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Diff files over SSH
Sometimes you need to compare two config files on different servers. Put the file names into the above script and let 'er rip.

Add the time to BASH prompt
Adds the time in 12hr AM/PM format to the beginning of a prompt. Change \@ to \t for 24-hour time or \T for 12hr without AM/PM. To keep the time the next time you open a terminal, edit ~/.bashrc and stick the command at the bottom.

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)

Run a command only when load average is below a certain threshold
Good for one off jobs that you want to run at a quiet time. The default threshold is a load average of 0.8 but this can be set using atrun.

sqlite3 cmd to extract Firefox bookmarks from places.sqlite
Found this useful query at http://id.motd.org/pivot/entry.php?id=22. The b.parent=2 in the command refers to the bookmarks folder to extract. See the source webpage for additional info.

list files recursively by size

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

cooking a list of numbers for calculation
When you've got a list of numbers each on its row, the ECHO command puts them on a simple line, separated by space. You can then substitute the spaces with an operator. Finally, pipe it to the BC program.

Generate random valid mac addresses
Python Alternative

display a smiling smiley if the command succeeded and a sad smiley if the command failed
you could save the code between if and fi to a shell script named smiley.sh with the first argument as and then do a smiley.sh to see if the command succeeded. a bit needless but who cares ;)


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