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commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

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list files recursively by size

keep an eye on system load changes
helps you keep watch on the load of a system, without having to stare constantly at the terminal. The -d argument to watch highlights the difference from the last run, making it easier to note how the load is fluctuating. The sed command just strips off the information about how long the box has been up, and how many users are logged in.

convert ascii string to hex
You can use "decode()" in a similar manner: $ python -c 'print "68656c6c6f".decode("hex")'

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

Check reverse DNS
The +short option should make dig less chatty.

Remount root in read-write mode.
Saved my day, when my harddrive got stuck in read-only mode.

Silently Execute a Shell Script that runs in the background and won't die on HUP/logout
This command runs your shell script in the background with no output of any kind, and it will remain running even after you logout.

Email yourself a quick message
Usage: mailme message This is a useful function if you want to get notified about process completion or failure. e.g. $ mailme "process X completed"

Takes and displays screenshot of Android phone over adb.
Dependencies on phone: adb access, screencap command, base64 command. Dependencies on computer: adb, sed, base64, display (from imagemagick, but can substitute other image viewer which reads from stdin). This should work around adb stupidies (i.e. that it replaces \n with \r\n) with base64.

diff the same file in two directories.
This is useful when you're diffing two files of the same name in radically different directory trees. For example: Set $ path1='/some/long/convoluted/path/to/all/of/your/source/from/a/long/dead/machine' then $ path2='/local/version/of/same/file' then run the command. Much easier on the eyes when you're looking back across your command history, especially if you're doing the same diff over and over again.


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