Linux & Bash Cheatsheet

Print the full path of your current working directory.

List files with permissions, owners, sizes, and hidden entries in a readable format.

Change into another directory by absolute or relative path.

Search recursively for files matching a name pattern.

Locate files modified within the last day.

Query the locate database for files by name almost instantly.

Display directory contents as a tree up to a chosen depth.

Show the total size of the current directory in human-readable form.

Rank files and folders by size to find what is consuming space.

Show mounted filesystem capacity, usage, and free space.

Resolve a relative path into its canonical absolute path.

Inspect detailed file metadata like size, inode, mode, and timestamps.

Extract the filename portion from a full path.

Copy files or directories while preserving attributes and showing progress.

Recursively copy a directory and everything inside it.

Rename a file or move it to another directory.

Force-remove files or directories recursively.

Create nested directories without failing if parents already exist.

Create an empty file or update its modification timestamp.

Set a file timestamp manually for testing or restore workflows.

Create a symbolic link that points to another file or directory.

Create a hard link that references the same inode as the original file.

Set read-write for owner and read-only for group and others.

Add execute permission for the file owner using symbolic mode.

Recursively apply restrictive directory and file permissions.

Change file ownership recursively to a user and group.

Print a file to standard output exactly as stored.

Search for matching text and show the line numbers for each hit.

Search recursively through a project for a string or pattern.

Split input into fields and print selected columns or computed values.

Print only a selected range of lines from a file.

Replace matching text in a stream using sed substitution syntax.

Extract specific delimiter-separated fields from each input line.

Sort lines alphabetically and remove duplicates in one step.

Collapse adjacent duplicate lines and count their occurrences.

Count lines, words, or bytes in a file or stream.

Show the first lines of a file for quick inspection.

Follow the end of a growing log file in real time.

Compare two files and show unified diff output.

Open a file in a pager for efficient scrolling, searching, and navigation.

List every running process with CPU, memory, user, and command details.

Find process IDs and commands by pattern without scanning raw ps output manually.

Open the built-in live process monitor for CPU and memory analysis.

Use an interactive, colorized process viewer with easier sorting and filtering.

Send SIGTERM so a process can shut down gracefully.

Force-kill a stuck process using SIGKILL when graceful shutdown fails.

Signal all processes with the same name at once.

Start a process with lower CPU scheduling priority.

Run a command immune to hangups so it keeps running after logout.

List background and stopped jobs in the current shell session.

Resume a stopped shell job and continue it in the background.

Bring a background or stopped job back into the foreground.

Check the current state, logs, and unit details for a systemd service.

Restart a service managed by systemd.

Follow logs from a specific systemd service in real time.

Display IP addresses and status for all network interfaces.

Inspect the kernel routing table and default gateway configuration.

Show interface configuration using the legacy net-tools command set.

Test reachability and round-trip latency to a host.

Fetch HTTP headers to verify status codes, redirects, and server metadata.

Download a remote resource and save it to a chosen filename.

List listening TCP and UDP sockets with associated processes.

Display active listening ports and bound services with the classic networking tool.

Scan a target host for open ports and detected service versions.

Open an encrypted remote shell session over SSH.

Securely copy files between local and remote systems over SSH.

Synchronize files efficiently while transferring only deltas.

Test whether a TCP port is reachable using netcat.

Print the effective username of the current shell session.

Show the current user ID, group ID, and supplementary groups.

List the commands the current user may run with sudo.

Switch to another user account with a full login shell.

Change the password for the current account.

Create a new user with a home directory and default Bash shell.

Append a user to an additional supplementary group.

Delete a user account and remove its home directory.

Create a new system group for shared access control.

List all groups that a user belongs to.

Set owner read-write-execute and read-execute for group and others using octal mode.

Restrict a sensitive file to owner read-write and group read-only using octal permissions.

Recursively set both owner and group for an application directory.

Show disk usage with human-readable sizes and filesystem types.

Measure how much space a directory consumes.

List block devices, partitions, filesystems, and mount points.

Display all currently mounted filesystems in an easy-to-scan format.

Mount a filesystem at a chosen directory so it becomes accessible.

Unmount a filesystem cleanly before removing or reformatting it.

List disk partitions and geometry using the classic partitioning utility.

Inspect partition tables with GNU Parted, including GPT layouts.

Create an ext4 filesystem on a partition or block device.

Create a compressed tar archive from files or directories.

Extract a gzip-compressed tar archive into the current directory.

Compress a file with gzip while keeping the original copy.

Create a ZIP archive recursively from a folder or file set.

Extract a ZIP archive into a target directory.

Use a portable shebang so the script runs with Bash from the current environment.

Exit on errors, treat unset variables as failures, and catch pipe errors early.

Assign a shell variable without spaces around the equals sign.

Expand a variable and transform it to uppercase using Bash string operations.

Run commands conditionally when a file, string, or status test succeeds.

Dispatch different logic branches based on an input argument.

Loop over matching files and run the same command for each one.

Read input line by line from standard input or a file safely.

Define a reusable shell function that accepts positional parameters.

Create a Bash array for managing multiple related values.

Expand every array element as separate words.

Redirect standard output and standard error to different files.

Append both stdout and stderr to the same log file.

Pipe output through multiple commands and save a copy with tee.

Install a recurring cron job that runs a command on a fixed schedule.