Working with Terminal/Shell

Basic Directory commands

1. cd Used for : Use cd to change directories. Description : Type cd followed by the name of a directory to access that directory. Keep in mind that you are always in a directory and can navigate to directories hierarchically above or below.

Example:

cd download If the directory games is not located hierarchically below the current directory, then the complete path must be written out.

Ex: cd /home/super/downlaods

To move up one directory, use the shortcut command.

Example: cd ..

2. mkdir Used for : Used to create directories on disk. Similar to DOS MD Description : Use mkdir to make/create a brand new directory Type mkdir followed by the name of a directory. Ex: mkdir testdir

Create one or more directories. You must have write permission in the parent directory in order to create a directory. The default mode of the new directory is 0777, modified by the system or user's umask.

Options -m mode, --mode mode

Set the access mode for new directories. See chmod for an explanation of acceptable formats for mode.

-p, --parents

Create intervening parent directories if they don't exist.

-v, --verbose

Print a message for each directory created.

--help

Print help message and then exit.

&--version

Print version number and then exit.

-Z context, --context=context

Set security context in SELinux.

Examples

Create a read-only directory named personal:

mkdir -m 444 personal

3. rmdir Used for :Used rmdir to remove an existing directory (assuming you have permissions set to allow this). Description : Type rmdir followed by a directory's name to remove it. Ex: rmdir personal

You CAN'T remove a directory that contains files with this command. A more useful command is rm -r that removes directories and files within the directories.

The rmdir command is used mostly to remove empty directories. If you have a desire to use this command then you'll need to delete or move the files before attempting to remove a full directory.

Options

--help

Print a help message and then exit.

--ignore-fail-on-non-empty

Ignore failure to remove directories that are not empty.

-p, --parents

Remove directories and any intervening parent directories that become empty as a result. Useful for removing subdirectory trees.

--verbose

Verbose mode; print message for each directory as it is processed.

--version

Print version information and then exit.