Essential Terminal Commands Every Server Admin Should Know

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A practical guide published on DEV Community outlines the most useful Linux terminal commands for server administrators, organized into two categories: performance debugging and daily operations. For diagnosing sluggish servers, the guide covers tools such as top, htop, btop, iotop, and nload, which help identify resource bottlenecks in CPU, memory, disk, and network usage. Daily workflow commands covered include ls, cd, curl, dig, tmux, rsync, scp, and ssh-agent, among others. All examples were tested on a real Debian 13 server, with interactive tools illustrated via screenshots for easier recognition. The guide is intended as a battle-tested reference rather than a beginner setup tutorial, assuming users have SSH access and basic sudo privileges.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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