The Linux command line is powerful, but it might take a bit getting used to. In this lesson we start with some navigation and we’ll play with some files. Fun fact, a lot of these commands also work on the Mac command line.
In general when you login into a machine through SSH you’ll end up in the home directory of a user. In this case /home/pi but than. Here is a list of commands and a short explanation of their use.
Now that you have access to the command line, you can give them a try. We’ll get back to them later on in more detail.
| Command | Explanation |
|---|---|
| ls | list, show the content of the directory. Similar to dir in Windows |
| cd | change directory |
| clear | clear the output on the screen |
| mkdir | make directory |
| rmdir | remove empty directory |
| touch | create file |
| rm | remove file or not empty directory |
| cp | copy |
| mv | move |
| man | manual, works on all commands |
When you are familiar with these basic commands, you can check out the following.
| Command | Explanation |
|---|---|
| cat | display content of a file |
| echo | add text to a file – compare > and >> |
| df | show available/used disk space |
| du | disk usage, show how the directory is build up |
| hostname | to find out the name of the machine |
| uname | find information about system, like distro, kernel, processor |
| sudo | super user do, in front of a command to have root privileges |
| apt | debian family packate manager |
| chmod | change access rights |
| chown | change owner/group |
| tar | (un)pack tarball archives |
| unzip | unpack zip archives |
You can use your arrow keys (up and down) to go to to previous typed command, which saves typing.