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Optimal way of deleting huge numbers of files

Using xargs is better than: find /path/to/dir -type f -exec rm \-f {} \; as the -exec switch uses a separate process for each remove. xargs splits the streamed files into more managable subsets so less processes are required.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
12

find /path/to/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm

root · 2009-01-26 11:30:47 64
Display PHP files that directly instantiate a given class

This greps all PHP files for a given classname and displays both the file and the usage. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
tao/tests/filter/TestUrl.php:        $this->objFilter = new filter_Url();
tao/classes/local/view/Photos.php:        $objFilter  = new filter_Url();
```
1

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep \-H "new filter_" {} \;

root · 2009-01-26 10:43:09 77
Run the last command as root

Useful when you forget to use sudo for a command. "!!" grabs the last run command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1219

sudo !!

root · 2009-01-26 10:26:48 263
Creates a customized search command

Creates a command alias ('cr' in the above example) that searches the contents of files matching a set of file extensions (C & C++ source-code in the above example) recursively within the current directory. Search configured to be in colour, ignore-case, show line numbers and show 4 lines of context. Put in shell initialisation file of your choice. Trivially easy to use, e.g: cr sha1_init Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./openssl/signatures.c-600-xmlSecOpenSSLDsaSha1EvpInit(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx)
./openssl/signatures.c-601-{
./openssl/signatures.c:602:    return SHA1_Init(ctx->md_data);
./openssl/signatures.c-603-}
./openssl/signatures.c-604-
--
./openssl/signatures.c-706-    NULL,
./openssl/signatures.c-707-#else /* XMLSEC_OPENSSL_096 */
./openssl/signatures.c:708:    SHA1_Init,
./openssl/signatures.c-709-    SHA1_Update,
./openssl/signatures.c-710-    SHA1_Final,
```
0

alias cr='find . 2>/dev/null -regex '\''.*\.$c\|cpp\|pc\|h\|hpp\|cc$$'\'' | xargs grep --color=always -ni -C2'

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 08:54:25 56
Outputs a sorted list of disk usage to a text file

Recursively searches current directory and outputs sorted list of each directory's disk usage to a text file. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
712     .
328     ./test
176     ./lib
144     ./doc
100     ./test/data
96      ./lib/rake
64      ./doc/release_notes
```
6

du | sort -gr > file_sizes

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 01:12:54 62
Watch how fast the files in a drive are being deleted

This can be useful when a large remove operation is taking place.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

watch "df | grep /path/to/drive"

root · 2009-01-25 21:16:41 674
Execute a command at a given time

This is an alternative to cron which allows a one-off task to be scheduled for a certain time.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
266

echo "ls -l" | at midnight

root · 2009-01-25 21:07:42 86
Analyse an Apache access log for the most common IP addresses

This uses awk to grab the IP address from each request and then sorts and summarises the top 10.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
22

tail -10000 access_log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail

root · 2009-01-25 21:01:52 47
Add SVN keywords property to all PHP and Javascript files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

find . $ -name "*.php" -o -name "*.js" $ -exec svn propset svn:keywords Id {} \;

root · 2009-01-24 00:54:35 63
Count files beneath current directory (including subfolders)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
18

find . -type f | wc -l

root · 2009-01-23 17:19:32 74

Display the top ten running processes - sorted by memory usage

ps returns all running processes which are then sorted by the 4th field in numerical order and the top 10 are sent to STDOUT. Show Sample Output

106

ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail

root · 2009-01-23 17:12:33 295

Checks all MySQL tables

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myisamchk.html for further details. You can also repair all tables by running: myisamchk -r *.MYI
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

myisamchk /path/to/mysql/files/*.MYI

root · 2009-01-22 10:20:00 133
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Get a stream feed from a Twitter user

*** CAREFULLY READ THE NOTES **** *** THIS DOES NOT WORK "OUT OF THE BOX" *** You'll need a few minutes of CAREFUL reading before making your own Twitter feed: In 2010 simple command line Twitter feed requests all stopped working because Twitter upgraded to SSL security. Https requests for a filtered Twitter stream feed now require a special header called "oauth_header". The benefit is that your stream feed and login info is securely encrypted. The bad news is that an "oauth_header" takes some work to build. Fortunately, four functions, imaginatively named step1, step2, step3 and step4 can be used to build a customized oauth_header for you in a few minutes. Now, go look at "step1" to start creating your own oauth_header!

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"

move a lot of files over ssh

Useful to move many files (thousands or millions files) over ssh. Faster than scp because this way you save a lot of tcp connection establishments (syn/ack packets). If using a fast lan (I have just tested gigabyte ethernet) it is faster to not compress the data so the command would be: tar -cf - /home/user/test | ssh user@sshServer 'cd /tmp; tar xf -'

Batch rename extension of all files in a folder, in the example from .txt to .md

IBM AIX: Extract a .tar.gz archive in one shot

This command is for UNIX OSes that have plain vanilla System V UNIX commands instead of their more functional GNU counterparts, such as IBM AIX.

Find the package that installed a command

Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

Get My Public IP Address

Fix "broken" ID3 tags in the current directory and subdirectories

Some MP3s come with tags that don't work with all players. Also, some good tag editors like, EasyTAG output tags that don't work with all players. For example, EasyTAG saves the genre as a numeric field, which is not used correctly in Sansa MP3 players. This command corrects the ID3 tags in MP3 files using mid3iconv, which comes with mutagen. To install Mutagen on Fedora use "yum install python-mutagen"

Using parcellite, indents the content of the clipboard manager

This command takes the content of a Parcellite-managed clipboard manager and add one level of indentation to it. It may be useful to indent a block of code which will enter inside another, already indented one but I use it mostly to indent code I will post in Stack Overflow questions and answers.

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