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Linux Command Line Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

Command Syntax for Linux command line

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

Folders & Files

$ cp -a source/. /dest/
Copy Directory
 
$ rm -r mydir
Remove Directory
 
$ sudo du -hs /

$ sudo du -hs /etc/  
 # to restrict to specified directory
Usage by directory
 

Misc

$ dpkg --list
List installed packages
add 
> **.txt
to dump list to file
 
.tar.gz or tgz

$ tar xvzf ***.tar.gz       

$ > .gz (.gzip) 
$ gunzip ***.gz  

$ >.t­ar.bz2 or .tbz 
$ tar xvjf ***.ta­r.tbz  

$ dtrx ***.tar.gz 
$ dtrx ***.ta­r.bz2
Unzip tar
- v is for verbose
 

Change Permis­sions

$ sudo chmod -R ugo+rw /DATA/­SHARE
[...]
The breakdown of the above command looks like:
 
• sudo – this is used to gain admin rights for the command on any system that makes use of sudo (otherwise you'd have to 'su' to root and run the above command without 'sudo')
• chmod – the command to modify permis­sions
•-R – this modifies the permission of the parent folder and the child objects within
•ugo+rw – this gives User, Group, and Other read and write access.
As you can probably surmise, this command, as shown above, opens wide the 
SHARE
folder such that anyone on the system can have access to that folder. A more secure method would be to use groups 
g
or current user 
u
.
The breakdown of user permis­sions looks like this:
 
•u – user
•g – group
•o – other
The 'other' entry is the dangerous one, as it effect­ively gives everyone permission for the folder­/file.
The permis­sions you can give to a file or folder are:
 
•r – read
•w – write
•x – execute
Using the 
-R
switch is important. If you have a number of sub-fo­lders and files within the 
SHARE
directory, and you want the permis­sions to apply from the parent object (the containing folder) to the child objects (the sub-fo­lders and files), you must use the 
-R
(recur­sive) switch so the same permis­sions are applied all the way to the deepest folder, contained within the parent. [...]