Useful Linux Commands

[limotux]

Hi,

As you can see at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=66692&p=655927#p655927 I ahve been distro hopping over the past few months, tried some distros, whether "normal" Linux distros (RPM, DEB), Arch, and even BSD.
To me it was a great experience and I have learnt a lot.

The main thing I learnt is that the command line (yes, this black screen that many users shy away from), is the most powerful tool in Linux. It does magic.

So, out of caring about sharing my experience I thought of making this thread, where in the nect post I will put a few Linux commands that I found useful, helpful and powerful.

Just a little hint, some Linux commands require root privilege (i.e. adding "sudo" without quotes before the command then it will ask you your root password, then will do the command.) Some others may run in the background (the prompt will disappear, to exit you will need CTL-X)

A final thought, if you are searching over the internet, you might find some asking you to create or edit a file, many of them say do the command:

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vi xyz.txt

where "vi" is a command line text editor. (I didn't really like it) so, I installed "nano", which is a text editor that suited "my taste" more.

In a while I will start in the next post to put some of the commands that can benefit all of us, especially newbies whom I care about more.
Just for convenience I will add/edit the next post so that everything will be in one single post not scattered.

Of course, any users can post the commands they think are useful to add, so I add them to the main post (err... the second one)

I hope it will be useful.

[limotux]

Details of machine and hardware.

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inxi -F

More Details of machine and hardware

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inxi -Fxxx

Know the file system and partitions

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df

All disks and filesystem in hierarchical tree

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lsblk

Details and List of files in the current directory

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ll

thanks to rokytnji.1 memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=17058

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 balooctl status

See what baloo is doing now

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 balooctl status

Force baloo to search for non-indexed files and index it:

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 balooctl check

In case you feel something wrong and want to delete the index (it will automatically rebuild index)

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balooctl purge

Change "swappiness" (the lower the better in general, and I see MX Developers did a perfect thing here as I found my default =15, so no need to really change it)

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sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

To know current Sawappiness

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sudo sysctl vm.swappiness

Check if there are updates:

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sudo apt-get update

Then if there are update available

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sudo apt-get upgrade

OR
combine both in one

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Test Hard Drive Health
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-check-an ... g-smartctl

To start the test, wait till the time it tells then run other commands

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$ sudo smartctl -l error -l selftest /dev/sda

Generate Report and notice the table at the beginning

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sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda

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sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda

To know if a system is systemd or init

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ps --no-headers -o comm 1

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init --version

[rokytnji.1]

Here are simple tricks
https://itsfoss.com/linux-command-tricks/

l start with something really obvious and yet really important: tab completion.

When you are starting to type something in Linux terminal, you can hit the tab key and it will suggest all the possible options that start with string you have typed so far.

For example, if you are trying to copy a file named my_best_file_1.txt, you can just type ‘cp m’ and hit tab to see the possible options.