ECEn 320For more information on the following commands, type man and the name of the command to see a help manual for that command. You can open another terminal window at the same time to type the man command and see the helpful text. Some commands, like alias, are built into bash. For these, type man bash to get help. If you type man <command> and the response is No manual entry for <command>, it is likely built into bash. Online help is also available for shell built-in commands and other core commands.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
| alias | define an alternative to a command |
| cat | concatenate files and print on standard output |
| cd | change the current directory to another |
| chmod | change file mode bits |
| cp | copy files and directories |
| df | report file system disk space usage |
| diff | compare files line by line |
| echo | print a string of text |
| exit | end shell session and close terminal |
| find | search for files in a directory hierarchy |
| free | display amount of free and used memory in the system |
| grep | scan files and print lines that match patterns |
| groups | print the groups a user is in |
| head | output the first part of files |
| history | list recently typed commands |
| kill | send a signal to a process (usually to end it) |
| less, more | show the contents of a text file |
| ls | list directory contents |
| man | show help information about Linux commands |
| mkdir | make directories |
| mv | move or rename files |
| passwd | change user password |
| ping | send an echo request to another machine |
| ps | list the current processes |
| pwd | print name of current directory |
| rmdir | remove empty directories |
| ssh | login to a remote machine |
| tail | output the last part of files |
| tar | an archive utility for (de)compressing files |
| top | display Linux processes |
| uname | print system information |
| who | show who is logged on |