Linux Cheat Sheet¶

written by P. Ojeda with minor updates/changes by B. Brydsø.

Miscellaneous

Command	Effect	│	Command	Effect
ls	List files in current directory	│	less FILE	See the content of file FILE
ls -lah	List files in human readable format	│	vim FILE	Edit FILE with vim
cd /dir	Change to the directory “dir”	│	whereis data	Prints out the location of “data”
pwd	Your current PATH	│	tar -cvzf file.tgz FILE	Pack and compress “FILE”
rm FILE	Delete FILE	│	gunzip file.tgz	Uncompress “file.tgz”
rm -rf DIR	Delete directory DIR	│	tar -xvf file.tar	Unpack “file.tar”

Wildcards

Wildcard	Meaning
*	Means zero or any number of characters. Ex. File* could be File, File2, Fileuiwie, …
?	Means only one character. Ex. File? could be File1, Filex, Fileh, but not File22
[]	Means a range of characters. Ex. File[1-3] could be File1, File2, File3

grep

Command	Meaning
grep ‘word’ file	Search for the pattern ‘word’ in ‘file’
grep -rine ‘word’ home	Search for the pattern ‘word’ recursively in the directory /home

find

Command	Meaning
find /home -name ‘*.dat’	Find the files in the directory home ending in ‘.dat’
find /home -mtime +60	Find every file in /home that was modified more than 60 days ago

pipes

Command	Meaning
|	Take the output of one command as the input of another. Ex. ls

Secure copy protocol

Command	Effect
scp file user123@kebnekaise.hpc2n.umu.se:/home/u/user123/	Copy “file” to the home directory of the user “user123”

Note: vim commands are in ESC mode

Bash shortcuts	Meaning	│	vim commands	Meaning
ctrl+r	Make a reverse search	│	:w file.txt	Save file.txt
ctrl+a	Go to the beginning of the line	│	:q!	Exit without saving
ctrl+e	Go to the end of the line	│	:%s/pat1/pat2/g	Replace pattern “pat1” by “pat2”
ctrl+w	Delete the previous word	│	ctrl+v	Start selection
ctrl+k	Delete words after cursor	│	dd	Delete line
ctrl+u	Delete current line	│	x	Delete character
ctrl+l	Clean terminal	│	r	Replace character

awk

Command	Meaning
awk ‘/gold/ {print $1}’ coins.txt	Search for pattern “gold” in the file coins.txt and print first column

Batch jobs

Command	Effect
sbatch job.sh	Launch “job.sh” to the queue
squeue -u user123	Check the jobs from the user “user123”
scancel JOBID	Remove the job with id “JOBID” from the queue
squeue -f JOBID	Check the details about the job with id “JOBID”

sshfs

Command	Meaning
sshfs user123@kebnekaise.hpc2n.umu.se /dir1/ /local/dir2	Mount /dir1 (on Quarry) into your /local/dir2
fusermount -u /local/dir2	Unmount the /local/dir2