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Create an alias, store it in ~/.bash_aliases and source your new alias into the ~/.bashrc
This is useful if you use a shell with a lot of other users. You will be able to run "topu" to see your running processes instead of the complete 'top -u username'. Read more on alias: http://man.cx/alias

Buffer in order to avoir mistakes with redirections that empty your files
A common mistake in Bash is to write command-line where there's command a reading a file and whose result is redirected to that file. It can be easily avoided because of : 1) warnings "-bash: file.txt: cannot overwrite existing file" 2) options (often "-i") that let the command directly modify the file but I like to have that small function that does the trick by waiting for the first command to end before trying to write into the file. Lots of things could probably done in a better way, if you know one...

left-right mouse buttons (left-handed)

Create incremental backups of individual folders using find and tar-gzip
Problem: I wanted to backup user data individually, using and incremental method. In this example, all user data is located in "/mnt/storage/profiles", and about 25 folders inside, each with a username ( /mnt/storage/profiles/mike; /mnt/storage/profiles/lucy ...) I need each individual folder backed up, not the whole "/mnt/storage/profiles". So, using find while excluding directories depth and creating two variables (tarfile=username & desdir=destination), tar will create a .tgz file for each folder, resulting in a "mike_2013-12-05.tgz" and "lucy_2013-12-05.tgz".

copies 20 most recently downloaded mp3 files (such as from Miro) into a directory
Change ~/tmp to the destination directory, such as your mounted media. Change -n20 to whatever number of files to copy. It should quit when media is full. I use this to put my most recently downloaded podcasts onto my phone.

ssh batch jobs: query hundreds of hosts with an ssh command
Need to query hundreds of hosts with an ssh command ? Of course you'll have setup keys on all your remote HOSTs. But in the case a key is not present this command will skip that node, proceeding on to the next. -t: Force pseudo-tty allocation. This can be used to execute arbitrary screen-based programs on a remote machine. Also prevents unwanted stty messages being sent to console -q: Quiet mode. -o "BatchMode yes" If set to yes, passphrase/password querying will be disabled. This option is useful in scripts and other batch jobs where no user is present

(Git) Revert files with changed mode, not content
I sometimes (due to mismanagement!) end up with files in a git repo which have had their modes changed, but not their content. This one-liner lets me revert the mode changes, while leaving changed-content files be, so I can commit just the actual changes made.

Automagically update grub.conf labels after installing a new kernel
I like to label my grub boot options with the correct kernel version/build. After building and installing a new kernel with "make install" I had to edit my grub.conf by hand. To avoid this, I've decided to write this little command line to: 1. read the version/build part of the filename to which the kernel symlinks point 2. replace the first label lines of grub.conf grub.conf label lines must be in this format: Latest [{name}-{version/build}] Old [{name}-{version/build}] only the {version/build} part is substituted. For instance: title Latest [GNU/Linux-2.6.31-gentoo-r10.201003] would turn to title Latest [GNU/Linux-2.6.32-gentoo-r7.201004]"

Random unsigned integer
Reads 4 bytes from the random device and formats them as unsigned integer between 0 and 2^32-1.

check open ports (both ipv4 and ipv6)


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