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Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Change the primary group of a user

remote-pbzip2 and transfer a directory to local file

Backup all MySQL Databases to individual files
Backs up all databases, excluding test, mysql, performance_schema, information_schema. Requires parallel to work, install parallel on Ubuntu by running: sudo aptitude install parallel

Shows space used by each directory of the root filesystem excluding mountpoints/external filesystems (and sort the output)
Useful to see at glance which directory under the root file is using most space

extracting audio and video from a movie
rips the audio and video stream of a movie. The two streams are stored separately.

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.

Create and play an instant keyword based playlist
It works best as part of a function, such as the following: MUSICROOT=~/Music function fplay { if [ $1 = '-v' ]; then shift 1 find -E $MUSICROOT -type f -iname "*$**" -iregex '.*\.(3g[2|p]|aac|ac3|adts|aif[c|f]?|amr|and|au|caf|m4[a|r|v]|mp[1-4|a]|mpeg[0,9]?|sd2|wav)' -print -exec afplay "{}" \; & else find -E $MUSICROOT -type f -iname "*$**" -iregex '.*\.(3g[2|p]|aac|ac3|adts|aif[c|f]?|amr|and|au|caf|m4[a|r|v]|mp[1-4|a]|mpeg[0,9]?|sd2|wav)' -exec afplay "{}" \; & fi }

reapair all mySQL/mariaDB databases
while dumping database if you see following error/warning than you have to repair broken tables/rows

Get absolut path to your bash-script


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