Running ngspice from command line on a Linux and Windows machine.
Here is an excerpt from chapter 15 of the user manual which I found on sourceforge:


  If ngspice is started in interactive mode (see chapt. 16.4.2), like
  
  ngspice circuitfile.cir
  
  and  no  control  section  (.control  ...   .endc,  see  16.4.3)  is 
  provided in  the  circuit  file,  the  dot commands are not executed
  immediately, but are waiting for manually receiving the command “run”.


Chapter 16 is full of all kinds of useful information about invoking ngspice from the command line. You should probably read chapter 16. I found it here:
http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/docs/ngspice-manual.pdf

When in doubt, read the manual.