touch

- Makes a file --- Usage: touch dumbFile.inc --- creates a blank file in your current location


xrefresh

use this to refresh x if you visually have something messed up with x, or maybe you are rendering something and some ar all of your system messages have become messed up for one reason or another. xrefresh will repaint the screen. You can also use xrefresh if you are trying to change the config with your monitors (dual monitors or something of the like sort).

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace


Control alt backspace is much like the control alt delete accept a bit more extreme by comparison. This is a good command if you are in a bind and are unable to "kill" the process by command or using the system monitor (gnome gui). Depending on your Linux distribution it might take you all the way to your login screen (Ubuntu) if this happens you will have to log back in, or it might simply take you out of X (Fedora), in which can you would have to "startx" again. Use Ctrl+Alt+Backspace with caution, you might loose data or just simply screw things up (I say this because I have screwed things up pretty bad a couple of times with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace). Mounting Drives / Disks

When you want to mount something like a thumbdrive or maybe a FAT32 file system, all you have to do is create a destination where you want the mounted files to appear and then mount the drive. But before that you need to run a - dmesg (to find where your system see's your device). Almost all of the time Linux keeps its mounted drives under /mnt/. to create a dir under /mnt , you must be root. so -su and enter your root password, then (--skip this step if you have already created a directory for the mount -- )
mkdir deviceName001

Then you mount the device with this command

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/deviceName001

now your device is mounted.

Mount with write permissions

mount -t vfat -o user,rw,exec,umask=000 /dev/sda1 /mnt/thumb_drive

and to unmount

umount -t vfat -o user,rw,exec,umask=000 /dev/sda1 /mnt/thumb_drive


Scan for Devices

The big fat generic command for scanning for everything on your system is:

dmesg

This command will spit out so much information, if you don't know how to read it you will be there all day trying to decipher anything at all, so you can do this:

dmesg | grep usb

you would use pipe grep ( | grep ) combo to only give the usb info, or you could substitute "usb" with any other peripherals you wish to find (read more on grep to better understand this command).

use fdisk to indentify the partions

/sbin/fdisk -l

you will get a read out something like this:

[root@localhost yourmom]# /sbin/fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hdc: number GB, number bytes
number heads, number sectors/track, number cylinders
Units = cylinders of number * number = number bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *       number      number    number   number  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb5           number       number   number+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hdb6           number       number   number+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb7           number       number   number+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/hdd: number GB, number bytes
number heads, number sectors/track, number cylinders
Units = cylinders of number * number = number bytes

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdd1   *           number         number   number 7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdd2            number       number    number    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdd5            number       number    number+   number  HPFS/NTFS


...:::Installation Type Commands:::...

rpm -Uvh pirateMachine-0.7.19-0.i386.rpm

-Uvh , upgrade - verbose (information - normally routine progress messages will be displayed) - hash (Print 50 hash marks as the package archive is unpacked. Use with -v|--verbose for a nicer display. --- note this is very useful if you want to follow the progress of your install.)

rpm -e bitpim

-e followed by the program removes the program that is specified. This command will not prompt you a second time with something like are you sure you would like to remove bitpim (Y/N)? None of that nonsense, you have to be sure of what you are doing, you are using UNIX.

tar - compresses a file or group of files (probably in a directory)into a nice little ".tar"- package ---
Usage - tar -cvf images.tar images

The command to burn a CD out of the ISO under Linux is: cdrecord -eject speed=16 dev=0,0,0 KNOPPIX_V3.2-2003-04-15-EN.iso


...:::Compression Type Commands:::...

tar xvfz CompressedFile.TAR.gz

vncserver -geometry 1024x768 -depth 24

...:::Change directory commands:::...

cd ~username

I wrote myself a note about this one because I of course always remember the cd part but the ~username part is extra useful. For example you are doing something to an account and you are in /usr/ect/bin and you wanna go to bob's home dir real quick. cd ~bob tada