Introduction to Linux
Ajay Vibhute
History of Linux
• Unix operating system was implemented by Ken Thompson and Dennis
Ritchie in 1969 and first released in 1970
• Then Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) developed Berkeley
Software Distribution (BSD) in 1977
• In 1983 Richard Stallman started GNU project and wrote kernel called
Hurd
• In 1987 Andrew Tanenbaum developed unix like system for academic use,
MINIX
• In 1991 Linus Torvalds started a project which later became linux kernel.
The development of Linux kernel was done on MINIX using GNU C compiler.
Overview of Linux System
Linux Shells
• Bourne shell: sh
• Korn shell: ksh
• C shell: csh
• Bourne again shell: bash
• tcsh: tcsh
Bash Environment
• /etc/pro le:- system wide default environment
variables.
• ~/.bash_pro le:- user speci c environment
variables
• ~/.bashrc:- called from bash_pro le
• ~/.bash_logout:- executes when users logs out
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• who :- shows who all logged in
• who am i:- show the current session
• who -d :- print the dead processes
• who -c :- gives the count of users currently logged in
• uname:- print system information
• uname -a : print all information
Listing the files
• ls :- List all les in current working directory
• ls -a :- List all les in current working directory
including hidden les
• ls -ltrh :- Displays the sorted list of les along with
other information like permissions, links etc.
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Creating a Directory
• mkdir <directory name>:- Creates an empty
directory
• mkdir -p <parent directory/sub directory>:- Create
intermediate directories as required.
Change the directory
• cd <directory name>:- Change the directory
• cd - :- Change directory to last working directory
Path of current directory
• pwd : print name of current/working directory
Create Empty file
• touch < lename>
• Open le using gedit and add some text,
gedit < lename> &
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View contents of the file
• cat < lename>
• more < lename>
• head -n <no-of-lines> < lename>
• tail -n <no-of-lines> < lename>
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Count number of lines in a file
• wc < le-name> :- print the number of newlines,
words, and bytes in les
• wc -l < le-name>:- print the number of lines
• wc -w < le-name>:- print the word count
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Determine the file type
• le < le-name>: determines the type of the le
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Search pattern in the text file
• grep <pattern> < le-name>
• grep -i <pattern> < le-name> :- Search by ignoring
the case
• grep -v <pattern> < le-name> :- Print the non-
matching lines
• grep -c <pattern> < le-name> :- Print count of
matching lines
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Copy and move file
• cp <source- le> <destination- le>
• cp -r <source-directory> <destination-directory>
• mv <old- le-name> <new- le-name>
• mv <old-directory-name> <new-directory-name>
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Delete a file
• rm < le-name>: Remove a le
• rm -f < le-name>: Remove le forcefully
• rm -r < le-name>: Remove le recursively
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Changing permissions of le
• chmod <permission> < le-name>
7 read, write and execute rwx
6 read and write rw-
5 read and execute r-x
4 read only r--
3 write and execute -wx
2 write only -w-
1 execute only --x
0 none
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Changing the owner of le
• chown <user:group> < le-name>
• chown -R <<user:group> < le-name> :Change
owner recursively
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Getting size of le
• du < le-name>
• du -h < le-name> : Estimate le size in human
readable form
• du -s : summarise the output
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Search a le
• nd -name < le-name> :search for le with given
name
• nd -P <path> -name < le-name>: search for le
name in the speci ed path
• nd -mindepth/-maxdepth: decides the depth of
the search
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Sort content of the le
• sort -n : use numerical values to sort
• sort -r : sort in reverse order
• sort -k pos1,pos2 : specify sorting key
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Extract columns from tabular
ASCII le
• cut -d delimiter
• awk
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Getting available memory
• free :- Shows available memory
• free -m :- Shows available memory in MB
• free -g :- Shows available memory in GB
List running processes
• ps : List processes
• ps -aef :- list all processes running on the system
• kill <signal> <pid>
File compare and
conversion
• diff
• cmp
• od -a
• od -h
Using | (pipe)
