These are 41 Most Useful SSH Putty commands to help you manage the VPS (Virtual Private server) or Dedicated Server.
This should help you in daily work on the server. I have included command for all major Linux distribution like Cent-OS ,Ubuntu
1)How to connect to Server using putty
Download Putty here
a)Provide Hostname or IP address of the VPS or dedicated server
b) Choose SSH or telnet
c) For SSH, it will ask for verification of keys
d) Provide username and password and login to the system
we can use the puttycm tool.It is very useful if you are managing multiple server
2) Check Linux Distribution
cat /etc/*-release
3) How to reboot the VPS
reboot
4) How to find uptime of the box
Uptime
5) How to check the filesystem space
df -k
or
df -h
6) How to check CPU
We can use top command
top
7) How to update package
Cent-OS distribution
yum update
Ubuntu distribution
apt-get install
8) How to list the file
Use ls command
ls : it will list file
ls -lrt : it will list files in order of timestamp
ls -l: it will list file with details
9) How to locate the configuration files
locate my.cnf
locate httpd.cnf
10) How to start and Stop httpd service
how to start and stop httpd service
11) How to stop and start the MySql service
How to start and stop mysql on Linux
12) How to edit the file
We can use either vi and Nano editor for it
check out below tutorials for vi
Unix Tutorial :vi editor Part -1
Unix Tutorial : vi tutorial -2
for Nano,below command will be of help
nano <file name> : This will open filename for edit.
13) How to create directory
mkdir command is used to create directory
mkdir image
14) How to remove the file
rm command can be used to delete the file
rm <file name>
15) How to change password for the username
As root user
passwd <user name>
As user only
passwd
16) How to remove the directory
rmdir can be used to delete the directory. Directory must be empty for deletion from this command
rmdir <directory name>
17) How to kill a process
Sometimes , you may want to kill a stuck process. You can use kill command to do it. We need to get the PID of the process and then kill using below command
kill <pid>
18) How to search for a string across the files
You can use grep command to do it. Read below detailed article on it
grep "test" *.txt
How to use grep command in Unix and Linux with examples
19) How to backup the directory or folder
You may often want to backup directory or folder before performing changes on the system . We can use tar command for this. It is a very useful utility to perform backup
tar -cvf foldername.tar foldername
tar -xvf foldername.tar
how to tar a directory in Linux
20) How to check the content of the file
We can use cat command for it
cat <file name >
If the file is large , we can use more here to scroll as required
cat <file name>|more
21) How to download files from external locations
Use wget command.
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
22) How to change ownership of the files or directory
chown can be used to do it
chown tech:tech <filename>
chown -R tech:tech <directory name> : It will change ownership in directory recursively
23) How to change permission of the files
We can use chmod command for that
chmod 755 <file name>
24) How to find the system name and version
uname -a
25) How to find the version of Ubuntu running on the system
cat /etc/issue
26) how to walk into the directories
We use cd command to walk into directories
cd <directory name>
To come out of directory, we use
cd ..
27) How to copy the files
Use cp command to do it
cp <file name1> <filename 2>
28) How to rename the files or directories
Use mv command
mv file1 file2
29) How to check for Port usage in the system
netstat -anp|grep <port no>
30) How to shutdown the box
Type shutdown command
shutdown
31) How to check what all users are logged into the box
Use finger command
finger
32) How to check for running processes on the system
Use ps command
ps -ef|grep <process name>
ps -ef|grep mysql
33) How to check the used and free RAM on the box
Use free command
free
34) How to enable service start on reboot ?
We can use chkconfig or systemctl command for this
chkconfig mysqld on
systemctl mysqld enable
35) How to find files across directories
We can use find command
find . -name "test*" -print
Useful find command in Unix with example
36) How to read large file in command line
We can use more command to read the large file in command line
more
37)Printing last few lines
We can use tail command to print the lines at the end of file
tail
We can specify the number of lines also
tail -100 alert.log
38)Printing starting few lines
We can use head command to print the lines at the start of file
head
We can specify the number of lines also
head -100 alert.log
39)command line history
We can use history command to print all the command executed recently. This can help us find the command executed
history
40)File Manipulation command
We can use awk or sed for that. These are very powerful command
ps -ef|grep pmon|awk '{print $NF}'
Please read below articles for details
Awesome sed command in Linux/Unix with examples
21 awk command examples in Unix/Linux
41)man command to know about option for the above command
We can use man
man history
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