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LDAP search to query an ActiveDirectory server
These are the parameters to ldapsearch (from ldap-utils in Ubuntu), for searching for the record for Joe Blogg's user. sAMAccountName is the LDAP field that ActiveDirectory uses to store the user name. 'DOMAIN\Joe.Bloggs' where "DOMAIN" is the the active directory domain. Othewise you could use "CN=Joe.Bloggs,DC=example,DC=com" instead of "DOMAIN\Joe.Bloggs"

Rip a CD/DVD to ISO format.
An easy method to generate ISOs from CD/DVD media.

Prefix every line with a timestamp
Useful to add a timestamp to every line printed to stdout. You can use `-Ins` instead of `-Iseconds` if you want more precision.

Edit video by cutting the part you like without transcoding.
Examples: The following will take frames starting at 15.2 seconds for a total of 45.9 seconds: $ mencoder -ss 15.2 -endpos 30.7 -oac copy -ovc copy mymovie.avi -o myeditedmovie.avi Keep in mind -endpos is the total time, i.e. the output video in this is 3 minutes 3 seconds in length: $ mencoder -ss 1 minute -endpos 2 minutes 3 seconds -oac copy -ovc copy mymovie.avi -o myeditedmovie.avi

Display summary of git commit ids and messages for a given branch
In color. Additionally you may define in your ~/.gitconfig and run it just as 'git one': one = log --pretty='format:%Cgreen%H %Cred%ai %Creset- %s'

for loop with leading zero in bash 3

Discovering all open files/dirs underneath a directory
It may be helpful in case you need to umount a directory and some process is preventing you to do so keeping the folder busy. The lsof may process the +D option slowly and may require a significant amount of memory because it will descend the full dir tree. On the other hand it will neither follow symlinks nor other file systems.

Watch the progress of 'dd'
Running this code will execute dd in the background, and you'll grab the process ID with '$!' and assign it to the 'pid' variable. Now, you can watch the progress with the following: $ while true; do kill -USR1 $pid && sleep 1 && clear; done The important thing to grasp here isn't the filename or location of your input or output, or even the block size for that matter, but the fact that you can keep an eye on 'dd' as it's running to see where you are at during its execution.

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Share a terminal screen with others
If you enable multiuser, then you can permit others to share your screen session. The following conditions apply: 1. screen must be suid root; 2. "multiuser on" must be configured in ~/.screenrc; 3. control the others user(s) access with "aclchg": # ----- from ~/.screenrc-users ----- aclchg someuser +rx "#?" #enable r/o access to "someuser" aclchg someuser -x "#,at,aclchg,acladd,acldel,quit" # don't allow these aclchg otheruser +rwx "#?" # enable r/w access to "otheruser" aclchg otheruser -x "#,at,aclchg,acladd,acldel,quit" # don't allow them to use these commands # ----- After doing this (once), you start your session with: $ screen Then, the other user can join your terminal session(s) with youruserid: $ screen -r youruserid/ Note: the trailing "/" is required. Multiple users can share the same screen simultaneously, each with independent access controlled precisely with "aclchg" in the ~/.screenrc file. I use the following setup: # ~/.screenrc-base # default screenrc on any host source $HOME/.screenrc-base source $HOME/.screenrc-$HOST source $HOME/.screenrc-users # ----- Then, the base configurations are in ~/.screenrc-base; the host-specific configurations are in ~/.screenrc-$HOST, and the user configurations are in ~/.screenrc-users. The host-specific .screenrc file might contain some host-specific screen commands; e.g.: # ~/.screen-myhost # ----- screen -t 'anywhere' /bin/tcsh screen -t 'anywhere1' /bin/tcsh # ---- The .screenrc-base contains: # ~/.screenrc-base ## I find typing ^a (Control-a) awkward. So I set the escape key to CTRL-j instead of a. escape ^Jj termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@: autodetach on zombie kr verbose on multiuser on


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