Mandriva Linux includes a security tool called "msec" (configurable via "draksec").

One of the many things it regularily checks for is world writeable files.

If any are found, it writes the list to /var/log/security/writable.today.

"wc -l" simply counts the number of lines in the file.

This number should be low.

Browse through /var/log/security/writable.today and consider if any of those files *need* to be world-writeable (and if not, modify the permissions. eg: "chmod o-w $file").

A large number of world-writeable files may indicate that umask is not correctly set in /etc/profile (or ${HOME}/.bash_profile) but could also indicate poor security configuration or even malicious activity.

prerequisite:

It colors the machine name and current directory different colors for easy viewing.

Decreasing the cdrom device speed may be more comfortable to watch films (for example)

Issues a scan command on the given scsi host adapter (ex. a fibre channel adapter, in the example above on host0). Output can be watched in the messages log or in "dmesg"

Lists all installed RPM packages with name and architecture, which is useful to check for compability packages (+ required i386 packages) on a 64bit system.

Resets a scrambled terminal into its orignal state.

This command sequence allows simple setup of (gasp!) password-less SSH logins. Be careful, as if you already have an SSH keypair in your ~/.ssh directory on the local machine, there is a possibility ssh-keygen may overwrite them. ssh-copy-id copies the public key to the remote host and appends it to the remote account's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. When trying ssh, if you used no passphrase for your key, the remote shell appears soon after invoking ssh user@host.

This invokes tar on the remote machine and pipes the resulting tarfile over the network using ssh and is saved on the local machine. This is useful for making a one-off backup of a directory tree with zero storage overhead on the source. Variations on this include using compression on the source by using 'tar cfvp' or compression at the destination via

Thanks to OpenSSL, you can quickly and easily generate MD5 hashes for your passwords.

Alternative (thanks to linuxrawkstar and atoponce):

Note that the above method does not utlise OpenSSL.

A simple but effective replacement for ps aux. I used to waste my time running ps over and over; top is the way to go. It also allows complex sorting options. Press q to exit "nicely" (Ctrl + C is always an option, of course). Note that the list updates each second, resorting in the process; if you're trying to grab a specific PID, you might be better off with ps.

Alternatively, htop is available, though it may not come pre-installed. htop is slightly more interactive than top and includes color coding, visuals, and a nice interface for selecting and then killing processes. (Thanks to bwoodacre for this great tool.)

You're running a script, command, whatever.. You don't expect it to take long, now 5pm has rolled around and you're ready to go home... Wait, it's still running... You forgot to nohup it before running it... Suspend it, send it to the background, then disown it... The ouput wont go anywhere, but at least the command will still run...

Ever had a file with a list of numbers you wanted to add, use:

This will send a test print job to a networked printer.

This command shows if there are any locked AFS volumes.

The output is a list of AFS volume IDs (or nothing if there are none locked).

Show the webcam output with mplayer.

Change bash autocomplete case search to insensitive when pressing tab for completion.