Common Commands

From WebHost Wiki

• ls : Lists files and directories within the current directory
• ls -l : Lists files, permissions, owner, date modified and filesize

• cd : Change directory.

Used as cd /home/username/public_html/ (apsolute path) or Used ad cd public_html (relative path)

• cd ~ : Takes you to your home directory (on cpanel servers this is usually /home/username)
• cd ../ : Takes you to the directory above you.

• cat filename : shows the contents of filename.

• chmod : Change file access permissions for USER - GROUP - EVERYONE.
  • 0 = — No permission
  • 1 = –X Execute only
  • 2 = -W- Write only
  • 3 = -WX Write and execute
  • 4 = R– Read only
  • 5 = R-X Read and execute
  • 6 = RW- Read and write
  • 7 = RWX Read, write and execute

• Example Usage:
  • chmod 777 filename
  • This gives the USER, GROUP and EVERYONE Read, Write and Execute permissions for the file named filename.

• Common Usage
  • chmod 000: No-one can access the file
  • chmod 644 : Default for most files
  • chmod 755 : Used for CGI scripts and directories
  • chmod 777 : Usually used if you want a script to write to a file

• pico : Easy to use file editor.
  • Used as follows: pico filename

• grep : Looks for patterns within files.
  • Used as follows: grep “what your looking for” /file/location or
  • Used as: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep “vendor_id” this would show the line that shows the vendor_id within the file /proc/cpuinfo.

• last : shows the last users that logged in. Can also use last -20 -a which would show the last 20 logins with hostnames

• w : shows users that are logged in with where they are logged in from

• who : Shows who is on the server in a shell

• users : Shows users logged into shell

• netstat : Shows all current network connections

• top : Shows all live system processes, uptime, memory stats etc.. (The processes are show in a style similar to the Windows Task Manager).

• touch : Creates an empty file.
  • Used as follows: touch /path/to/where/you/want/the/file/filename.html

• du -sh : Shows disk usage in a readable format.

• cp filename filename.copy : Would copy the file filename to filename.copy So there would now be 2 files called filename and filename.copy.

• mv filename newdir/filename : Would move filename to the the directory named newdir. You can also change the destination filename to something diferent, so for example mv filename newdir/filename2 would move filename into newdir, and rename it filename2.

• rm filename : Remove/Delete file called filename.

• tar : Creating and Extracting tar and tar.gz files

• • Usage:
  • tar -zxvf file.tar.gz : Extracts the file file.tar.gz (Gzipped)
  • tar -xvf file.tar : Extracts the file file.tar (Not Gzipped)

• tar -cf archives.tar directory/ : Takes everything from directory/ and puts it into archives.tar

• unzip filename.zip : Extracts filename.zip into the current directory.

• zip filename.zip filename : Zip filename into a zip file called filename.zip

• logout : closes the session.

• exit : exits the session (basically the same as logout)