Helpful Linux Commands

Submitted by Ryan Clark on Mon, 11/09/2009 - 3:05pm

User Administration

adduser <username>: Create a new user named <username>
userdel -r <username>: Delete the user named <username>. The -r option removes the user's home folder located at /home/<username>.
lastlog: lists all users and the last time that they logged in.
groupadd <groupname>: Create a group called <groupname>
useradd -G <groupname1>,<groupname2>... <username>: Add a user named <username> to a group or multiple groups.

Permissions

chown <username>:<groupname> <file or directory>: Change the owner of at file or directory to <username> and <groupname>.
chmod <permissions code> <file or directory>: Change the permissions on a file or directory to that specified.

"Hardware" Resources

top: Show the top resource using processes
ps aux: Show all processes
free: Show information about memory allocation
du <file or folder name>: Show the size of a file or folder, recursive for folders.
kill <PID>: Kill a process by its ID. Use kill <PID> -9 to force the kill.

EC2 Tools

ec2-bundle-vol: use to bundle an AMI for your running instance. Use --help for syntax information.
ec2-upload-bundle: use to upload your bundle to Amazon's place for these things. Again, Use --help for syntax information.

Package Management / Software Installation

apt-get: Oh my goodness its so easy to install anything!
dpkg -L <package name>: Show a list of all the files that were installed with the named package. Useful since Linux seems so silly about where everything ends up...

Debugging

tail -f <log file>: Real-time display of latest log file changes.
find / -name <file or folder name fragment>*: Recursively search for folders and files by partial name from root down.

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