Basic Unix Commands you should know how to use
Detailed usage information is available through the "man" command or at many sites on the Internet (Unix 101, Basic Tutorial, Basic Unix, or just google search the command
cd change directories
hostname display your current hostname (which machine you're on)
ls short listing of directory contents
ls –l display a directory listing giving details about directories and files
ls –la same as ls -l, except include hidden files
mkdir DIRECTORY create the specified directory
rm FILE remove file or files
rm -r remove recursive (includes all subdirectories and files in subdirectories)
man COMMAND display the man (manual) page about the command
mv SOURCE TARGET move the source file to the target file
pwd return the current working directory name
chmod change the file mode of a file (allow/deny reading/writing/executing by different user classes)
less display a file in pages, allows forward (ctrl-f) or backward (ctrl-b) scrolling
whereis PROGRAM locates a program by looking in the standard Unix locations. Prints what it finds
which COMMAND locate a program on the User's PATH.
wc determine the word/line/character or byte count of a file
diff file1 file2 print out any differences in file1 and file2
ftp/sftp ftp - Internet file transfer program. sftp - secure (encrypted) internet file transfer program
passwd change the current user's password
ssh open ssh a secure (encrypted) client. "ssh aServer" attempts a secure remote login on server "aServer".
grep PATTERN FILE print lines matching a pattern in the given file
tar tape archiver.
tar cvf FILE.tar * - all contents of the current directory into FILE.tar.
tar xvf FILE.tar - extract all files from FILE.tar into the current directory.
gzip/gunzip compress or uncompress files. (.gz format)
cat FILE print a file to standard out. Useful to then pipe the file to another command.
example: cat file.txt | wc
send file.text to the wc (word count) command to determine how many words are in a file
scp secure copy a file from one machine to another scp user@host1:sourceFile user2@host2:destinationFile
cp SOURCE TARGET copy a file from source to target
cp –r SOURCE_DIR TARGET_DIR copy a directory (including all contents) from source to target
wget/curl download a web location to your local machine. (Some Unix variants only proivide curl, not wget)