Getting information in a terminal window

This is a series of useful commands you can enter at the shell prompt in a terminal window to obtain information about your system.

free provides memory information: total, used and free.
df -k provides the total, used and free space available in each file system, and the percentage of capacity used in each file system.
ps -aux provides a list of the processes running in your system, including their PID (which can be used in kill pid to end a process).
tail /var/log/messages lists the messages in the log (similar to Event Viewer in NT). It requires root (or su) status.
top another way to see memory, CPU use, processes running and their PIDs (press Control-C to end top).
ls -al lists all files in a directory, their attributes and size.
more display the content of a file, one screenful at a time.
pwd displays pathname of current directory.
echo $HOME displays the path of an user home directory
printenv displays the values of the Environment variables like path, home directory,etc
quota displays quotas for an user, if set up by the System Administrator.
uptime displays how long the system has been up.
man xxxx provides help on the xxxx command. Very technical descriptions are provided.
ifconfig provides basic network information (MAC address, IP number, SubnetMask)

This page is maintained by Al Bento who can be reached at abento@ubalt.edu. This page was last updated on November 12, 2003. Although we will attempt to keep this information accurate, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.