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find read write traffic on disk since startup
The iostat command is used for monitoring system input/output device loading by observing the time the devices are active in relation to their average transfer rates. in ubuntu to get the iostat program do this: sudo apt-get install sysstat i found this command here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54379

Random Number Between 1 And X
If X is 5, it will about a number between 1 and 5 inclusive. This works in bash and zsh. If you want between 0 and 4, remove the +1.

Unbelievable Shell Colors, Shading, Backgrounds, Effects for Non-X
I've been using linux for almost a decade and only recently discovered that most terminals like putty, xterm, xfree86, vt100, etc., support hundreds of shades of colors, backgrounds and text/terminal effects. This simply prints out a ton of them, the output is pretty amazing. If you use non-x terminals all the time like I do, it can really be helpful to know how to tweak colors and terminal capabilities. Like: $ echo $'\33[H\33[2J'

Listing package man page, services, config files and related rpm of a file, in one alias
Many times I give the same commands in loop to find informations about a file. I use this as an alias to summarize that informations in a single command. Now with variables! :D

Create a new file

diff directories, quick cut and paste to view the changes
We use this to quickly highlight differences and provide a quick way to cut and paste the command to view the files using the marvellous vimdiff

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.

Benchmark SQL Query
Benchmark a SQL query against MySQL Server. The example runs the query 10 times, and you get the average runtime in the output. To ensure that the query does not get cached, use `RESET QUERY CACHE;` on top in the query file.

GZip all files in a directory separately

Load all files (including in subdirs), whose name matches a substring, into Vim
This command searches the current directory, and all of its subdirs, for files that have the string "foo" in their filename (foo.c, two-foo.txt, index-FOO-bar.php, etc), and opens them in Vim. It ignores any hidden .svn directories. Change -iname to -name if you want to do case-sensitive matches. Files open in buffers by default, so to verify that the correct files were opened, type ":list". You can load all the files in tabs by doing ":tab ball" or use 'vim -p' on the command-line to load files straight to tabs. If you get permission denied errors, do: vim $(find . ! -path \*.svn\* -type -f iname \*foo\* 2>/dev/null) To narrow it down to a single file extension, such as .php files, use \*foo\*.php (or '*foo*.php'. Which ever you prefer)


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