Interesting Unix Commands
Interesting Unix Commands
ghost | 6671 Reads | Interesting UNIX Commands
(yes, i know some of these are kinda out of date but i wrote them down back when i first started playing with linux. Pluss i like the way it looks doing stuff from the terminal so most of these can be done from the GUI but i like doing it thisway.)
Ever since renting a UNIX handbook a while back ive discovered lots of the more
complex operations and commands of UNIX, besides the mundane, and ordinary asks of running an maintaining an eggdrop. I therefore went through my UNIX Handbook picking out some of the less mentioned, useful comands, and here they are:
mailx - This program will send an email to someone just like that. The syntax is 'mailx user@host' you then enter your message.
mesg - This command is used to disable or enable the ability of users being able to 'write' to you.
uname - This basically returns the version of UNIX the box is running. There are various switches for this command.
wall - Sends a public message to ever user on the box, as if you had 'writen' to each and ever user. Good for admins.
banner - This reutrns an ASCII banner for a word or letter you specify. So 'banner shell' would outpub shell in big ASCII
uncompress - This decompresses .Z files. For example 'uncompress shell.Z' would output a file 'shell'
tail - This shows the last 10 lines of a file. The -f option can also be used to 'follow' a file as additions are made.
more - allows you to scroll a file. This is most often used when reading MOTDs, by 'more /etc/motd'
ln - This is used to create links. For instance I could make shell-tests.txt link to a file called tests by 'ln -s shell-tests.txt tests'
grep - This command is the equivilent of find. I use it a lot, when doing tasks and adding the pipe symbol. Like 'ps aux | grep -c eggdrop' This basically takes ps aux, and searches it for the amount of times eggdrop is mentioned (hence -c for count)
crypt - This is used to encrypt text with a password. Simple encryption, but easy to use, if you need to encrypt somthin.
chown - This changes ownership of files or directories to a group or user. Very useful for administration tasks.
cat - This is the equivilent of type in DOS. All it does is prints out (on your screen) the contents of a file.
su - This is usually associated with Super User'ing to root, however it can also be used to login with a different login name. Use su . It will then prompt you for the pass of that user.
sleep - This command is like pause, however you need to specify a time in seconds. This is usually used in scripts.
ruptime - This neat command lists all the boxes on the LAN, their uptime, status, load averages and amount of users.
nohup - This command is a simple equivilent of screen. It basically keeps a process alive even when you're logged out.
man - This stands for manual, and covers most topics. To use it try 'man command.name' it should give you help :)
groups - Returns with the groups that you're a member of.
env - This command sets the environment of your shell. For instance you can change your home dir with 'env HOME=/home/blah'
at - This can be used to schedule things. Use 'at 10am' and then enter the command you'd like it to perform at that time.
stty - This has quite a few uses, however I use it for one thing. Ever had your backspace key produce ^H's? try "stty erase backspace"
command;command - Do you want to put multiple commands in one line? Use ; to separate them and they'll be performed one after eachother. For instance ls;uptime;cp blah review;./eggdrop u -m
-z3r0phr34k (Stan)
