All commands

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Follow tail by name (fix for rolling logs with tail -f)

If you use 'tail -f foo.txt' and it becomes temporarily moved/deleted (ie: log rolls over) then tail will not pick up on the new foo.txt and simply waits with no output. 'tail -F' allows you to follow the file by it's name, rather than a descriptor. If foo.txt disappears, tail will wait until the filename appears again and then continues tailing.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
15

tail -F file

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 07:37:11 10
Display screen window number in prompt

Add this to your $HOME/.bashrc file. It will only set this prompt if it is running inside screen ($WINDOW var is set) Looks like this... ion@atomos:~[2]$ Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
ion@atomos:~[2]$
```
4

[[ "$WINDOW" ]] && PS1="\u@\h:\w[$WINDOW]\$ "

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:46:19 7
Analyze awk fields

Breaks down and numbers each line and it's fields. This is really useful when you are going to parse something with awk but aren't sure exactly where to start. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1: foo bar this is line one
 1: foo
 2: bar
 3: this
 4: is
 5: line
 6: one
2: blah blah some other stuff
 1: blah
 2: blah
 3: some
 4: other
 5: stuff
```
16

awk '{print NR": "$0; for(i=1;i<=NF;++i)print "\t"i": "$i}'

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:25:31 56
Attach screen over ssh

Directly attach a remote screen session (saves a useless parent bash process)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
43

ssh -t remote_host screen -r

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:15:04 45
Encrypted archive with openssl and tar

command to decrypt: openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d < secret.tar.enc | tar x Of course, don't forget to rm the original files ;) You may also want to look at the openssl docs for more options.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
5

tar c folder_to_encrypt | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -e > secret.tar.enc

recursiverse · 2009-07-23 06:03:39 4
Open windows executable, file, or folder from cygwin terminal

This executes faster than cygstart.exe I put this in a script and added it to my path: cat `which explore.sh` #!/bin/bash if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then explorer.exe $( cygpath `pwd` -w ) & else explorer.exe $( cygpath $1 -w ) & fi; Using the script you just type explore.sh file_or_executable Note: you can do this for any file that has an associated executable in the windows registry. This is quite handy if you want to open pictures or movies from xterm. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ explorer $( cygpath "/path/to/executable" -w ) # Run the windows executable
$ explorer $( cygpath "movie file.avi" -w ) # Plays movie file with default player
$ explorer $( cygpath "/path/to/a folder" -w ) # Opens a folder in windows explorer
```
0

explorer $( cygpath "/path/to/file_or_exe" -w )

Highwayman · 2009-07-22 17:00:21 3660
Convert numbers to SI notation

converts any number on the 'stdin' to SI notation. My version limits to 3 digits of precious (working with 10% resistors). Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1
10
100
1k23
10k0
100k
1M00
24k5
4k54
2P35
0m34
0n35
```
2

$ awk '{ split(sprintf("%1.3e", $1), b, "e"); p = substr("yzafpnum_kMGTPEZY", (b[2]/3)+9, 1); o = sprintf("%f", b[1] * (10 ^ (b[2]%3))); gsub(/\./, p, o); print substr( gensub(/_[[:digit:]]*/, "", "g", o), 1, 4); }' < test.dat

mungewell · 2009-07-22 16:54:14 56
find geographical location of an ip address

a shorter version Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Leiden
```
1

lynx -dump http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/?QRY=$1|sed -nr s/'^.*My IP address city: (.+)$/\1/p'

antcore · 2009-07-22 16:14:56 75
Follow the most recently updated log files

This command finds the 5 (-n5) most frequently updated logs in /var/log, and then does a multifile tail follow of those log files. Alternately, you can do this to follow a specific list of log files: sudo tail -n0 -f /var/log/{messages,secure,cron,cups/error_log} Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
==> /var/log/cron <==

==> /var/log/messages <==

==> /var/log/lastlog <==

==> /var/log/wtmp <==

==> /var/log/secure <==

==> /var/log/lastlog <==

==> /var/log/wtmp <==
&#65533;1pts/4ts/4myusermyhost.example.com&#65533;fJ&#65533;&#65533;?
==> /var/log/secure <==
Jul 21 18:36:19 thost sshd[12730]: Accepted password for myuser from 192.168.100.7 port 50066 ssh2
Jul 21 18:36:19 thost sshd[12730]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user myuser by (uid=0)
```
5

ls -drt /var/log/* | tail -n5 | xargs sudo tail -n0 -f

kanaka · 2009-07-22 14:44:41 22
Mount a partition from within a complete disk dump

Instead of calculating the offset and providing an offset option to mount, let lomount do the job for you by just providing the partition number you would like to loop mount.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

lomount -diskimage /path/to/your/backup.img -partition 1 /mnt/foo

olorin · 2009-07-22 11:32:52 16
Read just the IP address of a device

Shows a single line per interface (device), with its IPv4 settings. Shorter command, better readability in output. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
    inet 192.168.0.1/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth0
    inet 192.168.200.1/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth1
```
-3

ip addr|grep "inet "

RickDeckardt · 2009-07-22 07:38:06 7
get delicious bookmarks on your shell (text version :-))

a variation of avi4now's command - thanks by the way!
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

curl -u 'username' https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all | sed 's/^.*href=//g;s/>.*$//g;s/"//g' | awk '{print $1}' | grep 'http'

bubo · 2009-07-22 07:32:59 7
Read just the IP address of a device

to clean up the extra lines Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
127.0.0.1
192.168.1.127
```
-1

/sbin/ifconfig | grep inet | cut -f 2 -d ":" | cut -f 1 -d " " |egrep -v "^$"

giray · 2009-07-22 07:27:54 3
Matrix Style

Same as above but slooooow it down
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

while true ; do IFS="" read i; echo "$i"; sleep .01; done < <(tr -c "[:digit:]" " " < /dev/urandom | dd cbs=$COLUMNS conv=unblock | GREP_COLOR="1;32" grep --color "[^ ]")

friedchuckles · 2009-07-22 03:59:07 9
Read just the IP address of a device

another way to output the IP address' of the system
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

/sbin/ifconfig | grep inet | cut -f 2 -d ":" | cut -f 1 -d " "

random_bob · 2009-07-21 21:42:04 10
search string in _all_ revisions
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

for i in `git log --all --oneline --format=%h`; do git grep SOME_STRING $i; done

mad · 2009-07-21 19:14:51 4
Read just the IP address of a device

That one works on Linux. On BSD and Solaris, the ifconfig output is much easier to parse: /sbin/ifconfig -a | awk '/inet/{print $2}'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

/sbin/ifconfig | awk -F'[ :]+' '/inet addr/{print $4}'

inof · 2009-07-21 14:18:17 5
restart apache only if config works

making lots of configurations to apache and restarting the server only to find it broken just plain sucks.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

alias restart='apache2ctl configtest && apache2ctl restart'

digitalmechanic · 2009-07-21 14:13:15 4
Read just the IP address of a device
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep "inet addr" | sed -e 's/.*inet addr:$.*$ B.*/\1/g'

digitalmechanic · 2009-07-21 14:10:39 3
Read just the IP address of a device

Found this useful for scripts where I needed to work with the machine's IP. If $DEVICE is not specified, this will return all IPs on the machine. If $DEVICE is set to a network adapter, it will return just that adapter's IP.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

ifconfig $DEVICE | perl -lne '/inet addr:([\d.]+)/ and print $1'

jdob · 2009-07-21 13:48:19 6
Quick alias for case-insensitive grep

This is *NOT* about the -i option in grep. I guess everybody already knows that option. This is about the basic rule of life that the simplest things are sometimes the best. ;-) One day when I used "grep -i" for the umpteenth time, I decided to make this alias, and I've used it ever since, probably more often than plain grep. (In fact I also have aliases egrip and fgrip defined accordingly. I also have wrip="grep -wi" but I don't use this one that often.) If you vote this down because it's too trivial and simplistic, that's no problem. I understand that. But still this is really one of my most favourite aliases.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

alias grip="grep -i"

inof · 2009-07-21 11:12:15 9
Print sorted count of lines

This alias finds identical lines in a file (or pipe) and prints a sorted count of them (the name "sucs" descends from the first letters of the commands). The first example shows the number of logins of users; the one who logged in most often comes last. The second example extracts web client IP addresses from a log file, then pipes the result through the "sucs" alias to find out which clients are performing the most accesses. Or pipe the first column of ps(1) output through "sucs" to see how many processes your users are running. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ last | awk '{print $1}' | sucs
  23 fred
  35 kathy
 109 jim
$ awk '{print $1}' httpd-access.log | sucs
   3 10.3.45.28
  45 172.20.23.87
  97 192.128.3.4
 280 10.1.128.16
...
```
0

alias sucs="sort | uniq -c | sort -n"

inof · 2009-07-21 10:55:06 3
Simple list of apache2 virtualhosts

Simply shows virtualhosts enabled, root access not needed (assuming apache2ctl is non-root executable).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

/usr/sbin/apache2ctl -S

lingo · 2009-07-21 10:52:49 4
List apache2 virtualhosts

Lists virtualhosts currently enabled for apache2, showing the ServerName:port, conf file and DocumentRoot
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

/usr/sbin/apache2ctl -S 2>&1 | perl -ne 'm@.*port\s+([0-9]+)\s+\w+\s+(\S+)\s+\((.+):.*@ && do { print "$2:$1\n\t$3\n"; $root = qx{grep DocumentRoot $3}; $root =~ s/^\s+//; print "\t$root\n" };'

lingo · 2009-07-21 10:51:30 3
Command for getting the list of files with perms, owners, groups info. Useful to find the checksum of 2 machines/images.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

find / | xargs ls -l | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 1,3,4,9

pavanlimo · 2009-07-21 08:41:59 7
‹ First < 474 475 476 477 478 > Last ›

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands

Check These Out

Convert unix timestamp to date

The "-d" option for gnu's "date" command can calculate positive or negative offset from any time, including "now". You can even specify a source timezone (the output timezone can be set with the TZ environment variable). Useful! Fun! Not very well documented!

download a sequence of vim patch

Seq allows you to define printf like formating by specified with -f, %03g is actually tells seq I got three digits, fill the blank digits with 0, and the range is from 176 to 240.

Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

send a circular

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.

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.

Get IP from hostname

Get the IP of a hostname.

split a string (2)

How to estimate the storage size of all files not named *.[extension] on the current directory

With this sentence we can estimate the storage size of all files not named *.jpg on the current directory. The syntax is based on Linux, for Unix compliance use: find ./* -prune ! -name '*.jpg' -ls |awk '{TOTAL+=$7} END {print int(TOTAL/(1024^2))"MB"}' We can change the jpg extension for whatever extension what we need

Find the process you are looking for minus the grepped one

faster ;) but your idea is really cool

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by