All commands

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Remove all backup files in my home directory

I use this simple command for remove all backup files generated usually by editors like Vim and Emacs.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

find ~user/ -name "*~" -exec rm {} \;

servermanaged · 2009-05-09 12:55:47 88
Get an IP address out of fail2ban jail

Removes an iptables rule created by fail2ban. This example shows how to remove a rule for an IP from the fail2ban-SSH chain. Can be used for any service monitored by fail2ban. For more on fail2ban, see http://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

iptables -D fail2ban-SSH -s <ip_address_to_be_set_free> -j DROP

mheadd · 2009-05-08 19:22:15 3
Encrypted Tarballs

gpg's compression is as suitable as gzip's however your backups can now be encrypted. to extract use: gpg < folder.tpg | tar -xf -
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tar -cf - folder/ | gpg -c > folder.tpg

copremesis · 2009-05-08 19:20:08 5
Safe Delete

remove file that has sensitive info safely. Overwrites it 33 times with zeros
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

shred -n33 -zx file; rm file

copremesis · 2009-05-08 19:15:41 8
Remove unused libs/packages

deborphan(1) must be installed.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

aptitude remove $(deborphan)

P17 · 2009-05-08 18:51:51 7
en/decrypts files in a specific directory

To decrypt the files replace "ccenrypt" with "ccdecrypt. ccrypt(1) must be installed. It uses the AES (Rijndael) block cipher. To make it handier create an alias.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

for a in path/* ; do ccenrypt -K <password> $a; done

P17 · 2009-05-08 18:33:23 6
Edit a script that's somewhere in your path.

Often I need to edit a bash or perl script I've written. I know it's in my path but I don't feel like typing the whole path (or I don't remember the path).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

vim `which <scriptname>`

bunedoggle · 2009-05-08 17:21:47 6
Clears Firefox` cache without clicking around
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

rm_cache() { rm -f $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/Cache/* }; alias rmcache='rm_cache'

P17 · 2009-05-08 14:00:42 3
Go to the last directory invoked on command line

During this operation : # mv Joomla_1.5.10-Stable-Full_Package.zip /var/www/joomla/ I invoke /var/www/joomla/ as last command argument. To change in this directory I can use # cd !$ So I go to hob:/var/www/joomla#
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

cd !$

servermanaged · 2009-05-08 09:48:14 6
Generate padded numbers 001 002 ... 100
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

echo 00{1..9} 0{10..99} 100

lv4tech · 2009-05-07 21:08:53 10
Search for files older than 30 days in a directory and list only their names not the full path
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

find /var/www/html/ -type f -mtime +30 -exec basename {} \;

lv4tech · 2009-05-07 21:05:47 6
Find out which version of linux you are running
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

cat /etc/*issue

lv4tech · 2009-05-07 20:53:03 10
Execute multiple commands from history

Assuming that 219,229 and 221 are entries in history, I recall them in a single line for execute multiple commands 219 ifdown wlan0 ... 221 ifup wlan0 ... 229 iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed so the result is execution of # ifdown wlan0 ; iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed ; ifup wlan0
This is sample output - yours may be different.
8

!219 ; !229 ; !221

servermanaged · 2009-05-07 20:51:36 8
Follow the flow of a log file

tailf same as tail -f follow the flow of a log file, showing it in real time to stdout.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
5

tailf file.log

servermanaged · 2009-05-07 20:13:41 6
Search and replace in multiple files and save them with the same names - quickly and effectively!

Yeah, there are many ways to do that. Doing with sed by using a for loop is my favourite, because these are two basic things in all *nix environments. Sed by default does not allow to save the output in the same files so we'll use mv to do that in batch along with the sed. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
No standard output on screen... just hit and boom. So, by the rule of the thumb first create a backup and then execute  or try to execute on some dummy files first.
```
-4

for files in $(ls -A directory_name); do sed 's/search/replaced/g' $files > $files.new && mv $files.new $files; done;

bassu · 2009-05-07 20:13:07 48
Find which version of Linux You are Running
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

lsb_release -d

tebeka · 2009-05-07 16:19:04 9
Ultra shortcut for ssh root@

When you have to manage lot of servers, it's boring to type ssh root@myhost for each connection. Now you can type juste "s someting" and you are connected. You can too add bash_completion script to complet with tab the name of your servers. This will be the next tips from me ;) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
user@localhost:~$ s myhost
Last login: Mon May  4 15:16:18 2009 from 10.40.29.72
[root@myhost ~]#
```
-20

alias s='ssh -l root'

GouNiNi · 2009-05-07 15:57:12 11
Run a long job and notify me when it's finished

You will need libnotify-bin for this to work: sudo aptitude install libnotify-bin
This is sample output - yours may be different.
25

./my-really-long-job.sh && notify-send "Job finished"

root · 2009-05-07 15:50:27 16
Safely store your gpg key passphrase.

From time to time one forgets either thier gpg key or other passphrases. This can be very problematic in most cases. But luckily there's this script. Its based off of pwsafe which is a unix commandline program that manages encrypted password databases. For more info on pwsafe visit, http://nsd.dyndns.org/pwsafe/. What this script does is it will help you store all your passphrases for later on and allow you to copy it to your clipboard so you can just paste it in, all with one password. Pretty neat no? You can find future releases of this and many more scripts at The Teachings of Master Denzuko - denzuko.wordpress.com. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Enter passphrase for $HOME/.pwsafe.dat: _
```
0

pwsafe -qa "gpg keys"."$(finger `whoami` | grep Name | awk '{ print $4" "$5 }')"

denzuko · 2009-05-07 14:49:56 4
Expand shell variables in sed scripts

With this command you can use shell variables inside sed scripts. This is useful if the script MUST remain in an external file, otherwise you can simply use an inline -e argument to sed.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

expanded_script=$(eval "echo \"$(cat ${sed_script_file})\"") && sed -e "${expanded_script}" your_input_file

giuseppe_rota · 2009-05-07 14:21:14 5
Random line from bash.org (funny IRC quotes)

bash.org is a collection of funny quotes from IRC. WARNING: some of the quotes contain "adult" jokes... may be embarrassing if your boss sees them... Thanks to Chen for the idea and initial version! This script downloads a page with random quotes, filters the html to retrieve just one liners quotes and outputs the first one. Just barely under the required 255 chars :) Improvment: You can replace the head -1 at the end by: awk 'length($0)>0 {printf( $0 "\n%%\n" )}' > bash_quotes.txt which will separate the quotes with a "%" and place it in the file. and then: strfile bash_quotes.txt which will make the file ready for the fortune command and then you can: fortune bash_quotes.txt which will give you a random quote from those in the downloaded file. I download a file periodically and then use the fortune in .bashrc so I see a funny quote every time I open a terminal. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
<Lev> have you SEEN the people who wear the I LOVE LINUX T-shirts....that does more damage to the OS than a billion microsoft blue-screens
```
7

curl -s http://bash.org/?random1|grep -oE ".*.*"|grep -oE ""|sed -e 's/<\/p>/\n/g' -e 's///g' -e 's///g'|perl -ne 'use HTML::Entities;print decode_entities($_),"\n"'|head -1

Iftah · 2009-05-07 13:13:21 17
Which fonts are installed?

See all fonts installed in your system Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Andale Mono
Arab
Arial
Arial Black
AR PL UMing CN
AR PL UMing HK
AR PL UMing TW
AR PL UMing TW MBE
Balker
Bitstream Charter
Bitstream Vera Sans
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
Bitstream Vera Serif ....
```
5

fc-list | cut -d ':' -f 1 | sort -u

kayowas · 2009-05-07 12:57:58 15
Cloning hard disks over the network:

This is a bit to bit copy so if you have a 500GB hard disk it will take a long time even if have Gigabit Ethernet
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

Boot up destination machine with Knoppix live CD and run nc -l -p 9000 | dd of=/dev/sda Then on the master dd if=/dev/sda | nc <dest-ip> 9000 You can monitor bandwidth usage to see progress: nload eth0 -u M

lv4tech · 2009-05-07 05:26:58 6
Start a file browser in the current directory

This opens up nautilus in the current directory, which is useful for some quick file management that isn't efficiently done from a terminal.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-10

screen -d -m nautilus --no-desktop `pwd`

windsurfer · 2009-05-07 00:49:07 14
sync a directory of corrupted jpeg with a source directory

Find all corrupted jpeg in the current directory, find a file with the same name in a source directory hierarchy and copy it over the corrupted jpeg file. Convenient to run on a large bunch of jpeg files copied from an unsure medium. Needs the jpeginfo tool, found in the jpeginfo package (on debian at least).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

for i in *jpg; do jpeginfo -c $i | grep -E "WARNING|ERROR" | cut -d " " -f 1 | xargs -I '{}' find /mnt/sourcerep -name {} -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' cp -f {} ./ ; done

vincentp · 2009-05-07 00:30:36 4
‹ First < 496 497 498 499 500 > Last ›

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

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.

Easy and fast access to often executed commands that are very long and complex.

When using reverse-i-search you have to type some part of the command that you want to retrieve. However, if the command is very complex it might be difficult to recall the parts that will uniquely identify this command. Using the above trick it's possible to label your commands and access them easily by pressing ^R and typing the label (should be short and descriptive). UPDATE: One might suggest using aliases. But in that case it would be difficult to change some parts of the command (such as options, file/directory names, etc).

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)

swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Print names of all video files encoded with h264

Remove all zero size files from current directory (not recursive)

Get the weather forecast for the next 24 to 48 for your location.

This shell function grabs the weather forecast for the next 24 to 48 hours from weatherunderground.com. Replace <YOURZIPORLOCATION> with your zip code or your "city, state" or "city, country", then calling the function without any arguments returns the weather for that location. Calling the function with a zip code or place name as an argument returns the weather for that location instead of your default. To add a bit of color formatting to the output, use the following instead: $weather(){ curl -s "http://api.wunderground.com/auto/wui/geo/ForecastXML/index.xml?query=${@:-}"|perl -ne '/([^

Archive all SVN repositories in platform indepenent form

Use of hotcopy for safety/stability of the backups.

cat a bunch of small files with file indication

If you have a bunch of small files that you want to cat to read, you can cat each alone (boring); do a cat *, and you won't see what line is for what file, or do a grep . *. "." will match any string and grep in multifile mode will place a $filename: before each matched line. It works recursively too!!

Change the ownership of all files owned by one user.

Finds all files in /home owned by UID 1056 and changes to 2056.

Prevent overwriting file when using redirection

If you set noclobber to on, bash won't allow redirection to overwrite existing files . $ set -o noclobber command turn the option on (default it s off ) . You can still append information but not overwrite the file .to turn it back off use : $ set +o noclobber . I use it because i overwrite a file by accident , after thought , content of the file was very important , creating a one more file mean nothing for my hard disk (we are not anymore on the 64 k memory time) , but content of file is far much important . What we call exeprience :(

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by