UNIX COMMANDS CHEAT SHEET
Command
Example
1.
ls
2.
cd
3.
4.
mkdir
cp
5.
6.
7.
8.
rm
mv
man
head
9.
tail
ls
ls -alF
cd tempdir
cd ..
cd ~dhyatt/web-docs
mkdir graphics
cp file1 web-docs
cp file1 file1.bak
rm file1.bak
mv old.html new.html
man ls
head file1
head -100 file1
tail file1
tail –f file1
10. less
11. more
12. cat
13. grep <str><files>
14. chmod <opt> <file>
15. ps <opt>
16. kill <opt> <ID>
17. history
18. top
19. pwd
20. gzip <file>
21. tar <file>
22. ln –s <file> link
23. df
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
du
nohup <command>
<command> &
ssh <user@host>
wget <url/file>
scp
Description
Lists files in current directory
List in long format
Change directory to tempdir
Move back one directory
Move into dhyatt's web-docs directory
Make a directory called graphics
Copy file into directory
Make backup of file1
Remove or delete file
Move or rename files
Online manual (help) about command
Display the first 10 lines in a file
Display the first 100 lines in a file
Display the last 10 lines in a file
Display the contents of the file as it
grows, last 10 lines at a time.
more index.html
Look at file, one page at a time
less index.html
Look at file, one page at a time
cat index.html
Print on the standard output
cat file1 file2
Concatenate files
grep "bad word" file1
Look for occurrence of a certain pattern
in a file
chmod 644 *.html
Change file permissions read only
chmod 755 file.exe
Change file permissions to executable
ps aux
List all running processes by #ID
ps aux | grep dhyatt
List process #ID's running by dhyatt
kill -9 8453
Kill process with ID #8453
history
Lists commands you've done recently
top
Print system usage and top resource
hogs
pwd
Print name of current/working directory
gzip bigfile
Compress file
gunzip bigfile.gz
Uncompress file
tar -cf subdir.tar subdir
Create an archive called subdir.tar of a
tar -xvf subdir.tar
directory
Extract files from an archive file
ln –s file link
Create symbolic link, link to file
df –h
Show disk space in human-readable
format
du
Show directory space usage
nohup cp file1 file2
Run a command immune to hang-ups,
nohup cp file1 file2 &
Run a command in the background
ssh [email protected]
Connect to host as user
wget http://seq.edu/file
Download file from valid url
scp [email protected]:file1
Secure copy a file from one host to
[email protected]:file2 another
Collected from http://www.tjhsst.edu/~dhyatt/superap/unixcmd.html