What are your most used CLI Commands

[saphil]

I am working on a new project comparing Linux (Ubuntu is my choice there) with OpenSolaris. There are a whole lot of similarities, but as a new user of Solaris, I can attest that there are enough differences to make starting a new Solaris implementation a run to the instruction manuals.

On Ubuntu, I use the following commands pretty regularly, and I want to have a small notebook of the commands that would do what I am used to doing in Linux and some man-page detail and the commands in Solaris as well. I want to de-geek the man pages a little, since most of the people I am working with right now are students, and the shorthand we know and love is confusing for newbies. I would like to be able to hand this out to a 1st-year IT student and have them be able to get a little more out of it than they do from man pages. I had a lot of trouble in the beginning, sorting out which parts of the commands are which, and I see this tendency in others as well.

I know, for instance, that the application package manager for Solaris is called packageadd, and that correlated to dpkg. Solaris zfs has some features that are not available in ext3. I have heard there is an ext4 file system out there, but I have not seen it yet (I read it was going to appear in Fedora9). If you were going to do this project, what would your top 25 commands be? I know some of these below are not core-utils, but they are the things I use.

wolf@prospero:~$ [Tab][Tab] #lists all available man pages 
Display all 3067 possibilities? (y or n)

OpenSolaris has only 1645 possible choices. To get all of these listed and (slightly) de-geeked would be way too big a scope.

ls   # for directory reading
cd   # changing directories
mkdir # to make directories
rm # to remove files and empty directories
rm -R # to remove non-empty directories (this is one of the dangerous commands
touch # to make files and update the "last accessed" point
./ #to run executables (like 'configure')
echo # to write something to display
uname -a # to check on what kernel I am running, so I can tell the forum support my details (if something were to go wrong.
chmod # change permissions on files
vi # text editing (it is ugly, but it is available on all unmodified unices that I have ever seen)
/usr/bin/bash # to run scripts
locate # to find files anywhere in the whole filesystem
which # to see 'which' application is the default.  You could have several copies of an application on the machine, but there is one that is used by default.
perl # to run perlscripts
grep # to search for files
cat # to search for contents of files
sudo # to act as root (or a sudoer)
ping # to check if an IP or domain name is live (or at least accepting ICMP Packets)  I know it's old-fashioned, but ping is more useful that a browser message "page cannot be found."
reboot # to reboot the machine
startx # to open a GUI session from TTY1 Terminal-only mode.
sudo dpkg --configure -a # to fix broken packages.  
dpkg -i # to install downloaded debian packages.
alien # to change rpm packages to debian ones so I can use dpkg -i to install them.
apt-get # to download application packages from a repo
aptitude # to download application packages from a repo, too.  Aptitude does a better job than apt-get solving dependency problems, AND has an ncurses graphical control panel that is useful when you are in a CLI-only situation.
valgrind # to run debugging traces on unhappy applications.
ssh # to connect to non-local servers securely.

Since I am an alpha-tester by inclination, and I like the challenge of running a system that is "not all there." I may encounter more challenges at keeping a system running than sane people who wait for Stable releases. I definitely find myself looking at the cli login more than most desktop users do. Since YMMV, I am interested in what your top-used commands are and why.

Transparency Disclaimer: My plan with this project is to license the output as as creative commons license similar to http://www.gp-field-guide.org.uk/ or with some other license that is in line with the GPL, and the spirit of Open-Source, so people who are interested can download it for free and Print-on-Demand copies can be purchased at a nominal fee. If you are interested in being part of this documentation project, let me know. My email is Wolf@HSI-US.com

[aeiah]

apart from what you've mentioned, i use python for running python scripts (much like your inclusion of perl) and i also use awk

[jbulcher]

I don't see head nor tail in there

head # to view the top lines in a file
tail # to view the last lines in a file - so useful for logs!

also useful:

apt-cache # search through application packages
sed # to replace text in a file
watch # to view the periodically updated contents of a file

[LinuX-M@n1@k]

I use everything you've mentioned without `alien`, `valgrind`, `perl` and `aptitude`
PS: Oh, and I use `vim` instead of `vi`

Edit: and `find` too

[saphil]

I have put a note on the OpenSolaris site to check interest level there.

I guess I use

top # to watch the processes occasionally as well

[Tom Mann]

At the moment I'd say... man

[pbhj]

Originally Posted by LinuX-M@n1@k I use everything you've mentioned without `alien`, `valgrind`, `perl` and `aptitude`

Same here - also like $() and {}, eg.

head $(ls | grep foto)

Do head on the results of grepping the ls of the current directory. Oh, yeah did you mention pwd (particularly when using ssh, so there's another one)?

mv fotowall.{pro,pro2}

Great for moving and copying, also find myself doing "nano !$" alot (open the last attribute on the previous command in nano, in fact all the history commands are pretty useful).

[macogw]

Please see the top 10 used terminal commands thread

[Mateo]

fairly certain "ls", "cd", and "exit" would be the main 3 for most users.

[LaRoza]

Originally Posted by Mateo fairly certain "ls", "cd", and "exit" would be the main 3 for most users.

make, gcc, rm are up on my list.