Some usefull links to help you with linux

[php_rules]

Hi, I thought that I'd post a few general links to help you with the day to day running of your linux servers..

firstly a link to putty.
Putty is a secure shell for windows - it lets you open an encrypted session to your server. (IMHO the best thing you can install on a windows machine)
download putty from here

a list of a few good commands to help you navigate around comes next...

mc - a norton commander clone, think file manager for the shell

top - shows the running processes on the machine

dmesg - shows the system messages

dmesg | grep statement - this will search through dmesg and display only the lines that contain 'statement' - change 'statement' to anything you want.

uname -a - this will list the details about your kernel - very usefull sometimes

cat /proc/cpuinfo - will list all the info about your cpu
cat /proc/cpuinfo | more - will list your cpu info one screen-full at a time

nmap 127.0.0.1 (if nmap is installed) will do a port scan of your own machine, this will tell you all the services running (so that you can shut down services that you don't need, or want)

finally, a link to a site that will help you lock down your box.

what IBM has to say about hardening linux

there are a lot more things to think about, but if you are new, then these should at least help a little.

[carl owen]

Thank you for this informative post. It is a very useful post and this will definitely help the users who will be starting with Linux.

[php_rules]

Just to expand a little - If you are in a shell (think command prompt) then these are a few commands you can use to navigate your way around.

ls - list the contents of the current directory
ls -a - list the contents of the current directory with detailed information
chmod +x file - makes file executable
chmod -x files - makes file unexecutable
whoami - tells you the user you are logged in as
who - tells you allt he users currently logged in on the system
vim file - opens up the VI editor displaying the content of file
cat file - concatenates file on the screen (prints it out on your screen - very useful)
cd - change the working directort - eg cd /etc/apache will change directory to /etc/apache

I will add more later on once i think of them, but these are the commands that I use most. Feel free to expand this list so that people can get some idea on how to operate their linux box if they arent sure.