Finding system information from the command line

At Your Command

© Sasha Radosavljevic, 123RF

© Sasha Radosavljevic, 123RF

Article from Issue 105/2009
Author(s):

The command line provides a plethora of information that you cannot obtain from the desktop.

The command line is an interface designed to give you full control over the system when you are logged in as root. Because information is needed for control, it's not surprising that the average free desktop contains dozens of commands designed to tell you exactly what is happening on your system. In fact, many commands give you so much more information than you could possibly be interested in that you might be tempted to shout, "Overshare!" in much the same tones you did when your roommate last gave you a play-by-play account of his or her most recent date.

To start, I will talk about some of the commands that can reveal most of the information you will likely want about your system. Many have no direct desktop equivalent, but if you are trying to manage a system, on however small a scale, you should find them useful.

Note that many of these commands are not available from everyday accounts. If you try one of them and the system claims that it does not exist, trying logging in as root or starting the command with sudo, and you should be in business.

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