Skip to main content

The Command Line Interface

The Command Line Interface​

Before continuing, make sure your Omega is powered and accessible as described in the First Time Setup guide.

What is the Command Line Interface?​

The command line interface (CLI) is a terminal session where every interaction is a command interpreted by the operating system. Many commands accept options that tweak their behavior, so the general pattern is command --option value.

Log in to your Omega from a terminal and you will see a prompt similar to the following:

Opening terminal prompt

Some Basic Commands​

Use the login command to authenticate as the root user:

login

Enter the username root and the default password onioneer when prompted (the password does not echo). After a successful login the prompt updates:

Login success screen

If you want to explore available utilities, BusyBox exposes a consolidated help system. Run the following commands to enumerate what is installed:

busybox --help
busybox --list

To get inline help for a specific command, append the --help flag, for example:

busybox ifconfig --help

Many commands simply report useful information. For example, the date utility prints the current time:

date

Date command output

Another essential tool is echo, which writes text back to the terminal:

echo hello

Echo command output

echo is also useful for passing inline input to other commands. You will use that pattern throughout the remaining Linux guides, including the Redirection walkthrough.

Next up, explore the Omega filesystem to understand how Linux stores data and configuration.