File Management

Linux Filesystems:
ext3

ext4

xfs

Windows Filesystems:
NTFS
FAT

Basic Commands

pwd

print working directory

cd

home directory (/home/username) or /root

~

/

root directory (absolute)

~

user directory (/home/username)

.

current directory (relative)

..

parent directory (relative)

ls

show directory contents

ls -l

show directory contents (list view)

ls -ltriah

show directory contents (list view)

-l long

-t time sorted (-S for size sorted)

-r reverse

-i inode

-a show hidden files

-h human readable file sizes

Type

# of Links

User Owner

Group Owner

Size

Month

Day

Time

Namedrwxr-xr-x

drwxr-xr-x

21

root

root

4096

Feb

27

13:33

var

lrwxrwxrwx

1

root

root

7

Feb

27

13:15

bin

-rw-r--r--

1

root

root

0

Mar

2

11:15

testfile

d

directory

l

link

    •  

file

Creating Files and Directories

touch filename

create file

rm filename

remove file

cp filename newfilename

copy file and name it

cp filename /tmp

copy file to /tmp

mv filename newfilename

renames the file

mv filename /tmp

move file to /tmp

mkdir dirname

create directory

rmdir dirname

remove directory

rm -r dirname

remove directory

chgrp groupowner filename

change the group owner of a file

chown userowner filename

change the user owner of a file

chown userowner:groupowner filename

change the user and group owner of a file

echo "text" > filename

insert the text into the file

cat filename

display the text inside a file

rm -rf

remove directory (recursive) (force)

Searching Files and Directories

nsotelo@rhel-pc:~$ find / -name "*ksh*.rpm" 2> /dev/null

search file or directory names for items containing name ksh and ending with .rpm

stderr to /dev/null

grep -ri error /var/log/ 2> /dev/null | wc -l

search file contents for key words

-c count

-r recursive

-i ignore case sensitive

-n display matched lines and their line numbers

-v all except specified

wc -l word count lines only

egrep -i "keyword|keyword2" /var/log

search file contents for two key words

 

find /etc -name "*.conf*" | xargs grep "localhost"

combination of above commands (output of find translated and input to grep

  • inode - pointer of number of a file on the disk
  • soft link - link will be removed if the file is removed or renamed
  • hard link - deleting, renaming or moving the original file will not affect the hard link

ln /location/file

creates a hard link to a file

ln -s /location/file

creates a soft link to a file

touch hulk

cd /tmp

/tmp $ ln -s /home/nsotelo/hulk

 

Input and Output Redirects (3 Redirects)

standard input (stdin) with file descriptor 0

ls >> listings

appends the output of ls to listings file

standard output (stdout) with file descriptor 1

cat < listings

feeds file contents to a file

standard output (stdout) with file descriptor 1

mail -s "office memo" allusers@abc.com < memoletter

feeds file contents to a file

standard error (stderr) with file descriptor 2

ls -l /root 2> errorfile

outputs the error message to errorfile

Pipes

Connects the output of one command directly to the input of another command

ls -ltr | more

ll | tail -l

 


Revision #1
Created 2026-07-05 06:11:29 UTC by Admin
Updated 2026-07-05 06:12:29 UTC by Admin