Managing a server using SSH and Command Line Access over the past few years has taught me a lot. It’s sometimes important to check how a server is doing in terms of load or you may simply want to check hard disk usage. Here are some commands I’ve frequently used:
Listing the number of files in a directory:
ls | wc -l
Display the size of a directory in readable format (recursively):
du -h
Display the total size of a directory (can take some time for large directories):
du -h | tail -n 1
Checking hard disk usage:
df -h -T
Check server load, memory usage and running processes:
top
Checking server load and uptime:
uptime