These commands are useful to whoever manage own VPS for the first time and in this article, commands are in Ubuntu system.
Connect to VPS
ssh username@domain_name_or_IP
List folder content
ls /path/to/folder
Copy file using same filename:
cp /path/to/source/file /path/to/destination/folder
Copy file using new filename:
cp /path/to/source/file /path/to/destination/file
Copy folder with same name:
cp /path/to/source/folder /path/to/destination/folder -R
Copy folder with new name:
cp /path/to/source/folder /path/to/destination/newfolder -R
Remove folder
rm /path/to/folder -R
Remove file
rm /path/to/file
Create folder
mkdir /path/to/new/folder
View a file
cat /path/to/file
View 10 first lines of file
head /path/to/file
View 10 last lines of file
tail /path/to/file
Search file
find /path/to/folder -name "filename.ext"
or using wildcard
find /path/to/folder -name "*.jpg"
Search string in file (-r force it to search recursively)
grep -r "search_string" /path/to/folder
We can use both find and grep in one line of command to limit which files that grep search
find . -name "*.php" | xargs grep "search_string"
Rename file: path should be the same with new filename
mv /path/to/file /path/to/new_file
File compressing
tar -zcf filename.tar.gz /path/to/file/or/folder
File decompressing
tar -zxf filename.tar.gz /path/to/file/or/folder