Linux CLI & Bash Cheat Sheet — Essential Terminal One-Liners
High-frequency Linux terminal commands for file management, process monitoring, disk space, pipes, and server administration.
File & Directory Navigation
ls -la
List all files including hidden dotfiles with file sizes, owners, and permissions
find . -name "*.log" -type f
Find all files ending in .log recursively from current directory
grep -rn "API_KEY" src/
Search for text recursively showing line numbers in folder src/
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz folder/
Compress folder into a gzip tarball
tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz
Extract a gzip tarball to current folder
System, Disk & Network
df -h
Show human-readable disk space usage across mounted drives
du -sh * | sort -hr
List folder sizes in current directory sorted from largest to smallest
lsof -i :3000
Identify what process or PID is listening on port 3000
kill -9 <PID>
Force terminate a process by its process ID
htop
Interactive visual process viewer and CPU/RAM monitor
Permissions & Ownership
chmod +x script.sh
Grant execute permission to script file
chmod -R 755 /var/www
Set read/write/execute for owner, read/execute for others recursively
chown -R user:group folder/
Change owner and group recursively