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Indent all the files in a project using emacs
use -iname \*[.ch] instead of -iname \*.c -o -iname \*.h

quickly formats a fat partition. usefull for flash drives

Debug a remote php application (behind firewall) using ssh tunnel for XDEBUG port 9000
If you need to xdebug a remote php application, which is behind a firewall, and you have an ssh daemon running on that machine. you can redirect port 9000 on that machine over to your local machine from which you run your xdebug client (I am using phpStorm) So, run this command on your local machine and start your local xdebug client, to start debugging. more info: http://code.google.com/p/spectator/wiki/Installing

Change user, assume environment, stay in current dir
I've used this a number of times troubleshooting user permissions. Instead of just 'su - user' you can throw another hyphen and stay in the original directory.

Show the command line for a PID, converting nulls to spaces and a newline
If you cat the file, all the parts of the command line are bunched up. If you use tr to convert the nulls to spaces, you're still left without a newline unless you add another step. This command does everything for you.

list files recursively by size

Delete .svn directories and content recursively
Use carefully have rm -rf ;-)

Lists installed kernels

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

Duplicate several drives concurrently
If you have some drive imaging to do, you can boot into any liveCD and use a commodity machine. The drives will be written in parallel. To improve efficiency, specify a larger block size in dd: $dd if=/dev/sda bs=64k | tee >(dd of=/dev/sdb bs=64k) | dd of=/dev/sdc bs=64k To image more drives , insert them as additional arguments to tee: $dd if=/dev/sda | tee >(dd of=/dev/sdb) >(dd of=/dev/sdc) >(dd of=/dev/sdd) | dd of=/dev/sde


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