If you just starting with Linux command line, the “Midnight Commander” file manager will be quite helpful for you to ease few simple tasks. You can launch it with a command mc You will see something like this:

The interface of “mc” are two panels with content of any 2 folders you navigate to. To switch between the panels (left/right) use TAB key on your keyboard. You can also use mouse if your ssh-session is capable of this. MC allows to do following things (key to execute in brackets, “F” refers to “function” keys – top row on your keyboard):

1. Navigate through files and folders (just select folder you want to go with arrows and press [ENTER]). To go “up” one folder select “..” on top of the folder listing and press [ENTER].
2. To select multiple files/folders on current panel use “Ins/0” key on your NUMPAD (small numericl panel on the right of the keyboard) panel. NumLock must be OFF!
3. Select All files in folder (“+ and then Enter”). Can also select files of certain extension in the same way.
4. View content of a file: select file and press (F3)
5. Edit file: select file and press (F4)
6. Copy file or folder from one folder to another (i.e. from one panel to the opposite): select file or folder and press (F5)
7. Move files/folders (select and press F6)
8. Make new folder in the current folder/panel: F7
9. Delete file/folder: select file or folder you want to delete and press (F8) [ cannot be undone ]
10. (F9) go into top menus if you do not have mouse functionality, navigate through using arrows.
11. (F10) exits MC.

You can still use “mc” session as a command line session: just press Ctrl+O to toggle between command line and mc panels. If you start typing while in panel mode, the command appears underneath the panels. Press Enter to execute it in the currently active panel of mc. Typing “exit” will close mc. Type “cd” {ENTER} to change to the top of your home folder. Type “cd foldername” to change to the “foldername” (sometimes it is faster than using “arrows/PgUp/PgDown”  keys.

While in one of the panels try pressing (F2) you will see what you can do with currently selected file or folder (the most useful is compress). MC can also decompress various archives (zip/rar/tar/gzip/z… etc). Just select the achieve and press [ENTER] – it will show its content. Select the files you want to de-compress and copy them to the opposite panel.

If you going to use MC you will find much more features soon and wont be able to work in command line without it.

regards,

Alex Pedcenko