This is a list of Common commands that can be run from root / SSH access.

I. Basic Commands

A. Retrieve Plesk Admin Password

cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow

B. Change Directory (cd)

cd /path/to/directory/

C. Listing Files/SubFolders (ls)

ls -alh

(files and subfolders listed with perms in human-readable sizes)

D. Checking Processes

ps -a top -c

(process viewer – Ctrl+C to exit)

ps -auxf

(process list)

E. Start/Stop Services

/etc/init.d/<service> start|stop|restart|status

(“/etc/init.d/httpd stop” stops apache)

F. Check Bean Counters (hard and soft limits, failcounts, etc.)

cat /proc/user_beancounters

II. File System Commands (df & du are (dv)-only commands)

A. Check Total Disk Usage

df

(gives physical disk usage report with % used)

B. List Files/Folders +Sizes (du)

du

(lists all filesizes. This will take some time.)

du -sh

(lists all the subfolders/sizes in a dir)

C. Remove/Delete Files (rm /path/to/filename.htm) -DANGER- always verify

rm -vf

(force-deletes file. Dont run unless you know EXACTLY what you’re doing)

rm -vrf

(force deletes folder and all subfolders and files)

To Remove a Directory you can use the following command:

 rmdir  

D. Copy Files (cp)

cp filename.abc /new/path/filename.abc.123

E. Move Files (mv)

mv filename.abc /new/path/filename.abc.123

F. Create Empty File (touch)

touch filename.123

III. File Permissions and Ownership

A. Change Permissions of files (chmod)

chmod 000 filename.abc

(defaults are usually 755 for folders, 644 for files)

B. Change Ownership of files (chmown)

chown user:group filename.abc

(you can see user and group w/ ls -alh)

IV. Checking Log Files (dv)

Log files can tell you a lot about whats going on on a (dv). You can use the command:
‘tail -n 100′ before the logfile name to list the last 100 entries of the logfile.

Here are some of the most common:

A. Main Error Log

/var/log/messages

B. Apache Error Log

/var/log/httpd/error_log

(main)

/home/httpd/vhosts/mt-example.com/statistics/logs/error_log

(per-domain) (May also be: /var/www/vhosts on newer dvs)

C. MySQL Logs

/var/log/MySQLd.log

D. Mail Logs

/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

V. Advanced Commands

A. Find. You can do alot with find. for now lets find all files over 10MB.

cd /
find / -type f -size +10000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $5 ": " $9 }' |sort -n

B. Grep. Another handy tool to get specific information

cat file | grep blah

(only lists the information where the word blah is found)

C. Less/More

less filename.abc 

(displays the content of a file. arrows to scroll, ‘q’ to quit.)

more == same thing basically. You can use the ‘| more’ command to scroll through something page or line at a time.

tail -n 1000 /var/log/httpd/error_log | more

VI. Vi is a basic text editor.

Careful what keys you hit while in vi.

vi /path/to/filename.abc