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Check a server is up. If it isn't mail me.
This version uses netcat to check a particular service.

Produce a pseudo random password with given length in base 64
Don't copy trailing '=' or use head -c to limit to desired length.

Open a manpage in the default (graphical) web browser
An easy alias for opening a manpage, nicely HTML formatted, in your set internet browser. If you get a "command exited with status 3" error you need to install groff.

GZip all files in a directory separately

Detect illegal access to kernel space, potentially useful for Meltdown detection
Based on capsule8 agent examples, not rigorously tested

list all file-types (case-insensitive extensions) including subdirectories

list files recursively by size

Convert a mp3 file to m4a
I use this to convert mp3 files to m4a files that can be used as ringtones on the iPhone. I've documented the process here: http://www.control-d.com/?p=60

Show top 50 running processes ordered by highest memory/cpu usage refreshing every 1s
http://alvinalexander.com/linux/unix-linux-process-memory-sort-ps-command-cpu for an overview of --sort available values

Is it a terminal?
Oddly, the isatty(3) glibc C call doesn't have a direct analogue as a command 'isatty(1)'. All is not lost as you can use test(1). For example, your script might be run from a tty or from a GUI menu item but it needs to get user-input or give feedback. Now your script can test STDIN with 'isatty 0' or STDOUT with 'isatty 1' and use xmessage(1) if the tty is not available. The other way to test for this is with 'tty -s' - but that's only for STDIN.


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