{"id":10822,"date":"2024-12-12T07:14:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T07:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.trustedhosting.in\/?p=10822"},"modified":"2024-12-12T07:14:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T07:14:22","slug":"navigating-around-a-linux-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/navigating-around-a-linux-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating around a Linux system"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Navigating<\/a><\/h1>\n

Navigating around a Linux system<\/h1>\n

Navigating a Linux server<\/a> using SSH for the first time can be a very daunting experience for those coming from a predominantly Windows \/ GUI background. The principal difference from having a user interface is that you will not have a desktop, both in the visual sense and in that there is no common area to launch programs from in the way that you may be used to.<\/p>\n

Linux is primarily interacted with using the Bash shell. On logging in you will be in your user\u2019s home folder, for example if logging in as the user\u00a0graphiterack<\/span><\/code>\u00a0you will be in\u00a0\/home\/graphiterack<\/span><\/code>. The exception to this is the\u00a0root<\/span><\/code>\u00a0user,\u00a0root<\/span><\/code>\u00a0is akin to the administrator user in other operating systems and has permission to change anything on the system and always logs in to\u00a0\/root<\/span><\/code>.<\/p>\n

You can always find your current location using the\u00a0pwd<\/span><\/code>\u00a0command like so:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
[centos@arthas centos]# <\/span>pwd<\/span>\r\n\/home\/centos<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Getting around<\/h2>\n
cd<\/span><\/code>\u00a0will be your primary method of traversing the system. As you may have guessed,\u00a0cd<\/span><\/code>\u00a0stands for change directory. This command is used in conjunction with a file path to change to that directory, for example:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
cd \/home\/graphiterack\/<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
cd<\/span><\/code>\u00a0can also be used to go up a folder in the system when used with two dots<\/p>\n
\n
\n
cd ..<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Once you are in a directory you can view it\u2019s contents using the command\u00a0ls<\/span><\/code>.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
[cloud-user@arthas ~]$ <\/span>ls\r\npython  sampleFile.txt  test<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Extra details can be seen with the command\u00a0ls<\/span>\u00a0-l<\/span><\/code>\u00a0which is commonly aliased to\u00a0ll<\/span><\/code>\u00a0in RHEL \/ CentOS based systems.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
[cloud-user@arthas ~]$ <\/span>ls -l\r\ntotal 12<\/span>\r\ndrwxr-xr-x. 3 cloud-user cloud-user 4096 Jan 15 12:55 python<\/span>\r\n-rw-rw-r--. 1 cloud-user cloud-user  101 Apr  6 05:59 sampleFile.txt<\/span>\r\ndrwxrwxr-x. 2 cloud-user cloud-user 4096 Apr  6 07:19 test<\/span>\r\n[cloud-user@arthas ~]$ <\/span>ll\r\ntotal 12<\/span>\r\ndrwxr-xr-x. 3 cloud-user cloud-user 4096 Jan 15 12:55 python<\/span>\r\n-rw-rw-r--. 1 cloud-user cloud-user  101 Apr  6 05:59 sampleFile.txt<\/span>\r\ndrwxrwxr-x. 2 cloud-user cloud-user 4096 Apr  6 07:19 test<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As you can see here, both outputs are the same as it is a CentOS server.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
\n
Viewing files<\/h2>\n
There are many way to view files in Linux, here we will cover the two most common ways that are found on the majority of Linux systems.<\/p>\n
\n
cat<\/span><\/code><\/h3>\n
The\u00a0cat<\/span><\/code>\u00a0utility can be used for a variety of operations, however in this article we will be using it in the most simple form\u00a0cat<\/span>\u00a0{filename}<\/span><\/code>. This will simply print he contents of the file to the console window as so:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
[cloud-user@arthas ~]$ <\/span>cat sampleFile.txt\r\nThis is an example file<\/span>\r\nThere are many like it but this one is mine<\/span>\r\nIt has several lines<\/span>\r\nand bacon.<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
cat<\/span><\/code>\u00a0is useful for quickly viewing small files that do not need to be edited.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
\n
less<\/h3>\n
less<\/span><\/code>\u00a0is another common utility used to view the contents of files.\u00a0less<\/span><\/code>\u00a0is useful for viewing files that are potentially very large and as such would not be easily viewed with\u00a0cat<\/span><\/code>. Unlike\u00a0cat<\/span><\/code>\u00a0which simply prints to standard output\u00a0less<\/span><\/code>\u00a0is an interactive file viewer that will open the file for viewing in a new screen. It can be opened with the command\u00a0less<\/span>\u00a0{filename}<\/span><\/code>.<\/p>\n
When viewing a file in\u00a0less<\/span><\/code>\u00a0it will be broken up into pages if the length of the file exceeds the size of your console window. These pages can be navigated with\u00a0Page<\/span>\u00a0Up<\/span><\/code>\u00a0and\u00a0Page<\/span>\u00a0Down<\/span><\/code>. The file can also be searched with\u00a0\/<\/span><\/code>\u00a0and\u00a0?<\/span><\/code>\u00a0to search up and down the pages respectively.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n
\n
Creating files<\/h2>\n
The easiest way to create a file in any Linux directory is to use the\u00a0touch<\/span><\/code>\u00a0command as follows:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
[cloud-user@arthas test]$ <\/span>touch exampleFile.txt\r\n[cloud-user@arthas test]$ <\/span>ls\r\nexampleFile.txt<\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This will create a blank file owned by the user that you are logged into the system with, these can then be edited with the text editor of your choice.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
\n
Editing files<\/h2>\n
Linux has many text editors available for use, the most common two being\u00a0nano<\/span><\/code>\u00a0and\u00a0vi<\/span><\/code>, each editor is worthy of an entire article to themselves however we will touch upon the basics of each here.<\/p>\n
\n
nano<\/span><\/code><\/h3>\n
To open a file in\u00a0nano<\/span><\/code>\u00a0you simply need to type\u00a0nano<\/span><\/code>\u00a0followed by the name of the file you wish to edit. In the following example I have used\u00a0nano<\/span>\u00a0sampleFile.txt<\/span><\/code>.<\/p>\n
\"Navigating<\/a><\/p>\n
You can interact with\u00a0nano<\/span><\/code>\u00a0in the same was as any regular text editor, instructions for operations are outlined at the bottom of the window. These can be performed by holding\u00a0Ctrl<\/span><\/code>\u00a0and pressing the specified letter.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
\n
vi<\/span><\/code>\/vim<\/span><\/code><\/h3>\n
To open a file in\u00a0vi<\/span><\/code>\u00a0is the same as\u00a0nano<\/span><\/code>\u00a0simply type\u00a0vi<\/span>\u00a0{filename}<\/span><\/code>, however this is where the similarities end.<\/p>\n
vi<\/span><\/code>\u00a0operates in two modes, command and input. The program will launch in command mode, to edit the file you will need to enter input mode. This can be done by pressing\u00a0i<\/span><\/code>. Once in input mode you can edit text as you need to, to return to command mode hit\u00a0esc<\/span><\/code>. In command mode you can issue\u00a0:wq<\/span><\/code>\u00a0to save your edits and exit the file.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Navigating around a Linux system Navigating a Linux server using SSH for the first time can be a very daunting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10822"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10827,"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10822\/revisions\/10827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webystrata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}