Knowledgebase

ls: list files/directories in a directory, comparable to dir in Windows/dos.
ls -alh: shows all files (including ones that start with a period), directories, and details attributes for each file.

cd: change directory ·· cd /usr/local/apache: go to /usr/local/apache/ directory
cd ~: go to your home directory
cd -: go to the last directory you were in
cd ..: go up a directory cat: print file contents to the screen

cat filename.txt: cat the contents of filename.txt to your screen

chmod: changes file access permissions
The set of 3 goes in this order from left to right:
USER – GROUP – EVERONE

0 = — No permission
1 = –X Execute only
2 = -W- Write only
3 = -WX Write and execute
4 = R– Read only
5 = R-X Read and execute
6 = RW- Read and write
7 = RWX Read, write and execute

Usage Example:
chmod number permissions filename

chmod 000 : No one can access
chmod 644 : Usually for HTML pages
chmod 755 : Usually for CGI scripts

chown: changes file ownership permissions
The set of 2 goes in this order from left to right:
USER – GROUP

chown root myfile.txt: Changes the owner of the file to root
chown root.root myfile.txt: Changes the owner and group of the file to root

tail: like a cat, but only reads the end of the file
tail /var/log/messages: see the last 20 (by default) lines of /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/messages: watch the file continuously, while it’s being updated
tail -200 /var/log/messages: print the last 200 lines of the file to the screen

more: like a cat, but opens the file one screen at a time rather than all at once
more /etc/userdomains: browse through the userdomains file. hit Space to go to the next page, q to quit

pico: friendly, easy-to-use file editor
pico /home/burst/public_html/index.html: edit the index page for the user’s website.

File Editing with VI commands
vi: another editor, tons of features, harder to use at first than pico
vi /home/burst/public_html/index.html: edit the index page for the user’s website.
While in the vi program, you can use the following useful commands, you will need to hit SHIFT +: to go into command mode

:q!: This force quits the file without saving and exits vi
:w: This writes the file to disk, saves it
:wq: This saves the file to disk and exists vi
: linenumber: EG :25: Takes you to line 25 within the file
:$: Takes you to the last line of the file
:0: Takes you to the first line of the file

grep: looks for patterns in files
grep root /etc/passwd: shows all matches of root in /etc/passwd
grep -v root /etc/passwd: shows all lines that do not match root

ln: create “links” between files and directories
ln -s /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd.conf: Now you can edit /etc/httpd.conf rather than the original. changes will affect the original, however, you can delete the link and it will not delete the original.

last: shows who logged in and when
last -20: shows only the last 20 logins
last -20 -a: shows the last 20 logins, with the hostname in the last field

w: shows who is currently logged in and where they are logged in from.
who: This also shows who is on the server in a shell.

netstat: shows all current network connections.
netstat -an: shows all connections to the server, the source and destination IPs, and ports.
netstat -rn: shows routing table for all ips bound to the server.

top: shows live system processes in a nice table, memory information, uptime, and other useful info. This is excellent for managing your system processes, and resources and ensuring everything is working fine and your server isn’t bogged down.
top then type Shift + M to sort by memory usage or Shift + P to sort by CPU usage

ps: ps is short for process status, which is similar to the top command. It’s used to show currently running processes and their PIDs.
A process ID is a unique number that identifies a process, with that you can kill or terminate a running program on your server (see kill command).
ps U username: shows processes for a certain user
ps aux: shows all system processes
ps aux –forest: shows all system processes like the above but organizes in a very useful hierarchy!

touch: create an empty file
touch /home/burst/public_html/404.html : create an empty file called 404.html in the directory /home/burst/public_html/

file: attempts to guess what type of file a file is by looking at its content.
file *: prints out a list of all files/directories in a directory

du: shows disk usage.
du -sh: shows a summary, in human-readable form, of total disk space used in the current directory, including subdirectories.
du -sh *: same thing, but for each file and directory. helpful when finding large files taking up space.

wc: word count
wc -l filename.txt: tells how many lines are in filename.txt

cp: copy a file
cp filename filename.backup: copies filename to filename.backup
cp -a /home/burst/new_design/* /home/burst/public_html/: copies all files, retaining permissions from one directory to another.
cp -av * ../newdir: Copies all files and directories recursively in the current directory INTO newdir

mv: Move a file command
mv old filename new filename: Move a file or directory from the old filename to the new filename

rm: delete a file
rm filename.txt: deletes filename.txt, will more than likely ask if you want to delete it
rm -f filename.txt: deletes filename.txt, will not ask for confirmation before deleting.
rm -rf tmp/: recursively deletes the directory tmp, and all files in it, including subdirectories. BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THIS COMMAND!

TAR: Creating and Extracting .tar.gz and .tar files
tar -zxvf file.tar.gz: Extracts the file
tar -xvf file.tar: Extracts the file
tar -cf archive.tar contents/: Takes everything from contents/ and puts it into archive.tar
gzip -d filename.gz: Decompress the file, extract it

ZIP Files: Extracting .zip files shell command
unzip file.zip

Firewall – iptables commands
iptables -I INPUT -s IPADDRESSHERE -j DROP: This command stops any connections from the IP address
iptables -L: List all rules in iptables
iptables -F: Flushes all iptables rules (clears the firewall)
iptables –save: Saves the current ruleset in memory to disk
service iptables restart: Restarts iptables

Apache Shell Commands
httpd -v: Outputs the build date and version of the Apache server.
httpd -l: Lists compiled in Apache modules
httpd status: Only works if mod_status is enabled and shows a page of active connections
service httpd restart: Restarted Apache web server

MySQL Shell Commands [Most will not work in shared cPanel environment]
mysqladmin process list: Shows active mysql connections and queries
mysqladmin drop databasenamehere: Drops/deletes the selected database
mysqladmin create databasenamehere: Creates a MySQL database

Restore MySQL Database Shell Command
MySQL -u username -p password databasename < databasefile.sql: Restores a MySQL database from databasefile.sql

Backup MySQL Database Shell Command
mysqldump -u username -p password databasename > databasefile.sql: Backup MySQL database to databasefile.sql

kill: terminate a system process
kill -9 431: kill -9 PID EG. This is a hard stop, and so you should use it with care on things like scripts or database jobs.
kill 10550: kill PID EG
Use top or ps ux to get system PIDs (Process IDs)

EG:
PID     TTY     TIME     COMMAND
10550     pts/3     0:01     /bin/csh
10574     pts/4     0:02     /bin/csh
10590     pts/4     0:09     APP

Each line represents one process, with a process being loosely defined as a running instance of a program. The column headed PID (process ID) shows the assigned process numbers of the processes. The heading COMMAND shows the location of the executed process.

Putting commands together
Often you will find you need to use different commands on the same line. Here are some examples. Note that the | character is called a pipe, it takes data from one program and pipes it to another.
> means create a new file, overwriting any content already there.
>> means to append data to a file, creating a new one if it does not already exist.
< send input from a file back into a command.

grep User /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf | more: This will dump all lines that match User from the httpd.conf, then print the results to your screen one page at a time.

last -a > /root/lastlogins.tmp: This will print all the current login history to a file called lastlogins.tmp in /root/

tail -10000 /var/log/exim_mainlog | grep domain.com | more: This will grab the last 10,000 lines from /var/log/exim_mainlog, find all occurrences of domain.com (the period represents ‘anything’, comment it out with a so it will be interpreted literally), then send it to your screen page by page.

netstat -an | grep:80 | wc -l: Show how many active connections there are to Apache (httpd runs on port 80)

mysqladmin processlist | wc -l: Show how many current open connections there are to MySQL