Begginner's Shell Notes

I wrote this forever ago and some of it is totally wrong. Don't read this or you'll get MORE STUPIDER

The following table contains a quick reference for commonly used shell commands. You should Also See Advanced Shell Commands for other helpful topics.

Desired Effect	Command
Beep	echo $'\a'
Copy From Remote Server	scp @:
Spawn a new command without losing command line control	&
Copy to Remote Server	scp @:
Delete a File	rm
Grep in Files with a Certain Name Patten	find -name *.env | xargs grep "value"
Grep Recursively	grep -R
Grep with a Regular Expression	grep -E "bluh|muh|zuh" *
Install RPM	rpm -Uvh
Kill a Proccess	kill -9
Make a Symbolic Link	ln -s
Present Working Directory	pwd
Repeat a Command at Regular Intervals	watch --interval= ""
Search Previous Commands	ctrl+r (or history | grep )
Set Rights	chmod [GXMMS:uga][GXMMS:+-][GXMMS:rwx]
Switch Users	su
Tar	tar cvzf
Untar	tar -xvf
Uninstall RPM	rpm -e
View Directories	ls -d */
View Files with Timestamps, etc.	ls -l
View Files with Timestamps, sorted by date	ls -lrt
View Info	which
View Mounts	df -k
View Processes	ps -aux
View Rights	ls -al
View What RPMs You Have Installed	rpm -qa | grep
Watch End of File for Specific Output	tail -F | grep
Wildcard	*
Wildcard (Digit)	?

In addition to these commands, it's also good to have scripts to automate searching over multpile servers, performing routine checks, etc.

Here's a sample grepping script for Sun2:

echo grepping for $1 in logs 0-9 on all servers
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6;
do
ssh lsdev@gx-mmsc00$i grep $1 /var/lsurf/log/gx-mmsc/mmsc-server.log.?;
echo $'\a'
done;

It's also handy to have scripts that simply type out your ssh commands for you.

echo connecting to ssh shell01.sun2.lightsurf.net...
ssh shell01.sun2.lightsurf.net

Here's an example of another script from the Daily Health Checks section:

echo
echo -------------------------
echo -
echo - DAILY HEALTH CHECK
echo -
echo -------------------------
echo
echo files in /gx/msgs/retry:
ls -l /gx/msgs/retry/
echo
echo Number of files in /gx/dist/sart:
ls -l /gx/dist/sart/ | wc -l
echo
echo Files over 2 megs in /gx/dist/sart:
find /gx/dist/sart ( -path './proc' -prune ) -o ( -size +2000000c -exec ls -l {} \; )
echo
echo Files in /lsurf/local_file_storage:
ls -l /lsurf/local_file_storage/
echo

If you place your scripts in your ~/bin directory, you can run them from the commandline no matter where you are on that machine.