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Follow tail by name (fix for rolling logs with tail -f)

If you use 'tail -f foo.txt' and it becomes temporarily moved/deleted (ie: log rolls over) then tail will not pick up on the new foo.txt and simply waits with no output. 'tail -F' allows you to follow the file by it's name, rather than a descriptor. If foo.txt disappears, tail will wait until the filename appears again and then continues tailing.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
15

tail -F file

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 07:37:11 10
Display screen window number in prompt

Add this to your $HOME/.bashrc file. It will only set this prompt if it is running inside screen ($WINDOW var is set) Looks like this... ion@atomos:~[2]$ Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
ion@atomos:~[2]$
```
4

[[ "$WINDOW" ]] && PS1="\u@\h:\w[$WINDOW]\$ "

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:46:19 7
Analyze awk fields

Breaks down and numbers each line and it's fields. This is really useful when you are going to parse something with awk but aren't sure exactly where to start. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1: foo bar this is line one
 1: foo
 2: bar
 3: this
 4: is
 5: line
 6: one
2: blah blah some other stuff
 1: blah
 2: blah
 3: some
 4: other
 5: stuff
```
16

awk '{print NR": "$0; for(i=1;i<=NF;++i)print "\t"i": "$i}'

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:25:31 56
Attach screen over ssh

Directly attach a remote screen session (saves a useless parent bash process)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
43

ssh -t remote_host screen -r

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:15:04 45
Encrypted archive with openssl and tar

command to decrypt: openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d < secret.tar.enc | tar x Of course, don't forget to rm the original files ;) You may also want to look at the openssl docs for more options.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
5

tar c folder_to_encrypt | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -e > secret.tar.enc

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:03:39 4
Open windows executable, file, or folder from cygwin terminal

This executes faster than cygstart.exe I put this in a script and added it to my path: cat `which explore.sh` #!/bin/bash if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then explorer.exe $( cygpath `pwd` -w ) & else explorer.exe $( cygpath $1 -w ) & fi; Using the script you just type explore.sh file_or_executable Note: you can do this for any file that has an associated executable in the windows registry. This is quite handy if you want to open pictures or movies from xterm. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ explorer $( cygpath "/path/to/executable" -w ) # Run the windows executable
$ explorer $( cygpath "movie file.avi" -w ) # Plays movie file with default player
$ explorer $( cygpath "/path/to/a folder" -w ) # Opens a folder in windows explorer
```
0

explorer $( cygpath "/path/to/file_or_exe" -w )

Highwayman · 2009-07-22 17:00:21 3640
Convert numbers to SI notation

converts any number on the 'stdin' to SI notation. My version limits to 3 digits of precious (working with 10% resistors). Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1
10
100
1k23
10k0
100k
1M00
24k5
4k54
2P35
0m34
0n35
```
2

$ awk '{ split(sprintf("%1.3e", $1), b, "e"); p = substr("yzafpnum_kMGTPEZY", (b[2]/3)+9, 1); o = sprintf("%f", b[1] * (10 ^ (b[2]%3))); gsub(/\./, p, o); print substr( gensub(/_[[:digit:]]*/, "", "g", o), 1, 4); }' < test.dat

mungewell · 2009-07-22 16:54:14 56
find geographical location of an ip address

a shorter version Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Leiden
```
1

lynx -dump http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/?QRY=$1|sed -nr s/'^.*My IP address city: (.+)$/\1/p'

antcore · 2009-07-22 16:14:56 75
Follow the most recently updated log files

This command finds the 5 (-n5) most frequently updated logs in /var/log, and then does a multifile tail follow of those log files. Alternately, you can do this to follow a specific list of log files: sudo tail -n0 -f /var/log/{messages,secure,cron,cups/error_log} Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
==> /var/log/cron <==

==> /var/log/messages <==

==> /var/log/lastlog <==

==> /var/log/wtmp <==

==> /var/log/secure <==

==> /var/log/lastlog <==

==> /var/log/wtmp <==
&#65533;1pts/4ts/4myusermyhost.example.com&#65533;fJ&#65533;&#65533;?
==> /var/log/secure <==
Jul 21 18:36:19 thost sshd[12730]: Accepted password for myuser from 192.168.100.7 port 50066 ssh2
Jul 21 18:36:19 thost sshd[12730]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user myuser by (uid=0)
```
5

ls -drt /var/log/* | tail -n5 | xargs sudo tail -n0 -f

kanaka · 2009-07-22 14:44:41 22
Mount a partition from within a complete disk dump

Instead of calculating the offset and providing an offset option to mount, let lomount do the job for you by just providing the partition number you would like to loop mount.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

lomount -diskimage /path/to/your/backup.img -partition 1 /mnt/foo

olorin · 2009-07-22 11:32:52 16
Read just the IP address of a device

Shows a single line per interface (device), with its IPv4 settings. Shorter command, better readability in output. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
    inet 192.168.0.1/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth0
    inet 192.168.200.1/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth1
```
-3

ip addr|grep "inet "

RickDeckardt · 2009-07-22 07:38:06 7
get delicious bookmarks on your shell (text version :-))

a variation of avi4now's command - thanks by the way!
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

curl -u 'username' https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all | sed 's/^.*href=//g;s/>.*$//g;s/"//g' | awk '{print $1}' | grep 'http'

bubo · 2009-07-22 07:32:59 7
Read just the IP address of a device

to clean up the extra lines Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
127.0.0.1
192.168.1.127
```
-1

/sbin/ifconfig | grep inet | cut -f 2 -d ":" | cut -f 1 -d " " |egrep -v "^$"

giray · 2009-07-22 07:27:54 3
Matrix Style

Same as above but slooooow it down
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

while true ; do IFS="" read i; echo "$i"; sleep .01; done < <(tr -c "[:digit:]" " " < /dev/urandom | dd cbs=$COLUMNS conv=unblock | GREP_COLOR="1;32" grep --color "[^ ]")

friedchuckles · 2009-07-22 03:59:07 9
Read just the IP address of a device

another way to output the IP address' of the system
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

/sbin/ifconfig | grep inet | cut -f 2 -d ":" | cut -f 1 -d " "

random_bob · 2009-07-21 21:42:04 10
search string in _all_ revisions
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

for i in `git log --all --oneline --format=%h`; do git grep SOME_STRING $i; done

mad · 2009-07-21 19:14:51 4
Read just the IP address of a device

That one works on Linux. On BSD and Solaris, the ifconfig output is much easier to parse: /sbin/ifconfig -a | awk '/inet/{print $2}'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

/sbin/ifconfig | awk -F'[ :]+' '/inet addr/{print $4}'

inof · 2009-07-21 14:18:17 5
restart apache only if config works

making lots of configurations to apache and restarting the server only to find it broken just plain sucks.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

alias restart='apache2ctl configtest && apache2ctl restart'

digitalmechanic · 2009-07-21 14:13:15 4
Read just the IP address of a device
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep "inet addr" | sed -e 's/.*inet addr:$.*$ B.*/\1/g'

digitalmechanic · 2009-07-21 14:10:39 3
Read just the IP address of a device

Found this useful for scripts where I needed to work with the machine's IP. If $DEVICE is not specified, this will return all IPs on the machine. If $DEVICE is set to a network adapter, it will return just that adapter's IP.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ifconfig $DEVICE | perl -lne '/inet addr:([\d.]+)/ and print $1'

jdob · 2009-07-21 13:48:19 6
Quick alias for case-insensitive grep

This is *NOT* about the -i option in grep. I guess everybody already knows that option. This is about the basic rule of life that the simplest things are sometimes the best. ;-) One day when I used "grep -i" for the umpteenth time, I decided to make this alias, and I've used it ever since, probably more often than plain grep. (In fact I also have aliases egrip and fgrip defined accordingly. I also have wrip="grep -wi" but I don't use this one that often.) If you vote this down because it's too trivial and simplistic, that's no problem. I understand that. But still this is really one of my most favourite aliases.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

alias grip="grep -i"

inof · 2009-07-21 11:12:15 9
Print sorted count of lines

This alias finds identical lines in a file (or pipe) and prints a sorted count of them (the name "sucs" descends from the first letters of the commands). The first example shows the number of logins of users; the one who logged in most often comes last. The second example extracts web client IP addresses from a log file, then pipes the result through the "sucs" alias to find out which clients are performing the most accesses. Or pipe the first column of ps(1) output through "sucs" to see how many processes your users are running. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ last | awk '{print $1}' | sucs
  23 fred
  35 kathy
 109 jim
$ awk '{print $1}' httpd-access.log | sucs
   3 10.3.45.28
  45 172.20.23.87
  97 192.128.3.4
 280 10.1.128.16
...
```
0

alias sucs="sort | uniq -c | sort -n"

inof · 2009-07-21 10:55:06 3
Simple list of apache2 virtualhosts

Simply shows virtualhosts enabled, root access not needed (assuming apache2ctl is non-root executable).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

/usr/sbin/apache2ctl -S

lingo · 2009-07-21 10:52:49 4
List apache2 virtualhosts

Lists virtualhosts currently enabled for apache2, showing the ServerName:port, conf file and DocumentRoot
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

/usr/sbin/apache2ctl -S 2>&1 | perl -ne 'm@.*port\s+([0-9]+)\s+\w+\s+(\S+)\s+\((.+):.*@ && do { print "$2:$1\n\t$3\n"; $root = qx{grep DocumentRoot $3}; $root =~ s/^\s+//; print "\t$root\n" };'

lingo · 2009-07-21 10:51:30 3
Command for getting the list of files with perms, owners, groups info. Useful to find the checksum of 2 machines/images.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

find / | xargs ls -l | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 1,3,4,9

pavanlimo · 2009-07-21 08:41:59 7
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geoip information

That makes a function you can put in your ~/.bashrc to run it when you need in any term with an IP as argument

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance

You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

Pick a random image from a directory (and subdirectories) every thirty minutes and set it as xfce4 wallpaper

Change your wallpaper every thirty minutes (or however long you like, I suppose) to a randomly selected image in a directory and subdirectories. Bear in mind this is not safe to use if anyone else has write access to your image directory.

do 'foo' until it exits successfully, pausing in between crashes

restart a buggy script when it dies. works great for "git svn fetch", which leaks memory like a sieve and eventually dies...making you restart it.

rsync Command that limits bandwidth

Useful for transferring large file over a network during operational hours

shortcut to scp a file to the same location on a remote machine

This will copy a file from your current directory to the same location on another machine. Handy for configuring ha, copying your resolv.conf, .bashrc, anything in /usr/local, etc.

Exclude inserting a table from a sql import

Starting with a large MySQL dump file (*.sql) remove any lines that have inserts for the specified table. Sometimes one or two tables are very large and uneeded, eg. log tables. To exclude multiple tables you can get fancy with sed, or just run the command again on subsequently generated files.

Assign top-level JSON entries to shell variables

A recursive version might be useful too. /dev/tty is used to show which shell variables just got defined.

Sending a file over icmp with hping

you need to start a listening hping on the reciever: hping3 --listen 10.0.2.254 -I eth0 --sign MSGID1 then you can send your file: hping3 10.0.2.254 --icmp --sign MSGID1 -d 50 -c 1 --file a_file

Randomize lines in a file

This appends a random number as a first filed of all lines in SOMEFILE then sorts by the first column and finally cuts of the random numbers.

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