Useful linux commands

OS Details

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid

System Information

$ uname -a
Linux p3307963.pubip.serverbeach.com 2.6.32-46-generic #108-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 11 15:56:25 UTC 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ uname -v

x86_64 (means system is 64 bit machine, otherwise its 32 bit machine)

User specific resource limit get/set

$ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 20
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 16382
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 64
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 1024
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) unlimited
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited

Above command is very very important. Many a times TCP/IP socket connection grows a lot, if you sense that kind of problem, too many connections at a time, try to change "open files" limit to higher value, 20000 is  good enough. How to change the limit, you should read this article How to set ulimit in ubuntu/debian linux systems

Which user has opened how many files in sort order

$ lsof | awk '{if(NR>1) print $3}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
   1256 root
    655 nishal
     16 www-data
      4 syslog
      4 ntp
      4 daemon

Check listening ports
$ netstat -nlp