Tips and Tricks for Navigating Linux
tmux
Tmux is a powerful screen multiplexer, meaning it lets you handle multiple panes in a command line interface, which is super useful for sys-admin tasks, hackthebox, and really anything on linux that involves multitasking. I found myself using it alot in my time as a linux admin when handling multiple remote SSH connections to various servers, and it is a fantastic tool.
To start a new tmux session in your current directory,type tmux new -s <name>
The default prefix key for tmux commands is ctrl+b
To open a new window in tmux, press prefix+c
Switch between tmux windows with prefix+<Window #>
To rename a tmux window, prefix+,
To detatch from your tmux session, press prefix+d
List tmux sessions with tmux ls
Join a tmux session with tmux attach -t <session name>
Horizontally split your terminal with prefix+"
Vertically split your terminal with prefix+%
Move between split panes using prefix+<arrow key>
Zoom in and out of split panes using prefix+z
To adjust the size of split panes use prefix+<hold arrow key>
To switch the position of panes use prefix+{ or prefix+}
To cycle through different layouts of panes use prefix+<space bar>
Grep
| Grep is a very powerful command line tool used to find matching patterns. You can use it to find a file in a directory, to find a specific string inside of a file, or you can even use it on the output of another command with the | character. The basic syntax of a grep command is |
grep [options] [pattern] [file]
So, to find a file within a directory, you can use
ls [/path/to/directory/] | grep [pattern]
Because linux is case sensitive, you can use the -i flag to grep for results in a non case sensitive fashion, as such
grep -i [pattern] [/path/to/file.txt]
To make grep search through files recursivly in a directory, type
grep -r [pattern] [/path/to/directory/]
To make grep invert the sense of matching, and exclude a specific pattern, use the -v flag
grep -v [pattern] [/path/to/directory/]
There are tons more flags and options for grep, but these are a few that I find myself using most often. These can also be chained together to do more cool stuff. For example,
ls /var/www | grep -iv config
Will search for file names within the /var/www/ directory that do not contain config. To view the full power of grep, you can always use
man grep
Vim
Vim is a powerful text editor, and is ubiquitous accross linux systems. One of the mottos of Vim is “edit at the speed of thought”, and vim really is it’s own language.
Opening a vile with vim <file> will enter you in read-only normal mode. To edit the file, press i to enter insert mode, and hit esc to exit insert mode. Some useful shortcuts include:
x : Cut Character
dw : cut word
dd : cut full line
yw : copy word
yy : copy full line
p : paste
You can multiple any command to run multiple times by adding a number before it, 4yw will copy 4 words for example.
You can hit : to enter command mode, some basic ones include
:1 : jump to the first line
:w : write (save)
:q : quit
:q! : force quit (without saving)
:wq : write and quit