Here in this cheat sheet, Linux commands are categorized into different sections according to its usage. We have designed all the commands in a nice background color.

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Cheat sheet

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1) System

uname Displays Linux system information uname -r Displays kernel release information uptime Displays how long the system has been running including load average hostname Shows the system hostname hostname -i Displays the IP address of the system last reboot Shows system reboot history date Displays current system date and time timedatectl Query and change the System clock cal Displays the current calendar month and day w Displays currently logged in users in the system whoami Displays who you are logged in as finger username Displays information about the user

2) Hardware

dmesg Displays bootup messages cat /proc/cpuinfo Displays more information about CPU e.g model, model name, cores, vendor id cat /proc/meminfo Displays more information about hardware memory e.g. Total and Free memory lshw Displays information about system's hardware configuration lsblk Displays block devices related information free -m Displays free and used memory in the system (-m flag indicates memory in MB) lspci -tv Displays PCI devices in a tree-like diagram lsusb -tv Displays USB devices in a tree-like diagram dmidecode Displays hardware information from the BIOS hdparm -i /dev/xda Displays information about disk data hdparm -tT /dev/xda <:code> Conducts a read speed test on device xda badblocks -s /dev/xda Tests for unreadable blocks on disk

3) Users

id Displays the details of the active user e.g. uid, gid, and groups last Shows the last logins in the system who Shows who is logged in to the system groupadd "admin" Adds the group 'admin' adduser "Sam" Adds user Sam userdel "Sam" Deletes user Sam usermod Used for changing / modifying user information

4) File Commands

ls -al Lists files - both regular & hidden files and their permissions as well. pwd Displays the current directory file path mkdir 'directory_name' Creates a new directory rm file_name Removes a file rm -f filename Forcefully removes a file rm -r directory_name Removes a directory recursively rm -rf directory_name Removes a directory forcefully and recursively cp file1 file2 Copies the contents of file1 to file2 cp -r dir1 dir2 Recursively Copies dir1 to dir2. dir2 is created if it does not exist mv file1 file2 Renames file1 to file2 ln -s /path/to/file_name link_name Creates a symbolic link to file_name touch file_name Creates a new file cat > file_name Places standard input into a file more file_name Outputs the contents of a file head file_name Displays the first 10 lines of a file tail file_name Displays the last 10 lines of a file gpg -c file_name Encrypts a file gpg file_name.gpg Decrypts a file wc Prints the number of bytes, words and lines in a file xargs Executes commands from standard input

5) Process Related

ps Display currently active processes ps aux | grep 'telnet' Searches for the id of the process 'telnet' pmap Displays memory map of processes top Displays all running processes kill pid Terminates process with a given pid killall proc Kills / Terminates all processes named proc pkill process-name Sends a signal to a process with its name bg Resumes suspended jobs in the background fg Brings suspended jobs to the foreground fg n job n to the foreground lsof Lists files that are open by processes renice 19 PID makes a process run with very low priority pgrep firefox find Firefox process ID pstree visualizing processes in tree model

6) File Permission

chmod octal filename Change file permissions of the file to octal Example chmod 777 /data/test.c Set rwx permissions to owner, group and everyone (everyone else who has access to the server) chmod 755 /data/test.c Set rwx to the owner and r_x to group and everyone chmod 766 /data/test.c Sets rwx for owner, rw for group and everyone chown owner user-file Change ownership of the file chown owner-user:owner-group file_name Change owner and group owner of the file chown owner-user:owner-group directory Change owner and group owner of the directory

7) Network

ip addr show Displays IP addresses and all the network interfaces ip address add 192.168.0.1/24 dev eth0 Assigns IP address 192.168.0.1 to interface eth0 ifconfig Displays IP addresses of all network interfaces ping host ping command sends an ICMP echo request to establish a connection to server / PC whois domain Retrieves more information about a domain name dig domain Retrieves DNS information about the domain dig -x host Performs reverse lookup on a domain host google.com Performs an IP lookup for the domain name hostname -i Displays local IP address wget file_name Downloads a file from an online source netstat -pnltu Displays all active listening ports

8) Compression/Archives

tar -cf home.tar home<:code> Creates archive file called 'home.tar' from file 'home' tar -xf files.tar Extract archive file 'files.tar' tar -zcvf home.tar.gz source-folder Creates gzipped tar archive file from the source folder gzip file Compression a file with .gz extension

9) Install Packages

rpm -i pkg_name.rpm Install an rpm package rpm -e pkg_name Removes an rpm package dnf install pkg_name Install package using dnf utility

10) Install Source (Compilation)

./configure Checks your system for the required software needed to build the program. It will build the Makefile containing the instructions required to effectively build the project make It reads the Makefile to compile the program with the required operations. The process may take some time, depending on your system and the size of the program make install The command installs the binaries in the default/modified paths after the compilation

11) Search

grep 'pattern' files Search for a given pattern in files grep -r pattern dir Search recursively for a pattern in a given directory locate file Find all instances of the file find /home/ -name "index" Find file names that begin with 'index' in /home folder find /home -size +10000k Find files greater than 10000k in the home folder

12) Login

ssh user@host Securely connect to host as user ssh -p port_number user@host Securely connect to host using a specified port ssh host Securely connect to the system via SSH default port 22 telnet host Connect to host via telnet default port 23

13) File Transfer

scp file1.txt server2/tmp Securely copy file1.txt to server2 in /tmp directory rsync -a /home/apps /backup/ Synchronize contents in /home/apps directory with /backup directory

14) Disk Usage

df -h Displays free space on mounted systems df -i Displays free inodes on filesystems fdisk -l Shows disk partitions, sizes, and types du -sh Displays disk usage in the current directory in a human-readable format findmnt Displays target mount point for all filesystems mount device-path mount-point Mount a device

15) Directory Traverse

cd .. Move up one level in the directory tree structure cd Change directory to $HOME directory cd /test Change directory to /test directory