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Redirect tar extract to another directory
The command extracting the tar contents into particular directory ...

Limit memory usage per script/program
When I'm testing some scripts or programs, they end up using more memory than anticipated. In that case, computer nearly halts due to swap space usage, and sometimes I have to press Magic SysRq+REISUB to reboot. So, I was looking for a way to limit memory usage per script and found out that ulimit can limit memory. If you run it this way: $ $ ulimit -v 1000000 . $ $ scriptname Then the new memory limit will be valid for that shell. I think changing the limit within a subshell is much more flexible and it won't interfere with your current shell ulimit settings. note: -v 1000000 corresponds to approximately 1GB of RAM

strip non-constant number of directories from tar archive while decompressing
If you want to decompress the files from an archive to current directory by stripping all directory paths, use --transform option to strip path information. Unfortunately, --strip-components option is good if the target files have same and constant depth of folders. The idea was taken from http://www.unix.com/solaris/145941-how-extract-files-tar-file-without-creating-directories.html

Rolling upgrades via aptitude
This has been my "sysupgrade" alias since ca. 2006, first used on Debian Sid, then Sabayon, and it still does its duty on Mint nowadays without breaking stuff.

List recorded formular fields of Firefox
When you fill a formular with Firefox, you see things you entered in previous formulars with same field names. This command list everything Firefox has registered. Using a "delete from", you can remove anoying Google queries, for example ;-)

Replace duplicate files by hardlinks
This variation can handle file paths containing spaces.

find geographical location of an ip address
a shorter version

zgrep across multiple files

Mount important virtual system directories under chroot'ed directory
The command is useful when, e.g., booting an existing system with a rescue or installation CD where you need to chroot into the hard-disk and be able to do stuff which accesses kernel info (e.g. when installing Ubuntu desktop with LVM2 you need to mount and chroot the hard disk from a shell window in order to install packages and run initramfs inside chroot). The command assumes that /mnt/xxx is where the chroot'ed environment's root file system on the hard disk is mounted.

Press ctrl+r in a bash shell and type a few letters of a previous command
In the sample output, I pressed ctrl+r and typed the letters las. I can't imagine how much typing this has saved me.


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