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A R T I C L E S
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10 more essential Linux commands you need to know
by Ken Hess (RedHat)
You've mastered installation and the basics of filesystem
navigation. Now you're ready to take your skills to the next
level with 10 more essential Linux commands.
Posted September 17, 2019
by
Ken Hess (Red Hat)
10 more essential Linux commands you need to know
Hopefully, you've read my 10 Basic Linux commands you need to
know article, and now you're ready for the next higher rung on
the sysadmin ladder. I n this article, I explore commands that
every system administrator should know for troubleshooting,
general housekeeping, and daily activities that you must
perform.
When you practice commands that can be harmful to a production
system, have a virtual machine running somewhere that you can
torture and restore should something go wrong. For some reason,
people generally frown on having to repair or reinstall
production systems because someone practiced a new command that
went awry. Plus, it's cool to show up one day armed with new
sysadmin skills to impress (school) your coworkers. Remember to
say, "Watch this," to be sure they're paying attention before
you hit the Enter key so it's more dramatic and awe-inspiring.
NOTE: You don't have to be the root user to run any of these
commands. To change system parameters or to edit system files,
though, you will have to be root.
Show who is logged in
As a system administrator, it's your job to keep track of who
logs into your systems, either through automation or when you're
in the system yourself. A quick check can tell you a lot about
what's going on at that point. For example, if you have a
system whose performance is "in the red" and you're not sure why
issue the who command to find out who is logged in. If you see
a developer or group of developers, they might be testing a new
application that is grabbing all the resources. Or you might
have the occasional rogue user running a poorly constructed Nmap
command.
The who command tells you who is logged in, when they logged in,
where they're logged in from, and even which type of connection
they're using:
$ who
root tty1 2019-07-23 07:58
khess pts/0 2019-07-23 07:59 (192.168.1.81)
The ttyX logins are from the console and the pts/X ones are over
the network from a computer via SSH. An acronym for Pseudo
Terminal Slave, most sysadmins refer to the pts entries as
pseudoterminals. The important thing is to note the difference
between TTY (local console) and PTS (remote SSH) logins.
Another reason to run who is if you're about to perform system
maintenance. A quick check will tell you who you have to
contact to advise them to log out of the system because your
maintenance might include a reboot or other activity that will
disrupt their work.
echo a line of text
Believe it or not, echo is one of the most powerful commands at
your disposal. With this command, you can do things like create
files, append to them, check return codes, and view system
variables.
To create a new file this command, use echo with some text, and
then redirect the output to the file you want to create:
$ echo "This is a test file" > test.txt
You don't have to use quotes around the text, but I always doCÇöI
worry that the text I redirect to the file won't look right if I
don't. To be sure it's correct, cat the file:
$ cat test.txt
This is a test file
To append some text on the next line, use the append redirect
operator ( >> ):
$ echo "This is how to add text to a file" >> test.txt
$ cat test.txt
This is a test file
This is how to add text to a file
Check the return code from the last command you ran with echo:
$ echo $? 0
A 0 response typically means success. You can also use echo to
check your environment variables:
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
The echo man page gives you many more options and capabilities,
such as how to use tabs, backspace, carriage returns, and more.
Display the top Linux processes
The top command does much more than simply display Linux
processes, but it's a start. Run top at the command line to
observe for yourself all the information that this command
provides:
top - 10:14:04 up 5 days, 48 min, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.02
Tasks: 233 total, 1 running, 232 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 5.9 us, 5.9 sy, 0.0 ni, 88.2 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si,
0.0
MiB Mem : 1829.4 total, 191.2 free, 1066.0 used, 572.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 0.0 total, 0.0 free, 0.0 used. 538.7 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
COMMAND
1651 khess 20 0 64016 4936 4056 R 11.8 0.3 0:00.02 top
1 root 20 0 179492 12076 6804 S 0.0 0.6 0:40.77
systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.17
kthreadd
3 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_gp
4 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
rcu_par_
The listing above shows the first few lines from my Red Hat 8.0
server's top display. This command runs continuously, so to
exit, type q. This command is named top in the first place
because it provides a real-time display of the top processes by
CPU and memory usage. To see an exhaustive explanation of the
top command, refer to the man page.
Other than q, the most beneficial key command for me is k, which
prompts a process ID (PID) to kill (terminate). As a system
administrator, it is your job to protect system health for the
general user population of that system. In other words, killing
processes to release resources is one of the things you do,
within reason, of course. It's career-limiting to kill
processes in a haphazard fashion, but it's something that has to
be done from time to timeCÇökilling processesCÇönot killing them
haphazardly.
The top command gives you a real-time snapshot of system
performance. Typically, you run top when a performance problem
is reported. When a system is idle, running top isn't exciting
and often results in showing top as the most resource-consuming
process on the system. Don't be alarmed by this, but do realize
that it's possible.
Use top as much as you like, but realize that its information is
not necessarily indicative of overall system performance. It is
a snapshot and not a measure of long-term activity.
kill a process
Although I wrote in the section above that it's your job to
sometimes kill processes, exercise caution when doing so.
There's a good chance that abruptly ending a process will cause
data corruption, data loss, and even job loss for you if you
haven't cleared such actions through the proper channels.
The two most often used signals or options for the kill command
are -15 and -9. Issuing a kill -15 is known as a soft, or
polite kill. The -15 (also known as SIGTERM) signal kills the
process but allows it to finish any pending processing:
$ kill -15
The -9 signal ( SIGKILL ) immediately terminates the program
with no regard for current processing. The -9 signal kills it.
End of story. End of process:
$ kill -9
There are two specific times to use the -9 signal. The first is
when you have a runaway process that can't be killed with the
-15 signal, and the second is when you need to free system
resources immediately without regard for data loss or
corruption. This second scenario is rare, but it does happen.
In that situation, the only other option might be to reboot the
system. Even after killing the process, you might have to
reboot anywayCÇökilling certain processes can leave the system in
an unstable state.
The takeaway here is to use kill sparingly and only with permission.
Closely associated with the kill command is the killall command.
If you have a process such as the Chrome web browser that can
consume more than its share of resources, you can issue the
killall command to rid the system of all its
spawned processes. The killall command doesn't require you to
know the PID, nor do you have to kill each individual process.
Doing so can become way too tedious, and system administrators
haven't the patience for such things.
$ killall chrome
This command terminates all instances of Chrome owned by this
user. You can issue the same command as root, but read the
previous dialog about exercising caution when doing so, because
issuing such a command as root terminates the program for
everyone on the system.
Note: If your system doesn't have the killall command available,
then you'll have to add it by installing the psmisc package as
shown below.
$ sudo yum -y install psmisc
I know, we haven't discussed the yum or dnf commands yet. Take
this one as a "just do it" lesson at this point.
View files more or less
If you've used commands such as ps, you know that file listings
can be long, and a lot of the information flows right off the
screen. Sure, you can page up or scroll, but it's not very
efficient.
The commands more and less limit the amount of data you see to
one "page." As with many things Linux-related, users are in two
camps: the more camp and the less camp. I'm in the more camp.
I never use less. And, no, less isn't more. Even the less man
page reads, "The opposite of more."
From a usage standpoint, these two commands are similar.
However, the differences surface when interacting with these
commands. It's impossible to show effectively in a static
article but less has a few more navigation options than more.
The more command's options are:
Advance one line using the Enter key.
Advance a full page using the Spacebar .
Quit by entering q.
You cannot move backward using more. Less , being more
Wonkavator-esque , allows you to move backward, search for
strings, and much more. Use the man pages for more and less to
decide which of these commands is right for you.
To make things even more complex, there are two ways to use more
and less. You can pipe (|) output to more and less or you can
use these commands to operate directly on files. Here are some
examples (without their output):
$ more /etc/passwd
$ cat /etc/passwd | more
$ ps -ef | more
$ less /etc/passwd
$ cat /etc/passwd | less
$ ps -ef | less
Update user passwd authentication tokens
Standard users use the passwd command to change their passwords.
It's quick and simple to do. Issue the passwd command and
you're prompted to change your password:
$ passwd
Changing password for user khess.
Current password:
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
When changing your password, you'll notice that the system does
not respond with any dots, stars, or even blank spaces. This
feature is far more secure in situations where someone is
shoulder surfing during a password change. There is also no
option for showing the password. Again, very secure.
There are additional passwd command options for the root user.
For example, if you issue the following command as yourself,
check your system's response:
$ passwd -S
Only root can do that.
If the root user issues this command with a username, the
command displays user information:
$ sudo passwd -S khess
khess PS 2019-07-29 0 99999 7 -1 (Password set, SHA512 crypt.)
The real power for system administrators is being able to set a
user's password without knowing the current one:
$ sudo passwd khess
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
As root, you can optionally lock and unlock user accounts:
$ sudo passwd -l john
Locking password for user john.
passwd: Success
$ sudo passwd -u john
Unlocking password for user john.
passwd: Success
Use passwd responsibly. And when offboarding a user, you should
lock the account rather than deleting it: The user might have
important data saved in their home directory, or have a process
running that requires the account to be functional. Locking is
good enough to prevent further interactive logins, and will also
inform you about any automated tasks that require a password to
perform. ifconfig a network interface
There are tasks that as a sysadmin you don't do every day, but
when you do them you need a power command like ifconfig. I
classify this command in the power category because it does many
things, but with simple syntax.
Note: While a user can look at network interface configurations
and settings with, you must be root to make changes.
$ ifconfig
enp0s3: flags=4163 mtu 1500
inet 192.168.1.96 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255
inet6 2600:1702:a40:88b0:581f:ea48:4e1a:6711 prefixlen 64 scopeid
0
inet6 fe80::3d1d:ee56:9c1c:33b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20
ether 08:00:27:a7:47:25 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 1153803 bytes 230635486 (219.9 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 78485 bytes 8389458 (8.0 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
lo: flags=73 mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 48 bytes 5616 (5.4 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 48 bytes 5616 (5.4 KiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
virbr0: flags=4099 mtu 1500
inet 192.168.122.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast
192.168.122.255
ether 52:54:00:7a:a9:b2 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
You can also use ifconfig to assign IP addresses to interfaces,
change an interface's IP addresses, take an interface offline,
bring one online, and more. grep a pattern
Use the grep utility to search for a particular pattern inside a
file or group of files. For example, say that you have a file
in your home directory that contains the IP address of a remote
system that you worked on a few months ago, but you can't recall
the exact address. You know it was something like
192.168.10.???. The problem is that you have 50 files in your
home directory and it would take hours to search through them
all by hand.
Well, fret no more, grep is here to help. In this example, you
can grep for the 192.168.10.pattern in your home directory:
$ grep 192.168.10. *
grep: data: Is a directory
grep: docs: Is a directory
grep: documents: Is a directory
grep: form: Is a directory
grep: forms: Is a directory
Notice that several of the entries state that you're attempting
to look into files that are directories, and that your search
came up negative for a file containing the IP address. Use the
recursive option ( -R ) to search subdirectories:
$ grep -R 192.168.10. *
documents/systems_list.txt: 192.168.10.45 pumba
Here, your search was successful. The grep command returned the
entire line that matches your pattern.
When system administrators mention grep or "grepping" something,
they usually refer to piping in the same sentence, as in "Pipe
it to grep." You don't always need to pipe to grep as you can
see from the example above. But, piping to grep works in a
similar way. To search for systemd in your process list:
$ ps -ef |grep systemd
root 1 0 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:40 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd
--sw
root 476 1 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:11
/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-jour
root 505 1 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:02
/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-udev
root 632 1 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:02
/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-mach
dbus 653 1 0 Aug07 ? 00:01:45 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon
--system
root 712 1 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:07
/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-logi
gdm 1209 1 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:02 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd
--us
gdm 1301 1209 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon
--sessio
khess 2423 29513 0 10:25 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto systemd
khess 8088 1 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:03 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd
--us
khess 8113 8088 0 Aug07 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon
--sessio
As you can see, piping to grep is the only way you can find all
instances of systemd from the process list. Note the first
entry with my username on it. That is my grep command searching
for systemd. If you don't want to see that entry, use the -v
option to exclude the grep command itself from your results:
$ ps -ef | grep systemd | grep -v grep
The other grep option that I find helpful is the ignore case
option( -i ):
$ grep -iR bob *
This command searches recursively through all files for the
string bob , regardless of case, which could match all of the
following: Bob, Spongebob, bilbobaggins, and BObrice.
Grep is very useful and can be used on text files, and in
conjunction with other commands via piping. You can also grep
for complex patterns using regular expressions (regex) but that
is a topic for other articles. Scan and process patterns with
awk
I feel like awk is one of those tools that few people use
because they don't understand the full power and possibilities
of this little dynamo. I will jump right in with some examples.
Say that I want a list of all processes that are
systemd-related, but I only want the PIDs, not all of the other
information that you get with ps:
$ ps -ef | grep systemd | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'
1
471
608
631
7449
7494
32681
To explain the command above:
I ran a ps, grepped for systemd, removed my own grep command,
and then piped the output to awk and printed the second column.
It is the second column because by default awk uses a space as a
field separator. The formal awk part of the command would look
like this: awk -F " " '{print $2}', where the -F option defines
the field separator.
For comma-separated values, you'd use:
awk F "," '{print $2}'.
If you have a text file ( test.txt) containing the following:
one,two,three,four,five
1,2,3,4,5
6,7,8,9,10
a,b,c,d,e
And you run awk against that file to extract the third column of
data, it displays the following:
$ cat test.txt | awk -F "," '{print $3}'
three
3
8
c
I think you can see what's going on with awk here. It's handy
for automation scripting as you can probably tell from these
examples. You can extract data and operate on it dynamically
with awk.
Edit text with vi
The vi (visual) text editor was a clever developer's (Bill Joy)
answer to updating the old line editor ex, which Bill Joy also
wrote. This program 40+ years later is still the most used
Linux command line text editor.
The vi editor is small, with the latest incarnation ( vim aka vi
improved) weighing at just over 3MB in size. These days vi is
often a symbolic link to vim (in RHEL 8, for example). Its
enhancements include multi-level undo, multiple windows and
buffers, syntax highlighting, command line editing, file name
completion, online help, and visual selection. Open vim and use
the following command for a summary of the differences between
vim and vi :
:help vi_diff.txt
vi has so many options and features that I'm only mentioning it
as one of the commands you need to know in this article. Please
refer to my vi : An introduction article for a more extensive
look at vi.
Wrapping up
Surprisingly, out of more than 200 possible Linux commands, most
system administrators only use about two dozen on a regular
basis. If you know those, system administration becomes easier
and far more elegant. Struggling with commands and syntax makes
the job harder. Learn these popular and highly-used commands
and you'll have the power to make a difference in your
environment.
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