Linux Blimp

One of the critical areas under Linux performance monitoring has to be CPU usage and system load. There are several Linux performance monitoring tools to keep an eye on how things are unfolding on a system.

A number of these tools simply output the system state/statistics while a few others provide you means of managing system performance. One such tool called CPUTool.

CPUTool is a simple yet powerful command-line tool for limiting and controlling CPU utilization of any process to a given limit and allows the interruption of process execution if the system load overreach a defined threshold.

How Does CPUTool Work?

In order to limit CPU usage, cputool sends the SIGSTOP and SIGCONT signals to processes and this is determined by the system load. It relies on the /proc pseudo-filesystem to read PIDs and their CPU usage measures.

It may be used to limit the CPU usage or system load influenced by a single process or a group of processes to a given limit and/or suspend processes if the system load goes beyond a threshold.

Suggested Read: Understand Linux Load Averages and Monitor Performance of Linux

Install CPUTool to Limit CPU Usage and Load Average

A CPUTool is only available to install on Debian/Ubuntu and its derivatives from the default system repositories using package management tool.

$ sudo apt install cputool

Limiting Process CPU Usage With CUPTool

Now lets look at how cputool really works. To demonstrate it all, we will run a dd command which should result into a high CPU percentage, in the background and display its PID.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null &

To monitor CPU usage we can use the top or glances tools that allow us to view a real-time regularly updated state of a running Linux system processes:

# top

From the output above, we can see that dd command is having the highest percentage of CPU time 99.7%)Now we can limit this using cputool as shown below.

The --cpu-limit or -c flag is used to set a usage percentage for a process or group of processes and -p to specify a PID. The following command will limit the dd command (PID 8275) to 50% use of one CPU core:

# cputool --cpu-limit 50 -p 8275 

After running cputool, we can check the new CPU usage for the process (PID 8275) once more. Now the CPU usage for dd process should range from (49.0%-52.0%).

# top

To further limit dd’s CPU usage to 20%, we can run cputool for a second time:

# cputool --cpu-limit 20 -p 8275 

Then immediately check using tools such as top or glances like this (the CPU usage for dd should now range from 19.0%-22.0% or slightly beyond this):

# top

Note that the shell doesn’t expect any user input while cputool is running; therefore becomes unresponsive. To kill it (this will terminate the CPU usage limitation operation), press Ctrl + C.

Importantly, to specify a process group (one program with several running instances each with a distinct PID) for instance HTTP web server:

# pidof apache2
9592 3643 3642 3641 3640 3638 3637 1780

Use the -P flag like this:

# cputool --cpu-limit 20 -P 1780

Limiting System Load with CUPTool

The -l option is used to specify the maximum load the system may go though for the process or process group to continue running. We may use a fractional value (e.g. 2.5).

The example below means run rsync for a local backup only when the system load does not exceed 3.5:

# cputool --load-limit 3.5 --rsync -av /home/tecmint /backup/`date +%Y-%m-%d`/

For more information and usage, view the CPUTool man page:

# man cputool

Do check out following useful guides for finding CPU info and CPU performance monitoring:

1. 9 Useful Commands to Get CPU Information on Linux
2. Cpustat – Monitors CPU Utilization by Running Processes in Linux
3. CoreFreq – A Powerful CPU Monitoring Tool for Linux Systems
4. Find Top Running Processes by Highest Memory and CPU Usage in Linux

In conclusion, CPUTool really comes in handy for Linux performance management.

 
Source

Thanks for all the likes, good words and support you gave us in the first two part of this article. In the first article we discussed commands for those users who have just switched to Linux and needed the necessary knowledge to start with.

1. 20 Useful Commands for Linux Newbies

In the second article we discussed the commands which a middle level user requires to manage his own system.

1. 20 Advanced Commands for Middle Level Linux Users

What Next? In this article I will be explaining those commands required for administrating the Linux Server.

41. Command: ifconfig

ifconfig is used to configure the kernel-resident network interfaces. It is used at boot time to set up interfaces as necessary. After that, it is usually only needed when debugging or when system tuning is needed.

Check Active Network Interfaces

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig 

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 40:2C:F4:EA:CF:0E  
          inet addr:192.168.1.3  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0 
          inet6 addr: fe80::422c:f4ff:feea:cf0e/64 Scope:Link 
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1 
          RX packets:163843 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 
          TX packets:124990 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:154389832 (147.2 MiB)  TX bytes:65085817 (62.0 MiB) 
          Interrupt:20 Memory:f7100000-f7120000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0 
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host 
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1 
          RX packets:78 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 
          TX packets:78 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:4186 (4.0 KiB)  TX bytes:4186 (4.0 KiB)

Check All Network Interfaces

Display details of All interfaces including disabled interfaces using “-a” argument.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig -a

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 40:2C:F4:EA:CF:0E  
          inet addr:192.168.1.3  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0 
          inet6 addr: fe80::422c:f4ff:feea:cf0e/64 Scope:Link 
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1 
          RX packets:163843 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 
          TX packets:124990 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:154389832 (147.2 MiB)  TX bytes:65085817 (62.0 MiB) 
          Interrupt:20 Memory:f7100000-f7120000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0 
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host 
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1 
          RX packets:78 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 
          TX packets:78 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:4186 (4.0 KiB)  TX bytes:4186 (4.0 KiB) 

virbr0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 0e:30:a3:3a:bf:03  
          inet addr:192.168.122.1  Bcast:192.168.122.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Disable an Interface

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig eth0 down

Enable an Interface

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig eth0 up

Assign IP Address to an Interface

Assign “192.168.1.12” as the IP address for the interface eth0.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.12

Change Subnet Mask of Interface eth0

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig eth0 netmask 255.255.255.

Change Broadcast Address of Interface eth0

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig eth0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

Assign IP Address, Netmask and Broadcast to Interface eth0

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.12 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

Note: If using a wireless network you need to use command “iwconfig“. For more “ifconfig” command examples and usage, read 15 Useful “ifconfig” Commands.

42. Command: netstat

netstat command displays various network related information such as network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, multicast memberships etc..,

List All Network Ports

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ netstat -a

Active UNIX domain sockets (servers and established)
Proto RefCnt Flags       Type       State         I-Node   Path
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     741379   /run/user/user1/keyring-I5cn1c/gpg
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     8965     /var/run/acpid.socket
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     18584    /tmp/.X11-unix/X0
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     741385   /run/user/user1/keyring-I5cn1c/ssh
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     741387   /run/user/user1/keyring-I5cn1c/pkcs11
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     20242    @/tmp/dbus-ghtTjuPN46
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     13332    /var/run/samba/winbindd_privileged/pipe
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     13331    /tmp/.winbindd/pipe
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     11030    /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     19308    /tmp/ssh-qnZadSgJAbqd/agent.3221
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     436781   /tmp/HotShots
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     46110    /run/user/ravisaive/pulse/native
unix  2      [ ACC ]     STREAM     LISTENING     19310    /tmp/gpg-zfE9YT/S.gpg-agent
....

List All TCP Ports

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ netstat -at

Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State      
tcp        0      0 localhost:mysql         *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:5901                  *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:5902                  *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:x11-1                 *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:x11-2                 *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 *:5938                  *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 localhost:5940          *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 ravisaive-OptiPl:domain *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 ravisaive-OptiPl:domain *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 localhost:ipp           *:*                     LISTEN     
tcp        0      0 ravisaive-OptiPle:48270 ec2-23-21-236-70.c:http ESTABLISHED
tcp        0      0 ravisaive-OptiPle:48272 ec2-23-21-236-70.c:http TIME_WAIT  
tcp        0      0 ravisaive-OptiPle:48421 bom03s01-in-f22.1:https ESTABLISHED
tcp        0      0 ravisaive-OptiPle:48269 ec2-23-21-236-70.c:http ESTABLISHED
tcp        0      0 ravisaive-OptiPle:39084 channel-ecmp-06-f:https ESTABLISHED
...

Show Statistics for All Ports

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ netstat -s

Ip:
    4994239 total packets received
    0 forwarded
    0 incoming packets discarded
    4165741 incoming packets delivered
    3248924 requests sent out
    8 outgoing packets dropped
Icmp:
    29460 ICMP messages received
    566 input ICMP message failed.
    ICMP input histogram:
        destination unreachable: 98
        redirects: 29362
    2918 ICMP messages sent
    0 ICMP messages failed
    ICMP output histogram:
        destination unreachable: 2918
IcmpMsg:
        InType3: 98
        InType5: 29362
        OutType3: 2918
Tcp:
    94533 active connections openings
    23 passive connection openings
    5870 failed connection attempts
    7194 connection resets received
....

OK! For some reason if you want not to resolve host, port and user name as a output of netstat.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ netstat -an

Fine, you may need to get the output of netstat continuously till interrupt instruction is passed (ctrl+c).

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ netstat -c

For more “netstat” command examples and usage, see the article 20 Netstat Command Examples.

43. Command: nslookup

A network utility program used to obtain information about Internet servers. As its name suggests, the utility finds name server information for domains by querying DNS.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ nslookup tecmint.com 

Server:		192.168.1.1 
Address:	192.168.1.1#53 

Non-authoritative answer: 
Name:	tecmint.com 
Address: 50.16.67.239

Query Mail Exchanger Record

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ nslookup -query=mx tecmint.com 

Server:		192.168.1.1 
Address:	192.168.1.1#53 

Non-authoritative answer: 
tecmint.com	mail exchanger = 0 smtp.secureserver.net. 
tecmint.com	mail exchanger = 10 mailstore1.secureserver.net. 

Authoritative answers can be found from:

Query Name Server

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ nslookup -type=ns tecmint.com 

Server:		192.168.1.1 
Address:	192.168.1.1#53 

Non-authoritative answer: 
tecmint.com	nameserver = ns3404.com. 
tecmint.com	nameserver = ns3403.com. 

Authoritative answers can be found from:

Query DNS Record

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ nslookup -type=any tecmint.com 

Server:		192.168.1.1 
Address:	192.168.1.1#53 

Non-authoritative answer: 
tecmint.com	mail exchanger = 10 mailstore1.secureserver.net. 
tecmint.com	mail exchanger = 0 smtp.secureserver.net. 
tecmint.com	nameserver = ns06.domaincontrol.com. 
tecmint.com	nameserver = ns3404.com. 
tecmint.com	nameserver = ns3403.com. 
tecmint.com	nameserver = ns05.domaincontrol.com. 

Authoritative answers can be found from:

Query Start of Authority

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ nslookup -type=soa tecmint.com 

Server:		192.168.1.1 
Address:	192.168.1.1#53 

Non-authoritative answer: 
tecmint.com 
	origin = ns3403.hostgator.com 
	mail addr = dnsadmin.gator1702.hostgator.com 
	serial = 2012081102 
	refresh = 86400 
	retry = 7200 
	expire = 3600000 
	minimum = 86400 

Authoritative answers can be found from:

Query Port Number

Change the port number using which you want to connect

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ nslookup -port 56 tecmint.com

Server:		tecmint.com
Address:	50.16.76.239#53

Name:	56
Address: 14.13.253.12

Read Also : 8 Nslookup Commands

44. Command: dig

dig is a tool for querying DNS nameservers for information about host addresses, mail exchanges, nameservers, and related information. This tool can be used from any Linux (Unix) or Macintosh OS X operating system. The most typical use of dig is to simply query a single host.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ dig tecmint.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.el6 <<>> tecmint.com 
;; global options: +cmd 
;; Got answer: 
;; ->>HEADER<

Turn Off Comment Lines

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ dig tecmint.com +nocomments 

; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.el6 <<>> tecmint.com +nocomments 
;; global options: +cmd 
;tecmint.com.			IN	A 
tecmint.com.		14400	IN	A	40.216.66.239 
;; Query time: 418 msec 
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1) 
;; WHEN: Sat Jun 29 13:53:22 2013 
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 45

Turn Off Authority Section

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ dig tecmint.com +noauthority 

; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.el6 <<>> tecmint.com +noauthority 
;; global options: +cmd 
;; Got answer: 
;; ->>HEADER<

Turn Off Additional Section

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ dig  tecmint.com +noadditional 

; <<>> DiG 9.9.2-P1 <<>> tecmint.com +noadditional
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<

Turn Off Stats Section

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ dig tecmint.com +nostats 

; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.el6 <<>> tecmint.com +nostats 
;; global options: +cmd 
;; Got answer: 
;; ->>HEADER<

Turn Off Answer Section

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ dig tecmint.com +noanswer 

; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.el6 <<>> tecmint.com +noanswer 
;; global options: +cmd 
;; Got answer: 
;; ->>HEADER<

Disable All Section at Once

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ dig tecmint.com +noall 

; <<>> DiG 9.8.2rc1-RedHat-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.el6 <<>> tecmint.com +noall 
;; global options: +cmd

Read Also : 10 Linux Dig Command Examples

45. Command: uptime

You have just connected to your Linux Server Machine and founds Something unusual or malicious, what you will do? Guessing…. NO, definitely not you could run uptime to verify what happened actually when the server was unattended.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ uptime

14:37:10 up  4:21,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.04

46. Command: wall

one of the most important command for administrator, wall sends a message to everybody logged in with their mesg permission set to “yes“. The message can be given as an argument to wall, or it can be sent to wall’s standard input.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ wall "we will be going down for maintenance for one hour sharply at 03:30 pm"

Broadcast message from root@localhost.localdomain (pts/0) (Sat Jun 29 14:44:02 2013): 

we will be going down for maintenance for one hour sharply at 03:30 pm

47. command: mesg

Lets you control if people can use the “write” command, to send text to you over the screen.

mesg [n|y]
n - prevents the message from others popping up on the screen.
y – Allows messages to appear on your screen.

48. Command: write

Let you send text directly to the screen of another Linux machine if ‘mesg’ is ‘y’.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ write ravisaive

49. Command: talk

An enhancement to write command, talk command lets you talk to the logged in users.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ talk ravisaive

Note: If talk command is not installed, you can always apt or yum the required packages.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ yum install talk
OR
[avishek@tecmint ~]$ apt-get install talk

50. Command: w

what command ‘w’ seems you funny? But actually it is not. t’s a command, even if it’s just one letter long! The command “w” is a combination of uptime and who commands given one immediately after the other, in that order.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ w

15:05:42 up  4:49,  3 users,  load average: 0.02, 0.01, 0.00 
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT 
server   tty7     :0               14:06    4:43m  1:42   0.08s pam: gdm-passwo 
server   pts/0    :0.0             14:18    0.00s  0.23s  1.65s gnome-terminal 
server   pts/1    :0.0             14:47    4:43   0.01s  0.01s bash

51. Command: rename

As the name suggests, this command rename files. rename will rename the specified files by replacing the first occurrence from the file name.

Give the file names a1, a2, a3, a4.....1213

Just type the command.

 rename a1 a0 a?
 rename a1 a0 a??

52. Command: top

Displays the processes of CPU. This command refresh automatically, by default and continues to show CPUprocesses unless interrupt-instruction is given.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ top

top - 14:06:45 up 10 days, 20:57,  2 users,  load average: 0.10, 0.16, 0.21
Tasks: 240 total,   1 running, 235 sleeping,   0 stopped,   4 zombie
%Cpu(s):  2.0 us,  0.5 sy,  0.0 ni, 97.5 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:   2028240 total,  1777848 used,   250392 free,    81804 buffers
KiB Swap:  3905532 total,   156748 used,  3748784 free,   381456 cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                            
23768 ravisaiv  20   0 1428m 571m  41m S   2.3 28.9  14:27.52 firefox                                                                                                            
24182 ravisaiv  20   0  511m 132m  25m S   1.7  6.7   2:45.94 plugin-containe                                                                                                    
26929 ravisaiv  20   0  5344 1432  972 R   0.7  0.1   0:00.07 top                                                                                                                
24875 ravisaiv  20   0  263m  14m  10m S   0.3  0.7   0:02.76 lxterminal                                                                                                         
    1 root      20   0  3896 1928 1228 S   0.0  0.1   0:01.62 init                                                                                                               
    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.06 kthreadd                                                                                                           
    3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:17.28 ksoftirqd/0                                                                                                        
    5 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:0H                                                                                                       
    7 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/u:0H                                                                                                       
    8 root      rt   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.12 migration/0                                                                                                        
    9 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rcu_bh                                                                                                             
   10 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:26.94 rcu_sched                                                                                                          
   11 root      rt   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:01.95 watchdog/0                                                                                                         
   12 root      rt   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:02.00 watchdog/1                                                                                                         
   13 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:17.80 ksoftirqd/1                                                                                                        
   14 root      rt   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.12 migration/1                                                                                                        
   16 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/1:0H                                                                                                       
   17 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuset                                                                                                             
   18 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper                                                                                                            
   19 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kdevtmpfs                                                                                                          
   20 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 netns                                                                                                              
   21 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.04 bdi-default                                                                                                        
   22 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kintegrityd                                                                                                        
   23 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd                                                                                                            
   24 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ata_sff

Read Also : 12 TOP Command Examples

53. Command: mkfs.ext4

This command create a new ext4 file system on the specified device, if wrong device is followed after this command, the whole block will be wiped and formatted, hence it is suggested not to run this command unless and until you understand what you are doing.

Mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 (sda1 block will be formatted)
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 (sdb1 block will be formatted)

Read More: What is Ext4 and How to Create and Convert

54. Command: vi/emacs/nano

vi (visual), emacs, nano are some of the most commonly used editors in Linux. They are used oftenly to edit text, configuration,… files. A quick guide to work around vi and nano is, emacs is a.

vi-editor

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ touch a.txt (creates a text file a.txt) 
[avishek@tecmint ~]$ vi a.txt (open a.txt with vi editor)

[press ‘i’ to enter insert mode, or you won’t be able to type-in anything]

echo "Hello"  (your text here for the file)

1. alt+x (exit insert mode, remember to keep some space between the last letter.
2. ctrl+x command or your last word will be deleted).
3. :wq! (saves the file, with the current text, remember ‘!’ is to override).

nano editor

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ nano a.txt (open a.txt file to be edited with nano)

edit, with the content, required

ctrl +x (to close the editor). It will show output as:

Save modified buffer (ANSWERING "No" WILL DESTROY CHANGES) ?                    
 Y Yes 
 N No           ^C Cancel

Click ‘y’ to yes and enter file name, and you are done.

55. Command: rsync

Rsync copies files and has a -P switch for a progress bar. So if you have rsync installed, you could use a simple alias.

alias cp='rsync -aP'

Now try to copy a large file in terminal and see the output with remaining items, similar to a progress bar.

Moreover, Keeping and Maintaining backup is one of the most important and boring work a system administrator, needs to perform. Rsync is a very nice tool (there exists, several other) to create and maintain backup, in terminal.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ rsync -zvr IMG_5267\ copy\=33\ copy\=ok.jpg ~/Desktop/ 

sending incremental file list 
IMG_5267 copy=33 copy=ok.jpg 

sent 2883830 bytes  received 31 bytes  5767722.00 bytes/sec 
total size is 2882771  speedup is 1.00

Note: -z for compression, -v for verbose and -r for recursive.

56. Command: free

Keeping track of memory and resources is as much important, as any other task performed by an administrator, and ‘free‘ command comes to rescue here.

Current Usage Status of Memory

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ free

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2028240    1788272     239968          0      69468     363716
-/+ buffers/cache:    1355088     673152
Swap:      3905532     157076    3748456

Tuned Output in KB, or MB, or GB

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ free -b

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:    2076917760 1838272512  238645248          0   71348224  372670464
-/+ buffers/cache: 1394253824  682663936
Swap:   3999264768  160845824 3838418944

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ free -k

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2028240    1801484     226756          0      69948     363704
-/+ buffers/cache:    1367832     660408
Swap:      3905532     157076    3748456

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ free -m

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1980       1762        218          0         68        355
-/+ buffers/cache:       1338        641
Swap:         3813        153       3660

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ free -g

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:             1          1          0          0          0          0
-/+ buffers/cache:          1          0
Swap:            3          0          3

Check Current Usage in Human Readable Format

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ free -h

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1.9G       1.7G       208M         0B        68M       355M
-/+ buffers/cache:       1.3G       632M
Swap:         3.7G       153M       3.6G

Check Status Contineously After Regular Interval

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ free -s 3

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2028240    1824096     204144          0      70708     364180
-/+ buffers/cache:    1389208     639032
Swap:      3905532     157076    3748456

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2028240    1824192     204048          0      70716     364212
-/+ buffers/cache:    1389264     638976
Swap:      3905532     157076    3748456

Read Also : 10 Examples of Free Command

57. Command: mysqldump

Ok till now you would have understood what this command actually stands for, from the name of this command.mysqldump commands dumps (backups) all or a particular database data into a given a file.For example,

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ mysqldump -u root -p --all-databases > /home/server/Desktop/backupfile.sql

Note: mysqldump requires mysql to be running and correct password for authorisation. We have covered some useful “mysqldump” commands at Database Backup with mysqldump Command

58. Command: mkpasswd

Make a hard-to-guess, random password of the length as specified.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ mkpasswd -l 10

zI4+Ybqfx9

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ mkpasswd -l 20 

w0Pr7aqKk&hmbmqdrlmk

Note: -l 10 generates a random password of 10 characters while -l 20 generates a password of character 20, it could be set to anything to get desired result. This command is very useful and implemented in scripting language oftenly to generate random passwords. You might need to yum or apt the ‘expect’ package to use this command.

[root@tecmint ~]# yum install expect 
OR
[root@tecmint ~]# apt-get install expect

59. Command: paste

Merge two or more text files on lines using. Example. If the content of file1 was:

1 
2 
3 

and file2 was: 

a 
b 
c 
d 
the resulting file3 would be: 

1    a 
2    b 
3    c 
     d

60.Command: lsof

lsof stands for “list open files” and displays all the files that your system has currently opened. It’s very useful to figure out which processes uses a certain file, or to display all the files for a single process. Some useful 10 lsof Command examples, you might be interested in reading.

[avishek@tecmint ~]$ lsof 

COMMAND     PID   TID            USER   FD      TYPE     DEVICE SIZE/OFF       NODE NAME
init          1                  root  cwd       DIR        8,1     4096          2 /
init          1                  root  rtd       DIR        8,1     4096          2 /
init          1                  root  txt       REG        8,1   227432     395571 /sbin/init
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    47080     263023 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libnss_files-2.17.so
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    42672     270178 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libnss_nis-2.17.so
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    87940     270187 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libnsl-2.17.so
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    30560     263021 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libnss_compat-2.17.so
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1   124637     270176 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread-2.17.so
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1  1770984     266166 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc-2.17.so
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    30696     262824 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/librt-2.17.so
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    34392     262867 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libjson.so.0.1.0
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1   296792     262889 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3.7.2
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    34168     262840 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libnih-dbus.so.1.0.0
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1    95616     262848 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libnih.so.1.0.0
init          1                  root  mem       REG        8,1   134376     270186 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/ld-2.17.so
init          1                  root    0u      CHR        1,3      0t0       1035 /dev/null
init          1                  root    1u      CHR        1,3      0t0       1035 /dev/null
init          1                  root    2u      CHR        1,3      0t0       1035 /dev/null
init          1                  root    3r     FIFO        0,8      0t0       1714 pipe
init          1                  root    4w     FIFO        0,8      0t0       1714 pipe
init          1                  root    5r     0000        0,9        0       6245 anon_inode
init          1                  root    6r     0000        0,9        0       6245 anon_inode
init          1                  root    7u     unix 0xf5e91f80      0t0       8192 @/com/ubuntu/upstart
init          1                  root    8w      REG        8,1     3916        394 /var/log/upstart/teamviewerd.log.1 (deleted)

This is not the end, a System Administrator does a lot of stuff, to provide you such a nice interface, upon which you work. System Administration is actually an art of learning and implementing in a very much perfect way. We will try to get you with all other necessary stuff which a linux professional must learn, linux in its basic actually itself, is a process of learning and learning.

Source

Wget is a popular, non-interactive and widely used network downloader which supports protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP, and retrieval via HTTP proxies. By default, wget downloads files in the current working directory where it is run.

Read Also: How to Rename File While Downloading with Wget in Linux

In this article, we will show how to download files to a specific directory without moving into that directory. This guide is useful, if, for example, you are using wget in a script, and want to automate downloads which should be stored in different directories.

In addition, wget being non-interactive (can work in the background) by design makes it easy to use for automating downloads via shell scripts. You can actually initiate a download and disconnect from the system, letting wget complete the job.

Wget’s -P or --directory-prefix option is used to set the directory prefix where all retrieved files and subdirectories will be saved to.

In this example, we will demonstrate how to download the glances config template and store it under /etc/glances/ directory.

$ sudo mkdir /etc/glances
$ ls /etc/glances/
$ sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nicolargo/glances/develop/conf/glances.conf -P /etc/glances/
$ ls /etc/glances/

If you are downloading a heavy file, you may want to add the -c or --continue flag, which means continue getting a partially-downloaded file. With it, you don’t have to start the download afresh.

This option helps you to resume downloading a file started by a previous instance of wget, or by another program or one that you had paused. It is also useful in case of any network failure. For example,

$ wget -c https://tenet.dl.sourceforge.net/project/parrotsecurity/iso/4.1/Parrot-security-4.1_amd64.iso

For more information, see the wget man page.

$ man wget 

You might also like to read these following related articles.

1. How to Download and Extract Tar Files with One Command
2. 5 Linux Command Line Based Tools for Downloading Files and Browsing Websites
3. 15 Tips On How to Use ‘Curl’ Command in Linux

That’s all! In this short article, we have explained how to download files to a specific directory without moving into that directory, using wget. You can share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Source

In this article we’ll see how we can use Dmidecode command to retrieve hardware information of any Linux system. Suppose if we want to upgrade a system we need to gather information like Memory, BIOS and CPUetc. With help of Dmidecode command we will come to know the details without opening system chasis. Dmidecode command works for RHEL/CentOS/Fedora/Ubuntu Linux.

Dmidecode tool read DMI (some say SMBIOS) table to fetch data and displays useful system informations like hardware details, serial numbers and BIOS version, Processor etc. in human readable format. You may require root priviledge to execute dmidecode command.

1. Basic Output of Demidecode

Below is the Demidecode command sample output.

# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS version fixup (2.31 -> 2.3).
SMBIOS 2.3 present.
45 structures occupying 1642 bytes.
Table at 0x000E0010.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 20 bytes
BIOS Information
        Vendor: Phoenix Technologies LTD
        Version: 6.00
        Release Date: 12/06/2006
        Address: 0xE78A0
        Runtime Size: 100192 bytes
        ROM Size: 64 kB
        Characteristics:
                ISA is supported
                PCI is supported
                PC Card (PCMCIA) is supported
                PNP is supported
                APM is supported
                BIOS is upgradeable
                BIOS shadowing is allowed
                ESCD support is available
               USB legacy is supported
                Smart battery is supported
                BIOS boot specification is supported

2. How to Get DMI Types

DMI Id give us particular hardware information of system. Dmidecode with options ‘-t ‘or ‘–type‘ and ‘Id‘ will provide us the exact infromation. Id 6 will give us Memory Module information.

[root@tecmint ~]# dmidecode -t 6
# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS version fixup (2.31 -> 2.3).
SMBIOS 2.3 present.

Handle 0x0009, DMI type 6, 12 bytes
Memory Module Information
        Socket Designation: RAM socket #0
        Bank Connections: 0 1
        Current Speed: Unknown
        Type: EDO DIMM
        Installed Size: 1024 MB (Single-bank Connection)
        Enabled Size: 1024 MB (Single-bank Connection)
        Error Status: OK

Handle 0x000A, DMI type 6, 12 bytes
Memory Module Information
        Socket Designation: RAM socket #1
        Bank Connections: 2 3
        Current Speed: Unknown
        Type: EDO DIMM
        Installed Size: Not Installed
        Enabled Size: Not Installed
        Error Status: OK

Handle 0x000B, DMI type 6, 12 bytes
Memory Module Information
        Socket Designation: RAM socket #2
        Bank Connections: 4 5
        Current Speed: Unknown
        Type: EDO DIMM
        Installed Size: Not Installed
        Enabled Size: Not Installed
        Error Status: OK

Handle 0x000C, DMI type 6, 12 bytes
Memory Module Information
        Socket Designation: RAM socket #3
        Bank Connections: 6 7
        Current Speed: Unknown
        Type: EDO DIMM
        Installed Size: Not Installed
        Enabled Size: Not Installed
        Error Status: OK

Following are the DMI types details.

		Type   Information
		----------------------------------------
          0		BIOS
          1		System
          2		Base Board
          3		Chassis
          4		Processor
          5		Memory Controller
          6		Memory Module
          7		Cache
          8		Port Connector
          9		System Slots
         10		On Board Devices
         11		OEM Strings
         12		System Configuration Options
         13		BIOS Language
         14		Group Associations
         15		System Event Log
         16		Physical Memory Array
         17		Memory Device
         18		32-bit Memory Error
         19		Memory Array Mapped Address
         20		Memory Device Mapped Address
         21		Built-in Pointing Device
         22		Portable Battery
         23		System Reset
         24		Hardware Security
         25		System Power Controls
         26		Voltage Probe
         27		Cooling Device
         28		Temperature Probe
         29		Electrical Current Probe
         30		Out-of-band Remote Access
         31		Boot Integrity Services
         32		System Boot
         33		64-bit Memory Error
         34		Management Device
         35		Management Device Component
         36		Management Device Threshold Data
         37		Memory Channel
         38		IPMI Device
         39		Power Supply

Instead of going with ‘type_id‘ you can also use keyword with ‘-t‘ argument to the dmidecode command. Following are the list of available keywords.

	Keyword     Types
       ------------------------------
       bios        0, 13
       system      1, 12, 15, 23, 32
       baseboard   2, 10
       chassis     3
       processor   4
       memory      5, 6, 16, 17
       cache       7
       connector   8
       slot        9

For example, to get the Cache information on system, you can execute below command instead of Id 7.

[root@tecmint ~]# dmidecode -t cache
# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS version fixup (2.31 -> 2.3).
SMBIOS 2.3 present.

Handle 0x000D, DMI type 7, 19 bytes
Cache Information
        Socket Designation: L1 Cache
        Configuration: Enabled, Socketed, Level 1
        Operational Mode: Write Back
        Location: Internal
        Installed Size: 16 kB
        Maximum Size: 16 kB
        Supported SRAM Types:
                Burst
                Pipeline Burst
                Asynchronous
        Installed SRAM Type: Asynchronous
        Speed: Unknown
        Error Correction Type: Unknown
        System Type: Unknown
        Associativity: Unknown

Handle 0x000E, DMI type 7, 19 bytes
Cache Information
        Socket Designation: L2 Cache
        Configuration: Enabled, Socketed, Level 2
        Operational Mode: Write Back
        Location: External
        Installed Size: 0 kB
        Maximum Size: 512 kB
        Supported SRAM Types:
                Burst
                Pipeline Burst
                Asynchronous
        Installed SRAM Type: None
        Speed: Unknown
        Error Correction Type: Unknown
        System Type: Unknown
        Associativity: Unknown

3. How to Get Memory Information

How do i get Memory information on system and how much memory is supported by system? The following command shows that the system can support maximum 4GB of RAM.

[root@tecmint ~]# dmidecode -t 16
# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS version fixup (2.31 -> 2.3).
SMBIOS 2.3 present.

Handle 0x001D, DMI type 16, 15 bytes
Physical Memory Array
        Location: System Board Or Motherboard
        Use: System Memory
        Error Correction Type: None
        Maximum Capacity: 4 GB
        Error Information Handle: Not Provided
        Number Of Devices: 4

Note: From the keyword list the memory related information IDs are 5, 6, 16 and 17.

4. How Do I Get BIOS information?

To get the BIOS information of the system, run the following command with ‘-t’ option.

[root@tecmint ~]# dmidecode -t bios
# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS version fixup (2.31 -> 2.3).
SMBIOS 2.3 present.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 20 bytes
BIOS Information
        Vendor: Phoenix Technologies LTD
        Version: 6.00
        Release Date: 12/06/2006
        Address: 0xE78A0
        Runtime Size: 100192 bytes
        ROM Size: 64 kB
        Characteristics:
                ISA is supported
                PCI is supported
                PC Card (PCMCIA) is supported
                PNP is supported
                APM is supported
                BIOS is upgradeable
                BIOS shadowing is allowed
                ESCD support is available
                USB legacy is supported
                Smart battery is supported
                BIOS boot specification is supported

5. How Do I Get the Manufacturer, Model and Serial Number?

To get the information about Manufacturer, Model and Serial Number of system, use the following command as shown below.

[root@tecmint ~]# dmidecode -t system
# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS 2.4 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
        Manufacturer: LENOVO
        Product Name: 9637C76
        Version: ThinkCentre M55e
        Serial Number: L9BT188
        UUID: 8015D37A-2F82-DC11-A3FB-8C6E4EBAD5CE
        Wake-up Type: AC Power Restored
        SKU Number: Not Specified
        Family: Not Specified

Handle 0x000F, DMI type 12, 5 bytes
System Configuration Options
        Option 1: Jumper settings can be described here.

Handle 0x0010, DMI type 15, 29 bytes
System Event Log
        Area Length: 432 bytes
        Header Start Offset: 0x0000
        Header Length: 16 bytes
        Data Start Offset: 0x0010
        Access Method: General-purpose non-volatile data functions
        Access Address: 0x0000
        Status: Valid, Not Full
        Change Token: 0x0000001A
        Header Format: Type 1
        Supported Log Type Descriptors: 3
        Descriptor 1: POST error
        Data Format 1: POST results bitmap
        Descriptor 2: Single-bit ECC memory error
        Data Format 2: Multiple-event
        Descriptor 3: Multi-bit ECC memory error
        Data Format 3: Multiple-event

Handle 0x0017, DMI type 23, 13 bytes
System Reset
        Status: Enabled
        Watchdog Timer: Present
        Boot Option: Do Not Reboot
        Boot Option On Limit: Do Not Reboot
        Reset Count: Unknown
        Reset Limit: Unknown
        Timer Interval: Unknown
        Timeout: Unknown

Handle 0x001F, DMI type 32, 20 bytes
System Boot Information
        Status:

Please run ‘man dmidecode‘ from terminal or command prompt to know more about dmidecode.

Read Also: 10 Command Line Tools to Get Linux Hardware Information

Source

In this post, we are going to review how we can assign Static IP Address, Static Route, Default Gateway etc.  Assigning IP Address on demand using IP command. IFCONFIG command is deprecated and replaced by IPcommand in Linux. However, IFCONFIG command is still works and available for most of the Linux distributions.

Don’t Miss: ifconfig vs ip: What’s Difference and Comparing Commands

Note: Please take configuration file backup before doing any changes.

How do i Configure Static IP Address Internet Protocol (IPv4)

To configure static IP Address, you need to update or edit network configuration file to assign an Static IP Address to a system. You must be superuser with su (switch user) command from terminal or command prompt.

For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

Open and edit network configuration file for (eth0 or eth1) using your favorite editor. For example, to assigning IP Address to eth0 interface as follows.

[root@tecmint ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

Simple output:

DEVICE="eth0"
BOOTPROTO=static
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE="Ethernet"
IPADDR=192.168.50.2
NAME="System eth0"
HWADDR=00:0C:29:28:FD:4C
GATEWAY=192.168.50.1

For Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint

Assign Static IP Address to eth0 interface editing configuration file /etc/network/interfaces to make permanent changes as shown below.

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.50.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.50.1

Next, restart network services after entering all the details using the following command.

# /etc/init.d/networking restart

$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

1. How to Assign a IP Address to Specific Interface

The following command used to assign IP Address to a specific interface (eth1) on the fly.

# ip addr add 192.168.50.5 dev eth1

$ sudo ip addr add 192.168.50.5 dev eth1

Note: Unfortunately all these settings will be lost after a system restart.

2. How to Check an IP Address

To get the depth information of your network interfaces like IP Address, MAC Address information, use the following command as shown below.

# ip addr show

$ sudo ip addr show

Sample Output

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:28:fd:4c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.50.2/24 brd 192.168.50.255 scope global eth0
    inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe28:fd4c/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:28:fd:56 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.50.5/24 scope global eth1
    inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe28:fd56/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

3. How to Remove an IP Address

The following command will remove an assigned IP address from the given interface (eth1).

# ip addr del 192.168.50.5/24 dev eth1

$ sudo ip addr del 192.168.50.5/24 dev eth1

4. How to Enable Network Interface

The “up” flag with interface name (eth1) enables a network interface. For example, the following command will activates the eth1 network interface.

# ip link set eth1 up

$ sudo ip link set eth1 up

5. How to Disable Network Interface

The “down” flag with interface name (eth1) disables a network interface. For example, the following command will De-activates the eth1 network interface.

# ip link set eth1 down

$ sudo ip link set eth1 down

6. How do I Check Route Table?

Type the following command to check the routing table information of system.

# ip route show

$ sudo ip route show

Sample Output

10.10.20.0/24 via 192.168.50.100 dev eth0
192.168.160.0/24 dev eth1  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.160.130  metric 1
192.168.50.0/24 dev eth0  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.50.2
169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0  scope link  metric 1002
default via 192.168.50.1 dev eth0  proto static

7. How do I Add Static Route

Why you need to add Static routes or Manual routes, because that the traffic must not pass through the default gateway. We need to add Static routes to pass traffic from best way to reach the destination.

# ip route add 10.10.20.0/24 via 192.168.50.100 dev eth0

$ sudo ip route add 10.10.20.0/24 via 192.168.50.100 dev eth0

8. How to Remove Static Route

To remove assigned static route, simply type the following command.

# ip route del 10.10.20.0/24

$ sudo ip route del 10.10.20.0/24

9. How do I Add Persistence Static Routes

All the above route will be lost after a system restart. To add permanent Static route, edit file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth0 (We are storing static route for (eth0) and add the following lines and save and exist. By default route-eth0 file will not be there, need to be created.

For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth0
10.10.20.0/24 via 192.168.50.100 dev eth0

For Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint

Open the file /etc/network/interfaces and at the end add the persistence Static routes. IP Addresses may differ in your environment.

$ sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.50.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.50.100
#########{Static Route}###########
up ip route add 10.10.20.0/24 via 192.168.50.100 dev eth0

Next, restart network services after entering all the details using the following command.

# /etc/init.d/network restart

$ sudo /etc/init.d/network restart

10. How do I Add Default Gateway

Default gateway can be specified globally or for in interface-specific config file. Advantage of default gateway is If we have more than one NIC is present in the system. You can add default gateway on the fly as shown below command.

# ip route add default via 192.168.50.100

$ sudo ip route add default via 192.168.50.100

Kindly correct me if i missed out. Please refer manual page doing man ip from terminal/command prompt to know more about IP Command.

Source

ps (processes status) is a native Unix/Linux utility for viewing information concerning a selection of running processes on a system: it reads this information from the virtual files in /proc filesystem. It is one of the important utilities for system administration specifically under process monitoring, to help you understand whats is going on a Linux system.

It has numerous options for manipulating its output, however you’ll find a small number of them practically useful for daily usage.

Read Also: All You Need To Know About Processes in Linux [Comprehensive Guide]

In this article, we’ll look at 30 useful examples of ps commands for monitoring active running processes on a Linux system.

Note that ps produces output with a heading line, which represents the meaning of each column of information, you can find the meaning of all the labels in the ps man page.

List All Processes in Current Shell

1. If you run ps command without any arguments, it displays processes for the current shell.

$ ps 

Print All Processes in Different Formats

2. Display every active process on a Linux system in generic (Unix/Linux) format.

$ ps -A
OR
$ ps -e

3. Display all processes in BSD format.

$ ps au
OR
$ ps axu

4. To perform a full-format listing, add the -f or -F flag.

$ ps -ef
OR
$ ps -eF

Display User Running Processes

5. You can select all processes owned by you (runner of the ps command, root in this case), type:

$ ps -x 

6. To display a user’s processes by real user ID (RUID) or name, use the -U flag.

$ ps -fU tecmint
OR
$ ps -fu 1000

7. To select a user’s processes by effective user ID (EUID) or name, use the -u option.

$ ps -fu tecmint
OR
$ ps -fu 1000

Print All Processes Running as Root (Real and Effecitve ID)

8. The command below enables you to view every process running with root user privileges (real & effective ID) in user format.

$ ps -U root -u root 

Display Group Processes

9. If you want to list all processes owned by a certain group (real group ID (RGID) or name), type.

$ ps -fG apache
OR
$ ps -fG 48

10. To list all processes owned by effective group name (or session), type.

$ ps -fg apache

Display Processes by PID and PPID

11. You can list processes by PID as follows.

$ ps -fp 1178

12. To select process by PPID, type.

$ ps -f --ppid 1154

13. Make selection using PID list.

$ ps -fp 2226,1154,1146

Display Processes by TTY

14. To select processes by tty, use the -t flag as follows.

$ ps -t pst/0
$ ps -t pst/1
$ ps -ft tty1

Print Process Tree

15. A process tree shows how processes on the system are linked to each other; processes whose parents have been killed are adopted by the init (or systemd).

$ ps -e --forest 

16. You can also print a process tree for a given process like this.

$ ps -f --forest -C sshd
OR
$ ps -ef --forest | grep -v grep | grep sshd 

Print Process Threads

17. To print all threads of a process, use the -H flag, this will show the LWP (light weight process) as well as NLWP (number of light weight process) columns.

$ ps -fL -C httpd

Specify Custom Output Format

Using the -o or –format options, ps allows you to build user-defined output formats as shown below.

18. To list all format specifiers, include the L flag.

$ ps L

19. The command below allows you to view the PID, PPID, user name and command of a process.

$ ps -eo pid,ppid,user,cmd

20. Below is another example of a custom output format showing file system group, nice value, start time and elapsed time of a process.

$ ps -p 1154 -o pid,ppid,fgroup,ni,lstart,etime

21. To find a process name using its PID.

$ ps -p 1154 -o comm=

Display Parent and Child Processes

22. To select a specific process by its name, use the -C flag, this will also display all its child processes.

$ ps -C sshd

23. Find all PIDs of all instances of a process, useful when writing scripts that need to read PIDs from a std output or file.

$ ps -C httpd -o pid=

24. Check execution time of a process.

$ ps -eo comm,etime,user | grep httpd

The output below shows the HTTPD service has been running for 1 hours, 48 minutes and 17 seconds.

Troubleshoot Linux System Performance

If your system isn’t working as it should be, for instance if it’s unusually slow, you can perform some system troubleshooting as follows.

26. Find top running processes by highest memory and CPU usage in Linux.

$ ps -eo pid,ppid,cmd,%mem,%cpu --sort=-%mem | head
OR
$ ps -eo pid,ppid,cmd,%mem,%cpu --sort=-%cpu | head

27. To kill an Linux processes/unresponsive applications or any process that is consuming high CPU time.

First, find the PID of the unresponsive process or application.

$ ps -A | grep -i stress

Then use the kill command to terminate it immediately.

$ kill -9 2583 2584

Print Security Information

28. Show security context (specifically for SELinux) like this.

$ ps -eM
OR
$ ps --context

29. You can also display security information in user-defined format with this command.

$ ps -eo  euser,ruser,suser,fuser,f,comm,label

Perform Real-time Process Monitoring Using Watch Utility

30. Finally, since ps displays static information, you can employ the watch utility to perform real-time process monitoring with repetitive output, displayed after every second as in the command below (specify a custom ps command to achieve your objective).

$ watch -n 1 'ps -eo pid,ppid,cmd,%mem,%cpu --sort=-%mem | head'

Important: ps only shows static information, to view frequently updated output you can use tools such as htop; top and glances: the last two are in fact Linux system performance monitoring tool.

You might also like to read these following related articles.

1. How to Find a Process Name Using PID Number in Linux
2. Find Top Running Processes by Highest Memory and CPU Usage in Linux
3. A Guide to Kill, Pkill and Killall Commands to Terminate a Process in Linux
4. How to Find and Kill Running Processes in Linux
5. How to Start Linux Command in Background and Detach Process in Terminal

That’s all for now. If you have any useful ps command example(s) to share (not forgetting to explain what it does), use the comment form below.

Source

It is always a good practice to know the hardware components of your Linux system is running on, this helps you to deal with compatibility issues when it comes to installing packages, drivers on your system.

Therefore in this tips and tricks, we shall look at some useful commands that can help you to extract information about your Linux system and hardware components.

1. How to View Linux System Information

To know only system name, you can use uname command without any switch will print system information or uname -s command will print the kernel name of your system.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ uname

Linux

To view your network hostname, use ‘-n’ switch with uname command as shown.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ uname -n

tecmint.com

To get information about kernel-version, use ‘-v’ switch.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ uname -v

#64-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 22 21:28:38 UTC 2014

To get the information about your kernel release, use ‘-r’ switch.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ uname -r

3.13.0-37-generic

To print your machine hardware name, use ‘-m’ switch:

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ uname -m

x86_64

All this information can be printed at once by running ‘uname -a’ command as shown below.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ uname -a

Linux tecmint.com 3.13.0-37-generic #64-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 22 21:28:38 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

2. How to View Linux System Hardware Information

Here you can use the lshw tool to gather vast information about your hardware components such as cpu, disks, memory, usb controllers etc.

lshw is a relatively small tool and there are few options that you can use with it while extracting information. The information provided by lshw gathered form different /proc files.

Note: Do remember that the lshw command executed by superuser (root) or sudo user.

Read Also: Difference Between su and sudo User in Linux

To print information about your Linux system hardware, run this command.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo lshw

tecmint.com               
    description: Notebook
    product: 20354 (LENOVO_MT_20354_BU_idea_FM_Lenovo Z50-70)
    vendor: LENOVO
    version: Lenovo Z50-70
    serial: 1037407803441
    width: 64 bits
    capabilities: smbios-2.7 dmi-2.7 vsyscall32
    configuration: administrator_password=disabled boot=normal chassis=notebook family=IDEAPAD frontpanel_password=disabled keyboard_password=disabled power-on_password=disabled sku=LENOVO_MT_20354_BU_idea_FM_Lenovo Z50-70 uuid=E4B1D229-D237-E411-9F6E-28D244EBBD98
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       product: Lancer 5A5
       vendor: LENOVO
       physical id: 0
       version: 31900059WIN
       serial: YB06377069
       slot: Type2 - Board Chassis Location
     *-firmware
          description: BIOS
          vendor: LENOVO
          physical id: 0
          version: 9BCN26WW
          date: 07/31/2014
          size: 128KiB
          capacity: 4032KiB
          capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect edd int13floppynec int13floppytoshiba int13floppy360 int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int9keyboard int10video acpi usb biosbootspecification uefi
......

You can print a summary of your hardware information by using the -short option.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo lshw -short

H/W path       Device      Class          Description
=====================================================
                           system         20354 (LENOVO_MT_20354_BU_idea_FM_Lenovo Z50-70)
/0                         bus            Lancer 5A5
/0/0                       memory         128KiB BIOS
/0/4                       processor      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4210U CPU @ 1.70GHz
/0/4/b                     memory         32KiB L1 cache
/0/4/c                     memory         256KiB L2 cache
/0/4/d                     memory         3MiB L3 cache
/0/a                       memory         32KiB L1 cache
/0/12                      memory         8GiB System Memory
/0/12/0                    memory         DIMM [empty]
/0/12/1                    memory         DIMM [empty]
/0/12/2                    memory         8GiB SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0.6 ns)
/0/12/3                    memory         DIMM [empty]
/0/100                     bridge         Haswell-ULT DRAM Controller
/0/100/2                   display        Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller
/0/100/3                   multimedia     Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller
...

If you wish to generate output as a html file, you can use the option -html.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo lshw -html > lshw.html

3. How to View Linux CPU Information

To view information about your CPU, use the lscpu command as it shows information about your CPU architecture such as number of CPU’s, cores, CPU family model, CPU caches, threads, etc from sysfs and /proc/cpuinfo.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lscpu

Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 69
Stepping:              1
CPU MHz:               768.000
BogoMIPS:              4788.72
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              3072K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3

4. How to Collect Linux Block Device Information

Block devices are storage devices such as hard disks, flash drives etc. lsblk command is used to report information about block devices as follows.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lsblk

NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda       8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1    8:1    0  1000M  0 part 
├─sda2    8:2    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3    8:3    0  1000M  0 part 
├─sda4    8:4    0   128M  0 part 
├─sda5    8:5    0 557.1G  0 part 
├─sda6    8:6    0    25G  0 part 
├─sda7    8:7    0  14.7G  0 part 
├─sda8    8:8    0     1M  0 part 
├─sda9    8:9    0 324.5G  0 part /
└─sda10   8:10   0   7.9G  0 part [SWAP]
sr0      11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  

If you want to view all block devices on your system then include the -a option.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lsblk -a

NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda       8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1    8:1    0  1000M  0 part 
├─sda2    8:2    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3    8:3    0  1000M  0 part 
├─sda4    8:4    0   128M  0 part 
├─sda5    8:5    0 557.1G  0 part 
├─sda6    8:6    0    25G  0 part 
├─sda7    8:7    0  14.7G  0 part 
├─sda8    8:8    0     1M  0 part 
├─sda9    8:9    0 324.5G  0 part /
└─sda10   8:10   0   7.9G  0 part [SWAP]
sdb       8:16   1         0 disk 
sr0      11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  
ram0      1:0    0    64M  0 disk 
ram1      1:1    0    64M  0 disk 
ram2      1:2    0    64M  0 disk 
ram3      1:3    0    64M  0 disk 
ram4      1:4    0    64M  0 disk 
ram5      1:5    0    64M  0 disk 
ram6      1:6    0    64M  0 disk 
ram7      1:7    0    64M  0 disk 
ram8      1:8    0    64M  0 disk 
ram9      1:9    0    64M  0 disk 
loop0     7:0    0         0 loop 
loop1     7:1    0         0 loop 
loop2     7:2    0         0 loop 
loop3     7:3    0         0 loop 
loop4     7:4    0         0 loop 
loop5     7:5    0         0 loop 
loop6     7:6    0         0 loop 
loop7     7:7    0         0 loop 
ram10     1:10   0    64M  0 disk 
ram11     1:11   0    64M  0 disk 
ram12     1:12   0    64M  0 disk 
ram13     1:13   0    64M  0 disk 
ram14     1:14   0    64M  0 disk 
ram15     1:15   0    64M  0 disk 

5. How to Print USB Controllers Information

The lsusb command is used to report information about USB controllers and all the devices that are connected to them.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lsusb

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0bda:b728 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 5986:0249 Acer, Inc 
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bda:0129 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTS5129 Card Reader Controller
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 045e:00cb Microsoft Corp. Basic Optical Mouse v2.0
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

You can use the -v option to generate a detailed information about each USB device.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lsusb -v

6. How to Print PCI Devices Information

PCI devices may included usb ports, graphics cards, network adapters etc. The lspci tool is used to generate information concerning all PCI controllers on your system plus the devices that are connected to them.

To print information about PCI devices run the following command.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT DRAM Controller (rev 0b)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller (rev 0b)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP USB xHCI HC (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP HECI #0 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev e4)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev e4)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev e4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP USB EHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Lynx Point-LP SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
03:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM108M [GeForce 840M] (rev a2)

Use the -t option to produce output in a tree format.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lspci -t

-[0000:00]-+-00.0
           +-02.0
           +-03.0
           +-14.0
           +-16.0
           +-1b.0
           +-1c.0-[01]----00.0
           +-1c.3-[02]----00.0
           +-1c.4-[03]----00.0
           +-1d.0
           +-1f.0
           +-1f.2
           \-1f.3

Use the -v option to produce detailed information about each connected device.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lspci -v

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT DRAM Controller (rev 0b)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3978
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Capabilities: 

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device 380d
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 62
	Memory at c3000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
	Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	I/O ports at 6000 [size=64]
	Expansion ROM at  [disabled]
	Capabilities: 
	Kernel driver in use: i915
.....

7. How to Print SCSI Devices Information

To view all your scsi/sata devices, use the lsscsi command as follows. If you do not have lsscsi tool installed, run the following command to install it.

$ sudo apt-get install lsscsi        [on Debian derivatives]
# yum install lsscsi                 [On RedHat based systems]
# dnf install lsscsi                 [On Fedora 21+ Onwards]

After install, run the lsscsi command as shown:

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lsscsi

[0:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      ST1000LM024 HN-M 2BA3  /dev/sda 
[1:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  PLDS     DVD-RW DA8A5SH   RL61  /dev/sr0 
[4:0:0:0]    disk    Generic- xD/SD/M.S.       1.00  /dev/sdb 

Use the -s option to show device sizes.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ lsscsi -s

[0:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      ST1000LM024 HN-M 2BA3  /dev/sda   1.00TB
[1:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  PLDS     DVD-RW DA8A5SH   RL61  /dev/sr0        -
[4:0:0:0]    disk    Generic- xD/SD/M.S.       1.00  /dev/sdb        -

8. How to Print Information about SATA Devices

You can find some information about sata devices on your system as follows using the hdparm utility. In the example below, I used the block device /dev/sda1 which the harddisk on my system.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo hdparm /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
 multcount     =  0 (off)
 IO_support    =  1 (32-bit)
 readonly      =  0 (off)
 readahead     = 256 (on)
 geometry      = 56065/255/63, sectors = 2048000, start = 2048

To print information about device geometry interms of cylinders, heads, sectors, size and the starting offset of the device, use the -g option.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo hdparm -g /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
 geometry      = 56065/255/63, sectors = 2048000, start = 2048

9. How to Print Linux File System Information

To gather information about file system partitions, you can use fdisk command. Although the main functionality of fdisk command is to modify file system partitions, it can also be used to view information about the different partitions on your file system.

You can print partition information as follows. Remember to run the command as a superuser or else you may not see any output.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcee8ad92

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1  1953525167   976762583+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.

10. How to Extract Information about Hardware Components

You can also use the dmidecode utility to extract hardware information by reading data from the DMI tables.

To print information about memory, run this command as a superuser.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo dmidecode -t memory

# dmidecode 2.12
# SMBIOS entry point at 0xaaebef98
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0005, DMI type 5, 24 bytes
Memory Controller Information
	Error Detecting Method: None
	Error Correcting Capabilities:
		None
	Supported Interleave: One-way Interleave
	Current Interleave: One-way Interleave
	Maximum Memory Module Size: 8192 MB
	Maximum Total Memory Size: 32768 MB
	Supported Speeds:
		Other
	Supported Memory Types:
		Other
	Memory Module Voltage: Unknown
	Associated Memory Slots: 4
		0x0006
		0x0007
		0x0008
		0x0009
	Enabled Error Correcting Capabilities:
		None
...

To print information about system, run this command.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo dmidecode -t system

# dmidecode 2.12
# SMBIOS entry point at 0xaaebef98
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0001, DMI type 1, 27 bytes
System Information
	Manufacturer: LENOVO
	Product Name: 20354
	Version: Lenovo Z50-70
	Serial Number: 1037407803441
	UUID: 29D2B1E4-37D2-11E4-9F6E-28D244EBBD98
	Wake-up Type: Power Switch
	SKU Number: LENOVO_MT_20354_BU_idea_FM_Lenovo Z50-70
	Family: IDEAPAD
...

To print information about BIOS, run this command.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo dmidecode -t bios

# dmidecode 2.12
# SMBIOS entry point at 0xaaebef98
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
	Vendor: LENOVO
	Version: 9BCN26WW
	Release Date: 07/31/2014
	Address: 0xE0000
	Runtime Size: 128 kB
	ROM Size: 4096 kB
	Characteristics:
		PCI is supported
		BIOS is upgradeable
		BIOS shadowing is allowed
		Boot from CD is supported
		Selectable boot is supported
		EDD is supported
		Japanese floppy for NEC 9800 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
		Japanese floppy for Toshiba 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
		5.25"/360 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
		8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
		CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
		ACPI is supported
		USB legacy is supported
		BIOS boot specification is supported
		Targeted content distribution is supported
		UEFI is supported
	BIOS Revision: 0.26
	Firmware Revision: 0.26
...

To print information about processor, run this command.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ sudo dmidecode -t processor

# dmidecode 2.12
# SMBIOS entry point at 0xaaebef98
SMBIOS 2.7 present.

Handle 0x0004, DMI type 4, 42 bytes
Processor Information
	Socket Designation: U3E1
	Type: Central Processor
	Family: Core i5
	Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation
	ID: 51 06 04 00 FF FB EB BF
	Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 69, Stepping 1
	Flags:
...

Summary

There are many other ways you can use to obtain information about your system hardware components. Most of these commands use files in the /proc directory to extract system information.

Source

One of the several duties of a system administrator is to install and manage software on a computer system-Linux in this case and in order keep track of installed/available software packages on your system, you can learn, and/or keep in mind a few quick commands.

In this article, we will explain how to list all installed rpm packages on CentOS, RHEL and Fedora distributions using four different ways.

1. Using RPM Package Manager

RPM (RPM Package Manager) formerly known as Red-Hat Package Manager is an open source, low-level package manager, which runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as well as other Linux such as CentOS, Fedora and UNIX systems.

You can compare it to DPKG Package Manager, the default packaging system for Debian and it’s derivatives such as Ubuntu, Kali Linux etc.

The following command will print a list of all installed packages on your Linux system, the flag -q meaning query and -a enables listing of all installed packages:

# rpm -qa

2. Using YUM Package Manager

YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) is an interactive, front-end rpm based, package manager.

You can use the yum command below to list all installed packages on your system, one advantage with this method is, it includes the repository from which a package was installed:

# yum list installed

3. Using YUM-Utils

Yum-utils is an assortment of tools and programs for managing yum repositories, installing debug packages, source packages, extended information from repositories and administration.

To install it, run the command below as root, otherwise, use sudo command:

# yum update && yum install yum-utils

Once you have it installed, type the repoquery command below to list all installed packages on your system:

# repoquery -a --installed 

To list installed packages from a particular repository, use the yumdb program in the form below:

# yumdb search from_repo base

Read more about package management in Linux:

1. Linux Package Management with Yum, RPM, Apt, Dpkg, Aptitude and Zypper
2. 5 Best Linux Package Managers for Linux Newbies
3. 20 Useful ‘Yum’ Commands for Package Management
4. 27 ‘DNF’ (Fork of Yum) Commands for RPM Package Management in Fedora

In this article, we showed you how to list all installed packages on CentOS or RHEL four different ways.

Source

As system administrators, we would have got requirements wherein we need to configure raw hard disks to the existing servers as part of upgrading server capacity or sometimes disk replacement in case of disk failure.

In this article, I will take you through the steps by which we can add the new raw hard disk to an existing Linux server such as RHEL/CentOS or Debian/Ubuntu.

Suggested Read: How to Add a New Disk Larger Than 2TB to An Existing Linux

Important: Please note that the purpose of this article is to show only how to create a new partition and doesn’t include partition extension or any other switches.

I am using fdisk utility to do this configuration.

I have added a hard disk of 20GB capacity to be mounted as a /data partition.

fdisk is a command line utility to view and manage hard disks and partitions on Linux systems.

# fdisk -l

This will list the current partitions and configurations.

After attaching the hard disk of 20GB capacity, the fdisk -l will give the below output.

# fdisk -l

New disk added is shown as /dev/xvdc. If we are adding physical disk it will show as /dev/sda based of the disk type. Here I used a virtual disk.

To partition a particular hard disk, for example /dev/xvdc.

# fdisk /dev/xvdc

Commonly used fdisk commands.

• n – Create partition
• p – print partition table
• d – delete a partition
• q – exit without saving the changes
• w – write the changes and exit.

Here since we are creating a partition use n option.

Create either primary/extended partitions. By default we can have upto 4 primary partitions.

Give the partition number as desired. Recommended to go for the default value 1.

Give the value of the first sector. If it is a new disk, always select default value. If you are creating a second partition on the same disk, we need to add 1 to the last sector of the previous partition.

Give the value of the last sector or the partition size. Always recommended to give the size of the partition. Always prefix + to avoid value out of range error.

Save the changes and exit.

Now format the disk with mkfs command.

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvdc1

Once formatting has been completed, now mount the partition as shown below.

# mount /dev/xvdc1 /data

Make an entry in /etc/fstab file for permanent mount at boot time.

/dev/xvdc1	/data	ext4	defaults     0   0

Conclusion

Now you know how to partition a raw disk using fdisk command and mount the same.

We need to be extra cautious while working with the partitions especially when you are editing the configured disks.

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This is the part of our on-going series of commands in Linux. We have covered basic ls command and cat command. In this article, we are trying to explore top command which is one of the most frequently used commands in our daily system administrative jobs. top command displays processor activity of your Linux box and also displays tasks managed by kernel in real-time. It’ll show processor and memory are being used and other information like running processes. This may help you to take correct action. top command found in UNIX-like operating systems.

You might also be interested in following tutorials :

1. Htop (Linux Process Monitoring) tool for RHEL, CentOS & Fedora
2. Iotop (Monitor Linux Disk I/O) in RHEL, CentOS and Fedora

1. Display of Top Command

In this example, it will show information like tasks, memory, cpu and swap. Press ‘q‘ to quit window.

# top

2. Sorting with -O (Uppercase Letter ‘O’).

Press (Shift+O) to Sort field via field letter, for example press ‘a‘ letter to sort process with PID (Process ID).

Type any key to return to main top window with sorted PID order as shown in below screen. Press ‘q‘ to quit exit the window.

3. Display Specific User Process

Use top command with ‘u‘ option will display specific User process details.

# top -u tecmint

4. Highlight Running Process in Top

Press ‘z‘ option in running top command will display running process in color which may help you to identified running process easily.

5. Shows Absolute Path of Processes

Press ‘c‘ option in running top command, it will display absolute path of running process.

6. Change Delay or Set ‘Screen Refresh Interval’ in Top

By default screen refresh interval is 3.0 seconds, same can be change pressing ‘d‘ option in running top command and change it as desired as shown below.

7. Kill running process with argument ‘k’

You can kill a process after finding PID of process by pressing ‘k‘ option in running top command without exiting from top window as shown below.

8. Sort by CPU Utilisation

Press (Shift+P) to sort processes as per CPU utilization. See screenshot below.

9. Renice a Process

You can use ‘r‘ option to change the priority of the process also called Renice.

10. Save Top Command Results

To save the running top command results output to a file /root/.toprc use the following command.

# top -n 1 -b > top-output.txt

11. Getting Top Command Help

Press ‘h‘ option to obtain the top command help.

12. Exit Top Command After Specific repetition

Top output keep refreshing until you press ‘q‘. With below command top command will automatically exit after 10 number of repetition.

# top -n 10

There are number of arguments to know more about top command you may refer man page of top command.

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