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Linuxize.com has some amazing guides for common Linux/MacOS commands and tasks. If their site does not have cover the desired content, man <command> to view the full documentation of a command.

Linuxize Basic Linux Commands

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alias

Aliases are custom commands that map to a longer command.

Command Description
alias <alias>="<command>" Create an alias
which <alias/command> Locate an alias/command
alias View the mappings of all aliases
My aliases

Run the commands to see what they do

Oh My Zsh creates a lot of useful aliases, here are some that I regularly use:

alias l='ls -lah'
alias ll='ls -lh'
alias md='mkdir -p'
alias rd='rmdir'
  • Aliases that I use from the Git plugin are detailed in the Commands page

Aliases that I defined myself

Section of my .zshrc file
alias cls='clear'
alias h='history'
alias lt='ls -lahrt'
alias llt='ls -lhrt'

Resources:

du

Estimates disk usage of the given files or directories.

Command Description
du -ha <file/directory> Get size of each file within the directory recursively
du -h --max-depth=1 <directory> Get size of directories up to the first level
du -hs Get only the size of the current working directory

Resources:

find

Recursively searches for files and directories.

Command Description
find -type f -iname <filename> Search for files by name, ignoring case
find -type f -name '*.<file_extension>' Search for files by extension

Resources:

less

Read contents of a file or command output quickly and without filling up terminal.

Command Description
less <filename> Read the contents of a file
<command> | less Read the standard output (what would be printed to the terminal) of <command>
Commands inside less
Command Description
h Display help
q Exit
g Go to first line of file
#g Go to line #
G Go to last line of file
j/k Move forward and backward by line
f/b Move forward and backward by window
-N Toggle line numbers
-S Toggle chopping long lines
/<string> Search for <string>
n/N Navigate between search matches

Resources:

screen

I use screen to perform long-running tasks on a remote machine. It enables me to connect and disconnect from the machine (i.e. via SSH) without exiting the command.

Command Description
screen -S <session_name> Start a named screen session
screen -d Detach from current screen
Ctrl+Alt then D Detach from current screen when a command is running
screen -ls List running screens and their session IDs
screen -r <session_id> Reattach to screen
screen -d -r <session_id> Reattach to screen from inside another screen
exit Terminate current screen
screen in WSL

Error Message

$ screen
Cannot make directory '/run/screen': Permission denied

To Fix

  1. Create an alternate screen directory with the appropriate permissions 
    mkdir ~/.screen && chmod 700 ~/.screen
  2. Point the SCREENDIR environment variable to that directory
    .bashrc file or equivalent
    export SCREENDIR=$HOME/.screen

Resources:

Additional Guides

Last update: October 2, 2022