Editing and searching on a server: nano, grep and find for beginners

The short answer: on a VPS there is no mouse and no windows, but three tools solve almost everything a beginner needs: nano to edit a file, grep to search for text inside files and find to locate files. All come with the system.

nano: editing a file

Open with nano /path/to/file (if the file belongs to the system, put sudo in front). Type as normal. The shortcuts are listed at the bottom of the screen; the ^ symbol means the Ctrl key.

To Shortcut
Save Ctrl+O and then Enter
Quit Ctrl+X (if there are changes, it asks whether to save)
Search inside the file Ctrl+W
Delete the current line Ctrl+K
Go to a line Ctrl+_ and the number

grep: searching for text

To Command
Lines with a word in a file grep -n "error" /var/log/app.log
Ignoring upper and lower case grep -in "error" file
In every PHP file of a folder grep -rn "word" /var/www/site --include="*.php"
The lines that do NOT have the word grep -v "word" file
Follow a log live tail -f /var/log/app.log

The -n shows the line number and the -r goes into subfolders. To read a big file a little at a time, use less file (quit with q).

find: locating files

To Command
A file by name find /var/www -name "wp-config.php"
Changed in the last 24 hours find /var/www/site -type f -mtime -1
Larger than 100 MB find / -type f -size +100M 2>/dev/null

The 2>/dev/null hides the “Permission denied” messages. The second line is useful if the site was changed without you knowing; the third helps when the disk fills up: see No space left on device.

Before editing a configuration file, take a copy: cp -a file file.before. And do not use rm with asterisks on files found by a find without looking at the list first. See also Linux file permissions.
Is this your first VPS? Start with First steps with your VPS. To know where the logs you will want to search are: Where are the logs on a Linux VPS.

Searched and cannot find the cause of an error on the server? Open a ticket with the log file and the error line.

Open a support ticket

SEE ALSO

First steps with your VPS

Where are the logs on a Linux VPS: journalctl and /var/log

Linux file permissions on a VPS: chmod, chown and Permission denied

No space left on device: finding what fills your VPS disk

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