All commands (14,187)

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

Fast, built-in pipe-based data sink
This is shorter and actually much faster than >/dev/null (see sample output for timings) Plus, it looks like a disappointed face emoticon.

for newbies, how to get one line info about all /bin programs
Get simple description on each file from /bin dir, in list form, usefull for newbies.

How to remove an ISO image from media database

create screencast (record text and audio simultaneously) using 'script' and 'arecord'
This shell function takes a single argument, which is used as the base name of the .wav, .timing and .session files created. To create a screencast: $ screencast test type and talk ... then type 'exit' or to exit the screencast. test.wav will contain the audio from your screencast. test.session will contain text and control characters needed to paint the screen test.timing will contain timing information needed to synch individual keystrokes in test.session with the audio. to play back: $ aplay test.wav & scriptreplay test.{timing,session} NOTE: because the shell function uses the variable "$!", and bash likes to expand '!' during history expansion, you will need to turn off bash's history before you enter the shell function. This can be achieved using the command $set +H

Encrypted chat with netcat and openssl (one-liner)
client$ while true; do read -n30 ui; echo $ui |openssl enc -aes-256-ctr -a -k PaSSw ; done | nc localhost 8877 | while read so; do decoded_so=`echo "$so"| openssl enc -d -a -aes-256-ctr -k PaSSw`; echo -e "Incoming: $decoded_so"; done This will establish a simple encrypted chat with AES-256-CTR using netcat and openssl only. More info here https://nixaid.com/encrypted-chat-with-netcat/

get rid of lines with non ascii characters
found here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9035939

Create QR codes from a URL.
like 7300, but doesn't clutter your working directory with old qr.*.png files. This will get the QR barcode, and send it right into ImageMagick's 'display' tool. Usage is the same as 7300; just call this function followed by the URL: $ qrurl http://xkcd.com

Print the 16 most recent RPM packages installed in newest to oldest order

Limit the cpu usage of a process
Similar to `cpulimit`, although `prlimit` can be found shipped with recent util-linux. Example: limit CPU consumption to 10% for a math problem which ordinarily takes up 100% CPU: Before: $ bc -l

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"


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: