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Get backup from remote host, then expand in current directory using tar

trace the system calls made by a process (and its children)
strace can be invaluable in trying to figure out what the heck some misbehaving program is doing. There are number of useful flags to limit and control its output, and to attach to already running programs. (See also 'ltrace'.)

Rename files in batch

delay execution of a command that needs lots of memory and CPU time until the resources are available
[ 2000 -ge "$(free -m | awk '/buffers.cache:/ {print $4}')" ] returns true if less than 2000 MB of RAM are available, so adjust this number to your needs. [ $(echo "$(uptime | awk '{print $10}' | sed -e 's/,$//' -e 's/,/./') >= $(grep -c ^processor /proc/cpuinfo)" | bc) -eq 1 ] returns true if the current machine load is at least equal to the number of CPUs. If either of the tests returns true we wait 10 seconds and check again. If both tests return false, i.e. 2GB are available and machine load falls below number of CPUs, we start our command and save it's output in a text file. The ( ( ... ) & ) construct lets the command run in background even if we log out. See http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/3115/ .

Create a large test file (taking no space).

Create POSIX tar archive
tar(1) and cpio(1) are not fully platform agnostic, although their file formats are specified in POSIX.1-2001. As such, GNU tar(1) might not be able to extract a BSD tar(1) archive, and ivce versa. pax(1) is defined in POSIX.1-2001. To extract an archive: $ pax -rf archive.tar

remote diff with side-by-side ordering.
more information: man sdiff

Mount a truecrypt drive from a file from the command line interactively
It seems to completely void the benefit of having an encrypted folder if you then have a script on your unencrypted hard drive with your password in it. This command will mount a truecrypt file at a given mount point after asking you for the password.

remove all spaces from all files in current folder

Find the package that installed a command


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