General Shell Commands Some of the most common shell commands you will use on a day-to-day basis are as follows: ls List contents of the directory. pwd Print Working Directory. Display the name of the directory that you are currently in. cd Change Directory. mv Move a file or directory rm Remove file. rmdir Remove directory. chown Change the owner of a file or directory. chmod Change Mode. Change the access restrictions for a file or directory. du Display the disk usage for a directory and its subdirectories. df Display the free disk space information. ping Ping an IP address or domain name to see if that server is active. host Look up a DNS entry for an IP address or domain name. date Display date and time. command line completion. If you have any suggestions for or problems with this website, please e-mail support@mercuryd.com