Listing the Contents of a Directory with ls
To see the contents of a directory (the files and subdirectories), we can use
the
ls
(list) command. This is very similar to the
dir
command in Windows.
kali >ls
bin initrd.img media run var
8
Chapter 1
boot initrd.img.old mnt sbin vmlinuz
dev lib opt srv vmlinuz.old
etc lib64 proc tmp
home lost+found root usr
This command lists both the files and directories contained in the
directory. You can also use this command on any particular directory, not
just the one you are currently in, by listing the directory name after the
command; for example,
ls /etc
shows what’s in the /etc directory.
To get more information about the files and directories, such as their
permissions, owner, size, and when they were last modified, you can add
the
-l
switch after
ls
(the
l
stands for long). This is often referred to as
long listing. Let’s try it here:
kali >ls -l
total 84
drw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 5 11:15 bin
drw-r--r-- 2 root root 4096 Dec 5 11:15 boot
drw-r--r-- 3 root root 4096 Dec 9 13:10 dev
drw-r--r-- 18 root root 4096 Dec 9 13:43 etc
--snip--
drw-r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 5 11:15 var
As you can see,
ls -l
provides us with significantly more information,
such as whether an object is a file or directory, the number of links, the
owner, the group, its size, when it was created or modified, and its name.
I typically add the
-l
switch whenever doing a listing in Linux, but to
each their own. We’ll talk more about
ls -l
in Chapter 5.
Some files in Linux are hidden and won’t be revealed by a simple
ls
or
ls -l
command. To show hidden files, add a lowercase
–a
switch, like so:
kali >ls -la
If you aren’t seeing a file you expect to see, it’s worth trying
ls
with the
a
flag When using multiple flags, you can combine them into one, as we’ve
done here with
-la
instead of
-l -a
.
Getting Help
Nearly every command, application, or utility has a dedicated help file in
Linux that provides guidance for its use. For instance, if I needed help
using the best wireless cracking tool, aircrack-ng, I could simply type the
aircrack-ng
command followed by the
--help
command:
kali >aircrack-ng --help
Note the double dash here. The convention in Linux is to use a double
dash (
--
) before word options, such as
help
, and a single dash (
-
) before
single-letter options, such as
–h
.
Getting Started with the Basics
9
When you enter this command, you should see a short description of
the tool and guidance on how to use it. In some cases, you can use either
-h
or
-?
to get to the help file. For instance, if I needed help using the hacker’s
best port-scanning tool, nmap, I would enter the following:
kali > nmap -h
Unfortunately, although many applications support all three options
(
--help
,
-h
, and
-?
), there’s no guarantee the application you’re using will.
So if one option doesn’t work, try another.
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