r)
Write access (w)
Execute rights (x)
3 types of access levels
 User (u): for the owner of the file
 Group (g): each file also has a “group”
attribute, corresponding to a given list of
users
 Others (o): for all other users
Access right constraints
x is sufficient to execute binaries Both x and r and
required for shell scripts. Both r and x permissions
needed in practice for directories:
r to list the contents, x to access the contents.
You can't rename, remove, copy files in a directory if you
don't have w access to this directory.
If you have w access to a directory, you CAN remove a
file even if you don't have write access to this file
(remember that a directory is just a file describing a list
of files). This even lets you modify (remove + recreate) a
file even without w access to it.
Access rights examples
-rw-r—r Readable
and writable for file owner, only readable
for others
-rw-r------ Readable
and writable for file owner, only readable
for users belonging to the file group.
Drwx------ Directory
only accessible by its owner
-------r-x
File executable by others but neither by
your friends nor by
yourself. Nice protections for a trap...

chmod: changing permissions
chmod <permissions> <files>
2 formats for permissions:
Octal format (abc):
a,b,c = r*4+w*2+x (r, w, x: booleans)
Example: chmod 644 <file>
(rw for u, r for g and o)
Or symbolic format. Easy to understand by
examples:
chmod go+r: add read permissions to group
and others.
chmod u-w: remove write permissions from
user.
chmod a-x: (a: all) remove execute
permission from all.
chmod R a+rX linux/
Makes linux and everything in it available to
everyone!
R: apply changes recursively
X: x, but only for directories and files already
executable
Very useful to open recursive access to
directories, without adding execution rights to
all files.
chmod a+t /tmp
t: (sticky). Special permission for directories,
allowing only the directory and file owner to
delete a file in a directory.
Useful for directories with write access to
anyone, like /tmp.
Displayed by ls –l with a t character.

File ownership
Particularly useful in (embedded) system
development when you create files for another
system.
chown –R sco /home/linux/src
(R: recursive)
Makes user sco the new owner of all the files
in /home/linux/src.
chgrp –R empire /home/skywalker
Makes empire the new group of everything in
/home/skywalker.
chown R borg:aliens usss_entreprise/
chown can be used to change the owner and
group at the same time.
Beware of the dark side of root
 root user privileges are only needed for
very specific tasks with security risks:
mounting, creating device files, loading
drivers, starting networking, changing
file ownership, package upgrades...
 Even if you have the root password,
your regular account should be
sufficient for 99.9 % of your tasks
(unless you are a system administrator).
 In a training session, it is acceptable to
use root. In real life, you may not even
have access to this account, or put your
systems and data at risk if you do.

Using the root account
In case you really want to use root...
If you have the root password:
su - ( Switch User )
in modern distributions, the sudo command gives you
access to some root privileges with your own user
password.
Example: sudo mount /dev/hda4 /home

Standard I/O, redirections, pipes
More about command output
 All the commands outputting text on your terminal do it by writing
to their standard output.
 Standard output can be written (redirected) to a file using the > symbol
 Standard output can be appended to an existing file using the >> symbol
Standard output redirection examples
ls ~adam/* > ~gwb/debug.txt
cat obiwan_kenobi.txt > starwars_biographies.txt
cat han_solo.txt >> starwars_biographies.txt
echo “README: No such file or directory” > README
Useful way of creating a file without a text editor.

Standard input
More about command input
Lots of commands, when not given input arguments, can
take their input from standard input.
sort
windows
linux
[Ctrl][D]
linux
Windows
sort < participants.txt
The standard input of sort is taken from the given file.
sort takes its input from
the standard input: in this case,
what you type in the terminal
(ended by [Ctrl][D])

Pipes
Unix pipes are very useful to redirect the standard output
of a command to the standard input of another one.
Examples:- cat *.log | grep -i error | sort
 grep –ri error . | grep -v “ignored” | sort –u >
serious_errors.log
 cat /home/*/homework.txt | grep mark | more
This one of the most powerful features in Unix shells!

The tee command
tee [-a] file
The tee command can be used to send standard output to the
screen and to a file simultaneously.
make | tee build.log
Runs the make command and stores its output to build.log.
make install | tee –a build.log
Runs the make install command and appends its output to
build.log.

Standard error
Error messages are usually output (if the program is well
written) to standard error instead of standard output.
Standard error can be redirected through 2> or 2>>
Example:
cat f1 f2 nofile > newfile 2> errfile
Note: 1 is the descriptor for standard output, so 1> is equivalent to
>.
Can redirect both standard output and standard error to the
same file using &> :
cat f1 f2 nofile &> wholefile

The yes command
Useful to fill standard input with always the same
string.
yes <string> | <command>
Keeps filling the standard input of <command> with
<string> (y by default).
Examples
yes | rm –r dir/
bank> yes no | credit_applicant
yes "" | make oldconfig
(equivalent to hitting [Enter] to accept all default
settings)

Special devices
Device files with a special behavior or
contents
/dev/null :- The data sink! Discards all data
written to this file. Useful to get rid of
unwanted output, typically log information:
mplayer black_adder_4th.avi &> /dev/null
/dev/zero
Reads from this file always return 0
characters
Useful to create a file filled with zeros:
dd if=/dev/zero of=disk.img bs=1k
count=2048
/dev/random
Returns random bytes when read. Mainly
used by cryptographic programs. Uses
interrupts from some device drivers as
sources of true randomness (“entropy”).
Reads can be blocked until enough entropy is
gathered.
/dev/urandom
For programs for which pseudo random
numbers are fine. Always generates random
bytes, even if not enough entropy is available
(in which case it is possible, though still
difficult, to predict future byte sequences
from past ones).
See man random for details.
/dev/full
Mimics a full device.
Useful to check that your application
properly handles this kind of situation.
See man full for details.

Task control

Full control on tasks
 Unix supports true preemptive
multitasking.
 Ability to run many tasks in parallel, and
abort them even if they corrupt their own
state and data.
 Ability to choose which programs you
run.
 Ability to choose which input your
programs takes, and where their output
goes.
Processes
“Everything in Unix is a file Everything
in Unix that is not a file is a process”
Processes : Instances of a running
programs
Several instances of the same program
can run at the same time Data
associated to processes: ( Open files,
allocated memory, stack, process id,
parent, priority, state... )
Running jobs in background
Same usage throughout all the shells Useful
 For command line jobs which output can be examined later, especially for time
consuming ones.
 To start graphical applications from the command line and then continue with the
mouse.
Starting a task: add & at the end of your line:
find_prince_charming –cute --clever –rich &

Background job control
jobs
Returns the list of background jobs from the
same shell
[1] Running
~/bin/find_meaning_of_life withoutgod
&
[2]+ Running make mistakes &
fg
fg %<n>
Puts the last / nth background job in foreground
mode
Moving the current task in background mode:
[Ctrl] Z
bg
kill %<n>
Aborts the nth job.
Job control example
> jobs
[1]Running
&
[2]+ Running make mistakes &
> fg
make mistakes
> [Ctrl] Z
[2]+ Stopped make mistakes
> bg
[2]+ make mistakes &
> kill %1
[1]+ Terminated

Listing all processes
... whatever shell, script or process they are started from
ps –ux ( Lists all the processes belonging to the current user)
ps –aux (Note: ps edf on System V systems)
Lists all the processes running on the system
ps -aux | grep bart | grep bash
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME
COMMAND
bart 3039 0.0 0.2 5916 1380 pts/2 S 14:35 0:00 /bin/bash
bart 3416 0.0 0.0 0 0 pts/2 RW 15:07 0:00 [bash]
PID: Process id
VSZ: Virtual process size (code + data + stack)
RSS: Process resident size: number of KB currently in RAM
TTY: Terminal
STAT: Status: R (Runnable), S (Sleep), W (paging), Z (Zombie)...

Live process activity
top Displays most important processes, sorted by cpu percentage
top 15: 44:33 up 1:11, 5 users, load average: 0.98, 0.61, 0.59
Tasks: 81 total, 5 running, 76 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 92.7% us, 5.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 0.0% id, 1.7% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 515344k total, 512384k used, 2960k free, 20464k buffers
Swap: 1044184k total, 0k used, 1044184k free, 277660k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
COMMAND
3809 jdoe 25 0 6256 3932 1312 R 93.8 0.8 0:21.49 bunzip2
2769 root 16 0 157m 80m 90m R 2.7 16.0 5:21.01 X
3006 jdoe 15 0 30928 15m 27m S 0.3 3.0 0:22.40 kdeinit
3008 jdoe 16 0 5624 892 4468 S 0.3 0.2 0:06.59 autorun
3034 jdoe 15 0 26764 12m 24m S 0.3 2.5 0:12.68 kscd
3810 jdoe 16 0 2892 916 1620 R 0.3 0.2 0:00.06 top
 You can change the sorting order by typing
M: Memory usage, P: %CPU, T: Time.
 You can kill a task by typing k and the process id.

Killing processes
kill <pids> Sends an abort signal to the given processes. Lets processes save data and exit
by themselves. Should be usedfirst.
Example: kill 3039 3134 3190 3416
kill -9 <pids>
Sends an immediate termination signal. The system itself terminates the processes. Useful
when a process is really stuck (doesn't answer to kill 1).
kill -9 -1 Kills all the processes of the current user. 1:means all processes.
killall [-< signal>] <command>
Kills all the jobs running <command>. Example:
killall bash
xkill
Lets you kill a graphical application by clicking on it! Very quick! Convenient when you
don't know the application command name.

Environment variables
Shells let the user define variables. They can be reused in shell commands.
Convention: lower case names
You can also define environment variables: variables that are also visible within
scripts or executable called from the shell.
Convention: upper case names.
env Lists all defined environment variables and their value.
Shell variables (bash)
projdir=/home/marshall/coolstuff
ls -la
$projdir; cd $projdir
Environment variables (bash)
cd $HOME
export DEBUG=1
./find_extraterrestrial_life
(displays debug information if DEBUG is set)

Main standard environment variables
Used by lots of applications!
LD_LIBRARY_PATH Shared library search path
DISPLAY Screen id to display X (graphical) applications on.
EDITOR Default editor (vi, emacs...)
HOME Current user home directory
HOSTNAME Name of the local machine
MANPATH Manual page search path
PATH Command search path
PRINTER Default printer name
SHELL Current shell name
TERM Current terminal type
USER Current user name

PATH environment variables
PATH
Specifies the shell search order for commands
/
home/acox/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/kerberos/bi
n:
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/bin:/usr/bin
LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Specifies the shared library (binary code
libraries shared by
applications, like the C library) search order
for ld
/usr/local/lib:/usr/lib:/lib:/usr/X11R6/lib
MANPATH
Specifies the search order for manual pages
/usr/local/man:/usr/share/man
It is strongly recommended not to have the
“.” directory in your PATH environment
variable, in particular not at the beginning:
 A cracker could place a malicious ls file
in your directories. It would get
executed when you run ls in this
directory and could do naughty things to
your data.
 If you have an executable file called test
in a directory, this will override the
default test program and some scripts
will stop working properly.
 Each time you cd to a new directory, the
shell will waste time updating its list of
available commands.
Call your local commands as follows: ./test

Alias Command
Shells let you define command aliases: shortcuts for
commands you
use very frequently.
Examples
alias ls='ls la'
Useful to always run commands with default arguments.
alias rm='rm i'
Useful to make rm always ask for confirmation.
alias frd='find_ram_device asap --risky'
Useful to replace very long and frequent commands.
alias cia='. /home/sydney/env/cia.sh'
Useful to set an environment in a quick way
(. is a shell command to execute the content of a shell script).

The which command
Before you run a command, which tells you where it is found
bash> which ls
alias ls='ls --color= tty'
/bin/ls
tcsh> which ls
ls: aliased to ls --color=tty
bash> which alias
/usr/bin/which: no alias in
(/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin)
tcsh> which alias
alias: shell builtin command.

~/.bashrc file
~/.bashrc
Shell script read each time a bash shell is started
You can use this file to define
Your default environment variables (PATH, EDITOR...).
Your aliases.
Your prompt (see the bash manual for details).
A greeting message.

Command history
history :- Displays the latest commands that you ran and their number. You
can copy and paste command strings.
You can recall the latest command:
!!
You can recall a command by its number
!1003
You can recall the latest command matching a starting string:
!cat
You can make substitutions on the latest command:
^more^less
You can run another command with the same arguments:
more !*

Text editors
Graphical text editors
Fine for most needs
nedit
Emacs, Xemacs
Kate, Gedit
Textonly text editors
Often needed for sysadmins and
great for power users
vi, vim
nano
The nedit text editor
http://www.nedit.org/
Best text editor for non vi or emacs
experts
Feature highlights:
 Very easy text selection and
moving
 Syntax highlighting for most
languages and formats. Can be
tailored for your own log files, to
highlight particular errors and
warnings.
 Easy to customize through
menus
Not installed by default by all
distributions

Kate and gedit
Kate is a powerful text
editor
dedicated to programming
activities, for KDE
http://kate.kde.org
Gedit is a text editor for the
Gnome environment
http://projects.gnome.org/ge
dit/

Vi Editor
Textmode text editor available in all Unix systems. Created before computers with
mice appeared.
 Difficult to learn for beginners used to graphical text editors.
 Very productive for power users.
 Often can't be replaced to edit files in system administration or in Embedded
Systems, when you just have a text console.
vim vi improved
vi implementation now found in most GNU /
Linux host systems
 Implements lots of features available in
modern editors: syntax highlighting,
command history, help, unlimited undo and
much much more.
 Cool feature example: can directly open
compressed text files.
 Comes with a GTK graphical interface
(gvim)
 Unfortunately, not free software (because of
a small restriction in freedom to make
changes)

Measuring disk usage
Caution: different from file size!
du -h <file> (disk usage)
-h: returns size on disk of the given file, in human
readable format: K (kilobytes), M (megabytes) or G
(gigabytes), .
Without -h, du returns the raw number of
disk blocks used by the file (hard to read).
Note that the -h option only exists in GNU du.
du -sh <dir>
-s: returns the sum of disk usage of all the files in the
given directory.

Measuring disk space
df -h <dir>
Returns disk usage and free space for the filesystem
containing the given directory.
Similarly, the –h option only exists in GNU df.
Example:
df -h .
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 9.2G 7.1G 1.8G 81% /
df -h
Returns disk space information for all filesystems available in
the system. When errors happen, useful to look for full
filesystems.

Compressing and decompressing
Very useful for shrinking huge files and saving space
g[un]zip <file>
GNU zip compression utility. Creates .gz files. Ordinary
performance (similar to Zip).
b[un]zip2 <file>
More recent and effective compression utility. Creates .bz2 files.
Usually 2025% better than gzip.
[un]lzma <file>
Much better compression ratio than bzip2 (up to 10 to 20%).
Compatible command line options.

Archiving
Useful to backup or release a set of files
within 1 file
 tar: originally ―tape archive‖
 Creating an archive:
tar cvf <archive> <files or directories>
c: create
v: verbose. Useful to follow archiving
progress.
f: file. Archive created in file (tape used
otherwise).
 Example:
tar cvf /backup/home.tar /home
bzip2 /backup/home.tar
 Viewing the contents of an archive or
integrity check:
tar tvf <archive>
t: test
 Extracting all the files from an
archive:
tar xvf <archive>
 Extracting just a few files from an
archive:
tar xvf <archive> <files or
directories>
Files or directories are given with paths
relative to the archive root directory.

Extra options in GNU tar
tar = gtar = GNU tar on GNU / Linux
Can compress and uncompress archives on the fly. Useful
to avoid creating huge intermediate files Much simpler to
do than with tar and bzip2!
j option: [un]compresses on the fly with bzip2
z option: [un]compresses on the fly with gzip
--lzma option: [un]compresses on the fly with lzma
Examples (which one will you remember?)
gtar jcvf bills_bugs.tar.bz2 bills_bugs
tar cvf bills_bugs | bzip2 > bills_bugs.tar.bz2

Unix printing
Multiuser, multijob, multiclient, multiprinter
 In Unix / Linux, printing commands don't really print.
They send jobs to printing queues, possibly on the
local machine, on network printing servers or on
network printers.
 Printer independent system:
Print servers only accept jobs in PostScript
or text. Printer drivers on the server take
care of the conversion to each printers own format.
 Robust system:
Reboot a system, it will continue to print
pending jobs.

Useful environment variable: PRINTER Sets the default printer on the system.
Example:
export PRINTER=lp
 lpr [P<queue>] <files>
Sends the given files to the specified printing queue The files must be in text or
PostScript format. Otherwise, you only print garbage.
 a2ps [P<queue>] <files>
“Any to PostScript” converts many formats to PostScript and send the output to the
specified queue. Useful features:
several pages / sheet, page numbering, info frame...
Printing commands
Print job control
lpq [P<queue>] Lists all the print jobs in the given or default queue.
lp is not ready
Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size
1st asloane 84 nsa_windows_backdoors.ps 60416 bytes
2nd amoore 85 gw_bush_iraq_mistakes.ps 65024000 bytes
cancel <job#> [<queue>] Removes the given job number from the default queue.

Comparing files and directories
diff file1 file2
Reports the differences between 2 files, or nothing if the
files are identical.
diff –r dir1/ dir2/
Reports all the differences between files with the same
name in the 2 directories.
These differences can be saved in a file using the redirection,
and then later reapplied using the patch command.
To investigate differences in detail, better use graphical tools!

tkdiff
http://tkdiff.sourceforge.net/
Useful tool to compare files and merge differences

kompare
Another nice tool to compare files and merge differences
Part of the kdesdk package (Fedora Core)

gvimdiff
Another nice tool
to view
differences in
files Available in
most
distributions
with gvim
Apparently not
using
diff.
No issue with
files with binary
sections!

The find command
find . Name ―*.pdf‖
Lists all the *.pdf files in the current (.) directory or
subdirectories. You need the double quotes to prevent the shell
from expanding the * character.
find docs name "*.pdf" exec xpdf {} ';‗
Finds all the *.pdf files in the docs directory and displays one
after the other.
Many more possibilities available! However, the above 2
examples cover most needs.

The locate command
Much faster regular expression search alternative to find locate
keys
Lists all the files on your system with keys in their name.
locate ―*.pdf‖
Lists all the *.pdf files available on the whole machine
 locate ―/home/fridge/*coke*‖
Lists all the *coke* files in the given directory (absolute path)
locate is much faster because it indexes all files in a
dedicated database, which is updated on a regular basis.
find is better to search through recently created files.

Changing users
You do not have to log out to log on another user account!
su hyde
(Rare) Change to the hyde account, but keeping the environment
variable settings of the original user.
su jekyll
(More frequent) Log on the jekyll account, with exactly the
same settings as this new user.
su - When no argument is given, it means the root user.

The wget command
Instead of downloading files from your browser, just copy and paste their URL and
download them with wget!
wget main features
 http and ftp support
 Can resume interrupted downloads
 Can download entire sites or at least check for bad links
 Very useful in scripts or when no graphics are available (system administration,
embedded systems)
 Proxy support (http_proxy and ftp_proxy env. variables)
wget –c http://microsoft.com/customers/dogs/winxp4dogs.zip
Continues an interrupted download.
wget –m http://lwn.net/
Mirrors a site.
wget -r –np http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/
Recursively downloads an online book for offline access.
-np: "noparent". Only follows links in the current directory.

Misc commands
sleep 60
Waits for 60 seconds (doesn't consume system
resources).
wc report.txt (word count)
438 2115 18302 report.txt
Counts the number of lines, words and characters in
a file or in standard input.

Compiling simple applications
The compiler used for all Linux systems is GCC
http://gcc.gnu.org
To compile a singlefile application, developed in C :
gcc –o test test.c
Will generate a test binary, from the test.c source file For C++ :
g++ -o test test.cc
The –Wall option enables more warnings
To compile sources files to object files and link the application :
gcc –c test1.c
gcc –c test2.c
gcc –o test test1.o test2.o
gcc automatically calls the linker ld

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Latest update: Aug 3, 2013,
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Thank You

Unix Linux Commands Presentation 2013

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