How to use Cat command on Dedicated Server

June 5, 2011 / Dedicated Server

You’ll learn how to utilize the cat command on a dedicated server in this post.

There are many different methods to check the existing running conditions, errors, and general status of services on a dedicated server. Especially, files in the /proc directory can show you critical system information. The “proc” is a virtual filesystem, used as an interface to kernel data structures. Usually, it is mounted at the/proc directory.

However, it’s not at all a good idea to open such files in a text editor, peculiarly when it is possible to view the file containing the information in your console very easily.

The “catcommand is a Linux-based command that allows you to read the contents of the text files without opening them in a text editor. The easiest method of reading a file is to use the “cat” command followed by the particular filename. See the below example:

cat logfile.txt

If you try to open large files in a text editor, it will come up with some issues, whereas, if you open the same file using the “cat” command, it will show you all the contents from that file very quickly without any problems. To rectify it, you can append “less” to the output, to check the file page by page. See the below example:

cat logfile.txt | less

It is also possible to save the output contents in a file and download it so that you can check it offline. To do this, simply type “cat” followed by an output redirection operator.

cat /proc/cpuinfo > /home/user/cpu-information.txt

The “cat” command can also be used to link multiple files together. If you ever wanted to combine files, this is the best method to do it. See the below example:

cat myfile1 myfile2 myfile3

When you fire the above command, it will display the output contents on your screen, which you can send to a file to download.

cat myfile1 myfile2 myfile3 > output.txt

The “cat” command can be used to view any file contents on your dedicated server. To know more about the “cat” command, simply fire the “man cat” command from your command line.

This way you can use the cat command on Dedicated servers. Hope you grasped everything. For more information visit our site regularly.

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