MIS 253N

Commands You Just Have to Know

The following are the bare minimum commands that you should be familiar with in order to navigate through Windows XP and Vistas command line interface as well as commands on any UNIX or Linux or Mac systems. This is not an exhaustive list. Open a command window in Windows XP1 START RUN In the run box, type cmd Program needed to get into Grackle from any client computer ssh (example is Putty)

Commands to know on Grackle or other UNIX-like systems

finger
Used to check the status of user accounts on the local system

passwd
Used to change your password on the system

chfn
Used to change information displayed by the finger command

uptime
Used to check since last system reboot and system load

top
Used to see what programs are currently running (live)

ps or ps aux
Used to get a snapshot of running processes -aux for Linux systems

whoami
Used to see what your login name is
1

For Vista and Windows 7 users, omit the RUN command and type CMD directly

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who
Used to see who is logged in who t will show where they are logged in from

ls
Used to show your files and directories ls l will show the attributes of each file and directory

cd
Used to change directories cd will return you to your home directory cd /tmp will change to the temp directory cd public_html will change to your public_html directory (where your web files will live)

mkdir
Used to make a directory

rmdir
Used to delete a directory

cat
Display the contents of a file w/o pausing

more
Display the contents a file pausing every screen

nano
Editor used to view, create or modify files Know some of the common editing commands CTRL & X to save and exit a file CTRL & O to save and continue editing CTRL K to delete a line CTRL U to undelete the last deletion

ping
Check to see if a host is alive and responding ping bluejay.creighton.edu or ping 147.134.144.2

nslookup or dig
Used to see if a domain is available Is your lastname available?

traceroute or tracert
Used to check the route (or path) from one host to another Fall 2009 PAGE 2 OF 3

df
Used to check to see how much disk space is free on the system. Use df h to see it in a more readable format.

du
Used to check to see how much disk space you are using on the system. Use du h to see it in a more readable format. | Unix pipe command used to send output to another program

> and >>

Used to direct the output to a file; > is to a new file, >> creates a file if the file does not exist, or appends to an existing file

man
Short for manual it is the help system. For example, man ping will show you how to use the ping command, and its parameters.

mail
email the command For example: mail s subject line recipient

sort
sort by first character of each line For example: ps aux | sort

Fall 2009

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