Basic Dedicated Shell Commands

From Lunarpages Web Hosting Wiki

Here are a few handy and helpful basic shell commands to help you get started with becoming familiar with Shell on your dedicated hosting account. At the command prompt, enter " ls " this will list the contents of your current directory.

You should see something like this (sample contents)

[root@restoretmp steph]# ls
file.html public_html test
[root@restoretmp steph]#

The contents will normally have different colors ie: Blue for folders, white for files etc.. " ls " or ( list ) has many options for example:

" ls -a " in the same directory will show:

[root@restoretmp steph]# ls -a
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc file.html public_html test
[root@restoretmp steph]#

As you can see, the " -a " option allows you to see ALL the files in the directory (including hidden)

" ls -l " Will show a long format including group owner size, date modified and permissions.

" ls -R " Will list the contents of all the subdirectories recursively.

you can also mix the options: " ls -al " for example (long list of all including hidden)

You can also view directories without actually moving into them: " ls /home/steph " from root will show

[root@restoretmp root]# ls /home/steph
file.html public_html test
[root@restoretmp root]#

Moving around in shell.

" cd " (change directory) is the method of moving from one directory to another:

" cd /home/steph " for example would place me in the directory of steph.

" cd .. " will move you back one directory

" pwd " will print your current directory (useful if you need to double check where you are before typing a command)

" cd " Will take you back to root

Creating files and folders

The touch command is useful for creating a file:

" touch new-filename " would create a file named (new-filename) For directories:

" mkdir new-directory " will create a directory named (new-directory)

Removing files and directories:

" rm filename " would remove a file in the name of (filename)

" rmdir foldername " would remove a directory/folder in the name of (foldername)

chmod

Permissions often require changing on files and folders, the method is shown below:

" chmod 755 foldername " will set a folder to 755 for example:

[root@restoretmp steph]# ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 4 05:47 file.html
drw-r--r-- 2 root root 4096 May 4 05:48 public_html
[root@restoretmp steph]#

public-html is set at chmod 644

Type: " chmod 755 public_html " then look again using " ls -l "

[root@restoretmp steph]# chmod 755 public_html
[root@restoretmp steph]# ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 4 05:47 file.html
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 4 05:48 public_html
[root@restoretmp steph]#

drwxr-xr-x is 755 (the "d" means it is a directory)

Ownership

As you can see, our file.html is owned by root, to change the ownership to yourself ( chown ):

Type " chown steph:steph file.html "

[root@restoretmp steph]# chown steph:steph file.html
[root@restoretmp steph]# ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 steph steph 0 May 4 05:47 file.html
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 4 05:48 public_html
[root@restoretmp steph]#

As you can see "steph" is now the owner (lucky me)

We will add to this as required but these are the very basic commands in shell.

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