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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.

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Find the date of the first commit in a git repository
Finds the date of the first commit in a git repository branch

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

Use mplayer to save video streams to a file
I use this command to save RTSP video streams over night from one of our national TV stations, so I won't have to squeeze the data through my slow internet connection when I want to watch it the next day. For ease of use, you might want to put this in a file: #!/bin/bash FILE="`basename \"$1\"`" mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile "$FILE" -playlist "$1"

Shows what processes need to be restarted after system upgrade
This command can be installed in debian by the package debian-goodies. It also outputs the /etc/init.d/ commands that you need to do.

Create a mirror of a local folder, on a remote server
Create a exact mirror of the local folder "/root/files", on remote server 'remote_server' using SSH command (listening on port 22) (all files & folders on destination server/folder will be deleted)

Continually monitor things
You can use this one-liner for a quick and dirty (more customizable) alternative to the watch command. The keys to making this work: everything exists in an infinite loop; the loop starts with a clear; the loop ends with a sleep. Enter whatever you'd like to keep an eye on in the middle.

List the size (in human readable form) of all sub folders from the current location

Get size of terminal

send echo to socket network
this command will send a message to the socket 25 on host 192.168.1.2 in tcp. works on udp and icmp understand only IP address, not hostname. on the other side (192.168.1.2), you can listen to this socket and test if you receive the message. easy to diagnose a firewall problem or not.

Top Command in batch mode
running top command in batch mode. it is usefull if you want to redirect the output in a file.


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