In a previous article, we showed the use of some useful commands for manipulating files and directories, in this case, several commands are presented which allow us to collect certain system information. Also, we will see that displaying the content of certain files, can also be a way for giving useful information. Furthermore, the use of session managing commands will be described.

We begin with some commands to get system information: kernel features and architecture.

arch                   # architecture
uname -m               # architecture
uname -r               # kernel version
uname -a               #complete information
cat /etc/issue         # distribution name

Recall that in Linux, everything is stored in files, so if we want to see a detailed system information, /proc directory will be of much help, because it contains the files hierarchy that shows the current state of the kernel. Within this directory you can find a lot of information about the hardware and any processes running. If you enter to this directory, and you see that files have 0 bytes, do not worry it’s normal, because the /proc directory contains another file type called virtual files, unlike the known types: text and binary files, that you will be more familiarized with. Here are some examples:

cat /proc/cpuinfo             # CPU information
cat /proc/interrupts          # show interruptions
cat /proc/meminfo             # verify memory usage
cat /proc/mounts              # show mounted filesystem 
cat /proc/swaps               # show swap
cat /proc/version             # kernel version
cat /proc/net/dev             # show network adapters and statistics
lspci -tv                     # show PCI devices
lsusb -tv                     # show USB devices

On the other hand, if you want a real-time monitor system, the following command is the indicated. When you are using it you can type some options: h - help, u – user, p - PID, q - exit.

top                           # show Linux tasks</pre>

For dates, schedules and time, also we have two useful commands:<

date                          # show system date
date 041217002011.00          # set date and time
cal 2011                      # show 2011 schedule
cal 02 2009                   # show february 2009 schedule
clock -w                      # save date changes in BIOS

To view the disk space consumption, directories or files, we can use different commands like ls, df and du. Below we combine them with other commands to optimize viewing:

ls -lSr | more                             # show file and directories sorted by size
df -h                                      # partitions list
du -sh dir1                                # used space by dir1
du -h --max-depth=1 | sort -nr             # show size of all subdirectories in the current location in descending order
du -sk * | sort -rn                        # show file and directories sorted by size

Finally, shutdown, restart or log off:

shutdown -h 23:17                # scheduled shutdown at 23:17
shutdown -c                      # cancel a scheduled shutdown
shutdown -h now                  # shutdown
shutdown -r now                  # restart
halt                             # shutdown
poweroff                         # shutdown
reboot                           # restart
logout                           # log out

Refereces

  1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Reference Manual