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Basic Unix Commands & Cron Jobs

Below are some of the most commonly used Unix commands. To obtain full documentation and syntax of all Unix commands, you can quickly find answers to your questions at the Unix Help website.

File Manipulation mv - Move file command cp - Copy file command rm - Remove file command Directory Manipulation pwd - Prints out your working directory mkdir - Creates a new directory cd - Changes Directories rmdir - Removes Directory Account Management ls - list the contents of a directory passwd - Change your password zip, unzip - Zip or unzip files du - Display disk usage locate - Find files Full Applications for Online Work pico - edit a file online lynx - simple browser for viewing your pages mail, pine, elm - Popular mail applications

Cron Jobs

One of the most powerful and useful features that a Unix operating system has is the ability to schedule and run any task at any given time and day. This gives users the capability to schedule jobs to run. These jobs include, but not limited to, running cleanups, backups, updates, running specific applications, etc. The most common way to schedule these tasks are by using the commonly known Cron. Cron is basically a "clock daemon" that runs 24 hours and 7 days a week; it constantly checks to see if there are any jobs to run and if there is, it runs them. You can even have the results emailed directly to you upon completion.

For example, a crontab ('cron table') entry such as " 50 1 15,30 * 5 payroll " would run a hypothetical 'payroll' command at 1:50 AM on the fifteenth and thirtieth of every month, as well as every Friday.

Type "man crontab" for information on how to edit your crontab, and "man 5 crontab" for information on the format.