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How to backup hard disk timely?
Creates files in $DATE and hardlinks existing files to $PREVDATE. Thus full backup in each directory. Only drawback is changed modification time. Recommend a wrapper script to determine $DATE and $PREVDATE. Works like a charm. (Dirvish handrolled)

Auto download Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with super fast zsync
Need to have rc iso pre-downloaded before running command.

List your MACs address
The output of ifconfig is localized, using it will fail in non-English environment. "ip" command in iproute2 provides a consistent output and thus is more robust

Buffer in order to avoir mistakes with redirections that empty your files
A common mistake in Bash is to write command-line where there's command a reading a file and whose result is redirected to that file. It can be easily avoided because of : 1) warnings "-bash: file.txt: cannot overwrite existing file" 2) options (often "-i") that let the command directly modify the file but I like to have that small function that does the trick by waiting for the first command to end before trying to write into the file. Lots of things could probably done in a better way, if you know one...

output absolute path of the present working directory
I've seen a lot of overly complicated attempts at figuring out "where am I?" I think this is a part of the problem: type -a pwd force the use of the binary version of `pwd` instead of the built-in with "/bin/pwd -P" -P option provides an absolute path to the present working directory for the overly cautious type: $(which pwd) -P

Unzip multiple files with one command
With this command you can easily unzip multiple zip files with just one command. All you need to do is to use single quotes.

Quick access to the ascii table.

how to export a table in .csv file
Exports the result of query in a csv file

Comparison between the execution output of the last and penultimate command
Useful for checking if there are differences between last and penultimate command.

Get rid from a blank display without reboot
Killall5 will kill your session and redirect to login screen. -Very useful when suffering display problems. -Can use F1-F6 -Need to login in the particular console if not already


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