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Show total size of each subdirectory, broken down by KB,MB,GB,TB

Run a program transparently, but print a stack trace if it fails
For automated unit tests I wanted my program to run normally, but if it crashed, to add a stack trace to the output log. I came up with this command so I wouldn't have to mess around with core files. The one downside is that it does smoosh your program's stderr and stdout together.

Print the detailed statistics of transferred bytes by the firewall rules

Compare two CSV files, discarding any repeated lines
The value for the sort command's -k argument is the column in the CSV file to sort on. In this example, it sorts on the second column. You must use some form of the sort command in order for uniq to work properly.

drop first column of output by piping to this
An advantage is that this doesn't modify remained string at all. One can change {0,1} with {0,n} to drop several columns

Copy stdin to your X11 buffer
Have you ever had to scp a file to your work machine in order to copy its contents to a mail? xclip can help you with that. It copies its stdin to the X11 buffer, so all you have to do is middle-click to paste the content of that looong file :)

Rolling upgrades via aptitude
This has been my "sysupgrade" alias since ca. 2006, first used on Debian Sid, then Sabayon, and it still does its duty on Mint nowadays without breaking stuff.

See a full list of compiler defined symbols
From http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/01/msg00971.html .

Backup trought SSH

Gentoo: Get the size of all installed packets, sorted
On a Gentoo system, this command will tell you which packets you have installed and sort them by how much space they consume. Good for finding out space-hogs when tidying up disk space.


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