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Unix Command 'Cheat Sheets'? 77

Posted by Cliff from the all-the-unix-you-need-on-a-8x14-page-in-a-6pt-font dept.
WCLPeter asks: "One of the things that I like about Linux is that once it's set up properly it tends to stay that way. I have had experience using Linux as I've set up a firewall for my xDSL line, but that was a while ago. Like all things, if you don't use it often, you forget how to use it. Which is what has happened to me. As I prepare to install a Slackware 8.0 ISO so I can play some Loki games I bought I wondered: Is there a Unix cheat-sheet?" If you were going to create such a cheatsheat, what commands would you have in it? Of course, you can't get all of the Unix commands on a single sheet of paper, but probably enough of them to at least get a new user confortable with navigation and file operations.

"I'm sure you all know the type. When you buy a book on a program/OS/Programming Language, it usually contains a page that lists all the functions or commands followed by a simple 1-2 line description of that command.

Something along the lines of:
ls: Used to display a directory listing.
gcc: GNU C Compiler. Used to compile 'C' files into program code.
etc... - The list continues in this fashion.

I know I could read the various FAQ's. Most FAQ's unfortunately follow the 'FAQ A leads to FAQ B which leads to FAQ C which leads back to FAQ A' format. It would be so much easier for newer users to graze down a list of 50-100+ commands, find one that -looks- sort of like what I want to do and type 'man <command>' for usage information."
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Unix Command 'Cheat Sheets'? More

Unix Command 'Cheat Sheets'?

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  • grep (Score:2, Informative)

    by mjoconnor81 ( 242768 )
    grep is definitly one of the more useful commands. when used to sort through the output of other commands using |

  • man (Score:2, Insightful)

    by laymil ( 14940 )
    just give them one command: man. its got all sorts of information about the commands.
    • He's come across the one stumbling block that I have when switching back and forth from the 2000/Mac/Linux platforms in my home lab. What *ARE* the commands? He's looking for a master list of all those hundereds and thousands of commands so he can poke through and see if anything fits his needs. I know that i would absolutely *ADORE* something like this. Sure, *nix can do anything you damn well please, but to a casual Redhat user, you may start out knowing what you want to do but not how to do it.

      I know that in the past, i've known exactly what I want to do (for example, start a new service and open an ipchains port for it from only a certain IP), but what would i look at to fix this?

      Just a one command per line index would be wonderful.
      • makewhatis (if it isn't already made)
        cat /var/cache/man/whatis > commands.txt
        less commands.txt
        or less /var/cache/man/whatis
        or grep foo /var/cache/man/whatis
        (foo=string)
        to search it.
    • Unless I'm missing something, you have to know the name of the command you want to know about to use man.

      • Re:man (Score:2, Informative)

        by robwills ( 121453 )
        Try:
        man -k

        You would be surprised how easy it is to find the appropriate topic.

        • I agree that "man -k some_keyword" works well if you already know what you are looking for. But what if you don't know what you don't know? In other words, what if you want a list of all commands and a brief description of what they can do? Here are some variations that might get you a summary of every command:


          man -k " " > cheat.txt
          man -k "" > cheat.txt

          NOTE: The first example contains a single quoted space character as the argument; the second example contains no characters between the quotes.
          The idea is to provide a parameter to the keyword search that would match ALL commands. Hope this helps!

          CAVEAT: I don't have a linux box handy to check these on; but I recall using something like this myself, when I was in the same boat many years ago.

      • here's the thing...man lets you look up the commands themselves. gasp.
    • If Linux/Unix had a built-in help equal to VMS, it would go a long way to helping neophytes master Bash and Linux in general. For those that don't know, HELP in VMS is a command. You can say HELP SET and get all the qualifiers AND examples for the SET command. It's quite complete. Something man isn't. (If man just had decent examples of the commands referenced that would help alot)
    • seems most people are incapable of understanding the man pages anymore, let alone apropos/man -k


      but what do I know...I don't use linux anymore for my *nix experiences...too many linuxisms for my tastes

  • 'apropos' (Score:5, Informative)

    by penguinboy ( 35085 ) on Tuesday October 09, 2001 @09:06PM (#2408904)
    'apropos' is a rather useful little command-line utility that, when given a topic as an argument, will print a list of man pages that may be related to that topic. Quite helpful when you don't know which man page it is you need..

  • Cheat Sheets (Score:5, Informative)

    by dso ( 9793 ) on Tuesday October 09, 2001 @09:12PM (#2408913) Homepage
    I have developed a couple of "cheat sheets" for the Canadian Linux Users Group. The following sheets available include:

    Linux Command Card
    Slackware System Reference
    File System Hierarchy
    Samba Configuration

    I have a couple for SQL Databases but they are not on the site yet. All these sheets are in PDF format so new users who use Windows can get the commands prior to installing Linux. Also, experienced Linux users will know how to read a PDF.

    They are available at:

    http://www.hexeon.com/clue/library/
    • I can see using PDF if you need to include diagrams of a carburetor with the instructions on how to rebuild the carburetor, but unless you have to include screen shots, why shouldn't a list of command line interface commands and a brief explanation of what they are and what they do, (and please, please, please, an explanation of how they got named whatever name they have) be just a simple text file?

      • Why PDF (Score:1)

        by dso ( 9793 )
        Text files are great for basic text, but honestly PDF has many advantages (i.e. consistant layout, graphics, cross platform). I have made these sheets to look good for those that like "eye candy".

        The documents are Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, so if someone wants to make a text document by all means go ahead. I just like to use PDF.
        • Which brings us back to my original question--What about one of these would need to be anything other than text?
          • Because carriage returns in plain text aren't the same from *nix to Win to Mac.

            Loading up a document in notepad and having it linewrap with non-alphabetic charachters is fugly.

            PDF avoids this problem, but with a size trade-off.

            Like he said, if you want to make them into text, go for it, but for him, his preference was PDF.
    • This will help in assimilating future Linux users. Big thanks and Props to DSO!
    • Might be a good resource, if I could actually view the PDF's

      A stock Slackware 8.0 install (which I notice happens to be your distro of choice) just gives blank pages.

      Perhaps you could include some documentation on how to view the pages?
      • Ghost Script should be able to view these since they are binary PostScript files. Also, if you download Adobe Acrobat you should have no problem reading them. Also, there are a couple of free PDF viewers for Linux, just search Google.

  • Unix in a Nutshell (Score:3, Informative)

    by Carey ( 2195 ) on Tuesday October 09, 2001 @09:20PM (#2408938)
    O'Reilly's UNIX in a Nutshell [oreilly.com] is the best short-form UNIX command reference you can get.

    Use its pages to make up cheat-sheets with your favorite commands. I think that's about as simple as it gets with UNIX.

    You will probably learn the commands more effectively by producing your own cheat sheets than by purchasing some produced by someone else. However, if that is what you are looking for, check at a university bookstore in the CS section. You can probably find that type of material there.

    • Damn good book. Refreshingly concise. A must have.

      I just wish all distributions would ship this one in their shrink wrap boxes as the technical reference manual.
    • I'll second that. One of the most useful purchases I've made, definitely worth the price. They also have several books in their "pocket reference" series; I don't think there is a general UNIX one but one of them might have a decent "cheat sheet."
    • It seems a little redundant to add further to the praise already showered on this book, but I would like to mention that, as a Sun and HA consultant for nearly three years, it was the one book I always had with me and it remains the one I still refer to the most after over seven years of working with Unix. Because you can't keep every obscure detail of syntax or awk usage in your head, but you can look it up very quickly.

      Although it doesn't quite fulfill the function of a "cheat sheet", the Intro in my (first) edition contains a quick summary of the major commands, categorised by general function.

      Ade_
      /
  • Hello...

    Get O'reilly's "Linux in a netshell" book. This is exactly why I got my first one, and my second one (3rd edition).

    There is a section on "linux commands", along with smaller sections on bash,csh/tcsh. A section on emacs and a section on vi. Plus sections on sed and awk.

    It is a very nice "quick reference manual" for those times when you need to know what the '-M' option to rdist does.

  • bash has a built in help for commands it defines internally....

    these include all the directory navigation things, and a few other useful things

    this may be somewhat helpful

  • Command Reference Cards (Score:2, Informative)

    by RedLeg ( 22564 )
    SSC, the publishers of Linux Journal, have been publishing (selling) pocket references for Unix, Linux, and specific Unix applications for years. They are printed on durable card stock, and are generally very useful for those occasionally used commands. Check out: SSC Product Listing [ssc.com].

    set mode = BOFH

    OTOH, RTFM: man man, man apropos, man $command

  • Some quick cheet sheets (Score:3, Informative)

    by ehinojosa ( 220524 ) on Tuesday October 09, 2001 @11:02PM (#2409173)
    These come from Webmonkey, they cover some basic commands, might be a nice starting point:

    http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/reference/un ix _guide/

    http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/html/97/02/i nd ex3a.html

  • Role 'yer own (Score:2, Informative)

    by /Idiot\ ( 71460 )
    I maintain my own cheet-sheet of about 1x A4 page. The reason I typed my own was two-fold:

    a) I couldn't find one I liked, some are out there if you search but I want one with all the stuff I forget and only the stuff I forget, and

    b) When I type it out with a description for the cheet sheet I tend to remember it more.

    Because of the effect b) has on a) the document gets revised regularly. It's not that much to maintain after the initial bulk has been written.

    I was once going to write a web page that would let you select 4 or 6 topics that you wanted out of a list of who knows how many and they would be presented to you on a web page in a format that you could print nicely, but that never happened :-( Hey CowboyNeil, feel like adding it to slash?

  • Another failed chance to put search engines to use (Score:5, Informative)

    by Toodles ( 60042 ) on Tuesday October 09, 2001 @11:42PM (#2409277) Homepage
    First, a serious plug for refcards.com [refcards.com] as they have a bunch of DAMN handy refference cards, including apache, perl, cvs, gdb, ANSI c, etc etc. However, they do not have one for basic *nix usage. So...

    Here are some of the more promising results of a search [google.com] from google.com [google.com] (String used was :unix ref card pdf)

    Unix Cheat Sheet [geocities.com]
    Unix Cheat Sheet [buffalo.edu]
    From Rice University [bilkent.edu.tr] : Very basic
    Another [uni-jena.de] Too large and outdated
    Selection of Unix, Vi, and Emacs refferences [ualberta.ca] Courtesy Univ. of Alberta.ca

    You should be able to find what you need easy enough. I should also highly reccommend to everyone the linuxsecurity.com Linux Security guidesheet. Damn good reading to hardening your system. Here [linuxsecurity.com]

    Toodles

  • Check out 'man intro' or 'man 1 intro' on other unices, print that and use it.

    For some reason Linux doesn't have a command reference there the way other ones do.

  • Command references and apropos (Score:3, Informative)

    by danejasper ( 523409 ) <dane@sonic.net> on Wednesday October 10, 2001 @02:22AM (#2409674) Homepage
    SSC, one of the first publishers of Linux resources including Linux Journal, publishes a number of "Pocket References" including the "Linux Command Summary". It may meet your needs. Info at:

    http://www.ssc.com/ssc/productlist.html [ssc.com].

    A useful online tool, when paired with man pages, is the 'apropos' command. It can be used to search summaries of command functions to find the right command, then you can read the man page for that tool. For example:

    # apropos search
    apropos (1) - search the whatis database for strings
    find (1) - search for files in a directory hierarchy
    lkbib (1) - search bibliographic databases
    lookbib (1) - search bibliographic databases
    manpath (1) - determine user's search path for man pages
    whatis (1) - search the whatis database for complete words.
    zgrep (1) - search possibly compressed files for a regular expression

    So, you can read these descriptions, and if one sounds like the tool you're looking for, call up the man page for that particular utility using "man".

    For those missing man pages on the system, you can use my (somewhat outdated) man page web gateway at http://www.sonic.net/cgi-bin/man [sonic.net].

    Happy Linuxing!

    -Dane (last seen driving the North Bay backroads in a red 2001 Porsche Carerra with the California license plate "LINUX")

  • http://home.earthlink.net/~bhami/rosetta.html

    Great for figuring out how to do X on OS Y if you know how to fo it on OS Z. Except windows.
  • Unfortunatly this site [refcards.com] does not have a Unix card but they do have a few others that are worth having (Emacs, TeX, Apache).
  • check out the sample chapters to get an idea of this is what you're looking for

    For Unix:
    http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/unixnut3/ [oreilly.com]

    For Linux:
    http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxnut3/ [oreilly.com]

  • a few useful resources (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2001 @08:10AM (#2410179) Homepage
    The problem is, there are so many commands, it's hard to fit that much information into a small space. So, for quick reference, I normally turn to 'man -k' [which is the same as 'apropos'].
    Failing that, a quick search through google or google groups.

    Some people prefer printed materials, however, and I know that one of the folks here always seems to go for one book which just has the quick usage of most shell commands [but well, she doesn't get in for a few hours, and it wasn't obvious in her stacks of books] She also had the Linux Command Reference, published by the Linux Journal, which is slightly bigger than the ORA pocket books, but still very portable.

    Once of the books that I started out with was the UNIX System Administration Handbook [amazon.com], which I've heard includes linux in the latest version. It's not cheap, it's not small, but it nicely organizes things by topic, and points out possible pitfalls.

  • Over the years of using Unix systems, whenever I need to work at figuring what command line combinations work for what I need, or what obscure command does something powerful, I write it down on an index card and file it away. Most of these you would never run across in the basic Unix books, although I'll bet most of these can be found in the blue Unix Power Tools book somewhere. In general, these are from Usenet postings gleaned from searches, after man pages turned up nothing (man -k doesn't often help if you don't already know what to look for). Some examples:

    • nroff -man whatever | less
      viewing a man page outside of the regular search path for man
    • ldd -d
      dynamic linkage dependencies
    • ls -l | sort +4n
      sort files by size
    • find args | xargs command
      I have seen the light. Xargs is the light. Learn to love xargs
    • perl -pi -e 'replacement pattern' file(s)
      Inplace editing of files
    • truss/strace
      Trace system calls. Very useful!
    • SQL for tricky queries, formulas for table/index size estimates
    • rcs/cvs options I commonly use
    • Anything else I think would be hard to find again if I had to
    -Chad
  • I find sometimes an ls of /bin /sbin /usr/sbin and /usr/bin (although you probably need a | more/less with that one) and then using man can usually get me what I want. Sometimes you just can't remember the name of command until you see it...

    KidA

  • More useful: a list of one-liners (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tassach ( 137772 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2001 @04:30PM (#2412604)
    What's even better than a simple cheat sheet of the basic commands is a list of useful one-liners: little 2 or 3 command scripts using odd switches that do somthing useful. Learning the basic unix commands is pretty trivial next to learning how to string them together to do neat things. EG:

    ls -at | head -n1 : list the most recently modified file in the current directory

    ps h -u user | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill -9 : terminate all jobs owned by user.

    • Slashcode, at least the way it is set up at slashdot, sucks.

      I just tried to give a very useful sed code example for renaming mp3s, and the lameness filter was 'encountered'. Yes, the filter is a bastion of lameness.

      As I cannot simply C&P my example, I will type it out for you longhand.

      for i in *.mp3
      do
      mv "$i" "`echo $i | sed 'see below'`"
      done

      Okay, here we go: s slash caret backslash open-paren dot dot backslash close-paren space dash space backslash open-paren dot splat backslash close-paren space dash space backslash open-paren dot splat backslash close-paren dot m p 3 dollar sign slash backslash 1 space dash space backslash 3 dot m p 3 slash

      For those who don't know, a splat is an asterisk. Everything else should be clear if you know english; If you don't, I suggest you learn it before trying to read my posts anyway :) My text should be easily decodable, at least. I'd try including a perl script to decode it, but the lameness filter would probably reject it. I only typed all that out (with appropriate C&P) in the first place to make a point, anyway. I'll leave any scripting to you.

  • This seems to be a pretty good collection of cheat sheets:
    [RICE.EDU] [rice.edu]
  • If you had kept a notebook, like most of us learned todo in grade school, you would have your own notes to refer to. :-P

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