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Less a grep result, going directly to the first match in the first file
Really useful way to combine less and grep while browsing log files. I can't figure out how to make it into a true oneliner so paste it into a script file called lgrep: Usage: lgrep searchfor file1 [file2 file3] Advanced example (grep for an Exception in logfiles that starts with qc): lgrep Exception $(find . -name "qc*.log")

Write comments to your history.
A null operation with the name 'comment', allowing comments to be written to HISTFILE. Prepending '#' to a command will *not* write the command to the history file, although it will be available for the current session, thus '#' is not useful for keeping track of comments past the current session.

The BOFH Excuse Server

Rename files in batch

Want to known what time is it in another part of the world ?
available timezone can be found in /usr/share/zoneinfo. Other examples: $ TZ=Europe/Paris date; TZ=Australia/Sydney date; TZ=America/New_York date this is based on zoneinfo files on macosx. Your mileage my vary on other unix dialects

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Number of .... indicate how far down to cd
Use dots to cd down directories instead of having to remember all of the pesky back slashes! Better yet, works on even and odd number of dots! Now, just estimate how far down you want to traverse.

Record audio and video from webcam using mencoder
Record audio to MP3 stream and video to MPEG-4 stream from webcam to AVI file using mencoder. Gives floating point exception in some mencoder versions.

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

Show a Package Version on Debian based distribution
if you don't want to show string "version?, then use awk or cut filter it: apt-cache show pkgname | grep -i "version:" | awk '{ print $2 }' we can also use regex to search many packages and show their versions: apt-cache search pkgregex | grep -i "version:"


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