Useful Computer Commands

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Searching files
to search files, type: find . -name tork.txt
to search within a file, use the grep command. grep body *.html

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Compressing and uncompressing files.
to compress, first type tar -cvf mystuff.tar a1.dat a2.dat
then type gzip mystuff.tar Now to uncompress this file, type: gunzip mystuff.tar.gz
tar -xvf mystuff.tar

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File size
To get the size of a directory, or the total size of all your files, use du --max-depth=1

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Removing Files
Here's a dangerous little command...to remove all files from a directory as well as subdirectories, type: rm -rf *
If you just use the rm -f command, then it will not prompt you.

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Running and Monitoring Processes
Running processes in background: xemacs &
Monitoring processing:top
Monitoring processing:ps -e

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File Permissions
To change file permissions, or directory permissions, use chmod 744 siggi
The number tells you the read-write permissions. 777 gives everyone read-write permissions...644 gives everyone read permissions.
But you can't change permissions if you don't have ownership. To see the ownership, type ls -l
. If its a directory, type ls -l .
This is telling you all the permissions. If the first character is a d, that means its a directory.
This webpage has more useful infomation on the chmod command.

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