Discussion on:

10 command-line tools that refuse to die

ipconfig [ /all ] -- 2nd or 3rd place
telnet x.x.x.x [port] to check and open port
ipconfig /renew - place 5th - 6th
nslookup

Don't forget ipconfig /release for when it won't let go.. and I'm surprised the netstat, nslookup, and particularly the netsh commands didn't get a mention here.

I prefer Dig, although in the Windows world, nslookup is the only DNS lookup service available. Why Dig hasn't been ported to Windows I'll never know; it's much more useful.

Dig has been ported to windows, but since it isn't a stock app nslookup still gets used a lot.

Bill

qwinsta /server:

Lists sessions on a server.

rwinsta /server:

Resets that session knocking the user off of the server.

Most valuable

%windir%\system32\taskkill.exe /F /FI "status eq not responding"

I think these 2 command should be included [ ls ] it very common to use, also cd,

cmd

some comments are confusing commands with program or utility names

Try the following:

man man

Then try:
man woman

nsfw.

I tried finding "man bear pig" but it isn't working?
Really liking the comments - great stuff and cmdlet finds that should be an article all to itself.

and copy con

I use nslookup every day, even with tools like dig etc... nslookup is what I was brought up on

tail -n[some number] filename, e.g. 'tail -n300 catalina.out'

Invaluable when trying to work out what's happening when daemon is starting up. Or not.

Whether using DOS, Windows, or linux, whether from a command line or in a bat/cmd/sh file, the "for" command is like the conductor of the soloist, getting the soloist to perform a wide variety of variations on a theme.

On a Solaris system "killall" kills all running processes. Be warned!

cacls for setting file/share perms
w32tm for checking/setting time parameters
shutdown /r for rebooting yours or another system when windows is "uncooperative"
netdom for resetting windows communications secret passwords
nbtstat for checking cached info
dsadd,dsget,dsmod,dsquery for AD management tasks
dnscmd for updating dns
rpcping for tesing rpc connections
ntdcutil for managing fsmo roles, among other things

netstat

with all those parameters - big TICK. I haven't found a backup tool - an' I've tried a fair few in 30 years in IT - that comes anywhere near the simplicity and flexibility of xcopy.

Have you tried to use Robocopy? IMHO it puts xcopy to shame. Way more parameters, plus logging and the fact that is only copies changed files by default when running the same job more than once - like running a backup.

using ">" or ">>" so that you can save and review the output later
e.g dir >> c:\temp\listing.txt
ok that was a trivial example.
or piping into more
dir | more

Group policy updater in windows land.

Windows Ftp when you are at a (customer) PC and need to upload / download a file

It's occasionally happened to me that an application has managed to generate a file name which Windows can't handle, so that Windows Explorer won't delete the file either individually or as part of a group selection because ti can't "see" it. When that happens the best solution seems to be to move all the other files out of the affected directory and then go to the command prompt and do a del *.* on that directory.

Not to worry, your readers caught them.

How can anyone do without an ssh command line when managing remote boxes?

Also, whilst there are a load of GUI front-ends for git, they always stuff up and I end up back at the command line (although 'smartgit' isn't bad)

I would add the "grep" "tail" command as the most popular! "ls -l" and there are many more who we can't forget and even windows user still run cmd line or powershell as it become more popular for windows sys admins.

I'd add tail and less

shutdown -r/-s (-m computername)

sudo?
rm -rf?

Careful using in tandem though.

man? Who uses man? ;^)

Are you saying that you never need directions, or that you know it all already?


Cheers!

Ipconfig in general is number two behind ping. Troubleshooting 101, ping it, if it isn???t ping-able verify the issue isn???t you be for continuing.

I was surprised to not see grep on this list.

Nbtstat -A followed by IP address shows information of that machine

You don't need 'find' just because you lost a file. This command is most useful when you want to locate all common files (like *.jpg) and automatically run other useful commands (like chmod, grep, etc) on them. And don't forget being able to 'pipe' at the command line.

Far and away the most poweful command line tool, because it feed the text output of one command into the input of another.

Works on Windows or Unix.

Has to be in the lineup somewhere!

dir
cd c:\
dir > lpt1

I just downloaded grep and sed from GnuWin32. I hadn't used any Unix for years, never mind how many. But I needed some quick access to some ugly XML, and there it was!

I am reviewing their library for other handy commands.

Yes, I have also used the various network commands suggested.

netstat

There has been a large push from Microsoft lately to move away from the GUI and back to the command line. Server 2008 Server Core is a good example of that. So is Powershell.

grep/egrep
sed
screen -- if you don't know screen, and you do important long-running things at the command line, look it up. You really really want to know screen. Oracle DBA's especially.

netstat, more specifcally netstat -a in Windows

But i did not see anyone put down the ps command in all of its diff flavors. Also the ls command is good for unix/linux and for powershell.
Also, in the performance world I live in, the commands Iostat, Sar, Netstat, and Vmstat can't be beat for the first round of checking a system out.

You just can't find a more powerful search tool than sed and grep with regular expressions.

I run the "top" command every day on my linux servers to search for any processes hung for an extended time.

Perhaps you should start using Cat5e or even 6 cables; its 2012

gpresult /r
gpupdate /force
wuauclt /detectnow

I'm a "tweaker," not a power user, but I've never had any use for any of those ten commands, whether I'm on Linux or Windows, and I've been using Windows since '98, and Linux for just a few years.
Seriously, other than a network administrator who would use some of those when there are more readily available tools?

Some of the suggestions -- ls and cd in particular -- do have good GUI equivalents. Seems silly to think of them as the best reasons to enter a shell.

Sometimes when the GUI is unresponsive I can still get a command prompt open and be able to do commands. For me where the command line becomes the most useful is with automation. Most GUI tools really don't have a way to automate tasks, but the command line does. Some tasks are faster to complete on the command line. Getting the IP address of the computer is a six or seven step process using the GUI. WIth commands it's about three (Win Key + r; cmd; ipconfig /all)

Hi Janitorman, I've seen many times when the command line "overrules" the gui. I use "net use" a lot when a connection maybe open, but not visible in the gui and I can think of many other specifics such as faulty dns gui listings and more. I guess someone who uses command lines (either nix or win) really get a feel of how much more granular and precise it can be. People often wonder why someone would drop to the command line to accomplish something, but there are very specific explanations why it is needed each time. Many GUIs do not reveal what is actually happening behind the scenes and I think too many people trust the gui too much - but that's my 2 cents. You are very correct that network admins use this method a lot and it is difficult to learn so much "syntax" hence the need for a gui to begin with.

Sudo & ipconfig... btw how abt "make"?

PS: loved that "should be slapped with cat5"

To me is an irreplaceable tool. Sure it is among the firt ten.
Best regards.

Hector Pasi

cannot live without any of those network related commands! That's my bread and butter!

grep for Unix / Max and findstr for Windows to filter contents
top / tail
Telnet should go right after ping and trace route to check connectivity
ping and trace route will never die, since they are implementations of ICMP protocol and it is required for any TCP/IP implementation

It is trivial to chain commands together with pipes and redirection on the command line. While there may be a few esoteric exceptions, in general you cannot do this with GUI tools. This is why the command line will never die. I can do things with a few dozen typed characters that would take an impractical amount of time and effort to figure out how to do with GUI tools.

As much as it can be easier to use a gui, command line tools are great for repetitive tasks.If you have to do something every day, or multiple times each day, and/or on multiple servers, script it once, and use forever. The script can also be set up as a job with whatever scheduler you have, and can be run by someone other than you (i.e when you are not around).

Scripting command line tools also reduces human error. For example, a database administrator is often asked to restore a backup of a production database on to a test server. So it is can happen maybe a couple of timse a year or so, that a production database gets overlaid by mistake. Having an on-demand job set up prevents that from happening.

Writting scripts in vi on UNIX machines is what separates the true geeks from the rest of the herd. : )

findstr I use this constantly as a quick filter to almost any command being run. finding this command turned some of my batch scripts into valuable tools. I have found that virtually no one knows this command and it is a bit sad. Combined with pstools and a for / f large scale management becomes just a bit easier.

net view | findstr -i web will find all servers using wins or net bios with the 'web' as part of the name.

type log.txt|findstr -i -c:"My string"

here is my favorite use:
##put all hosts that contain the name web in hosts.txt file
net view | findstr -i web>>hosts.txt
##starts a new cmd prompt restarting IIS on each host simultaneously
for /f %I (hosts.txt) do start iisreset %I
.

Question: Do all platforms support TCP/IP? YES!!! There you have more than 20 commands which are irreplaceable. The article should not focus just on Linux but across all UNIX platforms. I can think of at least 50 commands which the SysAdmin really needs on each different platform. What about Windows...well, Windows is not for Enterprise applications really; Windows is OK for desktop applications and checking email at home so forget about Windows. What about the Man pages...the best there is and no GUI can handle that.

NSLOOKUP for checking DNS.

I think this al depends on the user. If you are a sys admin the use of the command line is much easier and faster.

ls
mv
cp
truss
{f,e,}grep
sed
vi
netstat
vmstat

etc etc etc

"...The only disadvantage of Traceroute is that you must have a working network connection to use it."

That is sort of like saying the only disadvantage of chkdsk is that you need a disk

chroot is one of my favorite commands

Are you kidding? A great deal of the GUI programs for monitoring machine functions are just a graphical display of the command line output.

What about top? How do you know what to kill?

Only people stuck in strick Microsoft mode don't need to know much about the command line. Well I use ping, ipconfig and then some commands from the start menu to call GUIs for like regedit with Microsoft. Used command line when DOS was big and now with Unix and Linux. Perfer to use command line to compile C++. That way there is no weird between you and what is going on. There is no question in my mind as a programmer, DBA, network tech and hardware tech (you can use a Linux live CD to boot with and get a full descrition of a systems hardware from the command line, very helpful in chasing down drivers) and web master that if you don't know the command line, you don't really know all that much about how a computer oprerates. If you really want to know computers, get away from Microsoft, you only learn Microsoft with Microsoft products and get a book or two on command line scripting and learn Unix, BSD and or Linux. You will find that bash schell scriting can interact with MySQL, your environmental variables. read data dump files from any database to spot bad data before you try to upload them to a table and more. Good stuff.

One of my favorites is diskpart followed by clean disk, it has helped me out on numerous occasions When Windows XP can't see a disk that was previously formatted as UDF. Don't automatically assume that a disk is dead just because the Windows XP disk management utility won't see it. Try diskpart first.

I have had times where I have a Server or PC locked up and I have to reboot it but for some reason I can not RDP to it

Shutdown /m \\'SERVERNAME' /r /f /t 0

saved my bacon quite a few times

How often trying to clean a virus out of a Windows machine.
GUI message "that service is running" You know and can see the virus. Windows won't allow a running file to be deleted. Anti virus says it must reboot to remove it, but you can see it reload before the anti virus, Catch 22. Command line use a manual delete problem solved.
Has helped me out countless times.

Does anyone other than me use sfc in Windows. Seems to work in conjunction with chkdsk, although I've often found than when sfc actually does find a problem, it cannot necessarily fix it. I think it then needs a copy of the OS complete with the latest Service Packs on say a DVD and who actually has that?

Love these articles - with LogMeIn Free and the Shutdown /r /f command, I have been able to update and install needed security items on my wife's laptop remotely, while she is traveling on business. But I remain a non-tech total novice. Is there a pdf manual that lists all of these, at least for Win XP Pro SP3, with instructions and samples? And maybe even explains what the hell they do? Thanks !!

Although some aren't MS system commands, there are some of the old DOS or DOS add-on utility commands which still work and fill an occasional need. SWEEP was one, although I haven't tried it in W7 yet. FC to compare a couple files. ATTR to play with file attributes that Windows doesn't let you manage. Using the 'pipe' symbol to pipe the output of one command into another on the same command line. And the combination of CD and DIR to let you see files and directories that Windows translates into something it thinks you want to see (check your recycle bin some time).

Set proc/priv=BYPASS

I have a suite of batch files that I use PSEXEC with so I can do a whole bunch of things to remote PC's quickly and easily. From remotely enabling RDP access to installing apps silently, PSEXEC allows me to do stuff that I would otherwise need to talk user through.

And since when is "cmd" a command line tool? It *IS* the command line!

One is enough: the shell.

As an application dev/support team, I find xcopy most valuable in the cases where the same configuration file needed to be copied to multiple similar locations. Using GUI will means transversing the folders many, many times. It is far easier to issue to a single command.

Why list out windows and unix commands that do the same/related things as different items? You're using up your top ten too quickly instead of writing: "Killall (or TaskKill for Windows)" or "Chown (also Chgrp, Chmod)".

If you grouped them, then you'd have room for more...
- ssh
- dig
- tail
- more
- pico

ChkDsk isn't the "best" tool to check and repair NTFS, it's the only one. It's a loose cannon; either safe but unreliable (prone to false positive errors) when run read-only without the /F, or uncontrollable if run with /F (no pre-action prompts, no undo). But there's nil else available for NTFS, or FAT32 that spans the 137G line.

As to /R, that IMO should not be used at all. If you suspect the surface of the disk is failing, you should do a quick (SMART details) check, back up, and then do a surface check that does not get bogged down trying to "fix" anything, as ChkDsk /R will do. I use HD Tune for both the SMART details and surface scan; the latter tests the whole physical drive, not just the area within particular partitions or volumes.

There's a step before HD Tune, if you find file system corruption, and that is to check the RAM. If the RAM is bad, it's unsafe to run anything on that system; the hard drive should be backed up and tested from within another known-good PC (but not booted there!).

exit

# list directories starting with 'abc' from current location
find . -name "abc*" -type d

# Find all text files containing "abc" searching from current location
find . -name "*.txt" -exec grep -in "abc" {} \; -print

# Remove all text files searching from current location
find . -name "*.txt" -type f -exec rm {} \;


# Find all files older than 60 days old and delete them (you may want to test this on your specific flavour of *nix).
find . -name "*" -type f -mtime +60 -exec rm {} \;

tail and grep are two of my favourites
especially when used together

Netstat

top

ffmpeg for videophiles

awk, updatedb in a cron, ipconfig /flushdns, gpupdate /f, also chkdsk sometimes will revive flash and external drive that appear to have lost all data. top, ps aux, ls -la

Some are Windows, some Unix/Linux. Why mix them up. Not everyone is a Win/Unix/Linus/Mac user. This would've been easier to sift thru if they'd been put in OS groups.

"Some people think the command line is an outdated mode of usage and administration. "
Yeah, they're called IGNORANTS! - including pseudo "IT staff" that runs MS Windows, OMG! >:-D

I Love this command : Ping 0.0.0.0,
ipconfig,
sc query ex
taskkill

I like them because what you can do at the cmd line, is something you can write a .bat file to do for you, and you can schedule it.

In unix, my favorite has to be "cp". If it wasn't for that little command, I'd have been manually recreating a bunch of complex things through a GUI that does not support copying.

With the popularity of shell based programming languages such as Ruby and PowerShell growing, the command-line is even more popular today than even the old System V days.This is due to the accessibility of the modern shell compared to the shell of yesteryear. The personal computer was born because the need to customize a system to do what you need when you want it. There will always be the need for commands as written language is more powerful and allows a end user to more creative than a simple GUI. In the future the most popular and desired features will be in the GUI, but power knowledge workers that want customization and efficiency will be using the command-line on a regular basis.

How many times we use CD command to change directories??
@0vidiu you have to add NETSTAT to your list

Commands are the kernel of any system.

This command tools are everywhere, and available at almost all time. My favorite is "sc", starting and stopping a process in a remote machine is really cool.

NI

When I need to make lists of files in directories and subdirectories, this is the command I use. I import the resulting file into Excel, do a little manipulation, and I have my list.

Valuable schedulling command!
at 21:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F,S,Su shutdown -s -f -t 10

I would have to add the ROUTE command to the list. At least for my current position, it has most definately helped

It's the most powerful and easiest way to locally and remotely manage sistems for skilled professionals. GUIs are for beginners.

The shell is the past-present-future for ITs.

md \\?\drive_letter:\folder_name.extension... to make a secured folder. To access it, simple press Windows+R -> type \\?\drive_letter:\folder_name.extension...\ -> enter. To remove it, use rd \\?\drive_letter:\folder_name.extension...

sfc /scannow
The system file checker in Windows has saved me a thousand times, yet it is not in most textbooks (I'm a tech, but I also teach this stuff). This tool examines all of the system files to be sure they are present and in the correct version. It uses a combo of installation files from the DVD and the list of installed updates to accomplish this task.
Most of the greatest Linux commands are already on the list!
I tell my students I want a bumper sticker that says "I love my CLI!" Command line tools and scripting make life sooo much easier.

GREP when combined with any command makes all commands more useful.

If you combine GREP with AWK and KILL! You morph into a GOD, no really it's true.

It is Wonderful and helpful information and boost any business. Thanks for sharing this information friend.

vendor audits

Being worked on linux for more than a decade, I prefer to use command prompt on my windows box too. I think windows cmd is also powerful enough for managing administrative tasks..I usually refer this site http://www.windows-commandline.com for anything related to command line.

Me everyday use "ping" and "killall"

most commands that I use and i think they should include:
1- nslookup
2- netsh
3- grep
4- adsquery

Windows commands I use alot:

NBLOOKUP (kb830578) - for those still with WINS.
NBTSTAT
IPCONFIG
NSLOOKUP
NETSTAT
PING
TRACERT
CD
MD
RD
DEL
ECHO
REM
@
CALL
:text - labels for scrpts
EXIT
GOTO
IF
TYPE
FOR - in all its iterations - "looping" plus
SET - review advanced SET usage - arithmatic, substrings, substitution
SETX
FINDSTR - Regular expresions, grep capabilities
DFSUTIL
NLTEST - If you have DFS....
DSQUERY
DSGET
DSMOD
DSMOVE
DSADD
DSRM
XCACLS
ICACLS
PROMPT
SCHTASKS
SC - such a powerful command for service control
SLEEP
SUBST
CMD /C - use it to prefix any external command in a script to prevent the script from ending unexpectedly. ie cmd /c myutil.exe
START - good way to spin off separate items in a script
CHOICE
NTRIGHTS
NOW - great for flagging log files
POWERCFG
NETSH
NETDOM (errorlevls 2224, 2691 are collision errors)
FTYPE
ASSOC
W32TIME
REG - King of registry management REG /?
NET - Extremely powerful see all its capabilities NET /?
MKLINK
FILEACL
ATTRIB
MSIEXEC
ROBOCOPY - extremely powerful copy with logging!

A very good topic, but it is a terrible idea to mix Windows commands and other operating system(s) commands in the topic.
There are plenty of very important Windows command-lines that can fill out this topic of 10, with plenty more to spare.
I hope the next re-write of this topic would be "20 Essential Windows Command-Line Tools for IT Professionals".
Thanks.

what about xcopy for backup? In scripts I use this daily for my most important files