Linux Shell Commands Cheat Sheet

Examples marked with * are valid and safe to paste into a linux terminal without modification.

Command		Description
*	apropos whatis	Show commands pertinent to string. See also threadsafe
*	man -t man | ps2pdf – > man.pdf	make a pdf of a manual page
	which command	Show full path name of command
	time command	See how long a command takes
*	time cat	Start stopwatch. Ctrl-d to stop. See also sw
*	nice info	Run a low priority command (The “info” reader in this case)
*	renice 19 -p $$	Make shell (script) low priority. Use for non interactive tasks
*	cd -	Go to previous directory
*	cd	Go to $HOME directory
	(cd dir && command)	Go to dir, execute command and return to current dir
*	pushd .	Put current dir on stack so you canpopd back to it
*	alias l=’ls -l –color=auto’	quick dir listing
*	ls -lrt	List files by date. See also newest andfind_mm_yyyy
*	ls /usr/bin | pr -T9 -W$COLUMNS	Print in 9 columns to width of terminal
	find -name ‘*.[ch]‘ | xargs grep -E ‘expr’	Search ‘expr’ in this dir and below. See also findrepo
	find -type f -print0 | xargs -r0 grep -F ‘example’	Search all regular files for ‘example’ in this dir and below
	find -maxdepth 1 -type f | xargs grep -F ‘example’	Search all regular files for ‘example’ in this dir
	find -maxdepth 1 -type d | while readdir; do echo $dir; echo cmd2; done	Process each item with multiple commands (in while loop)
*	find -type f ! -perm -444	Find files not readable by all (useful for web site)
*	find -type d ! -perm -111	Find dirs not accessible by all (useful for web site)
*	locate -r ‘file[^/]*\.txt’	Search cached index for names. This re is like glob *file*.txt
*	look reference	Quickly search (sorted) dictionary for prefix
*	grep –color reference /usr/share/dict/words	Highlight occurances of regular expression in dictionary
	gpg -c file	Encrypt file
	gpg file.gpg	Decrypt file
	tar -c dir/ | bzip2 > dir.tar.bz2	Make compressed archive of dir/
	bzip2 -dc dir.tar.bz2 | tar -x	Extract archive (use gzip instead of bzip2 for tar.gz files)
	tar -c dir/ | gzip | gpg -c | ssh user@remote ‘dd of=dir.tar.gz.gpg’	Make encrypted archive of dir/ on remote machine
	find dir/ -name ‘*.txt’ | tar -c –files-from=- | bzip2 > dir_txt.tar.bz2	Make archive of subset of dir/ and below
	find dir/ -name ‘*.txt’ | xargs cp -a –target-directory=dir_txt/ –parents	Make copy of subset of dir/ and below
	( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p )	Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to /where/to/ dir
	( cd /dir/to/copy && tar -c . ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p )	Copy (with permissions) contents of copy/ dir to /where/to/
	( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ssh -C user@remote ‘cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p’	Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to remote:/where/to/ dir
	dd bs=1M if=/dev/sda | gzip | ssh user@remote ‘dd of=sda.gz’	Backup harddisk to remote machine
	rsync -P rsync://rsync.server.com/path/to/file file	Only get diffs. Do multiple times for troublesome downloads
	rsync –bwlimit=1000 fromfile tofile	Locally copy with rate limit. It’s like nice for I/O
	rsync -az -e ssh –delete ~/public_html/ remote.com:’~/public_html’	Mirror web site (using compression and encryption)
	rsync -auz -e ssh remote:/dir/ . && rsync -auz -e ssh . remote:/dir/	Synchronize current directory with remote one
	ssh $USER@$HOST command	Run command on $HOST as $USER (default command=shell)
*	ssh -f -Y $USER@$HOSTNAME xeyes	Run GUI command on $HOSTNAME as $USER
	scp -p -r $USER@$HOST: file dir/	Copy with permissions to $USER’s home directory on $HOST
	ssh -g -L 8080:localhost:80 root@$HOST	Forward connections to $HOSTNAME:8080 out to $HOST:80
	ssh -R 1434:imap:143 root@$HOST	Forward connections from $HOST:1434 in to imap:143
*	(cd cmdline && wget -nd -pHEKk http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html)	Store local browsable version of a page to the current dir
	wget -c http://www.example.com/large.file	Continue downloading a partially downloaded file
	wget -r -nd -np -l1 -A ‘*.jpg’ http://www.example.com/dir/	Download a set of files to the current directory
	wget ftp://remote/file[1-9].iso/	FTP supports globbing directly
*	wget -q -O- http://www.pixelbeat.org/timeline.html | grep ‘a href’ | head	Process output directly
	echo ‘wget url’ | at 01:00	Download url at 1AM to current dir
	wget –limit-rate=20k url	Do a low priority download (limit to 20KB/s in this case)
	wget -nv –spider –force-html -i bookmarks.html	Check links in a file
	wget –mirror http://www.example.com/	Efficiently update a local copy of a site (handy from cron)
	ethtool eth0	Show status of ethernet interface eth0
	ethtool –change eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full	Manually set ethernet interface speed
	iwconfig eth1	Show status of wireless interface eth1
	iwconfig eth1 rate 1Mb/s fixed	Manually set wireless interface speed
*	iwlist scan	List wireless networks in range
*	ip link show	List network interfaces
	ip link set dev eth0 name wan	Rename interface eth0 to wan
	ip link set dev eth0 up	Bring interface eth0 up (or down)
*	ip addr show	List addresses for interfaces
	ip addr add 1.2.3.4/24 brd + dev eth0	Add (or del) ip and mask (255.255.255.0)
*	ip route show	List routing table
	ip route add default via 1.2.3.254	Set default gateway to 1.2.3.254
*	tc qdisc add dev lo root handle 1:0 netem delay 20msec	Add 20ms latency to loopback device (for testing)
*	tc qdisc del dev lo root	Remove latency added above
*	host pixelbeat.org	Lookup DNS ip address for name or vice versa
*	hostname -i	Lookup local ip address (equivalent to host `hostname`)
*	whois pixelbeat.org	Lookup whois info for hostname or ip address
*	netstat -tupl	List internet services on a system
*	netstat -tup	List active connections to/from system
*	smbtree	Find windows machines. See also findsmb
	nmblookup -A 1.2.3.4	Find the windows (netbios) name associated with ip address
	smbclient -L windows_box	List shares on windows machine or samba server
	mount -t smbfs -o fmask=666,guest //windows_box/share /mnt/share	Mount a windows share
	echo ‘message’ | smbclient -M windows_box	Send popup to windows machine (off by default in XP sp2)
	sed ‘s/string1/string2/g’	Replace string1 with string2
	sed ‘s/\(.*\)1/\12/g’	Modify anystring1 to anystring2
	sed ‘/ *#/d; /^ *$/d’	Remove comments and blank lines
	sed ‘:a; /\\$/N; s/\\\n//; ta’	Concatenate lines with trailing \
	sed ‘s/[ \t]*$//’	Remove trailing spaces from lines
	sed ‘s/\([\\`\\"$\\\\]\)/\\\1/g’	Escape shell metacharacters active within double quotes
*	seq 10 | sed “s/^/ /; s/ *\(.\{7,\}\)/\1/”	Right align numbers
	sed -n ’1000p;1000q‘	Print 1000th line
	sed -n ’10,20p;20q‘	Print lines 10 to 20
	sed -n ‘s/.*