Common Linux commands -- system info

pwd
Print working directory, i.e., display the name of my current directory on the screen.

hostname
Print the name of the local host (the machine on which you are working). Use netconf (as root) to change the name of the machine.

whoami
Print my login name.

id username
Print user id (uid) and his/her group id (gid), effective id (if different than the real id) and the supplementary groups.

date
Print or change the operating system date and time. E.g., I could change the date and time to 2000-12-31 23:57 using this command: date 123123572000 To set the hardware (BIOS) clock from the system (Linux) clock, use the command (as root) setclock

time
Determine the amount of time that it takes for a process to complete + other info. Don't confuse it with the date command. E.g. I can find out how long it takes to display a directory content using: time ls

who
Determine the users logged on the machine.

rwho -a (=remote who)
Determine all users logged on your network. The rwho service must be enabled for this command to run. If it isn't, run setup as root to enable "rwho".

finger user_name
System info about a user. Try: finger root

last
Show listing of users last logged-in on your system.

history more
Show the last (1000 or so) commands executed from the command line on the current account. The " more" causes the display to stop after each screenful.

uptime
Show the amount of time since the last reboot.

ps (=print status)
List the processes currently run by the current user.

ps axu more
List all the processes currently running, even those without the controlling terminal, together with the name of the user that owns each process.

top
Keep listing the currently running processes, sorted by cpu usage (top users first). In KDE, you can get GUI-based Ktop from "K"menu under "System"-"Task Manager" (or by executing "ktop" in an X-terminal).

uname -a (= Unix name with option "all")
Info on your (local) server. I can also use guname (in X-window terminal) to display the info more nicely.

free
Memory info (in kilobytes).

df -h (=disk free)
Print disk info about all the filesystems (in human-readable form)

du / -bh more (=disk usage) Print detailed disk usage for each subdirectory starting at the "/" (root) directory (in human legible form).

cat /proc/cpuinfo
Cpu info--it show the content of the file cpuinfo. Note that the files in the /proc directory are not real files--they are hooks to look at information available to the kernel.

cat /proc/interrupts
List the interrupts in use.

cat /proc/version
Linux version and other info

cat /proc/filesystems
Show the types of filesystems currently in use.

cat /etc/printcap
Show the setup of printers.

lsmod
(As root. Use /sbin/lsmod to execute this command when you are a non-root user.) Show the kernel modules currently loaded.

setmore
Show the current user environment.

echo $PATH
Show the content of the environment variable "PATH". This command can be used to show other environment variables as well. Use "set" to see the full environment.

dmesg less
Print kernel messages (the content of the so-called kernel ring buffer). Press "q" to quit "less". Use less /var/log/dmesg to see what "dmesg" dumped into this file right after the last system bootup.