All commands (14,187)

What's this?

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.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

Zip each file in a directory individually with the original file name
This will list the files in a directory, then zip each one with the original filename individually. video1.wmv -> video1.zip video2.wmv -> video2.zip This was for zipping up large amounts of video files for upload on a Windows machine.

Unlock your KDE4.3 session remotely
The unlock command for KDE 4.3 has changed from krunner_lock, this process doesn't exist anymore. So here's the update :-) If qdbus complains about not being able to find X, put a "DISPLAY=:0 " (:0 being your X server display) in front of the command.

save command output to image

Find installed network devices
Find installed network devices.

Fake system time before running a command
Fake system time before running any command.

set desktop background to highest-rated image from Reddit /r/wallpapers
You'll need "feh" to set the background from the commandline. Install with "apt-get install feh" Thanks to the Redditors on this thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/bira4/is_there_a_linux_version_of_this_preferably_a/

Print the contents of $VARIABLE, six words at a time
Print out the contents of $VARIABLE, six words per line, ignoring any single or double quotes in the text. Useful when $VARIABLE contains a sentence that changes periodically, and may or may not contain quoted text.

how to export a table in .csv file
Exports the result of query in a csv file

Print interface that is up and running

Re-read partition table on specified device without rebooting system (here /dev/sda).


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: