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Clean way of re-running bash startup scripts.
This replaces the current bash session with a new bash session, run as an interactive non-login shell... useful if you have changed /etc/bash.bashrc, or ~/.bashrc If you have changed a startup script for login shells, use $ exec bash -l Suitable for re-running /etc/profile, ~/.bash_login and ~/.profile. edit: chinmaya points out that $ env - HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM bash -s "exec bash -l" will clear any shell variables which have been set... since this verges on unwieldy, might want to use $ alias bash_restart='env - HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM bash -s "exec bash -l"'

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

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"

Backup a directory structure
Copies a directory structure from /home/ to /backups/home (notice that the destination does not have a trailing slash)

Print github url for the current url
Works for repos cloned via ssh or https.

Search apache virtual host by pattern
Outputs contents of virtual hosts containing PATTERN. Particularly useful for pefrorming complex searches. E.g. search for docroot of www.example.com: $ sed -n '/^[^#]*

Resume scp of a big file
It can resume a failed secure copy ( usefull when you transfer big files like db dumps through vpn ) using rsync. It requires rsync installed in both hosts. rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh $file_source $user@$host:$destination_file local -> remote or rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh $user@$host:$remote_file $destination_file remote -> local

IBM AIX: Extract a .tar.gz archive in one shot
This command is for UNIX OSes that have plain vanilla System V UNIX commands instead of their more functional GNU counterparts, such as IBM AIX.

find the rpm package name that provides a specific file
For Linux distributions using rpm (eg Mandriva), this command will find the rpm package name that provides a file.

Define shell variable HISTIGNORE so that comments (lines starting with #) appear in shell history
I was surprised to find that with RedHat bash, I could not find any comment lines (begining with #) in my bash shell history. Surprised because in Mageia Linux this works. It turns out that RedHat's bash will keep comment lines if in my .bashrc, I define: export HISTIGNORE=' cd "`*: PROMPT_COMMAND=?*?' Why have comment lines in shell history? It's a handy and convenient way to make proto-commands (to be completed later) and for storing brief text data that is searchable in shell history.


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