Updated: 2013-11-28 06:38 EST

1 Unix/Linux Command List You Should Know (Weekly Cumulative)Indexup to index

This is a list of basic Unix/Linux command names used in this course and the week number in which they were first introduced and described. A missing week number means the command hasn’t been formally introduced yet.

All these command names have manual pages. Command names that are built-in to the shell (e.g. cd, exit, pwd, history, etc.) are described somewhere in the man page for the bash shell. You can also use the shell built-in help command to get information about built-in commands, e.g. help help.

This list only gives the names of the commands, not what the commands do or how to use them. As you use each command, you must keep a notebook with these command names in it and a short description of what each command does; you will be required to learn and remember at least some of what each of these commands can do:

WK  Command, feature, or technique introduced
--  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
01  (Labour Day) Terminal Control Characters: ^C ^D ^W ^U ^Z
02  Remote Login, CLS, Setting the BASH prompt:  PS1='[\u@\h \W]\$ '
03  GLOB characters: * ? [...], aliases
04  I/O Redirection: < > | 2>&1, Pipes
05  Editors, Shell local and environment variables, start-up files
05  Midterm #1 review
06  Midterm #1 (Monday morning)
06  cp, search $PATH
07  (Thanksgiving) Quoting, File System
07  CentOS VM Installation
08  Inodes and hard links, ln, Symbolic Links, Disk Usage, du, quota
09  Permissions: whoami, id, groups, umask, chmod
09  Midterm #2 review
10  Midterm #2 (Monday morning)
10  Unix/Linux Software Package Management: yum, rpm, and tar
11  system logs, syslog, scheduling with crontab, at
11  Processes, Jobs, Background, Foreground, Kill, Signals
12  users and groups, su, sudo, chown, chsh, useradd, gpasswd, etc.
12  Partitions and File Systems - fdisk, mkfs, mount, swap
13  Boot Process, GRUB, Run Levels, services, telinit, chkconfig
14  Data Mining

03  alias (shell built-in)
02  apropos (synonym for: man -k)
11  at
04  awk '{print $1}'  (also $2, $NF, etc.)
02  bash
11  bg (shell built-in)
01  cal (9 1752)
01  cat
02  cd (shell built-in)
09  chmod ( -R ugo[-+=]rwx octal_number )
12  chown ( -R ) [owner][:[group]]
02  clear
02  cp ( -a -r -p )
11  crontab
04  cut
01  date
09  df
12  diff
11  dmesg
08  du
02  echo (shell built-in and external)
    eject
02  exit (shell built-in)
05  export (shell built-in)
12  fdisk ( -l )
11  fg (shell built-in)
03  fgrep (see grep -F)
01  figlet
01  file ( -s -L )
02  find ( -name -user -inum -size -print -ls )
12  gpasswd
03  grep ( -i -v -w )
13  grub ( command line and stand-alone boot )
12  groupadd
12  groupdel
12  groupmod
09  groups
04  head
08  help (shell built-in)
03  history (shell built-in)
05  hostname
09  id
11  jobs (shell built-in)
11  kill (shell built-in)
11  killall
    last
02  less (similar to "more"; used by "man")
08  ln ( -s )
05  locate
01  ls ( -l -i -a -d -L )
02  man ( -k )
08  md5sum
02  mkdir ( -p )
12  mkfs
12  mkswap
03  more (similar to "less")
12  mount
03  mv
05  nano
12  newgrp
04  nl (same as "cat -n")
02  passwd ( username )
11  ps ( uaxww -efww )
11  pstree
02  pwd (shell built-in and also external)
08  quota -v
08  reboot (see also: shutdown -h now)
03  rm ( -r -f )
02  rmdir
10  rpm
13  service
05  set (shell built-in)
05  shopt (shell built-in)
08  shutdown -h now (see also: reboot)
03  sleep (60)
04  sort ( -f -n -r )
12  su ( - )
12  sudo
03  sum
12  swapoff
12  swapon
04  tail
10  tar
01  toilet
03  touch
02  tree
09  umask ( octal_number ) (shell built-in)
12  umount
03  unalias  ( -a ) (shell built-in)
14  uname
05  uniq ( -c )
12  useradd
12  userdel
12  usermod
05  vi / vim / vimtutor
04  wc ( -l -w -c )
01  who
04  whoami
02  whois (also Week 05 and Week 11)
08  yum

Keep a notebook with these command names in it and a short description of what each command does; you will be required to learn and remember at least some of what each of these commands can do.

Author: 
| Ian! D. Allen  -  idallen@idallen.ca  -  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| Home Page: http://idallen.com/   Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/
| College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/
| Defend digital freedom:  http://eff.org/  and have fun:  http://fools.ca/

Plain Text - plain text version of this page in Pandoc Markdown format

Campaign for non-browser-specific HTML   Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional   Valid CSS!   Creative Commons by nc sa 3.0   Hacker Ideals Emblem   Author Ian! D. Allen