Linux Commands 3
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Linux Commands
Continued from Linux Commands
4000.
DEVICES
console (4) - console terminal and virtual consoles console_codes (4) - Linux console escape and control sequences fd (4) - floppy disk device fifo (4) - first-in first-out special file, named pipe full (4) - always-full device hd (4) - MFM/IDE hard disk devices initrd (4) - boot-loader initialized RAM disk ipfw (4) - IP firewall and accounting ipfw_chains (4) - IP firewall lp (4) - line printer devices mem (4) - system memory, kernel memory and system ports mouse (4) - serial mouse interface null (4) - data sink ram (4) - ram disk device random (4) - kernel random-number source devices sd (4) - driver for SCSI disk drives tty (4) - controlling terminal ttys (4) - serial terminal lines urandom (4) - weaker kernel random-number source device
5100.
GENERAL FILE FORMATS
american-english (5) - a list of American English words charmap (5) - character symbols to define character encodings english (5) - a list of English words info (5) - readable online documentation ispell (5) - format of ispell(1) dictionaries and affix files magic (5) - file(1)'s magic number file pdmenurc (5) - menu definitions file for pdmenu(1) texinfo (5) - software documentation system
5240.
TTY- AND CONSOLE-RELATED FILE FORMATS
fb.modes (5) - framebuffer modes file keymaps (5) - keyboard table descriptions securetty (5) - file which lists ttys from which root can log in term (5) - format of compiled term file terminfo (5) - terminal capability database
5300.
PROGRAMMING FILE FORMATS
cvs (5) - Concurrent Versions System support files locale (5) - locale(7) definition file rcsfile (5) - format of RCS file
5410.
BOOT-CONTROL FILE FORMATS
initscript (5) - script that executes inittab commands inittab (5) - format of the init process' inittab file issue (5) - pre-login message and identification file lilo.conf (5) - configuration file for lilo(8) login.defs (5) - login configuration motd (5) - message of the day rc.boot (5) - directory for local or per-package boot scripts rcS (5) - defaults used at boot time
5420.
PROCESS-CONTROL FILE FORMATS
anacrontab (5) - configuration file for anacron(8) crontab (5) - tables for driving cron proc (5) - process information pseudo-filesystem
5430.
FILESYSTEM-CONTROL FILE FORMATS
fstab (5) - static information about the filesystems suid.conf (5) - config file for files and dirs with special perms
5440.
USER-ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATION FILE FORMATS
at.allow (5) - file determining who can submit at(1) jobs at.deny (5) - file determining who cannot submit at(1) jobs group (5) - user group file nologin (5) - file to prevent non-root users from logging in passwd (5) - the password file shadow (5) - encrypted password file shells (5) - pathnames of valid login shells sudoers (5) - list of which users may execute what super.tab (5) - database of restricted commands for super(1) utmp (5) - login records
5450.
KERNEL-INTERFACE FILE FORMATS
acct (5) - execution accounting file modules (5) - kernel modules to load at boot time modules.conf (5) - configuration file for loading kernel modules sysctl.conf (5) - sysctl(8) preload/configuration file
5460.
DEBIAN FILE FORMATS
apt.conf (5) - configuration file for apt(8) deb (5) - Debian GNU/Linux binary package format deb-control (5) - Debian GNU/Linux pkgs' master control file format kernel-package (5) - (a system for creating kernel-related packages) menufile (5) - entry in the Debian menu system sources.list (5) - package resource list for apt(8) syslog.conf (5) - syslogd(8) configuration file
5490.
OTHER SYSTEM-CONFIGURATION FILE FORMATS
manpath (5) - format of the /etc/manpath.config file tzfile (5) - time zone information
5620.
NETWORKING FILE FORMATS
ethers (5) - ethernet address to IP number database gateways (5) - file which lists gateways for routed(8) host.conf (5) - resolver configuration file hosts (5) - the static table lookup for host names hosts_access (5) - format of host access control files hosts_options (5) - host access control language extensions inetd.conf (5) - internet servers database interfaces (5) - network intrface config for ifup(8) and ifdown(8) ipc (5) - (System V interprocess communication mechanisms) issue.net (5) - identification file for telnet sessions protocols (5) - the protocols-definition file resolver (5) - resolver configuration file rsyncd.conf (5) - configuration file for rsync server services (5) - internet network services list xferlog (5) - FTP server logfile
5640.
E-MAIL FILE FORMATS
mailcap.order (5) - the mailcap MIME ordering specifications muttrc (5) - configuratn file for the mutt(1) mail user agent procmailex (5) - procmail(1) rcfile examples procmailrc (5) - procmail(1) rcfile procmailsc (5) - procmail(1) weighted scoring technique uuencode (5) - format of an encoded uuencode(1) file
5710.
PRINTSERVICE CONFIGURATION FILE FORMATS
papersize (5) - the preferred paper size printcap (5) - printer capability database
5730.
IMAGE FORMATS
pbm (5) - portable bitmap file format pgm (5) - portable graymap file format png (5) - Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format pnm (5) - portable anymap file format ppm (5) - portable pixmap file format
5800.
X-CONFIGURATION FILE FORMATS
XF86Config (5x) - configuration file for XFree86 Xsession.options - configuration options for X sessions xfs.options (5x) - configuration options for X font server
7100.
SYSTEM CONVENTIONS AND MISCELLANY
bootparam (7) - intro to boot-time parameters of the Linux kernel environ (7) - user environment signal (7) - list of available signals unix (7) - sockets for local interprocess communication
7200.
CHARACTER-SET CONVENTIONS AND MISCELLANY
ascii (7) - the ascii character set in octal, decimal, & hex charsets (7) - programmer's view of character sets and i18n iso_8859-1 (7) - ISO 8859-1 character set in octal, decimal & hex latin1 (7) - (see iso_8859-1(7)) locale (7) - description of multi-language support unicode (7) - the unified 16-bit super character set utf-8 (7) - an ASCII compatible multibyte unicode encoding
7300.
GROFF CONVENTIONS AND MISCELLANY
groff_char (7) - groff character names groff_man (7) - groff 'an' macros to generate man pages groff_mdoc (7) - quick reference guide for the -mdoc macro package groff_mdoc.samples - tutorial sampler for writing manuals with -mdoc groff_me (7) - troff macros for formatting papers groff_mm (7) - groff mm macros groff_ms (7) - groff ms macros groff_msafer (7) - groff -msafer macros man (7) - macros to format man pages
7700.
OTHER CONVENTIONS AND MISCELLANY
dist (7) - introduction to dist glob (7) - globbing pathnames hier (7) - description of the file system hierarchy libggi (7) - user-space graphics library pcre (7) - perl-compatible regular expressions regex (7) - POSIX 1003.2 regular expressions suffixes (7) - list of file suffixes term (7) - conventions for naming terminal types
7800.
NETWORK CONVENTIONS AND MISCELLANY
icmp (7) - Linux IPv4 ICMP kernel module ip (7) - Linux IPv4 protocol implementation mailaddr (7) - mail addressing description netdevice (7) - low-level access to Linux network devices packet (7) - packet interface on device level raw (7) - Linux IPv4 raw sockets socket (7) - Linux socket interface tcp (7) - TCP protocol udp (7) - UDP protocol on top of IPv4 uri (7) - uniform resource identifier (URI), incl URL/N
8110.
BOOT CONTROL
dmesg (8) - print or control the kernel ring buffer getty (8) - open tty, prompt for login, and invoke /bin/login halt (8) - stop the system init (8) - initialize process control lilo (8) - install boot loader lsdev (8) - display information about installed hardware pnpdump (8) - dump ISA plug-and-play devices resource info poweroff (8) - stop the system and power down reboot (8) - stop the system and reboot runlevel (8) - find the current and previous system runlevel setserial (8) - get/set Linux serial-port information shutdown (8) - bring the system down sulogin (8) - login(1) in single-user mode telinit (8) - signal init(8) update-rc.d (8) - install & remove System-V style init script links
8120.
PROCESS CONTROL
accton (8) - turn process accounting on or off ipcrm (8) - remove the specified IPC resources ipcs (8) - provide information on IPC facilities killall5 (8) - send a signal to all processes pidof (8) - find the process ID of a running program sa (8) - summarize accounting information setsid (8) - run a program in a new session
8130.
FILESYSTEM CONTROL
dump (8) - back an ext2 filesystem up e2fsck (8) - check a Linux second extended file system fdisk (8) - manipulate a partition table interactively lsof (8) - list open files mke2fs (8) - create a Linux second extended file system mkisofs (8) - create a iso9660 filesystem mklost+found (8) - create a lost+found dir on a mounted filesystem mkswap (8) - set up a Linux swap area mount (8) - mount a file system restore (8) - restore files or file systems from dump backups sfdisk (8) - manipulate a partition table swapon (8) - enable/disable devs & files for paging & swapping tune2fs (8) - adjust tunable parameters on ext2 filesystems umount (8) - unmount a file system
8140.
USER-ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATION
addgroup (8) - add a group to the system adduser (8) - add a user to the system edquota (8) - edit user quotas groupadd (8) - create a new group (addgroup(8) is usu preferred) groupdel (8) - delete a group groupmod (8) - modify a group lastlog (8) - examine users' last logins newaliases (8) - update /etc/aliases database quotacheck (8) - scan a file system for disk usages quotaoff (8) - turn file system quotas on and off quotaon (8) - turn file system quotas on and off repquota (8) - summarize quotas for a file system sac (8) - perform system accounting sudo (8) - execute a command as another user ttysnoop (8) - snoop on a user's tty useradd (8) - create a new user (adduser(8) is usu preferred) userdel (8) - delete a user account and related files usermod (8) - modify a user account
8151.
KERNEL-MODULE CONTROL
depmod (8) - handle loadable-kernel-module dependency descrips insmod (8) - install loadable kernel module lsmod (8) - list loaded modules rmmod (8) - unload loadable modules modconf (8) - configure modules modinfo (8) - display information about a kernel module modprobe (8) - handle loadable modules in a high-level manner
8152.
KERNEL CONTROL
hwclock (8) - query and set the hardware clock (RTC) lspci (8) - list all PCI devices kbdrate (8) - reset the keyboard repeat rate and delay time procinfo (8) - display system status gathered from /proc rdev (8) - query/set rootflags, swapdev, ramsize or vidmode sysctl (8) - configure kernel parameters at runtime syslogd-listfiles - list system logfiles vmstat (8) - report virtual memory statistics
8153.
CONSOLE CONTROL
consolechars (8) - load console font getkeycodes (8) - print kernel scancode-to-keycode mapping table setkeycodes (8) - load kernel scancode-to-keycode mapping table
8190.
OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE AND PRIVILEGED COMMANDS
MAKEDEV (8) - create devices chroot (8) - run command or shell with special root directory cleanup-info (8) - clean up the mess left by a bogus install-info install-info (8) - create or update entry in Info directory ld.so (8) - apply the dynamic linker/loader logrotate (8) - rotate, compress and mail system logs lpc (8) - control the line printer magicfilter (8) - apply this automatic configurable printer filter mandb (8) - create or update the manual-page index caches run-parts (8) - run scripts or programs in a directory savelog (8) - save a log file start-stop-daemon - start and stop system daemon programs tmpreaper (8) - remove files not accessed for a time update-alternatives - maintain symlinks determining default commands update-mime (8) - create or update MIME information
8200.
DEBIAN SOFTWARE PACKAGE MANAGEMENT
apt (8) - (Advanced Package Tool) apt-get (8) - handle packages from the command line cruft (8) - check the filesys for missing & unexplained files dpkg (8) - manage Debian packages in a medium-level manner dpkg-preconfigure - let packages ask questions prior to installation dpkg-reconfigure (8) - reconfigure an already installed package dselect (8) - run this console Debian package handling frontend install-docs (8) - manage online Debian documentation
8700.
GENERAL DAEMONS
anacron (8) - run commands periodically atd (8) - run jobs queued for later execution cron (8) - daemon to execute scheduled commands gpm (8) - run this virtual-console paste util & mouse servr klogd (8) - kernel log daemon logoutd (8) - enforce login time restrictions lpd (8) - line printer spooler daemon sysklogd (8) - Linux system logging utilities
8810.
NETWORK CONTROL
arp (8) - manipulate the system ARP cache chat (8) - engage the modem in an automated conversation fping (8) - send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts icmpinfo (8) - interpret ICMP messages ifconfig (8) - configure a network interface ifdown (8) - take a network interface down ifup (8) - bring a network interface up ipacset (8) - set kernel ip accounting rules ipchains (8) - administer IP firewalls ipchains-restore (8) - restore IP firewall chains from stdin ipchains-save (8) - save IP firewall chains to stdout ipfwadm (8) - administer and account for IP firewalls netstat (8) - display network status ping (8) - send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts route (8) - show / manipulate the IP routing table slrnpull (8) - download news into slrn(1) news spool sniffit (8) - monitor packets tcpdump (8) - dump traffic on a network traceroute (8) - print the route packets take to network host
8820.
NETWORK DAEMONS
apache (8) - run this HTTP server bind (8) - (the Berkeley Internet Name Domain server) exim (8) - run this mail-transfer agent ftpd (8) - run the internet File Transfer Protocol server identd (8) - TCP/IP ident protocol server in.fingerd (8) - run this remote user-information server in.talkd (8) - run this remote user-communication server in.telnetd (8) - run the telnet-protocol server inetd (8) - run the internet super-server iplogger (8) - log incoming TCP and ICMP sessions ipopd (8) - run the UW POP2 and POP3 servers pppd (8) - run the Point-to-Point Protocol daemon rinetd (8) - run the internet redirection server routed (8) - run the network routing daemon sshd (8) - run this secure shell daemon stunnel (8) - universal SSL tunnel tcpd (8) - use this access-control facility for intrnet svcs tcplogd (8) - log incoming TCP sessions
HOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT A SPECIFIC COMMAND
To learn more about a specific command, try
man command
info command (GNU commands and some others)
help command (bash(1) builtins)
command --help
command -h
command -?
command -help
locate command
whereis command
which command
man -a command
dpkg -S `which command`
dpkg -L `dpkg -S \`which command\` | sed -e 's/:.*//'`
ls -RC --co /usr/{share/,}doc/command*
ls -RC --co /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt
The ultimate way to learn all about any command, of course, is to read its source code. This is what GNU/Linux experts do when needed or desired. If you are not yet such an expert, yet would like someday to become one, why, to learn the commands in this Howto should set you well on your way.
HOW TO FIND OTHER COMMANDS
One may obtain at any time a more complete listing of available commands by
whatis -w '*' info help echo $PATH ls -RC --co /bin ls -RC --co /usr/bin ls -RC --co /usr/X11R6/bin ls -RC --co /sbin ls -RC --co /usr/sbin manpath ls -RC --co /usr/share/man/ ls -RC --co /usr/man ls -RC --co /usr/X11R6/man/ ls -RC --co /usr/share/info/ ls -RC --co /usr/info/
and so forth. (If the output of any of the above commands scrolls off the screen, capture it by appending a " | less -r" to the command. For example, "whatis -w '*' | less -r". In `less', the <Up>, <Down>, <Page Up> and <Page Down> keys work as expected. To quit `less', press `q'.)
WORK STILL NEEDED
Some of the commands cataloged in this Howto do not yet have adequate free documentation available. A command's documentation may be inadequate in any of six ways:
- it may fail to cover some of the command's useful features;
- it may cover all the features but lack an accessible introduction for beginners;
- it may be written in a style which is too hard to read;
- it may not be available in English;
- it may not be free per the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG); and/or
- it may not exist.
Good free documentation is central to the institution and practice of free software. When you encounter a command whose documentation seems inadequate, if you should by any means overcome the lack of adequate documentation to master the command's application, then consider improving the documentation or writing new documentation; and submitting your work to the command's maintainer to be distributed with future releases of the command's software.
DOCUMENT HISTORY
Having first installed Red Hat GNU/Linux 3.0.3 in 1996, the author found himself daunted at the hundreds or even thousands of available GNU/Linux commands. He began to take summary notes on the commands he found most interesting or used most often. As the notes grew and, in 1998, as the author migrated to Debian GNU/Linux 2.0, the author began categorizing then subcategorizing the commands. He added the four-digit command-classification system in 2002.
Having by 2002 received six years of iterative practice and refinement, the document had, without ever quite intending to do so, grown into a comprehensive, uniquely useful summary overview and classification of the many hundreds of important available GNU/Linux commands. Knowing of no other such catalog in existence, the author released version 0.1.0 (covering GNU/Linux through Debian 2.2r6) to the public 29 May 2002.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This Command Selection Howto's actual contents represent only a tiny fraction of the total skill and effort which have made the document useful. The vast majority of the total effort and skill, in fact, are found in the countless thousands of hours which many fine programmers, some wholly unsung, have selflessly given in creating and documenting the free programs which implement the hundreds of commands this Howto covers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thaddeus H. Black holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho, USA. Thaddeus is presently working on obtaining his American state registration as a Professional Engineer. He makes his living as a design and field engineer in the American construction industry. He and his wife Kristie have two sons: Benjamin and Isaiah.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (C) 2002 Thaddeus H. Black.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. You might already have the license's complete text on your computer in such a directory as `/usr/share/common-licenses/'; otherwise, you may download the text, if you want it, from any of many sources on the Internet, including (at the time of this writing) ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/Licenses/COPYING.DOC.
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