Is there a standard that I can refer to for the list of programs (e.g. cat, ls) that must be included in Linux?
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aliteralmind
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Ron Vince
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The Linux Standard Base (LSB) has a list of applications:
[ du install mv strings
ar echo install_initd newgrp strip
at ed ipcrm nice stty
awk egrep ipcs nl su
basename env join nohup sync
batch expand kill od tail
bc expr killall passwd tar
cat false ln paste tee
chfn fgrep locale patch test
chgrp file localedef pathchk tic
chmod find logger pax time
chown fold logname pidof touch
chsh fuser lp pr tput
cksum gencat lpr printf tr
cmp getconf ls ps true
col gettext lsb_release pwd tsort
comm grep m4 remove_initd tty
cp groupadd mailx renice umount
cpio groupdel make rm uname
crontab groupmod man rmdir unexpand
csplit groups md5sum sed uniq
cut gunzip mkdir sendmail useradd
date gzip mkfifo seq userdel
dd head mknod sh usermod
df hostname mktemp shutdown wc
diff iconv more sleep xargs
dirname id mount sort zcat
dmesg infocmp msgfmt split
Many of these are included as being part of the POSIX 1003.1-2001 standard, but the following are either only in LSB, or have differing specifications from POSIX:
ar echo hostname more sh
at egrep install mount shutdown
awk fgrep install_initd msgfmt su
batch file ipcrm newgrp sync
bc fuser ipcs od tar
chfn gettext killall passwd umount
chsh grep lpr patch useradd
col groupadd ls pidof userdel
cpio groupdel lsb_release remove_initd usermod
crontab groupmod m4 renice xargs
df groups md5sum sed zcat
dmesg gunzip mknod sendmail
du gzip mktemp seq
muru
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4A number of the 'only from LSB' programs are actually from POSIX. These include: awk, grep, ls, sed, sh, xargs for sure; I'd have to check on ar, at, batch, bc, crontab. There may be others too. – Jonathan Leffler Sep 25 '15 at 12:30
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@JonathanLeffler I must have made a mistake in the regex. Will fix it when I can. – muru Sep 25 '15 at 14:35
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NP. I'd use either the top-level POSIX 2008 (2013) page or specifically the list of utilities. It includes all of the possibilities I mentioned; I also see
file,ipcrm,ipcs,m4,patch, andzcatlisted — that's an eyeballing operation rather than a formal verification of the lists. – Jonathan Leffler Sep 25 '15 at 14:46 -
And I got irked with myself so I went and did the formal list comparison. The following commands that you list as LSB-only are in fact listed in POSIX: ar, at, awk, batch, bc, crontab, df, du, echo, file, fuser, grep, ipcrm, ipcs, ls, m4, more, newgrp, od, patch, renice, sed, sh, xargs, zcat. I don't recall using
fuserorrenice. – Jonathan Leffler Sep 25 '15 at 14:50 -
@JonathanLeffler I think LSB specifies some behaviour for the separately listed ones. From the text of the footnote, I mis-assumed that they were only LSB. – muru Sep 25 '15 at 14:52
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aAFAIK it is guaranteed to be on any POSIX-compliant system, though your second list doesn't mention it..wq– edmz Sep 26 '15 at 15:49 -
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Technically you can't assume anything will be present, because Linux-the-kernel gets used in a whole bunch of embedded or semi-embedded contexts where a full complement of shell utilities would be a pointless waste of space. It would not be out of the question, for instance, to build an IoT device whose filesystem contains a bootloader, a monolithic kernel, a custom /sbin/init that does everything the device will ever need to do, a few /dev entries, and nothing else.
The POSIX.1-2008 "Shell and Utilities" specification, also linked in muru's answer, is intended to standardize the shell as a programming language. It therefore doesn't include most of the system administration tools that one expects to be present on a "traditional" Unix installation. Unfortunately, this is also a visible remaining scar of the ancient schism between System V and BSD -- the tools you will find on Linux are not the same as those on FreeBSD or OSX or whatever. So, again, there's no reliable baseline.
To give an indication of what is missing from maru's answer, this is the set of packages that Debian (unstable) considers to be "required" (official definition: "Systems with only the required packages are probably unusable, but they do have enough functionality to allow the sysadmin to boot and install more software.") and that contribute files to /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, or /usr/sbin. Those marked with an asterisk are not just "required", but "essential", which means other packaged software is allowed to assume its presence without depending on it.
base-passwd* gzip* perl-base*
bash* hostname* sed*
bsdutils* initscripts sensible-utils
coreutils* libc-bin* sysv-rc
dash* libpam-modules-bin sysvinit-utils*
debianutils* libpam-runtime tar*
diffutils* login* tzdata
dpkg* mawk¹ util-linux*
e2fsprogs* mount* xz-utils
findutils* ncurses-bin*
grep* passwd
¹ awk-the-language is "essential", but the sysadmin can choose whether they want the "mawk" or "gawk" implementation.
And these are the packages considered "important" ditto; the official definition of "important" is "an experienced Unix person who found it missing would say 'What on earth is going on, where is foo?'":
adduser cpio ifupdown man-db vim-common
apt cron iproute2 procps vim-tiny
apt-utils debconf iputils-ping rsyslog wget
aptitude dmidecode isc-dhcp-client systemd whiptail
aptitude-common gnupg kmod systemd-sysv
at gpgv less traceroute
bsdmainutils groff-base logrotate udev
Notice that this second set includes critical system administration tools like ps and iproute2, but also things that might be completely unnecessary on some installations, like at and dmidecode. Both sets also contain things that are Debian-specific, like dpkg and apt.
Notice also that both sets together are not a superset of the functionality required by LSB (or POSIX+XSI for that matter): these utilities are missing:
ar gencat lpr msgfmt strings
bc gettext lsb_release patch strip
ed install_initd m4 pax time
file killall mailx remove_initd
fuser lp make sendmail
The list of utilities that are in the above packages but not in LSB is long and tedious, but I'm including it anyway to underscore just how many "critical system administration tools" it includes.
accessdb mkhomedir_helper
add-shell mklost+found
addgroup mkswap
addpart modinfo
adduser modprobe
agetty mountpoint
apropos mt-gnu
apt namei
apt-cache ncal
apt-cdrom ncurses5-config
apt-config ncursesw5-config
apt-extracttemplates neqn
apt-ftparchive networkctl
apt-get newusers
apt-key nisdomainname
apt-mark nologin
apt-sortpkgs nproc
aptitude-create-state-bundle nroff
aptitude-curses nsenter
aptitude-run-state-bundle nstat
arch numfmt
arpd oldfind
badblocks ownership
base64 pam-auth-update
bash pam_getenv
bashbug pam_tally
biosdecode pam_tally2
blkdiscard pam_timestamp_check
blkid partx
blockdev perl
bootctl perl5.20.2
bridge pg
bsd-from pgrep
bsd-write pic
busctl ping
cal ping6
calendar pinky
captoinfo pivot_root
catchsegv pkill
catman pldd
cfdisk pmap
chage poweroff
chattr preconv
chcon printenv
chcpu printerbanner
chgpasswd prlimit
chpasswd ptx
chroot pwck
chrt pwconv
clear pwdx
clear_console pwunconv
colcrt raw
colrm rbash
column readlink
cpgr readprofile
cppw realpath
cron reboot
ctrlaltdel remove-shell
ctstat rename.ul
dash reset
debconf resize2fs
debconf-apt-progress resizepart
debconf-communicate rev
debconf-copydb rgrep
debconf-escape rmmod
debconf-set-selections rmt-tar
debconf-show routef
debugfs routel
delgroup rsyslogd
delpart rtacct
deluser rtcwake
depmod rtmon
dhclient rtstat
dhclient-script run-parts
diff3 runcon
dir runlevel
dircolors runuser
dmidecode savelog
dnsdomainname script
domainname scriptreplay
dpkg sdiff
dpkg-deb select-editor
dpkg-divert sensible-browser
dpkg-maintscript-helper sensible-editor
dpkg-preconfigure sensible-pager
dpkg-query service
dpkg-reconfigure setarch
dpkg-split setsid
dpkg-statoverride setterm
dpkg-trigger sfdisk
dumpe2fs sg
e2freefrag sha1sum
e2fsck sha224sum
e2image sha256sum
e2label sha384sum
e2undo sha512sum
e4defrag shadowconfig
eqn shred
expiry shuf
factor skill
faillog slabtop
fallocate snice
fdformat soelim
fdisk ss
filefrag start-stop-daemon
findfs stat
findmnt stdbuf
flock sulogin
fmt sum
free swaplabel
fsck swapoff
fsck.cramfs swapon
fsck.ext2 switch_root
fsck.ext3 sysctl
fsck.ext4 systemctl
fsck.ext4dev systemd
fsck.minix systemd-analyze
fsck.nfs systemd-ask-password
fsfreeze systemd-cat
fstab-decode systemd-cgls
fstrim systemd-cgtop
geqn systemd-delta
getent systemd-detect-virt
getopt systemd-escape
getty systemd-hwdb
gpasswd systemd-inhibit
gpg systemd-machine-id-setup
gpg-zip systemd-notify
gpgsplit systemd-path
gpgv systemd-run
gpic systemd-stdio-bridge
groff systemd-tmpfiles
grog systemd-tty-ask-password-agent
grops tabs
grotty tac
grpck tailf
grpconv tarcat
grpunconv taskset
gtbl tbl
gzexe tc
halt tcptraceroute.db
hd telinit
helpztags tempfile
hexdump timedatectl
hostid timeout
hostnamectl tload
hwclock toe
i386 top
iconvconfig traceproto.db
ifdown traceroute-nanog
ifquery traceroute.db
ifup traceroute6.db
infotocap troff
init truncate
insmod tset
installkernel tune2fs
invoke-rc.d tunelp
ionice tzconfig
ip tzselect
ipcmk udevadm
ischroot ul
isosize uncompress
journalctl unix_chkpwd
killall5 unix_update
kmod unlink
last unshare
lastb unxz
lastlog update-alternatives
ldattach update-passwd
ldconfig update-rc.d
ldconfig.real uptime
ldd users
less utmpdump
lessecho vdir
lessfile vigr
lesskey vim.tiny
lesspipe vipw
lexgrog vmstat
lft.db vpddecode
line w.procps
link wall
linux32 watch
linux64 wdctl
lnstat wget
localectl whatis
login whereis
loginctl which
logrotate whiptail
logsave who
look whoami
lorder wipefs
losetup x86_64
lsattr xxd
lsblk xz
lscpu xzcat
lsipc xzcmp
lslocks xzdiff
lslogins xzegrep
lsmod xzfgrep
lspgpot xzgrep
lzmainfo xzless
mandb xzmore
manpath yes
mawk ypdomainname
mcookie zcmp
md5sum.textutils zdiff
mesg zdump
mke2fs zegrep
mkfs zfgrep
mkfs.bfs zforce
mkfs.cramfs zgrep
mkfs.ext2 zic
mkfs.ext3 zless
mkfs.ext4 zmore
mkfs.ext4dev znew
mkfs.minix zramctl
zwol
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1Comprehensive. I'd like to note that Debian's adduser (and family) is ... Debian's. Arch uses Slackware's, which is very different. I'm only naming it since it doesn't sound Debian-specific, but is, nevertheless, like the
ipcommand you mentioned earlier. – muru Sep 27 '15 at 17:00
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The Wikipedia : list of Unix commands and Linuxconfig : Linux Commands are certainly worth a look.
However, many people tend to take a browse through at what's contained in the directories shown by echo $PATH and then look at the man page for more info.
steve
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Looking in the directories will tell you what's included in your specific distribution, it won't tell what should be. How would you tell by looking there that something is missing? – Barmar Sep 30 '15 at 19:23
busybox --list. Just kidding. – Mingye Wang Sep 25 '15 at 13:28lsbpackage). – muru Sep 25 '15 at 17:02ipcame fromutil-linux, so it should be same across Linux distros. Is there another source ofip? – muru Sep 26 '15 at 15:38ipcomes fromiproute2on my Debian box, but that's not the point; the point is thatip(and a great many others -fsck,mke2fs, the LVM toolset, ...) aren't defined by LSB nor POSIX. – zwol Sep 26 '15 at 20:15