SSH & Linux Commands Cheatsheet

A running list of SSH and Linux commands I use regularly when managing servers. Nothing fancy — just the ones I keep looking up.

Navigation

# Move into a directory
cd /var/www/html/

# Go up two levels
cd ../..

# Where am I?
pwd

# List files (all, long format, human-readable sizes)
ls -alh

Finding Things

# Find a file by name
find . -name "wp-config.php"

# Find with wildcard
find . -name "*.log"

# Find directories only
find . -name "uploads" -type d

# Search inside files (recursive, case-insensitive, show filenames)
grep -ril "search_string" /path/to/directory/

grep flags: r recursive, i case-insensitive, l filenames only, c count matches.

Find + Exec

Run a command on every match from find:

# Set directory permissions to 755
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

# Set file permissions to 644
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

# Move all .eml files to another folder
find . -name "*.eml" -exec mv -uv {} /home/user/mail/cur \;

# Delete all error_log files
find . -name "error_log" -exec rm -v {} \;

Files & Directories

# Copy a file
cp source.txt /path/to/destination/

# Download a file from a URL
wget https://example.com/file.zip

# Delete a file
rm -v file.txt

# Delete a directory and everything in it
rm -rvf directory_name/

Archives

# Create a tar.gz archive
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz /path/to/folder/

# Extract a tar.gz archive
tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

Flags: c create, x extract, z gzip compression, v verbose, f filename follows.

MySQL from the Command Line

# Export a database
mysqldump -u db_user -p db_name > backup.sql

# Import a database
mysql -u db_user -p db_name < backup.sql

The -p flag prompts for the password — don't put it inline in the command.