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Optimal way of deleting huge numbers of files

Using xargs is better than: find /path/to/dir -type f -exec rm \-f {} \; as the -exec switch uses a separate process for each remove. xargs splits the streamed files into more managable subsets so less processes are required.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
12

find /path/to/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm

root · 2009-01-26 11:30:47 63
Display PHP files that directly instantiate a given class

This greps all PHP files for a given classname and displays both the file and the usage. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
tao/tests/filter/TestUrl.php:        $this->objFilter = new filter_Url();
tao/classes/local/view/Photos.php:        $objFilter  = new filter_Url();
```
1

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep \-H "new filter_" {} \;

root · 2009-01-26 10:43:09 73
Run the last command as root

Useful when you forget to use sudo for a command. "!!" grabs the last run command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1219

sudo !!

root · 2009-01-26 10:26:48 262
Creates a customized search command

Creates a command alias ('cr' in the above example) that searches the contents of files matching a set of file extensions (C & C++ source-code in the above example) recursively within the current directory. Search configured to be in colour, ignore-case, show line numbers and show 4 lines of context. Put in shell initialisation file of your choice. Trivially easy to use, e.g: cr sha1_init Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./openssl/signatures.c-600-xmlSecOpenSSLDsaSha1EvpInit(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx)
./openssl/signatures.c-601-{
./openssl/signatures.c:602:    return SHA1_Init(ctx->md_data);
./openssl/signatures.c-603-}
./openssl/signatures.c-604-
--
./openssl/signatures.c-706-    NULL,
./openssl/signatures.c-707-#else /* XMLSEC_OPENSSL_096 */
./openssl/signatures.c:708:    SHA1_Init,
./openssl/signatures.c-709-    SHA1_Update,
./openssl/signatures.c-710-    SHA1_Final,
```
0

alias cr='find . 2>/dev/null -regex '\''.*\.$c\|cpp\|pc\|h\|hpp\|cc$$'\'' | xargs grep --color=always -ni -C2'

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 08:54:25 56
Outputs a sorted list of disk usage to a text file

Recursively searches current directory and outputs sorted list of each directory's disk usage to a text file. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
712     .
328     ./test
176     ./lib
144     ./doc
100     ./test/data
96      ./lib/rake
64      ./doc/release_notes
```
6

du | sort -gr > file_sizes

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 01:12:54 62
Watch how fast the files in a drive are being deleted

This can be useful when a large remove operation is taking place.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

watch "df | grep /path/to/drive"

root · 2009-01-25 21:16:41 674
Execute a command at a given time

This is an alternative to cron which allows a one-off task to be scheduled for a certain time.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
266

echo "ls -l" | at midnight

root · 2009-01-25 21:07:42 85
Analyse an Apache access log for the most common IP addresses

This uses awk to grab the IP address from each request and then sorts and summarises the top 10.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
22

tail -10000 access_log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail

root · 2009-01-25 21:01:52 47
Add SVN keywords property to all PHP and Javascript files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

find . $ -name "*.php" -o -name "*.js" $ -exec svn propset svn:keywords Id {} \;

root · 2009-01-24 00:54:35 63
Count files beneath current directory (including subfolders)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
18

find . -type f | wc -l

root · 2009-01-23 17:19:32 74

Display the top ten running processes - sorted by memory usage

ps returns all running processes which are then sorted by the 4th field in numerical order and the top 10 are sent to STDOUT. Show Sample Output

106

ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail

root · 2009-01-23 17:12:33 295

Checks all MySQL tables

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myisamchk.html for further details. You can also repair all tables by running: myisamchk -r *.MYI
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

myisamchk /path/to/mysql/files/*.MYI

root · 2009-01-22 10:20:00 133
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Advanced python tracing

Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Multi-thread any command

For instance: $ find . -type f -name '*.wav' -print0 |xargs -0 -P 3 -n 1 flac -V8 will encode all .wav files into FLAC in parallel. Explanation of xargs flags: -P [max-procs]: Max number of invocations to run at once. Set to 0 to run all at once [potentially dangerous re: excessive RAM usage]. -n [max-args]: Max number of arguments from the list to send to each invocation. -0: Stdin is a null-terminated list. I use xargs to build parallel-processing frameworks into my scripts like the one here: http://pastebin.com/1GvcifYa

Create a simple video contact sheet using the vcs bash script

Assumes you've downloaded Toni Corvera's vcs script (http://p.outlyer.net/vcs), have it in your PATH, and have installed the script's dependencies. Generates a video contact sheet of 24 thumbnails and 3 thumbnails per column. The bold font and white-on-black color scheme keeps the text readable at the chosen 70% JPEG compression quality, which keeps the file size at a manageable level. You can go even lower with the quality and get a good looking result.

Mirror a directory structure from websites with an Apache-generated file indexes

wget/curl/friends are not good with mirroring files off websites, especially those with Apache-generated directory listings. These tools endlessly waste time downloading useless index HTML pages. lftp's mirror command does a better job without the mess.

Bitcoin Brainwallet Base58 Encoder

A bitcoin "brainwallet" is a secret passphrase you carry in your brain. The Bitcoin Brainwallet Private Key Base58 Encoder is the third of three functions needed to calculate a bitcoin PRIVATE key from your "brainwallet" passphrase. This base58 encoder uses the obase parameter of the amazing bc utility to convert from ASCII-hex to base58. Tech note: bc inserts line continuation backslashes, but the "read s" command automatically strips them out. I hope that one day base58 will, like base64, be added to the amazing openssl utility.

Find the files that contain a certain term

Simple use of find and grep to recursively search a directory for files that contain a certain term.

tail: watch a filelog

-f file(s) to be monitorized -n number of last line to be printed on the screen in this example, the content of two files are displayed

Run a script in parrallel over ssh

Runs a local script over ssh assuming ssh keys are in place. -P argument prints results to stdout. # Uses - https://code.google.com/p/parallel-ssh/

find the longest command in your history

Record microphone input and output to date stamped mp3 file

record audio notes or meetings requires arecord and lame run mp3gain on the resulting file to increase the volume / quality ctrl-c to stop recording

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