Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Basic commands to explore your Pi
Now that you're logged in, let's have a look at a handful out of the several hundred
possible commands that you can type in the command line. When a command is
run prepended with
sudo,
it'll start with
super user
or
root
privileges. That's the
equivalent of the
Administrator
user in the Windows world.
Command
Description
sudo raspi-config
This starts
raspi-config
, which lets you reconfigure
your system.
sudo reboot
This reboots the Pi.
sudo poweroff
This prepares the Pi to be powered off. Always type this
before pulling the plug!
sudo su
This becomes the root user. Just be careful not to delete
anything by mistake!
df / -h
This displays the amount of disk space available on your
SD card.
free -h
This displays memory usage information.
date
This displays the current time.
top
This starts a task manager that shows running processes
with the most CPU hungry applications on top. Press
Q
to
quit.
exit
This logs you out of your current shell or SSH session.
sudo touch /forcefsck
This will enable your Pi to check/repair the root file
system at the next boot. It's a useful command if you
suspect your SD card data might be damaged.
Getting help with commands
Here are a few tricks that will help you get the hang of the Linux command line:
•
Command tab completion
: If you can't quite remember the exact name
of a command, but you think it stars with
raspi
, begin typing the first few
letters and press the
Tab
key twice to get a list of all commands starting with
those letters. Tab completion can also save you some typing when inputting
directory paths and filenames.
