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Rename files with vim.
Opens a list of files in a text editor. Using Vim as your default editor allows you to use the power of regex substitution and visual block mode to batch rename files. Found in the renameutils package sudo apt-get install renameutils

grep -v with multiple patterns.
You can use -e to pass multiple patterns.

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

dd with progress bar and statistics
This command utilizes 'pv' to show dd's progress. Notes on use with dd: -- dd block size (bs=...) is a widely debated command-line switch and should usually be between 1024 and 4096. You won't see much performance improvements beyond 4096, but regardless of the block size, dd will transfer every bit of data. -- pv's switch, '-s' should be as close to the size of the data source as possible. -- dd's out file, 'of=...' can be anything as the data within that file are the same regardless of the filename / extension.

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

Debug a remote php application (behind firewall) using ssh tunnel for XDEBUG port 9000
If you need to xdebug a remote php application, which is behind a firewall, and you have an ssh daemon running on that machine. you can redirect port 9000 on that machine over to your local machine from which you run your xdebug client (I am using phpStorm) So, run this command on your local machine and start your local xdebug client, to start debugging. more info: http://code.google.com/p/spectator/wiki/Installing

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"

Prepend section dates to individual entries in a summary log file
Searches for dates on lines by themselves. Uses that date to prepend all rows that contain SEARCHSTRING with the date, until it reaches another line with a date by itself. This fixed an issue with a specific log export where there would be a date, followed by all of the entries for that date.

GREP a PDF file.
PDF files are simultaneously wonderful and heinous. They are wonderful in being ubiquitous and mostly being cross platform. They are heinous in being very difficult to work with from the command line, search, grep, use only the text inside the PDF, or use outside of proprietary products. xpdf is a wonderful set of PDF tools. It is on many linux distros and can be installed on OS X. While primarily an open PDF viewer for X, xpdf has the tool "pdftotext" that can extract formated or unformatted text from inside a PDF that has text. This text stream can then be further processed by grep or other tool. The '-' after the file name directs output to stdout rather than to a text file the same name as the PDF. Make sure you use version 3.02 of pdftotext or later; earlier versions clipped lines. The lines extracted from a PDF without the "-layout" option are very long. More paragraphs. Use just to test that a pattern exists in the file. With "-layout" the output resembles the lines, but it is not perfect. xpdf is available open source at http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/

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