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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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Send multiple attachments using mailx
If you're users have ever asked your script to email their reports in separate attachments instead of tar'ring them into one file, then you can use this. You'll need the mailx package of course. In Unix you'd want to add an additional parameter "-m" (uuencode foo.txt foo.txt; uuencode /etc/passwd passwd.txt)|mailx -m -s "Hooosa!" someone@cmdfu.com

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.

Swap a file or dir with quick resotre
This lets you replace a file or directory and quickly revert if something goes wrong. For example, the current version of a website's files are in public_html. Put a new version of the site in public_html~ and execute the command. The names are swapped. If anything goes wrong, execute it again (up arrow or !!).

See multiple progress bars at once for multiple pipes with pv
In this example we convert a .tar.bz2 file to a .tar.gz file. If you don't have Pipe Viewer, you'll have to download it via apt-get install pv, etc.

Rsync between two servers
copying files from one server to another using rysnc. Root access need to be allowed on the destination.

Short URLs with is.gd
No curl and no sed, just wget :)

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"

Find size in kilobyte of files that are deleted but still in use and therefore consumes diskspace

find directory with most inodes/files
Find which directory in one filesystem that contains most inodes or files.

Sorted, recursive long file listing
Tells you everything you could ever want to know about all files and subdirectories. Great for package creators. Totally secure too. On my Slackware box, this gets set upon login: $ LS_OPTIONS='-F -b -T 0 --color=auto' and $ alias ls='/bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS' which works great.


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