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Compare two files side-by-side
I found out about this from Unix Power Tools, and thought it was pretty useful. Use the -w option to change the width of the output, and the -s option to suppress lines that are the same in both files.

Bypass with hexencoding, dump /etc/passwd

The Chronic: run a command every N seconds in the background
Chronic Bash function: $ chronic 3600 time # Print the time in your shell every hour $ chronic 60 updatedb > /dev/null # update slocate every minute Note: use 'jobs' to list background tasks and fg/bg to take control of them.

Clear terminal Screen
Probably the quickest / easiest way to clear the screen.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

view the system memory in clear text
see what's in your memory right now... sometimes you find passwords, account numbers and url's that were recently used. Anyone have a safe command to clear the memory without rebooting?

Mount/unmount your truecrypted file containers
This should automatically mount it to /media/truecrypt1. Further mounts will go to /media/truecrypt2, and so on. You shouldn't need sudo/su if your permissions are right. I alias tru='truecrypt' since tr and true are commands. To explicitly create a mount point do: tru volume.tc /media/foo To make sure an GUI explorer window (nautilus, et al) opens on the mounted volume, add: --explorer To see what you currently have mounted do: tru -l To dismount a volume do: tru -d volume.tc. To dismount all mounted volumes at once do: tru -d Tested with Truecrypt v6.3a / Ubuntu 9.10

Get technical and tag information about a video or audio file
MediaInfo supplies technical and tag information about a video or audio file. (sudo apt install mediainfo)

auto terminal title change
above line in .bash_profile will give you window title in putty or terminal client when you login to your remote server

Create a backup copy of a MySQL database on the same host
This should probably only be used for testing in a dev environment as it's not terribly efficient, but if you're doing something that might trash a DB and you still want the old data available, this works like a charm.


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