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Create a Multi-Part Archive Without Proprietary Junkware
Leave it to a proprietary software vendor to turn a cheap and easy parlor trick into a selling point. "Hey guys, why don't we turn our _collection of multiple files_ into a *collection of multiple files*!!" Extract the ^above with this: $ cat pics.tar.gz.??? | tar xzv ^extract on any Unix - no need to install junkware! (If you must make proprietary software, at least make it do something *new*) if [ -e windows ]; then use 7-Zip

restore the contents of a deleted file for which a descriptor is still available
Note that the file at the given path will have the contents of the (still) deleted file, but it is a new file with a new node number; in other words, this restores the data, but it does not actually "undelete" the old file. I posted a function declaration encapsulating this functionality to http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7yx6f/how_to_undelete_any_open_deleted_file_in_linux/c07sqwe (please excuse the crap formatting).

check open ports without netstat or lsof

lines in file2 that are not in file1

Get the size of all the directories in current directory

Rename files in batch

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

A DESTRUCTIVE command to render a drive unbootable
THIS COMMAND IS DESTRUCTIVE. That said, lets assume you want to render your boot drive unbootable and reboot your machine. Maybe you want it to boot off the network and kickstart from a boot server for a fresh OS install. Replace /dev/fd0 with the device name of your boot drive and this DESTRUCTIVE command will render your drive unbootable. Your BIOS boot priority should be set to boot from HD first, then LAN.

Convert a flv video file to avi using mencoder

copy timestamps of files from one location to another - useful when file contents are already synced but timestamps are wrong.
Sometimes when copying files from one place to another, the timestamps get lost. Maybe you forgot to add a flag to preserve timestamps in your copy command. You're sure the files are exactly the same in both locations, but the timestamps of the files in the new home are wrong and you need them to match the source. Using this command, you will get a shell script (/tmp/retime.sh) than you can move to the new location and just execute - it will change the timestamps on all the files and directories to their previous values. Make sure you're in the right directory when you launch it, otherwise all the touch commands will create new zero-length files with those names. Since find's output includes "." it will also change the timestamp of the current directory. Ideally rsync would be the way to handle this - since it only sends changes by default, there would be relatively little network traffic resulting. But rsync has to read the entire file contents on both sides to be sure no bytes have changed, potentially causing a huge amount of local disk I/O on each side. This could be a problem if your files are large. My approach avoids all the comparison I/O. I've seen comments that rsync with the "--size-only" and "--times" options should do this also, but it didn't seem to do what I wanted in my test. With my approach you can review/edit the output commands before running them, so you can tell exactly what will happen. The "tee" command both displays the output on the screen for your review, AND saves it to the file /tmp/retime.sh. Credit: got this idea from Stone's answer at http://serverfault.com/questions/344731/rsync-copying-over-timestamps-only?rq=1, and combined it into one line.


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