Unix Command 'Cheat Sheets'?

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."

Comments

grep

[mjoconnor81]

grep is definitly one of the more useful commands. when used to sort through the output of other commands using |

You're missing the point.

[Jonny 290]

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.

'apropos'

[penguinboy]

'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

[dso]

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/

Unix in a Nutshell

[Carey]

O'Reilly's UNIX in a Nutshell 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.

Command Reference Cards

[RedLeg]

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.

set mode = BOFH

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

Some quick cheet sheets

[ehinojosa]

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

[/Idiot\]

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

[Toodles]

First, a serious plug for 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 from google.com (String used was :unix ref card pdf)

Unix Cheat Sheet
Unix Cheat Sheet
From Rice University : Very basic
Another Too large and outdated
Selection of Unix, Vi, and Emacs refferences 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

Toodles

Re:man

[robwills]

Try:
man -k

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

Command references and apropos

[danejasper]

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.

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.

Happy Linuxing!

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

More useful: a list of one-liners

[Tassach]

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.