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Open Port Check
also could specify port number: lsof -ni TCP:80

Copy ssh keys to user@host to enable password-less ssh logins.
Alternative for machines without ssh-copy-id

Connect via sftp to a specific port
I use this for connect via sftp to a server listening on a non default ssh port.

Watch active calls on an Asterisk PBX
Show active calls as the happen on an Asterisk server. Note that the Asterisk command (in single quotes) is formatted for Asterisk 1.6. Use the -n flag on the watch command to modify the refresh period (in seconds - default is 2 seconds).

Execute most recent command containing search string.
Execute the most recent command containing search string. This differs from !string as that only refers to the most recent command starting with search string.

Record audio and video from webcam using mencoder
Record audio to MP3 stream and video to MPEG-4 stream from webcam to AVI file using mencoder. Gives floating point exception in some mencoder versions.

DVD ripping with ffmpeg
To rip DVD movie to ogg format using ffmpeg, follow these steps. 1) find the vob files on the mounted video DVD in VIDEO_TS that stores the movie itself. There would be a few other VOB files that stores splash screen or special features, the vob files for the movie itself can be identified by its superior size. You can verify these vob files by playing them directly with a player (e.g. mplayer) 2) concatenate all such vob files, pipe to ffmpeg 3) calculate the video size and crop size. The ogg video size must be multiple of 16 on both width and height, this is inherit limitation of theora codec. In my case I took 512x384. The -vcodec parameter is necessary because ffmpeg doesn't support theora by itself. -acodec is necessary otherwise ffmpeg uses flac by default.

Backup a directory structure
Copies a directory structure from /home/ to /backups/home (notice that the destination does not have a trailing slash)

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Happy Days
This never gets old


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