util-linux

util-linux is one of the essential core packages in any GNU/Linux distribution. It is distributed by the Linux Kernel Organization and it contains a whole array of basic commands like dmesg, mount, login and a lot of other basic utility-related commands. It is written entirely in beautiful C.

For example, lscpu shows you whether your processor has the core meltdown vulnerability.

The "other" set of basic commands like ls are handled by the coreutils package.

Included Utilities

addpart
agetty
blkdiscard
blkid
blkzone
blockdev
cal
cfdisk
chcpu
chfn
chmem
choom
chrt
chsh
col (legacy)^[1]
colcrt
colrm
column
ctrlaltdel
delpart
dmesg
eject
fallocate
fdformat
fdisk
findfs
findmnt
flock
fsck
fsck.cramfs
fsck.minix
fsfreeze
fstrim
getopt
hardlink
hexdump
hwclock (query and set the hardware clock (RTC))
ionice
ipcmk
ipcrm
ipcs
isosize
kill
last
ldattach
line (legacy)^[1]
logger
login
look
losetup
lsblk^[2]
lscpu^[3]
lslocks
lslogins
lsmem
mcookie
mesg

mkfs (legacy)^[1]
mkfs.bfs
mkfs.cramfs
mkfs.minix
mkswap
more
mount
mountpoint
namei
newgrp
nologin
nsenter
partx
pg (legacy)^[1]
pivot_root
prlimit^[4]
raw
readprofile
rename
renice
reset (legacy)^[1]
resizepart
rev
rfkill
rtcwake
runuser
script
scriptreplay
setarch (including architecture symlinks such as i386, linux32, linux64, x86_64, etc.)
setpriv
setsid
setterm
sfdisk
su
sulogin
swaplabel
swapoff
swapon
switch_root
tailf (legacy)^[1]
taskset
tunelp (deprecated)^[5]
ul
umount
unshare
utmpdump
uuidd
uuidgen
uuidparse
vipw (including symlink to vigr)
wall
wdctl
whereis
wipefs
write
zramctl

Not included

Some programs you'd think util-linux would provide are not actually part of that package.

lsusb is provided by usbutils.
lspci is provided by pciutils.

Links

util-linux's website is at kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/ and it's source code repository lives at git.kernel.org/cgit/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git.

The current maintainer, Karel Zak, has a blog at karelzak.blogspot.com/.

Footnotes

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 ^1.3 ^1.4 ^1.5 Documentation/deprecated.txt. util-linux (2019-12-09). Retrieved on 2019-12-09.
↑ lsblk manual.
↑ lscpu manual.
↑ Karel Zak (2012-01-25). prlimit(1). Retrieved on 2014-08-09.
↑ Sami Kerola (2012-12-16). tunelp: deprecation: remove command from default build. util-linux. Retrieved on 2014-04-12.

Enable comment auto-refresher

[legacy-1] 1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 ^1.3 ^1.4 ^1.5 Documentation/deprecated.txt. util-linux (2019-12-09). Retrieved on 2019-12-09.

[2] sblk manual.

[3] scpu manual.

[4] Karel Zak (2012-01-25). prlimit(1). Retrieved on 2014-08-09.

[5] Sami Kerola (2012-12-16). tunelp: deprecation: remove command from default build. util-linux. Retrieved on 2014-04-12.

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