Common Administrative Commands for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, & 7

We all are aware that Red Hat has launched a major release of Linux i.e. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and it has many changes in command and configuration. The command line and booting sequence in RHEL 7 is different from that of RHEL6 & RHEL5 and you should be knowing that difference as a system administrator.

I am sure like me, you must also be confused about using different commands in RHEL 5, 6 and 7. In RHEL 5 and 6 most of the commands are common but RHEL 7 has completely different commands. Though RHEL 6 commands also work on RHEL7 but its better you know Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 commands for efficient working.

Recommended Article: RHCSA & RHCE Syllabus

Red Hat also knows your problem, so they have made a good chart showing which of the commands on RHEL7 is equivalent to the commands on RHEL 5 & 6.

Common administrative commands included in this PDF file are related to “system Basics”, “security and identity”, “kernel, boot and hardware”, “software management”, “resource management”, “networking related commands”, “filesystem, volumes & disks” and “user management”.

Some of the most very basic command difference in RHEL7, 6 and 5 are given below for your reference.

Must know Command Difference in RHEL 7, 6 and 5

1. Shutdown system

RHEL 5 & 6: # shutdown
RHEL 7: # systemctl shutdown

2. Reboot system

RHEL 5 & 6: # reboot or # init 6
RHEL 7: # systemctl reboot

3. Configure default run level/target

RHEL 5 & 6: # /etc/inittab
RHEL 7: # systemctl set-default

4. Configure GRUB bootloader

RHEL 5 & 6: # /boot/grub/grub.conf
RHEL 7: # /etc/default/grub, grub2-mkconfig, grub-set-default

5. List running services

RHEL 5 & 6: # service –status-all
RHEL 7: # systemctl -t service –state=active

6. Check if service is enabled

RHEL 5 & 6: # chkconfig name
RHEL 7: # systemctl is-enabled name

7. View run level/target

RHEL 5 & 6: # runlevel or who -r
RHEL 7: # systemctl get-default or who -r

8. Enable/disable service

RHEL 5 & 6: # chkconfig name on and # chkconfig name off
RHEL 7: # systemctl enable name.service and # systemctl disable name.service

9. View service status

RHEL 5 & 6: # service name status
RHEL 7: # systemctl status name.service

Note: I have tried few RHEL6 command and they are working perfectly fine in RHEL7 also.

This chart is freely available at Red Hat website, you can just Google it or click below download link to download. Go and try these commands on your test environment.

Download Chart