All commands (14,187)

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

using scanner device from command line
you have to replace "mustek_usb" with the scanner found by `scanimage -l`

pretend to be busy in office to enjoy a cup of coffee
Create a progress dialog with custom title and text using zenity.

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"

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

Binary clock
Fun idea! This one adds seconds and keeps running on the same line. Perl's probably cheating though. :)

Securely stream (and save) a file from a remote server
Securely stream a file from a remote server (and save it locally). Useful if you're impatient and want to watch a movie immediately and download it at the same time without using extra bandwidth. This is an extension of snipertyler's idea. Note: This command uses an encrypted connection, unlike the original.

lotto generator
note the xargs at the end

sort lines by length

Top 15 processes with the largest number of open files
See the summary.

Restrict the bandwidth for the SCP command
the command is obvious, I know, but maybe not everyone knows that using the parameter "-l" you can limit the use of bandwidth command scp. In this example fetch all files from the directory zutaniddu and I copy them locally using only 10 Kbs


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: