| The following document includes a continuous description of the current |
| commands, functions and utilities included in the busybox. |
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| John Cooper |
| johnc@lineo.com |
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| _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| BusyBox 0.38, Functions and the Arguments they Support |
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| New Apps that have been added to BusyBox since this document was written: |
| ping, hostname, mkfifo, free, tail, du, tee, head, sort, uniq, lsmod, rmmod, fbset, and loadacm. |
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| ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| cat [file] |
| Display file contents to standard output. |
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| _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| chmod [-R] Mode,[Mode] file |
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| Change file access permissions (mode) of one or more files. |
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| -R Follows the directory tree from the current location thru all sub-directories, |
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| applying changes. |
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| Mode = u User |
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| g Group |
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| o Other |
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| a All |
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| Permission = r Read |
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| w Write |
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| s Set user (or group) ID |
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| t Sticky bit file cannot be removed by other |
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| than the owner. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| chown [option] owner[group]file |
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| Change owner and (or) group of file to owner and (or) group. |
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| Only the current owner or a priveleged user may change an owner. |
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| -R Follows the directory tree from the current location thru all sub-directories, applying |
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| changes. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| chgrp [option] newgroup file |
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| Change group of file or files to new group name or ID number located in /etc/group. |
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| Only the current owner or a priveleged user may change the group name or ID |
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| -R Follows the directory tree from the current location thru all sub-directories, |
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| applying changes. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| chroot NEWROOT [Command...] (System Admin Command) |
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| Run command with root directory set to NEWROOT. Only the current owner or a priveleged |
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| user may use this command. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| clear |
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| Clear screen. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| cp [option] fileA fileB |
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| Copy fileA to fileB or fileA to directory maintaining fileA name. |
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| -a archive Maintain file attributes whenever possible. Same as -dpR |
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| -d no dereference Maintain hard link relationships between fileA and fileB. |
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| No dereference of symbolic links. |
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| -p maintain file Maintain all file attributes and information including owner |
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| attributes group permissions and time information. |
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| -R recursive Copies directories recursively |
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| _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| date [option [+format] [date] |
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| date [option] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.SS]] |
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| Display the current system date and time. |
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| -R RFC-822 string Output an RFC-822 compliant date string. |
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| -s set DATE Set date where date is entered in MMDDhhmm etc. format. |
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| -u universal Print or set Coordinated Universal Time. |
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| _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| dd [if=name] [of=name] [bs=n] [count=n] |
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| Copy a file, converting and formatting according to options. Most useful when copying from |
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| physical input and output devices. |
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| if=fileA (instead of standard input) |
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| of=fileB (instead of standard output) |
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| bs=n Read and write N Bytes at a time. |
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| count=n Copy only n input blocks. |
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| Bytes may be suffixed by k for x1024, b for x512 and w for x2. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| df |
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| Display filesystem, number of blocks used, number of blocks available, number of blocks in use, |
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| and mount point. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| dmesg [-c] [-n level] [-s bufsize] (System Admin Command) |
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| Display system control messages. Stored in the kernel ring buffer are all messages since the |
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| last system boot, or the most recent if the buffer had been full. |
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| -c Clear buffer after printing messages. |
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| -n level Set the level of system message to be displayed on the console. |
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| -s bufsize Display the size of the kernel ring buffer. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| find [PATH] [EXPRESSION] |
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| Search for files in the current directory, and all subdirectories for patterns that match |
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| expression. Expressions may consist of the following. |
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| -follow Dereference symbolic links. |
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| -name PATTERN Find files that match PATTERN. Metacharacters should be escaped or |
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| quoted. |
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| -print Print full file name, followed by a newline, to standard out. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| chvt N |
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| Change foreground virtual terminal to /dev/ttyN. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| deallocvt N |
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| Deallocate unused virtual terminal /dev/ttyN. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| fsck.minix [-larvsmf] /dev/name |
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| Perform a consistency check for minix filesystems. |
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| -l List filenames. |
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| -r Perform interactive repairs. |
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| -a Perform automatic repairs |
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| -v Verbose |
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| -s Output superblock information |
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| -m Activates minix-like "mode not cleared" warnings. |
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| -f Force file system check. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| mkfs.minix [-c | -l filename ] [-nXX] [-iXX] /dev/name [blocks] |
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| Make a minix file system. |
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| -c Check device for bad blocks. |
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| -n [ 14|30 ] Specify max length of filenames. |
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| -i Specify number of inodes for filesystem. |
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| -l filename |
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| Read the bad blocks list from filename. |
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| -v Make a minix version 2 filesystem. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| grep [OPTIONS] PATTERN [FILE] |
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| Search for PATTERN in each FILE or from standard input. |
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| -h Suppress prefixing filename on output. |
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| -i Ignore case distinctions. |
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| -n Print line number with output lines. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| init |
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| The parent of all processes. Only to be run by the kernel. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| kill [ -s sigspec | -signum | -sigspec ] [pid | job ] or |
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| kill -l [ exitstatus ] |
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| Currently no information help page for this command |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| ln [option] TARGET... LINK_NAME|DIRECTORY |
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| Create a link named LINK_NAME or DIRECTORY to TARGET. |
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| -s Make symbolic links instead of hard links. |
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| -f Remove existing destination files. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| ls [ -1acdelnpuxACF ] [FILENAMES] |
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| List contents of directories. |
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| -1 Single entry per column of output. |
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| -a All files including hidden files beginning with a .. |
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| -c Files are listed by status change time. |
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| -d List directories, not there contents. |
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| -e (no information on this option) |
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| -l List in long format including permissions, owner, size |
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| modification time etc. |
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| -n Similar to -l, except use group ID and user ID instead |
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| of owner and group names. |
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| -p Directories are marked with a /. |
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| -u Display files sorted by file access time. |
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| -x Display files across the screen in rows. |
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| -A Display hidden and all other files except . and ... |
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| -C (Default, display files in columns) |
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| -F Tag files by type by appending: |
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| / to directories |
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| * to executables |
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| @ to symbolic links |
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| | to fifo's |
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| = to sockets |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| mkdir [OPTION] directory |
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| Create directories if they do not already exist. You must have write permission to create |
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| directories. Default mode can be modified by users umask. |
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| -m Used to set permission mode. (See chmod description) |
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| -p Make parent directories if they don't already exist. Return error code if |
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| they already exist. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| mknod NAME TYPE MAJOR MINOR |
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| Make block or character special files. |
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| TYPEs include: |
| b: Make a block (buffered) device. |
| c or u: Make a character (un-buffered) device. |
| p: Make a named pipe. Major and minor are ignored for named pipes. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| mkswap [-c] [ -v0|-v1 ] device [block-count] |
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| Prepare a disk partition to be used as a swap partition. |
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| -c Check for read-ability. |
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| -v0 Make version 0 swap [max 128 megs] |
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| -v1 Make version 1 swap [big |] default for |
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| kernels > 2.1.117. |
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| block-count |
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| Number of blocks to use. (Default is the entire |
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| partition). |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| more [file] |
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| Display file one screen page at a time. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| mount [flags] |
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| mount [flags] device directory [-o options, more options ] |
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| Mount a filesystem for file access. |
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| -a Mount all file systems in fstab. |
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| -o option |
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| async/sync: Writes are asynchronous/synchronous. |
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| dev/nodev: Allow use of special device files |
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| /disallow them. |
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| exec/noexec: Allow use of executable files |
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| /disallow them. |
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| suid/nosuid: Allow set-user-id-root programs |
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| /disallow them. |
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| remount: Remount a currently-mounted filesystem |
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| changing it's flags. |
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| ro/rw: Mount for read-only/read-write. |
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| (There are more flags specific to each filesystem. |
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| See the written documentation for those.) |
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| -r Mount the filesystem read only. |
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| -t FILESYSTEM TYPE |
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| Specify the filesystem type. |
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| -w Mount for reading and writing default |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| mv fileA fileB or |
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| mv fileA dirA |
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| Move fileA to fileB. (Renames fileA to fileB) |
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| Move fileA to dirA (Moves fileA into dirA) |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| ps |
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| Report process status. No options are currently supported. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| pwd |
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| Print working directory |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| reboot |
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| Reboot system. No options are currently supported. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| rm [option] file |
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| Remove or unlink the files. |
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| -f Remove existing destinations. Never prompt. |
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| -r or -R Remove contents of directories recursively. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| rmdir [OPTION] ... directory |
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| Remove directories if they are empty. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| sed |
| Usage: sed [-n] -e script [file...] |
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| Allowed sed scripts come in the following form: |
| 'ADDR [!] COMMAND' |
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| where address ADDR can be: |
| NUMBER Match specified line number |
| $ Match last line |
| /REGEXP/ Match specified regexp |
| (! inverts the meaning of the match) |
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| and COMMAND can be: |
| s/regexp/replacement/[igp] |
| which attempt to match regexp against the pattern space |
| and if successful replaces the matched portion with replacement. |
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| aTEXT |
| which appends TEXT after the pattern space |
| Options: |
| -e add the script to the commands to be executed |
| -n suppress automatic printing of pattern space |
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| This version of sed matches full regular expresions. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| sleep N |
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| Pause for N seconds. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| tar -[cxtvOf] [tarFileName] [file] |
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| Create, extract or list files from a tar file. |
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| c=create |
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| x=extract |
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| t=list contents |
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| v=verbose |
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| O=extract to stdout |
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| f=tarfile or "-" for standard input |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| swapon device |
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| Start swapping virtual memory pages on the given device. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| swapoff device |
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| Stop swapping virtual memory pages on the given device. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| sync |
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| Write all buffered filesystem blocks to disk. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| touch [-c] file [file...] |
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| Update the last modified date on given file(s). |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| true |
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| A null command that returns a successful 0 exit status code. (See false) |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| false |
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| A null command that returns an unsuccessful or non-zero exit status. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| uname [option] |
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| Print certain system information. With no option, same as -s. |
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| -a Display all information |
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| -m Display machine hardware type. |
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| -n Display machine network node hostname. |
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| -r Display OS release |
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| -s Display OS Name. |
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| -p Display Host processor type. |
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| -v Display OS Version. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| umount [flags] filesystem | directory |
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| Unmounts designated filesystem previously mounted on device. |
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| -a Unmount all file systems. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| update |
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| cvs update [options] files |
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| Incorporates recent changes from the repository into files in your working directory. No |
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| options are currently supported. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| zcat [options] files |
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| Usage: zcat [OPTION]... FILE |
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| Uncompress FILE (or standard input if FILE is '-'). |
| (When invoked as zcat, defaults to having -c turned on) |
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| Options: |
| -c Write output to standard output |
| -t Test compressed file integrity |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| gunzip (Same as zcat, but without the "-c" option.) |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| gzip [OPTION]... FILE |
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| Compress FILE with maximum compression. |
| When FILE is -, reads standard input. Implies -c. |
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| Options: |
| -c Write output to standard output instead of FILE.gz |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| loadfont |
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| No information available with --help. |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| loadkmap |
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| No information available with --help |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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| linuxrc |
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| No information available with --help |
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| ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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