Commands

Shell commands are instructions that you can type into a command-line interface (CLI) to perform various tasks on your operating system. These commands can be used to navigate the file system, manage files and directories, control processes, and more.

Basic Shell Commands

pwd: Print the current working directory.
cd [directory]: Change the current directory to the specified directory.
ls: List the contents of the current directory.

File and Directory Management

touch [filename]: Create a new empty file.
mkdir [directory]: Create a new directory.
rm [filename]: Remove a file.
rmdir [directory]: Remove an empty directory.
cp [source] [destination]: Copy a file or directory.
mv [source] [destination]: Move or rename a file or directory.

Viewing and Editing Files

cat [filename]: Display the contents of a file.
nano [filename]: Open a file in the Nano text editor.
vi [filename]: Open a file in the Vi text editor.

Process Management

ps: Display a list of currently running processes.
top: Display real-time system information and a list of running processes.
kill [PID]: Terminate a process by its process ID (PID).

System Information

uname -a: Display detailed information about the system.
df -h: Display disk space usage.
free -h: Display memory usage.

Networking

ping [hostname]: Check the network connection to a host.
ifconfig: Display network interface configuration.
netstat: Display network connections, routing tables, and interface statistics.

Example Shell Script

Here is an example of a shell script that uses some of these commands to create a backup of a directory:

#!/bin/bash
source_dir="/path/to/source"
backup_dir="/path/to/backup"
timestamp=$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)
backup_file="$backup_dir/backup_$timestamp.tar.gz"

# Create a backup
tar -czf $backup_file $source_dir
echo "Backup created at $backup_file"

This script compresses the contents of the source directory into a tar.gz file and saves it in the backup directory with a timestamp.

Last modified: 14 December 2024

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