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Check if a remote port is up using dnstools.com (i.e. from behind a firewall/proxy)
Shell function; returns 0 if the port is up, 1 otherwise (check $? after executing). First parameter: IP address/hostname Second parameter: port number There is no error checking for the input parameters.

Remount a usb disk in Gnome without physically removing and reinserting
Remounts a usb disk /dev/sdb, without having to physically remove and reinsert. (Gnome desktop)

Make vim open in tabs by default (save to .profile)
I always add this to my .profile rc so I can do things like: "vim *.c" and the files are opened in tabs.

split large video file
i have a large video file, 500+ MB, so i cant upload it to flickr, so to reduce the size i split it into 2 files. the command shows the splitting for the first file, from 0-4 minutes. ss is start time and t is duration (how long you want the output file to be). credit goes to philc: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=480343 NOTE: when i made the second half of the video, i got a *lot* of lines like this: frame= 0 fps= 0 q=0.0 size= 0kB time=10000000000.00 bitrate= 0.0kbit just be patient, it is working =)

Get gzip compressed web page using wget.
Like the original command, but the -f allows this one to succeed even if the website returns uncompressed data. From gzip(1) on the -f flag: If the input data is not in a format recognized by gzip, and if the --stdout is also given, copy the input data without change to the standard output: let zcat behave as cat.

Find the package that installed a command

pid of manually selecting window

save date and time for each command in history
Date-time format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

Edit a file in vim (at the first error) if it is not well formed xml.
Validate a file using xmllint. If there are parser errors, edit the file in vim at the line of the first error.

Remove all unused kernels with apt-get
A little aptitude magic. Note: this will remove images AND headers. If you just want to remove images: aptitude remove ?and(~i~nlinux-im ?not(~n`uname -r`)) I used this in zsh without any problems. I'm not sure how other shells will interpret some of the special characters used in the aptitude search terms. Use -s to simulate.


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