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Creates a proxy based on tsocks.

create tar archive of files in a directory and its sub-directories
creates a compressed tar archive of files in /path/foo and writes to a timestamped filename in /path.

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"

Compare two files side-by-side
I found out about this from Unix Power Tools, and thought it was pretty useful. Use the -w option to change the width of the output, and the -s option to suppress lines that are the same in both files.

find the rpm package name that provides a specific file
For Linux distributions using rpm (eg Mandriva), this command will find the rpm package name that provides a file.

Recover tmp flash videos (deleted immediately by the browser plugin)
Newer versions of the flashplayer browser plugin delete the tmp flash video immediately after opening a filehandle to prevent the user from "exporting" the video by simply copying the /tmp/FlashXYZ file. This command searches such deleted flash videos and creates symbolic links to the opened filehandle with the same name as the deleted file. This allows you to play your flash-videos (from e.g. youtube) with e.g. mplayer or copy the buffered video if you want to keep it.

Get your external IP address

show ls colors with demo
This can show all ls colors, with a demo.

Watch the disk fill up with change highlighting
If you add the -d flag each difference in the command's output will be highlighted. I also monitor individual drives by adding them to df. Makes for a nice thin status line that I can shove to the bottom of the monitor.

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


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