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Find usb device
I often use it to find recently added ou removed device, or using find in /dev, or anything similar. Just run the command, plug the device, and wait to see him and only him

check open ports without netstat or lsof

notify yourself when a long-running command which has ALREADY STARTED is finished
If you want to be notified when a long-running command is finished, but you have already started it: CTRL+Z $ fg; echo "finished" | sendmail me@example.com I use a script to post a tweet, which sends me a txt: $ fg; echo "finished" | tweet

Battery real life energy vs predicted remaining plotted
This time I added a print to reemaining energy, every minute, time stamped. The example shown here is complete and point to large discrepancies as time passes, converging to accuracy near the end.

Output system statistics every 5 seconds with timestamp
See man vmstat for information about the statistics. This does the same thing without the timestamp: $vmstat 5

create new branch from stashed changes
from http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Tools-Stashing Useful for when stash cannot be applied to current branch

Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions - (Open)solaris version with RBAC

Countdown Clock
The biggest advantage over atoponce's nifty original is not killing the scrollback. Written assuming bash, but shouldn't be terribly difficult to port to other shells. S should be multiple spaces, but I can't get commandlinefu to save/show them properly, any help?

Ping all hosts on 192.168.1.0/24
Pings all the hosts on 192.168.1.0/24 in parallel, so it is very fast. Alive host IP addresses are echoed to stdout as pings are responded to.

Run TOP in Color, split 4 ways for x seconds - the ultimate ps command. Great for init scripts
One of my favorite ways to impress newbies (and old hats) to the power of the shell, is to give them an incredibly colorful and amazing version of the top command that runs once upon login, just like running fortune on login. It's pretty sweet believe me, just add this one-liner to your ~/.bash_profile -- and of course you can set the height to be anything, from 1 line to 1000! $ G=$(stty -g);stty rows $((${LINES:-50}/2));top -n1; stty $G;unset G Doesn't take more than the below toprc file I've added below, and you get all 4 top windows showing output at the same time.. each with a different color scheme, and each showing different info. Each window would normally take up 1/4th of your screen when run like that - TOP is designed as a full screen program. But here's where you might learn something new today on this great site.. By using the stty command to change the terminals internal understanding of the size of your terminal window, you force top to also think that way as well. # save the correct settings to G var. $ G=$(stty -g) # change the number of rows to half the actual amount, or 50 otherwise $ stty rows $((${LINES:-50}/2)) # run top non-interactively for 1 second, the output stays on the screen (half at least) $ top -n1 # reset the terminal back to the correct values, and clean up after yourself $ stty $G;unset G This trick from my [ http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html bash_profile ], though the online version will be updated soon. Just think what else you could run like this! Note 1: I had to edit the toprc file out due to this site can't handle that (uploads/including code). So you can grab it from [ http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash-power-prompt.html my site ] Note 2: I had to come back and edit again because the links weren't being correctly parsed


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