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

Block the 6700 worst spamhosts
The above url contains over 6700 of the common ad websites. The command just pastes these into your /etc/hosts.

Generate random valid mac addresses
First set the variable $hexchars: $hexchars="0123456789ABCDEF" Change the number in the first for loop if you need less then 1200 mac addresses

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

Clone perms and owner group from one file to another
Copy both perms and owner group from one file to another.

Erase a word

Find files with root setuids settings

Get contents from hosts, passwd, groups even if they're in DB/LDAP/other
getent allows to get the contents of several databases in their native file format even if they are not actually in /etc. For example, if you are using a LDAP or a DB to authenticate your users, you won't find their info by catting /etc/passwd, but "getent passwd" will concatenate /etc/passwd to the LDAP/DB.

List process in unkillable state D (iowait)

Find the package that installed a command

Disable system bell in an X session
Execute this command in a terminal to disable the system-bell during X-session lifetime.


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: