:: Alphabetical List of Principal Commands ::
In the following command list, the distinction between upper case and lower case letters is important. Most of the commands are utilities that are run by invoking their own executable files. In some cases, they are commands which are internal to a shell such as bash (shell builtins). The shell builtins are indicated. There are now many utilities that are included with either the Gnome or the KDE desktop environments, so many that it would be difficult to include them all here. In many cases, they duplicate the functionality of one or more of the programs listed below. I would suggest consulting the online documentation for these packages.
Another good source of information on commands is the CTDP (2000b) document. There are different chapters which group commands in different categories.
/ - root directory
./ - current directory
./command_name - run a command in the current directory when the current directory is not on the path
../ - parent directory
~ - home directory
$ - typical prompt when logged in as ordinary user
# - typical prompt when logged in as root or superuser
! - repeat specified command
!! - repeat previous command
- repeat previous command with substitution
& - run a program in background mode
Tab Tab - prints a list of all available commands. This is just an efxample of autocomplete with no restriction on the first letter.
x Tab Tab - prints a list of all available completions for a command, where the beginning is x Alt Ctrl F1 - switch to the first virtual text console Alt Ctrl Fn - switch to the nth virtual text console. Typically, there are six on a Linux PC system. Alt Ctrl F7 - switch to the first GUI console, if there is one running. If the graphical console freezes, one can switch to a nongraphical console, kill the process that is giving problems, and switch back to the graphical console using this shortcut. ?ArrowUp - scroll through the command history (in bash) Shift ?PageUp - scroll terminal output up. This also works at the login prompt, so you can scroll through your boot messages. Shift ?PageDown - scroll terminal output down Ctrl Alt + - switch to next X server resolution (if the server is set up for more than one resolution) Ctrl Alt - - change to previous X server resolution Ctrl Alt ?BkSpc - kill the current X server. Used when normal exit is not possible. Ctrl Alt Del - shut down the system and reboot Ctrl c - kill the current process Ctrl d - logout from the current terminal Ctrl s - stop transfer to current terminal Ctrl q - resume transfer to current terminal. This should be tried if the terminal stops responding. Ctrl z - send current process to the background reset - restore a terminal to its default settings a2p - translation utility from awk to Perl a2ps - translation utility from any
ac - print statistics concerning user connect time
access - determine whether a file can be accessed
acroread - Adobe utility for viewing pdf files
adduser - used by root to add user to system usage: adduser userid
afio - utility to copy or restore files to an archive file. This utility is not part of the basic internal and external programs under Red Hat Linux. It is available as an rpm on the rpmfind.net site.
agetty - enables login on terminals. See getty, mgetty, and uugetty.
ali - list mail aliases
alias - assign name to specified command list. This is actually a shell builtin. On my Red Hat system, I have global alias commands in my /etc/bashrc file and in my /.bashrc file. On my Slackware box, I have made the rm command a little bit safer with alias rm='rm -i' so that you can't recursively delete your /dev directory without telling the system you're sure you want to do it.
alien - utility to convert to and from different Linux package formats. Can handle Debian (deb), Stampede (stp), Red Hat (rpm) and Slackware (tgz) packages.
apropos - display command names based on keyword search usage: apropos keyword
apsfilter - printer filter called by lpd to deal with printing different types of files. This is a fairly sophisticated print filter. It is not set up by default in Slackware. It used to be available on the second cd of a Slackware distribution. Since 4.0, it is available as one of the main packages in the ap set. Read the mail that the installation program sends to the root user. I believe that Red Hat uses its own printer filters.
ar - create, modify and extract from archives
arch - print machine architecture type
as - the portable GNU assembler
asapm - ?AfterStep laptop advanced power management utility
ash - a shell, a very simple shell program sometimes used on boot diskettes since it takes up much less space than bash, tcsh, zsh, etc.
asload - ?AfterStep cpu load monitor
asmail - ?AfterStep mail checking utility
asmodem - ?AfterStep utility to monitor modem status
aspell - a spell checking program along the lines of ispell
aspostit - X Window postit note utility
at - executes a shell script at specified time. Use atq to show pending jobs, and atrm to remove jobs from the queue. usage: at time or: at -f file time
atq - shows pending jobs queued by at. If run by root, shows everybody's pending jobs.
atrm - removes pending jobs queued by at. Use atq to determine the identities of various jobs. usage: atrm job
awk - searches for and process patterns in a file
banner - print banner to standard output. Syntax is banner ["option"] ["characters"]
bash - Bourne again shell. This is the default shell in the Red Hat installation.
batch - queue, examine, or delete jobs for later execution. See at.
bc - a language (compiler) similar to C, with unlimited precision arithmetic
bg PID - send process with pid PID to the background. This is the same as executing ["Ctrl"]z while interacting with the running process. This is a shell builtin. bh - puts a job in the background. This is a shell builtin. biff - mail notification utility. Notifies user of mail arrival and sender's name. bind - displays or redefines key bindings. This is a shell builtin. bison - parser generator similar to yacc bru - a powerful backup utility program. Commercial. Demonstration versions are often included with Linux distributions such as Red Hat. bsh - equivalent to ash bunzip2 - used to uncompress files compressed with bzip2 byacc - parser generator bzip2 - compresses with algorithm different from gzip bzless - view bzipped files c++ - invokes GNU C and C++ compiler cal - displays a 12-month calendar for the given year or a one-month calendar of the given month usage: cal month year cat - combine, copy standard input to standard output. Used to join or display files. cd - change working directory. This is a shell builtin in bash, tcsh and zsh. cdplay - command line utility for playing audio cds cfdisk - similar to fdisk, but menu-driven chat - used to interact with a modem via a chat script chgrp - changes group associated with file. Can be used to change the group associated with subdirectories and files of a directory. usage: chgrp group files or: chgrp -R group files chkconfig - Query or update system services/daemons for different runlevels. Manipulates the various symbolic links in /etc/rc.d. This utility is included with many rpm-based distributions such as RedHat and Mandrake. It is designed to work with System V initialization scripts. Graphical tools for configuring system services include ntsysv, tksysv and ksysv (the latter is a KDE utility). chmod - set permissions (modes) of files or directories. A value of 4 is used for read permission. A value of 2 is used for write permission. A value of 1 is used for execute permission. See umask for default file permissions upon file creation. Chmod can also be used to change the suid bit on files. The syntax for the symbolic version is chmod ["options"] who operation permission file-list The syntax for the absolute version is chmod ["options"] mode file-list To set the uid to the owner's permissions, use chmod u +s file-name To set the uid to the group's permissions, use chmod g +s file-name There are lots of security issues related to allowing a program to have root's permissions when run by an ordinary user. I don't pretend to understand all of these issues. chown - changes ownership of a file. Can be used recursively. usage: chown userid files or: chown -R userid files chsh - change default shell ci - creates or records changes in an RCS file clear - clear screen command cmp - compares two files for differences usage: cmp file1 file2 co - retrieves an unencoded version of an RCS file comm - compares sorted files configure - automatically configures software source code color-xterm - color xterm program. Under Red Hat, this is just a link to xterm-color. control-panel - graphical system configuration tool under Red Hat. cp - copies on or more files. Recursive copying is one simple way of archiving part of a directory structure. Use the command as follows: cp -r /sourcedirectory /targetdirectory cpio - direct copy of files to an output device. Allows creation of archive file spanning multiple diskettes. Allows one directory structure to be mirrored elsewhere on the partition or on another partition. In order to back up an entire directory structure on diskettes, cd to the directory and use the following command: find . -depth -print || cpio -ov > /dev/fd0 To restore from diskettes, use: cpio -iv < /dev/fd0 The cpio command will prompt the user to insert more diskettes as they are needed. The command for mirroring a directory structure is the following: find . -depth -print || cpio -pv /destinationdirectory This copies the working directory and its contents, including subdirectories, into /destinationdirectory. In order to copy an individual file which is larger than a floppy, use: find . -name nameoffile -print || cpio -iv > /dev/fd0 cpkgtool - Slackware tool to install, uninstall and query packages. Front end to installpkg, removepkg, makepkg. This is the graphical version that uses ncurses. cpp - GNU C-compatible compiler preprocessor crontab - schedules command to run at regularly specified time csh - run C shell csplit - separate files into sections. See also split. cvs - manages concurrent acces to files in a hierarchy. Stands for concurrent version system. Is built on RCS. It stores successive revisions of files efficiently and ensures that access to files by multiple developers is done in a controlled manner. Useful when many developers are working on the same project. cut - selects characters or TAB-separated fields from lines of input and writes them to standard output date - displays or sets date and time usage: date or: date date dd - direct copy of file from one device to another. Can be used to make copies of boot or root diskettes for installing Linux. It can be used, for example, to make and exact copy of a floppy disk, as follows. First, place the diskette to be copied in the floppy drive. Then, dd if=/dev/fd0 ibs=512 > floppy.copy Replace the diskette with a fresh diskette. dd if=floppy.copy bs=512 of=/dev/fd0 The ibs and bs options specify the block sizes for input and for both input and output. A boot disk image can be directly copied to a floppy using the second of the two dd commands above. declare - declares attributes for a variable (same as typeset). This is a shell builtin. df - displays capacity and free capacity on different physical devices such as hard drive partitions and floppy drives that are mounted on the file system. Gives free space in blocks. With the (undocumented) option -h, the program gives free space in Mb or Gb. This is useful for those accustomed to thinking of the capacity of a high-density 3.5 inch diskette as 1440k. diff - displays differences between two files usage: diff file1 file2 diff3 - compares three files and reports on differences dip - used to set up a SLIP or PPP connection. It can be used to set up an outgoing SLIP connection or an incoming connection. diplogin - used for setting up incoming dip connections. See the man page for dip. dir - a variation of the GNU ls command that defaults to printing file names in columns dircolors - set colors for GNU ls command. In Slackware, this command is run by the /etc/profile script. Then, whenever xterm is run with the -ls (login shell) option, ls displays different colors for different types of files. Typical usage is eval dircolors -b. In Red Hat and Mandrake, I get color directories by aliasing the ls command (see below). display - set display for output of programms under X Windows. Can be used to run a program on a remote machine while displaying the output on a local machine. The remote machine must have permission to send output to the local machine. This is actually an environment variable. See the more detailed discussion in connection with the xhost command below. dmesg - displays messages from /var/log relative to the most recent boot dos - invoke the DOSEMU DOS emulator du - displays information on disk usage. The command du / -bh || less will display detailed disk usage for each subdirectory starting at root, giving files sizes in bytes. dumpkeys - print information about the keyboard driver's translation tables to standard output dvilj - send a dvi file to a Laserjet printer. There are specialized versions for individual models of Laserjet printer. dvilj2p - specialized version of dvilj for the ["IIp"] series of printers. See above. dvips - send a dvi file to a Postscript printer, to a Postscript capable Laserjet printer, or to a file (with the -o option). There is a switch to print only a subset of the pages, and another switch to print in landscape mode. Use -t landscape, which is one of the arguments to the paper type switch. If you have one page of a document that is a wide table, and you wish to print this in landscape mode, use dvips filename -pp pagenumber -t landscape e2fsck - check an ext2 filesystem. The syntax is e2fsck /dev/devicename where the filesystem is on /dev/devicename. The device should not be mounted, and this program must be run as root. echo - write arguments to standard output. One use is to print out information about environment variables, as in echo $PATH - list paths to search echo $HOME or echo ~ - list name of home directory This is a shell builtin. editres - a dynamic resource editor for X Toolkit applications. Allows the user to change X resources for individual applications. efax - fax program efix - convert between fax, text, bit-map and gray-scale formats egrep - search files for lines that match regular expressions. Runs faster than grep and fgrep. elm - an interactive mail system elvis - a version of the vi text editor emacs - screen oriented text editor env - desplay the current environment or set a variable equal to a new value eval - scans and evaluates the command line. See dircolors command. This is a shell builtin. ex - interactive command-based editor. The man page lists it as being the same as vim, an improved version of vi. exec - system call which creates a subshell to execute a binary or a script. This is a shell builtin. execve - a variation of the exec command. exit - exit a shell. This is a shell builtin. expand - convert tabs in files to spaces and write to standard output expect - a program that talks
export - place the value of a variable in the calling environment (makes it global). This is a shell builtin.
expr - utility evaluates an expression and displays the result
f2c - FORTRAN to C translator
f77 - FORTRAN 77 compiler
false - null command that returns an unsuccessful exit status
fax - simple user interface to efax and efix programs
fc - views, edits, and executes commands for the history list. This is a shell builtin.
fdformat - low level format of a floppy device
fetchmail - retrieve mail from a remote mail server and pass it to local SMTP agents on the local machine
fdisk - used to partition hard drives usage: fdisk device
fg PID - bring a background or stopped process with pid PID to the foreground. This is a shell builtin. If only one process is running in background mode, fg with no argument is sufficient to bring it to the foreground fgrep - search for patterns in files file - displays classification of a file or files according to the type of data they contain find - find files according to a large variety of search criteria. The find command that I use the most is find . -name filename -print in order to find files matching a particular name on the working directory and all subdirectories. Find can be incredibly powerful, but it is incredibly obscure. finger - display information about a specified userid or userids fmt - simple text formatting utility. Tries to make all nonblank lines nearly the same length. fold - break lines of specified files so they are no wider than a specified lengths fortune - available in the bsdgames package in Slackware and other distributions. Put a call to fortune in /etc/profile and get something inspirational or amusing every time you fire up an xterm as a login shell. free - gives used and free memory on system along with other useful information fromdos - takes a DOS text file from stdin and sends a UNIX file to stdout. fsck - file system check and repair ftp - file transfer over network g++ - C++ compiler g77 - GNU Fortran 77 compiler gawk - GNU awk, mostly for processing delimited text files gcc - invoke C, C++ compiler getipts - parses arguments to a shell script. This is a shell builtin. getkeycodes - print kernel's scancode-to-keycode mapping table ghostscript - set of printing utilities. It seems to be obligatory to have this if a TEX installation such as ["teTEX"] is installed. How they communicate with one another is somewhat obscure. ghostview - Aladdin ghostscript interpreter/previewer gimp - image manipulation and paint program glint - Red Hat graphical front end for the rpm package installer and manager. grep - used to find a string within a file. The -i option returns matches without regard to case. The -n option means that each line of output is preceded by file name and line number. The -v option causes non-matched lines to be printed. usage: grep pattern files or: grep -i pattern files or: grep -n pattern files or: grep -v pattern files groupadd - create a new group on the system groups - shows which groups you are in grub - Gnu grand unified bootloader. Can be used instead of lilo to boot multiple operating systems. I encountered a couple of snafus trying to install grub on my home machine after installing Mandrake 8.0 and choosing the lilo bootloader during the initial install. The Mandrake installation program set up /boot/vmlinuz as a symlink to the actual kernel, vmlinuz-2.4.3-20mdk. It took me a while to figure out that grub doesn't understand symbolic links. The documentation suggests installing grub on a diskette using the dd
root (hd0,x) setup (hd0) Here, the x should be replaced by the partition where the /boot/grub directory is located, which is probably the root partition of the Linux system. Note that grub has its own conventions for naming devices and numbering partitions, so that for example a partition which is called hda6 under Linux will be called (hd0,5) by grub.
grub-install - command to install grub on the hard drive (or floppy drive).
gunzip - used to uncompress files compressed with gzip
gv - ?PostScript and PDF previewer, based on ghostview
gvim - see vi
gzexe - compresses executables
gzip - used to compress or decompress files
halt - shut down system as root, without reboot, immediately
hash - remembers the location of commands in the search path. This is a shell builtin.
head - displays first part of a file
history - command for viewing and manipulating the shell command history list
host - look up host names using domain server
hostname - used to get or set hostname. Typically, the host name is stored in the file /etc/HOSTNAME.
hwclock - used to query and set the hardware clock
hylafax - commercial fax program
id - display userid and groupid
inetd - daemon which starts up other daemons on demand. Configured in /etc/inetd.conf.
ifconfig - display (as root) information on network interfaces that are currently active. First ethernet interface should be listed as eth0, second as eth1, etc. First modem ppp connection should be listed as ppp0, etc. The lo connection is loopback only.
ifdown - shut down the network interface
ifup [interface_name] - start up the interface
info - display system information. This is the GNU hypertext reader.
init - the mother of all processes, run at bootup, executes commands in /etc/inittab. Can be used (with root privileges) to change the system run level. usage: init run_level
insmod - used (by root) to install modular device drivers
installpkg - Slackware command to install one of the packages from the program sets
intr - interrupt key, usually [Ctrl-C]
ispell - checks files for spelling errors usage: ispell files
jed - programmer's file editor. Behaves like emacs. Has modes for TEX, FORTRAN, C, etc.
jobs - displays list of current jobs in the background. This is a shell builtin.
joe - simple ?WordStar-like text editor. It can be invoked in emacs emulation mode with jemacs and in ?WordStar emulation mode with jstar.
jove - Joseph's Own Version of Emacs. A simple emacs clone.
kbd_mode - print current keyboard mode
kernelcfg - GUI to add/remove kernel modules (as root in X terminal).
kerneld - kernel daemon, a process that stays in memory and does all sorts of useful stuff, like automatic loading of device driver modules
kikbd - a utility program that comes with KDE that allows users to switch on the fly among different international keyboards. It can be used under different window managers than kfm.
kill - sends a signal to (especially to terminate) a job or process. This is a shell builtin in bash, tcsh and zsh.
killall - kill processes by name. Kill all processes which are instances of the speciffied program. Also used to send signals to processes or restart them.
killall5 - kill all processes except the ones on which it depends
last - generate a listing of user logins
lastlog - prints the last login times of all users
latex - compile a LATEX file
ldconfig - creates the necessary links and cache (for use by the run-time linker, ld.so) to the most recent shared libraries found in the directories specified on the command line, in the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and in the trusted directories (/usr/lib and /lib). Ldconfig checks the header and file names of the libraries it encounters when determining which versions should have their links updated. Ldconfig ignores symbolic links when scanning for libraries.
ldd - list the shared libraries on which a given executable depends, and where they are located
leave - display reminder at specified time
less - Linux alternative to more command. Displays text files, one screenful at a time. When less pauses, there is a large number of available commands to tell it what to do next. One can scroll both forwards and backwards. let - evaluates a numeric expression. This is a shell builtin. lilo - installs boot loader on the boot sector of a hard drive, of a diskette, or in another location. My 486 has a hard drive that is too large for the machine's BIOS, so I have to boot from a floppy. To create a boot diskette, I do the following (as root): /sbin/fdformat /dev/fd0H1440 /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0 mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy cp -dp linuxconf - interactive tool for configuring Linux system. Uses X if loaded. This is a Gnome tool. It comes with my Red Hat distribution, and is not included with Slackware. It would seem to be the easiest way to configure Linux under Slackware. Version 1.15 is available for Slackware. There is a pretty good introduction to the use of linuxconf in the Red Hat 5.2 installation manual, which is available online at their web site. ln - creates a link to a file. Used to create hard links and, with the -s option, symbolic links which can link files on different disk partitions. The syntax is ln ["options"] source ["dest"] locate filename - find the file name which contains the string filename
lock - temporarily lock terminal
lockfile - create semaphore file(s), used to limit access to a file
- log in to system
logname - consult /etc/utmp for user's login name
logout - execute logout as individual user and bring up login: prompt
look - look for strings in files
lpq - show print jobs that are waiting
lpr - send file to be printed
lprm - cancel a job from print queue
ls - list directory contents. To get colored directory listings under Red Hat, Mandrake, etc., use ls -color To get this all the time, add
alias ls='ls -color=auto' to .bashrc. The following command
alias ls='ls -Fskb -color=auto' will give directory listings in color, with file sizes in kilobytes, and append a character to the file to indicate its type.
lsattr - list attributes of files in ext2 file system
lsmod - used (by root) to show kernel modules currently loaded
lspci - utility to display information on pci buses and hardware devices attached to them. Part of the pciutils package that comes with many Linux distributions.
lspnp - utility to display information about pnp devices. Part of the pcmcia or kernel-pcmcia package, depending on the distribution.
m4 - an implementation of the traditional UNIX macro processor. It can be used with the sendmail configuration package in Red Hat (and Slackware) to generate a sendmail.conf configuration file without having to edit the configuration file directly.
magicfilter - general purpose printer filter. See apsfilter above. apsfilter is the printer filter that comes with the Red Hat and Slackware distributions.
mail - sends or reads electronic mail
make - keeps a set of programs current. This is a utility that helps when developing a set of programs. It works by executing a script called makefile, Makefile or ["GNUmakefile"] in the working directory. It is very often used in combination with configure when compiling and installing noncompiled software packages.
makebootdisk - command in Slackware to do just what the name says
MAKEDEV - executable script to make device files on /dev
makeswap - configures swap space
man - displays information from online Unix reference manual
manpath - attempt to determine path to manual pages
mc - Midnight Commander file manager and visual shell
mesg - enables/disables reception of messages
minicom - terminal program
mkdir - create a directory
mkfs - create a file system (format) on a device or partition. Should be invoked after lowlevel formatting of the disk using fdformat. It has several versions which are all links to the basic program, such as mkfs.ext2 and mkfs.msdos.
mkswap - creates a Linux swap space on the specified hard disk parition (root privileges neede) usage: mkswap device
more - list file contents, stopping after each full screen
mount -t ["fstype"] ["device"] ["mountpoint"] - mount device using filesystem of type ["fstype"] with device name ["device"] at the location ["mountpoint"] in the filesystem directory tree
mount -a - mount all filesystems according to the specifications in /etc/fstab
mouseconfig - mouse configuration utility under Red Hat. Located in /usr/sbin.
mpage - print multiple pages per sheet on a Postscript printer. Can also be used to print a page in landscape mode.
Mtools - package of MS-DOS utilities. Includes the following commands. mcd - changes working directory on DOS disk mcopy - copies DOS files from one directory to another mdel - deletes DOS files mdir - lists contents of DOS directories mformat - adds DOS formatting information to a disk mtype - displays contents of a DOS file The default device for execution of these commands is /dev/fd0 and can be referred to as a:. mv - moves (renames) files netconf - used (as root) to set up network newaliases - rebuilds the /etc/aliases database used by sendmail. Must be rerun every time /etc/aliases is modified for the changes to take effect. newgrp - similar to login. Changes user's identification nice program_name - sets the priority of the program program_name
nm - lists the symbols from object files objfile. If no object files are given as arguments, nm assumes `a.out'.
nohup - runs a command that keeps running after logout. The command is in principle immune to hangups, and must have output to a non tty. According to Linux in a Nutshell, this is necessary only in the Bourne shell, since modern shells preserve background processes by default.
ntsysv - run level editor under Red Hat. This is the equivalent of tksysv, but does not require a graphical interface.
nxterm - color xterm program. The man page for nxterm under Red Hat brings up the same page as xterm.
od - dumps contents of a file
passwd - change login password
paste - joins corresponding lines from files
patch - updates source code. Attempts to update a file from a file of change information, or pathces, created by diff.
pathchk - determine validity and portability of filenames
pdflatex - part of the pdftex program suite. Produces pdf output from a LATEX file.
pdftex - produces pdf output from a TeX file. See also pdflatex. This program is part of the tetex 0.9 distribution that is included with Red Hat 5.2 and above, and with Slackware 4.0 and above. It is also available as a separate program.
perl - practical extraction and report language
pg - display data one screenful at a time
pico - simple screen oriented text editor. It is included as part of the Pine program.
ping - check if Internet computer is responding. Can also measure the time it takes the queried computer to respond.
pkgtool - Slackware tool to install, uninstall and query packages. Front end to installpkg, removepkg, makepkg. The cpkgtool is the ncurses graphical version of this program.
popclient - retrieve mail via the Post Office Protocol. Supports ["POP2"] and ["POP3"].
popd - pops the top directory of the directory stack and uses cd to change to that directory. This is a shell builtin.
pr - paginates files for printing
printenv - display list of environment variables
printtool - run (as root) in an X terminal to configure your printer(s)
ps - displays status of processes. Use the -a option for processes for all users. Use the -x option to include processes not attached to a terminal.
pstree - display processes in the form of a tree structure. Killing a parent process will also kill all the children and their descendants.
pushd - pushes the argument onto the top of the directory stack and uses cd to change to that directory. This is a shell builtin.
pwd - print absolute path of working directory. This is a shell builtin.
pwchk - checks the integrity of password and shadow files
pwconv - converts passwords to the shadow password format
pwunconv - unconverts passwords from the shadow password format. Generates a standard Unix password file.
python - interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language
rcp - copy one or more files to or from remote computer. The syntax is poorly explained in the documentation that I have, including the man pages. Usage is: rcp filename username@remotehost:path The user's home directory on the remote system must contain the file .rhosts with a list of users (preceded by the full domain name or exact IP address of their machine) with access privileges.
localhostname username
rcs - creates or changes the attributes of an RCS file. Stands for Revision Control System.
rdev - query/set image root device, swap device, RAM disk size, or video mode in kernel
read - reads line from standard input. This is a shell builtin.
readonly - declares a variable to be read only. This is a shell builtin.
reboot - in Slackware, reboots the system. Seems to be equivalent to shutdown -r now in generic Linux.
renice program_name - resets the priority of process program_name. reset - used to reset the screen characteristics. This is useful if the screen gets messed up from, for example, trying to display a binary file in an xterm. return - exits from a function. This is a shell builtin. rlog - prints a summary of the history of an RCS file rlogin - log in to remote computer. The general syntax is as follows, using the UQAM Nobel machine as an example: rlogin -l userid nobel.si.uqam.ca The remote computer must recognize the local user and the local machine. See the rcp command for how to set up the .rhosts file on the remote machine. rm - remove files or directories. With the -r (recursive) option (very dangerous!), can be used to remove the contents of a specified directory including all subdirectories. rmail - interpret and handle remote mail received via uucp rmdir - remove empty directories rmmod - used to remove modular device drivers route -n - show routing table. The n option returns numerical addresses rather than names. rpm - invokes the Red Hat package manager in command line mode. I often use this command in query mode to query packages about what files they contain and to find out which package owns a particular file. Examples are rpm -qil foo. Gives package information and a file list for the package foo. rpm -qfil foo. Gives package information and a file list for the package that owns the file foo. Foo must be in the working directory, or the full path to foo must be specified. We need to find out about installing the rpm package on a Slackware box. It's probably better to use a package converter such as alien. rpm2tgz - an extremely useful utility on Slackware systems that converts rpm packages to tgz format. They can then be installed using the installpkg command (or pkgtool). rsh - execute shell command on a remote computer. See rcp and rlogin. rstat - summarize host's status: uptime, load averages, and current time ruptime - show host status of local machines rusers - list who is logged on local machines rwall - write to all users over a network rwho - show who is logged in on a LAN. The rwho service must be enabled for this command to run. If it isn't, run setup rxvt - a terminal program similar to xterm, but which has less features and uses less memory sed - edits a file (not interactively). Also a tool for processing text files. set - set or display value of shell variables. This is a shell builtin. The command set || less prints the current user environment, giving the values of currently defined variables. setenv - set or display value of environment variables setserial - used by root to configure a serial port setterm - set terminal attributes for a virtual console setuid - set the id of a program when it is run. Used, for example, to give root privileges to a program run by an ordinary user. This is actually done by running the chmod program as root. See the chmod command for the syntax. setup - Slackware program to set up program sets and configure system. Setup devices and file systems, mount root file system sh - standard UNIX shell. On Linux, just another name for bash. shift - promotes each command-line argument. This is a shell builtin. showmount - show information about an nfs server shutdown - reboot or shut down system as root, after specified amount of time. With the -r option, reboot. With the -h option, halt the system. usage: shutdown -r minutes sleep - creates process that sleeps for specified interval sliplogin - attaches a SLIP interface to standard input. Used to allow dialin SLIP connections. sort - sorts and/or merge files split - split file into specified number of segments ssh - secure shell. Apparently has many of the same functionalities as rlogin, telnet, ftp, rsh, etc., with better security and encryption features. We may want to learn how to set this up and use it. startx - front end to xinit in Linux. This is a script which starts up X clients and shuts down the X server on exit from the window manager. startx -- :1 - start the next X window session on the display 1 (the default is opened on display 0). One can switch between different graphical displays using ["Ctrl"]["Alt"]["F7"], ["Ctrl"]["Alt"]["F8"], etc. stty - sets or displays operating options for terminal su - log in as another user, including root sudo - allows individual users to have root permission to perform specified tasks swapoff - disables swap disk swapon - enables swap disk symlinks - provide list of and information about symbolic links sync - writes memory buffers to physical devices systat - query host for system information tac - print file in reverse tail - displays the last part of a file talk - visual communication program that copies lines from one terminal to that of another user tar - file compression and archiving utility. I find the syntax of this command to be frustratingly opaque. The following works for me. To use this command to unzip gzipped tarballs in verbose mode, use tar -xvzf filename.tgz To create a tarball from files in a given directory and its subdirectories, use tar -cvzf filename.tgz sourcename Sourcename can be the name of a single file, a wildcard such as *, or the name of a subdirectory. There seem to be two different conventions concerning gzipped tarballs. One often encounters .tar.gz. The other popular choice is .tgz. Slackware packages use the latter convention. The command can also be used to archive a file, a group of files, or a directory (with its subdirectories) on tape or onto floppies. If the material to be archived exceeds the capacity of the backup medium, the program will prompt the user to insert a new tape or diskette. Use the following command to back up to floppies: tar -cvf /dev/fd0 filename(s) or directoryname(s) The backup can be restored with tar -xvf /dev/fd0 Tar can be used for other things. To mirror all the files and subdirectories in from-stuff to to-stuff, use the commands cd from-stuff tar cf - . || (cd ../to-stuff; tar xvf -) No tar file is ever written to disk. The data is sent by pipe from one tar process to another. This example is taken from Running Linux, p.177. To list the table of contents of a tar archive, use tar tvf tarfile To extract individual files from a tar archive, use tar xvf tarfile files where files is the list of files to extract. When extracting files, tar creates missing subdirectories underneath the current directory in which the cammand is invoked. tcl - scripting language tcsh - extended version of the C shell tee - copy standard input to standard output and one or more files telinit - used to change run level. Exact run level that corresponds to single-user, multi-user, and X levels depends on distribution. telnet - remote login over network test - evaluates an expression or compares arguments. This is a shell builtin in bash, tcsh and zsh. tftp - user interface to TFTP protocol time - displays times for the current shell and its children. This is a shell builtin. Strange, because there is also a /usr/bin/time program on my Red Hat system. tin - Netnews reader tkdesk - graphical desktop file manager for X tksysv - graphical runlevel editor under Red Hat. Allows root to configure the services that are started at each run level. tload - display system load average in graph format top - dynamically displays process status touch - update access and modification times of a file. If the file does not exist on disk, an empty file is created. tr - translation utility that can be used, for example, to replace specified characters in a text file trap - traps a signal. This is a shell builtin. true - null command that returns a successful exit status tset - initializes terminal tty - shows special file that represents your terminal. Displays the terminal pathname. type - displays how each argument would be interpreted as a command. This is a shell builtin. typeset - declares attributes for a variaable (same as declare). This is a shell builtin. ul - translate underscores to underlining umask - establishes the file-creation permissions mask. Usage is umask xyz The system subtracts x, y and z from the owner, group and other file permissions that it would otherwise assign to new files. This is a shell builtin. umount ["device"] - finish writing to the device and remove it from the active filesystem. The command umount -a will (re)mount all file systems listed in /etc/fstab. unalias - remove name previously defined by alias. This is a shell builtin. uname - displays information about the system. With no arguments, it displays the name of the operating system. With the -a option, it displays information about the operating system, the host name, and hardware. uniq - displays lines of a file that are unique unset - removes a variable or function. This is a shell builtin. unzip - uncompress files compressed with the zip utility, compatible with DOS ["PKzip"] updatedb - update file database used by locate command uptime - shows the time, how long the system has been up, the number of users, and average load. useradd - same as adduser userdel - remove an account (as root). The user's home directory and undelivered mail must be dealt with separately. users - prints list of users on the system vdir - variant of the GNU version of the ls command. Defaults to printing out the long version of directory entries. vi - standard screen oriented Unix editor view - vi in read-only mode vim - improved vi editor vrfy - query remote host to verify the accuracy of an email address w - display info about userids and active processes wait - waits for a background process to terminate. This is a shell builtin. wc - displays number of lines, characters and words in a file Wharf - the ?AfterStep application dock module whatis - display one-line summary of specified command whereis - use to find utilities in standard locations which - used to find utilities in search path. Will return the absolute directory path of the named utility program. who - display information about currently logged in userids whoami - display information about userid that is currently logged in wish - front end to tk, an X window extension of tcl workbone - console based cd player workman - graphical cd player program write - send messages to another local user X - starts up the X server. Can be invoked with X -quiet -query remotemachineaddress in order to get a graphical login screen on the remote machine. See the discussion in connection with xdm below. xadm - display advanced power management BIOS information xargs - converts standard output of one command into arguments for another. This is one of those powerful but obscure commands. Xargs reads arguments from the standard input, delimited by blanks (which can be protected with double or single quotes or a backslash) or newlines, and executes the command (default is /bin/echo) one or more times with any initial-arguments followed by arguments read from standard input. Blank lines on the standard input are ignored. xbiff - graphical mail delivery notification utility xcalc - simple calculator program xclipboard - name says it all Xconfigurator - Red Hat utility for configuring settings for X xdm - used to start an X login session. This can be used to start a login session on a remote system. See the discussion on the following site: http://www.menet.umn.edu/~kaszeta/unix/xterminal/index.html See the man pages for X, xdm, and Xserver. As usual, the man pages are pretty obscure. The best single source seems to be the Xserver man pages. After X is configured, X needs to be started at bootup with the command (in /etc/rc.d/init.d/xterm): X -quiet -query remotemachineaddress If the address of a nameserver is not configured, then the numeric address of the remote machine rather than its name should be entered. If the machines are connected through ethernet cards and the net, then obviously basic networking has to be set up. Gnome and KDE come with their own versions of X display/login managers, called respectively gdm and kdm. xdvi - view a dvi file compiled under LATEX xedit - a simple text editor for X xf86config - graphical configuration tool for X ["XF86Setup"] - graphical configuration tool for X xfd - display an available font in X. Creates a grid in an x-term with one character per rectangle. xfig - utility for interactive generation of figures xfm - graphical file manager for X xhost - tell X server that remote computer has access to your machine and that you will use the remote computer. This can be used to set up remote X sessions. To set up a remote X session on the UQAM Nobel machine, run the following command on the local machine (one doesn't have to be root to do this) xhost +nobel.si.uqam.ca Then, log onto the remote machine using rlogin (see above) or telnet. Once logged in, use the following command to get the remote X server to open an X terminal on the local machine: setenv DISPLAY localhostname:0 ; xterm & This is valid for csh, which is the default login shell on Nobel. For ksh, (and I think bash) replace with DISPLAY=localhostname:0 export DISPLAY ; xterm Other X-based programs such as Netscape or Gauss (graphical version) can also be run on a remote machine with display on the local machine with little trouble. The local X server is the program that has all of the information concerning the properties of the graphics card and terminal, so it must be necessary to have X running on the local machine. The following should also work. After using xhost to give permission to the remote machine to display on the local machine, use netscape -display localhostname:0.0 Question: can one start the X session on the local machine and then run a remote copy of a window manager? xinit - start X Window. The command startx is a front end to xinit in Linux, including Slackware. xload - displays a graphic of the system load xlpq - graphical interface to print manager. This is included on one of the XFCE menus, but does not seem to be a part of the base Red Hat distribution. xlsfonts - list fonts available under the X Window system. xman - browsable command reference. Displays manual pages under X. xmh - graphical front end under X to the nmh mail handling system. This program is part of the ["XFree86"] package in Red Hat. xmodmap - utility for modifying keymaps and pointer button mappings in X. Can be used to install a French Canadian keyboard. Download the Xmodmap.cf file from www.linux-quebec.org, and insert the command xmodmap /etc/X11/Xmodmap.cf & into the .xession (with xdm) or the .xinitrc (with startx) file. xosview - displays bar graphs of system load, load average, memory usage, and swap usage xpaint - simple paint program for X xpdf - GPL'd utility for previewing dvi files. Doesn't seem to work too well on texts with a lot of math. xplaycd - X Window audio cd player utility xsetroot - utility to configure root window of an X terminal xsysinfo - graphical display of load and memory usage xterm - start an X Window terminal session xterm-color - color version of xterm xv - utility for viewing and manipulating many types of image files. This is a shareware program. xvidtune - utility for fine tuning of monitor settings under X yacc - parser generator ytalk - multi-user program similar to talk zcat - read one or more files that have been compressed with gzip or compress and write to standard output zcmp - read compressed files and pass them to cmp zdiff - read compressed files and pass them to diff zgrep - read compressed files and pass them to grep Zharf - ?AfterStep button panel module zip - zip utility compatible with DOS ["PKzip"] zless - view zipped files zmore - print contents of compressed files one screen at a time znew - uncompress Z files and recompress in .gz format Eventually, we want to be able to distinguish between commands that are an intrinsic part of the kernel, commands that are executable binaries that come with every distribution of Linux, executable binaries that are not provided with all distributiions of Linux, and executable shell scripts. We also want to point out the typical location of these commands on different Linux distributions. Finally, we want to distinguish between shell commands and Linux commands.