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#sysadmin (58)

Cheat sheets (58)

diskutil — macOS Disk & APFS Management

Command-line front-end to Disk Utility on macOS — list, partition, format, repair, encrypt, and snapshot APFS containers, plus build and tear down software RAID volumes.
diskutil macos disk apfs sysadmin cli encryption web-researched

launchctl — Managing launchd Agents and Daemons

Bootstrap, bootout, kickstart, print, and enable/disable services with launchctl on macOS: agents vs daemons, plist anatomy, user/system domains, RunAtLoad vs KeepAlive vs StartInterval vs StartCalendarInterval, and recipes for periodic scripts and on-demand workers.
macos sysadmin services web-researched

networksetup — macOS Network Configuration

Script every aspect of macOS network configuration — Wi-Fi joining, DNS servers, proxies, locations, and service order — from a single first-party command-line tool.
networksetup macos networking wifi dns proxy sysadmin cli web-researched

pmset — macOS Power Management

Inspect and configure sleep, wake, hibernate, and battery behaviour on macOS. Covers per-source profiles, scheduled wake, sleep-prevention diagnostics, battery reports, and hibernate modes.
macos pmset cli power sysadmin sleep battery web-researched

softwareupdate — macOS Updates From the Terminal

Deep-dive on softwareupdate(8), Apple's CLI for macOS system updates — listing pending updates, installing recommended-only or specific items, scheduling, ignoring updates, installing Rosetta and Command Line Tools, and pairing with mas and brew for full system update automation.
softwareupdate macos sysadmin updates rosetta mas brew cli web-researched

system_profiler — macOS Hardware & Software Inventory

Deep-dive on system_profiler(8) — macOS's built-in inventory tool. Covers data types, text/XML/JSON output, piping into jq and plutil, common SP* probes (hardware, displays, memory, storage, USB, network, software), detail levels, and fleet inventory recipes.
system_profiler macos sysadmin inventory hardware json plutil jq cli web-researched

tmutil — Time Machine from the Command Line

Drive Time Machine backups, destinations, exclusions, local APFS snapshots, restores, and verification entirely from the terminal — without opening System Settings.
macos tmutil cli backup time-machine apfs snapshots sysadmin web-researched

arp — ARP Cache Viewer and Editor

Display, add, and delete entries in the Windows ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) cache — map IP addresses to MAC addresses, detect IP conflicts, and diagnose Layer 2 connectivity issues.
arp windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

bcdedit — Boot Configuration Data Editor

View and modify the Windows Boot Configuration Data store — manage boot entries, set default OS, change timeouts, enable debugging, and configure boot options from an elevated command prompt.
bcdedit windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

chkdsk — Check Disk

Scan a FAT or NTFS volume for file system errors and bad sectors, optionally repairing them — the built-in Windows disk health and integrity tool for drives and volumes.
chkdsk windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

defrag — Disk Defragmenter CLI

Analyze, defragment, and optimize volumes from the command line — consolidate free space on HDDs, issue TRIM on SSDs, and schedule or review optimization tasks.
defrag windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

diskpart — Disk Partition Manager

Create, delete, format, extend, shrink, and assign drive letters to disk partitions from the Windows command prompt using an interactive or scripted REPL interface.
diskpart windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

dism — Deployment Image Servicing and Management

Service Windows images and the running OS — enable/disable optional features, repair the component store, mount and edit WIM/ESD images, add drivers, and manage editions from an elevated command prompt.
dism windows cli sysadmin imaging components web-researched

driverquery — List Installed Drivers

Display all installed device drivers on a local or remote Windows machine — module name, type, link date, and driver file path — for hardware audits and troubleshooting.
driverquery windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

fsutil — File System Utility

Inspect and manage NTFS file system internals — query volume info, manage hard links, sparse files, reparse points, the USN journal, and the dirty bit — from an elevated command prompt.
fsutil windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

getmac — MAC Address Query

Display the MAC (hardware) addresses and associated transport names for all network adapters on a local or remote Windows machine — useful for asset inventory, DHCP reservation setup, and network access control.
getmac windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

gpresult & gpupdate — Group Policy Diagnostics and Refresh

Inspect the Resultant Set of Policy that applied to a user and computer with gpresult, then force a refresh with gpupdate — including HTML reports, scope filtering, and the classic 'why didn't my GPO take effect?' workflow.
gpresult gpupdate windows cli sysadmin group-policy security web-researched

icacls — ACL Editor

Display and modify NTFS access control lists on files and directories — grant, deny, or remove permissions for users and groups, manage inheritance, and save or restore full ACL sets.
icacls windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

logman — Performance Monitor CLI

Create, start, stop, and manage Data Collector Sets for performance counters, event traces, and configuration data — the command-line interface to Windows Performance Monitor for scripted monitoring and automated log collection.
logman windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

mountvol — Volume Mount Point Manager

List, create, and remove NTFS volume mount points and display the unique volume GUID path for any drive letter or directory junction from the command prompt.
mountvol windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

net localgroup — Local Group Manager

Create, delete, and modify local security groups on a Windows machine — add or remove members, list group memberships, and manage built-in groups from the command prompt.
net-localgroup windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

net user — Local User Account Manager

Create, modify, delete, and list local Windows user accounts from the command prompt — set passwords, manage account expiry, lock/unlock accounts, and control logon hours.
net-user windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

netsh — Network Shell

Configure network interfaces, firewall rules, wireless profiles, port proxies, and Winsock settings from an elevated command prompt — the comprehensive Windows network configuration CLI.
netsh windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

pathping — Combined Traceroute and Ping

Trace the route to a destination and measure per-hop packet loss and latency over a sustained sampling period — more diagnostic than tracert and more thorough than ping for identifying intermittent network problems.
pathping windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

powercfg — Power Configuration CLI

Manage Windows power plans, enable or disable hibernation, diagnose battery health and sleep failures, and generate energy efficiency reports from the command prompt.
powercfg windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

PowerShell Remoting — Running Commands on Other Machines

Execute PowerShell against one or many remote hosts using WinRM or SSH transport, persistent sessions, credential management, and JEA.
powershell networking remoting sysadmin scripting web-researched

reg — Windows Registry from the Command Line

Query, add, modify, export, and import Windows registry keys and values with the built-in reg.exe — the scriptable, no-dependency tool for everything from one-off tweaks to full backup-and-restore.
reg registry cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

route — IP Routing Table Manager

Display, add, delete, and modify entries in the Windows IP routing table — control how packets are forwarded between subnets, add persistent static routes, and diagnose routing failures.
route windows cli scripting sysadmin networking web-researched

runas — Run as Different User

Launch a program in the security context of a different user account — elevate to Administrator, switch to a service account, or test application behaviour under a restricted identity.
runas windows cli scripting sysadmin security web-researched

sc — Service Control Manager CLI

Query, create, configure, start, stop, and delete Windows services from the command line — the scripting interface to the Service Control Manager, equivalent to the Services MMC snap-in but fully automatable.
sc windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

schtasks — Task Scheduler CLI

Create, query, run, end, and delete scheduled tasks on local or remote Windows machines from the command prompt — the scripting interface to Windows Task Scheduler.
schtasks windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

shutdown — Shutdown, Restart, and Logoff

Initiate, schedule, abort, or force a shutdown, restart, logoff, hibernate, or sleep on a local or remote Windows machine from the command line — essential for scripted maintenance, patch automation, and remote administration.
shutdown windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

Sysinternals — PsExec, Handle, ProcMon and the Sysadmin Toolkit

Bootstrap and drive the headless Sysinternals utilities — PsExec, Handle, PsList, Autoruns, ProcMon, ListDLLs — for process spelunking, file-lock hunting, autostart auditing and scripted system tracing on Windows.
sysinternals debugging sysadmin tools cli scripting web-researched

systeminfo — System Information

Display detailed OS, hardware, and network configuration for the local or a remote Windows machine. Covers output formats, remote querying, filtering, and parsing in scripts.
systeminfo windows cli sysadmin scripting hardware inventory reference web-researched

takeown — Take File Ownership

Transfer ownership of files and directories to the current user or the Administrators group from an elevated command prompt — a prerequisite for modifying ACLs on system-protected paths.
takeown windows cli scripting sysadmin ntfs acl permissions ownership security reference web-researched

taskkill — Terminate Processes

End one or more running Windows processes by PID or image name from the command prompt, with options for force termination, process tree killing, filtering, and remote targets.
taskkill windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

tasklist — List Running Processes

Display all running processes on a local or remote Windows machine with PID, memory usage, session, and optional service or module details — the cmd.exe equivalent of Task Manager for scripts.
tasklist windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

timeout — Pause Script Execution

Pause a batch script for a specified number of seconds with an optional keypress bypass — a reliable replacement for the ping-delay idiom and a safer alternative to sleep in Windows CMD scripts.
timeout windows cli scripting sysadmin reference web-researched

tzutil & w32tm — Timezone and Windows Time

Read and set the system timezone with tzutil, then query, configure, and force-sync the Windows Time service with w32tm — including NTP peer configuration and Kerberos-clock-drift recovery.
tzutil w32tm windows cli sysadmin time ntp sync kerberos reference web-researched

wevtutil — Windows Event Log Manager

Query, export, clear, and manage Windows Event Log channels from the command line — the primary CLI for event log automation, log archiving, and scripted log analysis on Windows.
wevtutil windows cli scripting sysadmin event-log security reference web-researched

whoami — Current User Identity

Display the current user name, SID, group memberships, and privileges from the Windows command prompt — essential for auditing security context in scripts and support scenarios.
whoami windows cli scripting security sysadmin reference web-researched

wmic — Windows Management Instrumentation CLI

Query and manage Windows system information — hardware, software, processes, services, and more — from the command prompt using WMI classes and WMIC's SQL-like syntax.
wmic windows cli scripting sysadmin web-researched

wsl — Managing Linux Distros from the wsl.exe CLI

Install, list, export, import, configure, and clone WSL distributions using the wsl.exe command on Windows 10 and 11.
wsl linux virtualization cli sysadmin web-researched

WSL Interoperability

Running Linux tools from Windows and vice versa, file system access, and networking between WSL and Windows.
wsl linux windows interop networking sysadmin reference web-researched

apt-get Package Management

Debian and Ubuntu package management — update, install, remove, upgrade, and maintain packages with apt-get.
apt debian ubuntu packages package-management dpkg sources ppa gpg sysadmin web-researched

cron — Scheduled Jobs

Time-based job scheduler on Unix. Covers crontab syntax, user vs. system crontabs, environment quirks, logging, anacron, and the modern systemd timer alternative.
cron scheduling sysadmin cli automation web-researched

htop — Interactive Process Viewer

Interactive process and resource monitor for the terminal. Covers function keys, sorting, filtering, signal sending, tree view, threads, and how to read load averages and memory correctly. Compares with top, btop, and bottom.
htop cli sysadmin monitoring processes web-researched

ip — iproute2 Networking

Modern replacement for ifconfig, route, and arp. Inspect and configure interfaces, addresses, routes, neighbour tables, and network namespaces with the iproute2 ip command.
ip iproute2 networking sysadmin cli routing web-researched

journalctl — systemd Journal Query

Query and follow systemd's structured journal. Covers unit filters, time ranges, priority levels, boot logs, namespaces, invocations, output formats, persistence, configuration, and disk-vacuum.
journalctl cli sysadmin logs systemd observability web-researched

lsof & ss — Open Files and Sockets

Diagnose what's holding a port, which files a process has open, and the state of every TCP/UDP socket using lsof and the modern iproute2 ss utility.
lsof ss lsfd sockets networking processes debug cli sysadmin web-researched

permissions — chmod, chown, umask, ACLs

POSIX file permissions on Linux. Covers symbolic and octal chmod, ownership with chown, the meaning of r/w/x for files vs. directories, setuid/setgid/sticky bits, umask, ACLs, capabilities, and immutable attributes.
permissions chmod chown umask acl capabilities sysadmin security cli web-researched

ps, ss & netstat — Processes & Sockets

Inspect running processes (ps), list network connections and listening ports (ss / netstat). Covers output formats, filtering, process trees, and socket state analysis.
ps netstat ss processes networking sockets cli sysadmin web-researched

systemd Unit Files

Writing, enabling, and managing systemd service, timer, and socket units.
systemd linux services daemons timers sockets sandboxing sysadmin web-researched

Memory Management — Virtual Memory, Paging, Swap, OOM, mmap

How operating systems give every process its own address space: virtual memory and paging, swap, the OOM killer, mmap, copy-on-write, the page cache, allocator choices (glibc, jemalloc, mimalloc), and how to read memory counters in top, ps, and free.
memory virtual-memory paging swap oom mmap page-cache jemalloc mimalloc sysadmin

Networking Stack — OSI/TCP-IP, Sockets, TCP/UDP, MTU, NAT, DNS

How packets actually move: the OSI and TCP/IP layer models, the BSD socket API, TCP vs UDP, the three-way handshake, MTU/MSS, NAT and port translation, basic IP routing, and the full DNS resolution flow.
networking osi tcp-ip sockets tcp udp mtu nat routing dns sysadmin

Processes — Fork, Exec, Signals, Zombies, Cgroups

Process lifecycle on Unix: fork/exec/wait, PIDs, signals, zombies and orphans, parent/child trees, process groups, sessions, controlling terminals, and a tour of Linux cgroups.
process fork exec signal zombie orphan pid pgid sid cgroup sysadmin

Security Fundamentals — Users, Permissions, Capabilities, MAC, Sandboxing

OS-level security primitives every operator should know: users and groups, file permissions, Linux capabilities, SUID/SGID, mandatory access control (SELinux, AppArmor), sandboxing concepts, least privilege, and encryption at rest vs in transit.
security users groups permissions capabilities suid sgid selinux apparmor sandbox encryption mac sysadmin

Linux

Command-line tools, shell scripting, networking, system administration, and data extraction for Linux.
linux shell sysadmin