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Basic Shell/Unix Commands

· 3 min read

I get rusty from time to time and need a quick tutorial to get myself back into the tech game. This reference doc is fairly basic but saves me the trouble of having to google (which doesn't work in China) other reference websites or Stackoverflow.

Create A New File​

Create an empty file with just a file name, use touch

touch README.md

Find A File or Directory​

Find a file or directory in the current path, use find

find . -name 'README.md'

Find a file that contains a string abc in its name in the current path recursively

find . -name "*abc*"

Find Strings​

Find files that contain string abcdef in their content, use grep as suggested by this Stack Overflow answer

grep -rnw 'path/to/somewhere' -e 'abcdef'

~/sites/guizishanren/pelican 14:24 [35] zire@guizishan $ grep -rnw . -e "COVER_IMG_URL"
./pelicanconf.py:20:COVER_IMG_URL = 'https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/guizishanren/img/shinjuku.jpg'
./themes/pure-single/README.md:9:* `COVER_IMG_URL` - Set the sidebar image (Optional).
./themes/pure-single/templates/base.html:43:            <div class="cover-img" {% if COVER_IMG_URL -%}
./themes/pure-single/templates/base.html:44:

Or a simpler grep

grep -Ril "abcdef" .

~/sites/guizishanren/pelican 14:34 [36] zire@guizishan $ grep -ril 'COVER_IMG_URL' .
./content/2017/20171125_basic_shell_unix_commands.md
./pelicanconf.py
./pelicanconf.pyc
./themes/pure-single/README.md
./themes/pure-single/templates/base.html

Check Directory Size​

Use du to find out the size of a directory pelican

du -sh pelican

To find out the size of each subdirectory in pelican

du -h pelican

Remove Directory​

rm -rf mydirectory

Use PATH Variable​

Display current PATH

echo $PATH

Add a new path to system variable PATH

export PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH

Download File​

curl -O some_URL_address_for_download_file

Copy File Between Server and Local Machine​

From server to local

scp xx.xx.xx.xx:some_directory/some_file_name .

From local to server

scp some_file_name xx.xx.xx.xx:some_directory/

Use rsync is arguably a superior way of doing just the same

rsync -avP some_file_name xx.xx.xx.xx:some_directory/
rsync -avP xx.xx.xx.xx:some_directory/some_file_name .

Use Nix as Package Manager​

Install Nix

curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

Upon Installation finished!, follow the on-screen instruction:

. /home/userjoe/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

Search for a package mySQL on Nix

nix-env -qa | grep mysql

Install the package

nix-env -i mysql-5.7.17

or

nix-env --install mysql-5.7.17

Uninstall the package

nix-env --uninstall mysql-5.7.17

or

nix-env -e mysql-5.7.17

Open help

nix-env --help

To show installed packages

nix-env -q

To show available packages

nix-env -qas

Display CHMOD Permission in Number Format​

ls -l | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/) \
*2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'
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