Quick reference guide Linux

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1. General remarks

This is a summary of the most frequently used UNIX/Linux (user) commands. This guide describes also some aliases, shell functions and scripts that do not exist elsewhere.

These commands are flagged with the letters A or N. These small enhancements are described on the page linux/made_easy.

with pointers to the missing pieces, source code and further background information. That should be a good starting point for sysadmins that want to modify their systems accordingly.

The selection of commands for this guide has been made by the author. Therefore tools and packages may be excluded from this list that are popular at other sites. On the other hand this guide describes command additions and modifications that do apply if the Andrew File System (AFS) and Kerberos 5 (Heimdal version) are installed. Another chapter deals with two popular batch systems (LSF and SGE). For standalone Linux systems these components are probably of little use. For the benefit of users with larger Linux installations they are included however.

Not all commands described here are available on all variants of Linux.

For a command usually only the most common options and arguments are listed which can be found also on other flavors of UNIX. No attempt is made to describe all options, arguments and modes of usage. For a concise description of a command please refer to the online man pages and other available documentation

The arguments to a command usually undergo further processing by the shell, if characters such as *, ?, =, \ , () or {} are used. If such characters are to be processed by the command and not by the shell, the arguments must be quoted as e.g. in locate "*/core". Without the quotes the command will probably not do what you expect. Single quotes have to be used, if really all characters (such as $) have to be transferred to the command.

Commands that provide a graphical user interface (GUI) are described in less detail than other commands, as most of the options and features can be selected interactively. Those commands do usually come with a (context sensitive) help system.

You are very welcome to give me feedback by email ( ) and to help improving this guide. Should you encounter
incorrectly described commands, commands that should be included in this summary or that should be left out, important command sequences that are hard to remember, typos, better English style etc. then I would very much appreciate hearing from you.

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