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Wait for an already launched program to stop before starting a new command.

The '[r]' is to avoid grep from grepping itself. (interchange 'r' by the appropriate letter) Here is an example that I use a lot (as root or halt will not work): while (ps -ef | grep [w]get); do sleep 10; done; sleep 60; halt I add the 'sleep 60' command just in case something went wrong; so that I have time to cancel. Very useful if you are going to bed while downloading something and do not want your computer running all night.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

while (ps -ef | grep [r]unning_program_name); do sleep 10; done; command_to_execute

m_a_xim · 2010-01-14 16:26:34 3
download the contents of a remote folder in the current local folder
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

wget -r -l1 -np -nd http://yoururl.com/yourfolder/

tanj · 2010-01-14 16:22:44 4
find and delete empty dirs, start in current working dir
This is sample output - yours may be different.
10

find . -type d -empty -delete

wincus · 2010-01-14 15:56:20 8
Remove everything except that file

it will remove everything except the file names matching you can use also use wildcards
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

find . ! -name <FILENAME> -delete

haplo · 2010-01-13 23:29:51 5
Finding all files on local file system with SUID and SGID set
This is sample output - yours may be different.
5

find / $ -local -o -prune $ $ -perm -4000 -o -perm -2000 $ -type f -exec ls -l {} \;

jerzy · 2010-01-13 22:49:57 5
Check which files are opened by Firefox then sort by largest size.

Just refining last proposal for this check, showing awk power to make more complex math (instead /1024/1024, 2^20). We don't need declare variable before run lsof, because $(command) returns his output. Also, awk can perform filtering by regexp instead to call grep. I changed the 0.0000xxxx messy output, with a more readable form purging all fractional numbers and files less than 1 MB. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
41 MB -- /home/tzk/.mozilla/firefox/default/urlclassifier3.sqlite
6 MB -- /home/tzk/.mozilla/firefox/default/places.sqlite
3 MB -- /home/tzk/.mozilla/firefox/default/XPC.mfasl
2 MB -- /home/tzk/.mozilla/firefox/default/extensions/writearea@writearea.com/chrome/writearea.jar
2 MB -- /home/tzk/.mozilla/firefox/default/extensions/writearea@writearea.com/chrome/writearea.jar
2 MB -- /home/tzk/.mozilla/firefox/default/extensions/{4BBDD651-70CF-4821-84F8-2B918CF89CA3}-trash/chrome/febe.jar
```
10

lsof -p $(pidof firefox) | awk '/.mozilla/ { s = int($7/(2^20)); if(s>0) print (s)" MB -- "$9 | "sort -rn" }'

tzk · 2010-01-13 22:45:53 7
Purge frozen messages in Exim
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

exipick -zi | xargs exim -Mrm

markszabo · 2010-01-13 21:53:43 3
Purge frozen messages in Exim

Although Exim will purge frozen (undeliverable) messages over time, the command "exim -Mrm #id#" where #id# is a particular message ID will purge a message immediately. Being lazy, I don't want to type the command for each frozen message, so I wrote the one-liner to do it for me.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

for i in `mailq | awk '$6 ~ /^frozen$/ {print $3}'`; do exim -Mrm $i; done

rjamestaylor · 2010-01-13 21:28:45 3
Remove everything except that file

Remove everything except that file with shell tricks inside a subshell to avoid changes in the environment. help shopt
This is sample output - yours may be different.
8

( shopt -s extglob; rm !(<PATTERN>) )

sputnick · 2010-01-13 16:43:15 5
Create a directory and go inside it

_ expands to the last argument of the last command that was executed
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

mkdir dir; cd $_

servermanaged · 2010-01-13 11:56:36 8
mkdir & cd into it as single command

combines mkdir and cd added quotes around $_, thanx to flatcap! Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
~/#$ mkcd /path/to/new/folder
/path/to/new/folder#$_
```
-3

echo 'mkcd() { mkdir -p "$@" && cd "$_"; }' >> ~/.bashrc

phaidros · 2010-01-13 09:37:56 4
get msn buddy's info
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

purple-remote "msn:getinfo?screenname=xxx"

newdongyuwei · 2010-01-13 03:29:32 3
[Gentoo] Input modules, commented, in your module.autoload file

Whenever you compile a new kernel, there are always new modules. The best way to make sure you have the correct modules loaded when you boot is to add all your modules in the modules.autoload file (they will be commented) and uncomment all those modules you need. Also a good way to keep track of the available modules in your system. For other distros you may have to change the name of the file to /etc/modprobe.conf Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
# /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6:  kernel modules to load when system boots.
#
# Note that this file is for 2.6 kernels.
#
# Add the names of modules that you'd like to load when the system
# starts into this file, one per line.  Comments begin with # and
# are ignored.  Read man modules.autoload for additional details.

# For example:
# aic7xxx
# mixer-oss.ko
# pcm-oss.ko
# seq-device.ko
# seq-oss.ko
# snd-seq.ko
```
-1

find /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko' |grep -i -o '[a-z0-9]*[-|_]*[0-9a-z]*\.ko$' |xargs -I {} echo '# {}' >>/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6

paragao · 2010-01-13 02:12:08 4

Copy a file using dc3dd and watch its progress (very nice alternative to dd)

Requires the dc3dd package - available at http://dc3dd.sourceforge.net Show Sample Output

dc3dd progress=on bs=512 count=2048 if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null

ubahmapk · 2010-01-12 22:54:27 4

Scroll a message in a terminal titlebar

Usage: titlescroll "message" <width> Requires command "xtitle" or replace with: echo -ne "\e]0;TEXT_HERE\007"
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

function titlescroll { _X=0 _TITLEMSG=$1 _WIDTH=${2:-16} _TITLEMSG=`printf "%$((${#_TITLEMSG}+$_WIDTH))s" "$_TITLEMSG"` while `true` do _X=$(((_X+1)%${#_TITLEMSG})) xtitle "${_TITLEMSG:_X:_WIDTH}" done }

romulusnr · 2010-01-12 20:48:46 3
Print a list of standard error codes and descriptions.

Written by jmcnamara Taken from http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=274896 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
 Prints:

    0
    1       Operation not permitted
    2       No such file or directory
    3       No such process
    4       Interrupted system call
    5       Input/output error
```
15

perl -le 'print $!+0, "\t", $!++ for 0..127'

voidpointer · 2010-01-12 17:33:50 16
download file1 file2 file3 file4 .... file 100

With counter format [001, 002, ..., 999] , nice with pictures or wallpapers collections.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

for file in $(seq -f '%03.f' 1 $TOTAL ); do echo "($file/$TOTAL)"; curl -f -O http://domain.com/Name_$file.ext; done

nordri · 2010-01-12 15:23:44 6
Print unique ipaddresses as they come in from Apache Access Log File

Prints the unique IP Addresses as they arrive from an Apache `access.log` file. The '-W interactive' tells awk to start writing to stdout immediately and not buffer the output. This command builds on the uniq lines without sorting command (http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4389/remove-duplicate-entries-in-a-file-without-sorting.)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

tail -f /var/log/apache2/access.log | awk -W interactive '!x[$1]++ {print $1}'

pykler · 2010-01-12 15:23:03 9
Change pidgin status

Thanks for the comment oshazard, i wasn't aware of purple-remote existence.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
13

purple-remote "setstatus?status=away&message=AFK"

unixApe · 2010-01-12 15:08:50 58
Copy a file using dd and watch its progress

This is a more accurate way to watch the progress of a dd process. The $DDPID=$! is needed so that you don't get the PID of the sleep. The sleep 1 is needed because in my testing at least, if you run kill -USR1 against dd too quickly, it will kill it off instead of display the status. So you need to wait a second, probably so that it can configure itself to trap the USR1 signal. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
4+1 records in
4+0 records out
4194304 bytes (4.2 MB) copied, 1.0153 s, 4.1 MB/s
```
4

dd if=fromfile of=tofile & DDPID=$! ; sleep 1 ; while kill -USR1 $DDPID ; do sleep 5; done

deltaray · 2010-01-12 15:01:44 4
download file1 file2 file3 file4 .... file 100
This is sample output - yours may be different.
5

wget http://domain.com/file{1..100}

wincus · 2010-01-12 14:28:04 3
clone an USB stick using dd + see its process

The following command will clone usb stick inside /dev/sdc to /dev/sdd Double check you got the correct usb sticks (origional-clone)with fdisk -l.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd conv=notrunc & while killall -USR1 dd; do sleep 5; done

bw · 2010-01-12 14:09:40 134
add a ip address to a network device

Allows to add more than one ip address to one network device.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

ip addr add 192.168.10.1/24 dev eth0

wincus · 2010-01-12 13:07:36 5
share internet connection with only one network interface

the below command create a alias for share your internet connection with another. ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.0.1/24 Its obviously necessary too activate the iptables post-routing and ip forwarding, as root: modprobe iptable_nat iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward Be sure that the alias 192.168.0.0/24 is not your active real ip range
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

ifconfig eth0:1 192.168.0.1/24

glaudiston · 2010-01-12 11:57:11 13
Remove today's Debian installed packages

Adapted using your usefull comments !
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

grep -e `date +%Y-%m-%d` /var/log/dpkg.log | awk '/install / {print $4}' | uniq | xargs apt-get -y remove

skygreg · 2010-01-12 09:42:22 11
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Tar - Compress by excluding folders

If you give tar a list of filenames, it will not add the directories, so if you don't care about directory ownership or permissions, you can save some space. Tar will create directories as necessary when extracting. This command is limited by the maximum supported size of the argument list, so if you are trying to tar up the whole OS for instance, you may just get "Argument list too long".

Show your local ipv4 IP

To show ipv6 instead, use [[ -6 ]] instead of [[ -4 ]] $ip -o -6 a s | awk -F'[ /]+' '$2!~/lo/{print $4}' To show only the IP of a specific interface, in case you get more than one result: $ip -o -4 a s eth0 | awk -F'[ /]+' '$2!~/lo/{print $4}' $ip -o -4 a s wlan0 | awk -F'[ /]+' '$2!~/lo/{print $4}'

Ping sweep without NMAP

Waits for all pings to complete and returns ip with mac address

Install pip with Proxy

Installs pip packages defining a proxy

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" }

Print all git repos from a user

in case you could afford installing jq

Find the package that installed a command

Matrix Style

Unlike other alternatives, this command only relies on bash builtins and should also work on windows platforms with the bash executable. Sparseness corresponds to the number 128 and can be adjusted. To print all possible digits instead of only 0 and 1 replace RANDOM%2 by RANDOM%10 or RANDOM%16 to add letters [A-F].

Capture FTP Credentials and Commands

Print permanent subtitles on a video

It prints myvideo.srt subtitle files in myvideo.avi, saving it in myvideo_subtitled.avi

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