Viewing your current directory
You can always discover what directory you are currently in using the pwd command. The following shows this user is in the /home/username/example.com directory:
[server]$ pwd /home/username/example.com
Creating directories
To create a new directory, use the mkdir command. The follow example creates a new directory named directory_name:
[server]$ mkdir directory_name
Deleting directories
There are actually a few ways to delete directories in the shell. To delete an empty directory, use the rmdir command:
[server]$ rmdir directory_name
To delete a non-empty directory (one that still contains files or other directories in it) rmdir will not work. Here you have two choices. You can either remove all the contained files and directories by hand using the rmdir and rm commands, or you can use the rm -r flag.
[server]$ rm -r directory_name
Be careful using this flag, as you will delete everything contained in the directory specified. There is no "Recycle Bin" or "Trash Can" in the shell. What you delete is gone forever, so use caution.
Changing directories
To change to another directory, use the cd command. The following changes the directory used to /target/directory:
[server]$ cd /target/directory
A successful change will not return any messages.
To change to your previous directory, use the cd - command:
[server]$ pwd /current/directory/ [server]$ cd /new/directory/ [server]$ pwd /new/directory/ [server]$ cd - [server]$ pwd /current/directory/
The user above has changed from one directory to another, then used the cd - command to return to their previous directory.
You can go to the parent directory quickly by using the ../. If you are logged into your webserver via SSH, running the following command changes your directory to your user’s directory:
[server]$ cd ../
You can go up multiple directories by stringing the ../ together.
[server]$ cd ../../
Listing contents of the current directory
To list the contents of a directory, use the ls command:
[server]$ ls Maildir example.com logs
Add the -l flag to list the contents with full details, including permissions, file size and last modified date:
[server]$ ls -l drwx--S--- 12 username groupname 4096 Mar 15 17:28 Maildir drwxr-xr-x 5 username groupname 4096 Mar 7 12:35 example.com drwxr-sr-x 8 root root 4096 Apr 17 06:33 logs
To list all files within the directory (including hidden files) in vertical format, add the -la flags:
[server]$ ls -la -rw------- 1 username pg###### 10541 Mar 12 18:46 .bash_history -rwxr-xr-x 1 username pg###### 430 Dec 18 14:45 .bash_profile -rw-r--r-- 1 username pg###### 237 Sep 16 2014 .bashrc drwxr-xr-x 5 username pg###### 4096 Sep 6 2011 Maildir
Viewing directory sizes
To determine the size of a directory, use the du command with the -sh flags:
[server]$ du -sh example.com 1532 example.com
Add the -sh flag to see the size in a more readable format (KB, MB, GB, and so on). You can also list multiple directories and files separated by spaces.
