Useful Commands

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Contents

Introduction

This page was randomly added to be a collection of useful shell commands (typed into a terminal) (like find /dir | grep word | wc) that everyone, Arch users, both new and experienced, can refer to.

Additions welcome! Variations are fine too, just as long as they are not TOO slight.

--Evanlec 12 December 2007

Format

For adding commands lets try and use a standard format:

command [flags] /path/to/target <parameter>  : shall indicate a parameter to specify in the command (without the <>'s)

Please include a brief description of what the command does as well :)

Follow the format I've started here.



Find Files

  • Search for a string and print matching file(s)
find /path | grep <word> | wc     ; list files (one per line) containing <word>

  • search stuff
find /some/directoy -type (d = dir f = file) -iname "something*"
find / -type f -iname "opera*

Filesystem

  • Mount ISO image file:
mount -o loop -t iso9660 <image.iso> /mount/point
  • Mount read-only FS as rw
mount -o remount,rw /target
  • updatedb
updatedb  #followed by slocate <word> to find a file
  • Show file sizes
du -h --max-depth=1 | sort -n  #shows size of files cumulative in current directory
  • List files by date
ls -larth  #shows all files +dir with newest at bottom
  • Show Disks
df -h

Xorg

  • Reconfigure xorg.conf
Xorg -configure
Note: xorgconfig does same, use lspci to find you vidcard, and pacman -S to install the xf86-video-intel(or ati or what have you) driver for your vidcard

System Monitoring

  • Show actual memory usage (without cache)
thing=( $(free -m | grep Mem) ); yep=$((thing[2]-thing[6])) ; indeed=$((yep*100/thing[1])) ; echo "Memory Usage: ${yep} MB / ${thing[1]} MB  - ${indeed}%"
  • Find the pid of a program on execution
$ pidof 'program_on_execution'
  • Kill all pid that match with the pattern
$ pkill -f 'pattern_of_program'

More Resources

Personal tools