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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"

Say something out loud
Whatever arguments you pass will be spoken out loud. (Put it in a script or shell function.)

Send apache log to syslog-ng
Send apache log to syslog-ng server without change configuration of syslog. Just add in httpd.conf or vhost conf.

Print every Nth line
Sometimes commands give you too much feedback. Perhaps 1/100th might be enough. If so, every() is for you. $ my_verbose_command | every 100 will print every 100th line of output. Specifically, it will print lines 100, 200, 300, etc If you use a negative argument it will print the *first* of a block, $ my_verbose_command | every -100 It will print lines 1, 101, 201, 301, etc The function wraps up this useful sed snippet: $ ... | sed -n '0~100p' don't print anything by default $ sed -n starting at line 0, then every hundred lines ( ~100 ) print. $ '0~100p' There's also some bash magic to test if the number is negative: we want character 0, length 1, of variable N. $ ${N:0:1} If it *is* negative, strip off the first character ${N:1} is character 1 onwards (second actual character).

Display a cool clock on your terminal
This command displays a clock on your terminal which updates the time every second. Press Ctrl-C to exit. A couple of variants: A little bit bigger text: $ watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet -f big" You can try other figlet fonts, too. Big sideways characters: $ watch -n 1 -t '/usr/games/banner -w 30 $(date +%M:%S)' This requires a particular version of banner and a 40-line terminal or you can adjust the width ("30" here).

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

Merge tarballs
Requires the GNU tar ignore zeros option. http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Blocking.html

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Read funny developer comments in the Linux source tree
These are way better than fortune(6).

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.


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