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

syncronizing datas beetween two folder (A and B) excluding some directories in A (dir1 and dir2)

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

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"

start a VNC server for another user

list files recursively by size

Get length of current playlist in xmms2

Webcam view with vlc
Quick command to test your webcam. Press 'f' to toggle fullscreen. Can also use 'vlc v4l2://' if you want gui controls. For higher/smoother framerate lower the default resolution: $ cvlc v4l2:// :v4l2-width=320 :v4l2-height=240 &

Print all /etc/passwd lines with duplicated uid
Prints all the lines in /etc/passwd belonging to users with a duplicated uid. It also adds the hostname to the beginning of the line. It's been tested in AIX, Solaris and Linux.

Remove a file whose name begins with a dash ( - ) character
Using the redundant ./ directory information prevents the dash from occurring at the beginning of the filename, and being interpreted as an option of the rm command. Also works using: $ rm -- -filename

Print the IP address and the Mac address in the same line
Print the IP address and the Mac address in the same line


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: