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Viewing Top Processes according to cpu, mem, swap size, etc.
I've wanted this for a long time, finally just sat down and came up with it. This shows you the sorted output of ps in a pretty format perfect for cron or startup scripts. You can sort by changing the k -vsz to k -pmem for example to sort by memory instead. If you want a function, here's one from my http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html $ aa_top_ps(){ local T N=${1:-10};T=${2:-vsz}; ps wwo pid,user,group,vsize:8,size:8,sz:6,rss:6,pmem:7,pcpu:7,time:7,wchan,sched=,stat,flags,comm,args k -${T} -A|sed -u "/^ *PID/d;${N}q"; }

BASH: Print shell variable into AWK

Generate a random password 30 characters long
This command is similar to the alternate, except with head(1), you can pick as many passwords as you wish to generate by changing the number of lines you wish to preview.

Concatenates lines using sed

Find the package a command belongs to on debian-based distros

check open ports
Tested in Linux and OSX

See system users

Merge tarballs
Requires the GNU tar ignore zeros option. http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Blocking.html

nmap IP block and autogenerate comprehensive Nagios service checks
More info here: http://nagioswiki.com/wiki/index.php/Autocreating_Nagios_Configuration_with_Nmap_and_Nmap2Nagios.pl

Unbelievable Shell Colors, Shading, Backgrounds, Effects for Non-X
I've been using linux for almost a decade and only recently discovered that most terminals like putty, xterm, xfree86, vt100, etc., support hundreds of shades of colors, backgrounds and text/terminal effects. This simply prints out a ton of them, the output is pretty amazing. If you use non-x terminals all the time like I do, it can really be helpful to know how to tweak colors and terminal capabilities. Like: $ echo $'\33[H\33[2J'


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