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Quickly generate an MD5 hash for a text string using OpenSSL
Here Strings / A variant of here documents, the format is:

Search back through previous commands
Searches backwards through your command-history for the typed text. Repeatedly hitting Ctrl-R will search progressively further. Return invokes the command.

Get IPv4 of eth0 for use with scripts
Combines wgzhao's grep | awk | sed into one awk command.

File rotation without rename command
Rotates log files with "gz"-extension in a directory for 7 days and enumerates the number in file name. i.e.: logfile.1.gz > logfile.2.gz I needed this line due to the limitations on AIX Unix systems which do not ship with the rename command.

Use Perl like grep
Much better alternatives - grep-alikes using perl regexps. With more options, and nicer outputs.

Alias TAIL for automatic smart output
Run the alias command, then issue $ps aux | tail and resize your terminal window (putty/console/hyperterm/xterm/etc) then issue the same command and you'll understand. $ ${LINES:-`tput lines 2>/dev/null||echo -n 12`} Insructs the shell that if LINES is not set or null to use the output from `tput lines` ( ncurses based terminal access ) to get the number of lines in your terminal. But furthermore, in case that doesn't work either, it will default to using the default of 80. The default for TAIL is to output the last 10 lines, this alias changes the default to output the last x lines instead, where x is the number of lines currently displayed on your terminal - 7. The -7 is there so that the top line displayed is the command you ran that used TAIL, ie the prompt. Depending on whether your PS1 and/or PROMPT_COMMAND output more than 1 line (mine is 3) you will want to increase from -2. So with my prompt being the following, I need -7, or - 5 if I only want to display the commandline at the top. ( http://www.askapache.com/linux/bash-power-prompt.html ) 275MB/748MB [7995:7993 - 0:186] 06:26:49 Thu Apr 08 [askapache@n1-backbone5:/dev/pts/0 +1] ~ $ In most shells the LINES variable is created automatically at login and updated when the terminal is resized (28 linux, 23/20 others for SIGWINCH) to contain the number of vertical lines that can fit in your terminal window. Because the alias doesn't hard-code the current LINES but relys on the $LINES variable, this is a dynamic alias that will always work on a tty device.

diff current vi buffer edits against original file

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"

RTFM function
Sometimes you don't have man pages only '-h' or '--help'.

Generate a random text color in bash
The expression $(( $RANDOM * 6 / 32767 + 1 )) generates a random number between 1 and 6, which is then inserted into the escape sequence \e[3_m to switch the foreground color of the terminal to either red, green, yellow, blue, purple or cyan. The color can be reset using the escape sequence \e[0m. The full list of colors can be found here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt#List_of_colors_for_prompt_and_Bash


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