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Update program providing a functionality on Debian
On Debian systems, choose which command provides java. Works for all alternatives listed in /etc/alternatives.

Find out what the day ends in
Several people have submitted commands to do this, but I think this is the simplest solution. It also happens to be the most portable one: It should work with any sh or csh derived shell under any UNIX-like OS. Oh by the way, with my German locale ($LC_TIME set appropriately) it prints "g" most of the time, and sometimes (on Wednesdays) it prints "h". It never prints "y".

Simple server which listens on a port and prints out received data
Sometimes you need a simple server which listens on a port and prints out received data. Example: Consider you want to know, which data is posted by a homepage to a remote script without analysing the html code! A simple way to do this is to save the page to your computer, substitude all action="address" with action="localhost:portnumber", run 'ncat -l portnumber' and open the edited page with your browser. If you then submit the form, ncat will print out the http-protocol with all the posted data.

Force the script to be started as root
Will run the script as root and exit if the wrong or no password is given. Also will keep the parameters active if any where given.

Encrypt and password-protect execution of any bash script, Version 2
(Please see sample output for usage) Use any script name (the read command gets it) and it will be encrypted with the extension .crypt, i.e.: myscript --> myscript.crypt You can execute myscript.crypt only if you know the password. If you die, your script dies with you. If you modify the startup line, be careful with the offset calculation of the crypted block (the XX string). Not difficult to make script editable (an offset-dd piped to a gpg -d piped to a vim - piped to a gpg -c directed to script.new ), but not enough space to do it on a one liner. Sorry for the chmod on parentheses, I dont like "-" at the end. Thanks flatcap for the subshell abbreviation to /dev/null

Find the package that installed a command

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"

external projector for presentations
i spent way too many hours trying to fiddle with /etc/X11/xorg.conf trying to hook up various external projectors. too bad i didn't know this would solve all my problems.

force a rescan on a host of scsi devices (useful for adding partitions to vmware on the fly)

Show CPU usage for EACH cores


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