The 15 Commands Essential for Unix

Learning UNIX is a seemingly daunting task, there are thousands of commands out there, each with hundreds of options. But in reality you only need to know a few of them. I use unix quite a bit, usually either on one of our Linux servers, or on my Powerbook with OS X. And these are the 15 commands that I use most. If you can memorize these 15 commands, you can do quite a bit on a unix operating system, and add unix as a skill on your resume. The 15 Most Important UNIX commands 1. man - show manual for a command, example: man ls hit q to exit the man page. 2. cd - change directory, example: cd /etc/ 3. ls - list directory, similar to dir on windows. example: ls /etc, use ls -l /etc to see more detail 4. cp - copy a file or directory, example: cp source dest if you want to copy a directory use the -R option for recursive: cp -R /source /dest 5. mv - move a file, example: mv source dest 6. rm - remove a file, example: rm somefile to remove a directory you may need the -R option, you can also use the -f option which tells it not to confirm each file: rm -Rf /dir 7. cat - concatenate, or output a file cat /var/log/messages 8. more - outputs one page of a file and pauses. example: more /var/log/messages press q to exit before getting to the bottom. You can also pipe to more | more from other commands, for example ls -l /etc | more 9. scp - secure copy, copies a file over SSH to another server. example: scp /local/file user@host.com:/path/to/save/file 10. *Originally published at Pete Freitag's Homepage Tag: Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark Murdok: Pete Freitag (http://foundeo.com/) that specializes in Web Consulting, and Products for Web Developers.