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Create new user with home dir and given password
The crypt function takes a password, key, as a string, and a salt character array which is described below, and returns a printable ASCII string which starts with another salt. It is believed that, given the output of the function, the best way to find a key that will produce that output is to guess values of key until the original value of key is found. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypt_(Unix)

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".

Save your open windows to a file so they can be opened after you restart
This will save your open windows to a file (~/.windows). To start those applications: $ cat ~/.windows | while read line; do $line &; done Should work on any EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager. If you use DWM or another Window Manager not using EWMH or NetWM try this: $ xwininfo -root -children | grep '^ ' | grep -v children | grep -v '' | sed -n 's/^ *\(0x[0-9a-f]*\) .*/\1/p' | uniq | while read line; do xprop -id $line _NET_WM_PID | sed -n 's/.* = \([0-9]*\)$/\1/p'; done | uniq -u | grep -v '^$' | while read line; do ps -o cmd= $line; done > ~/.windows

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.

Hide or show Desktop Icons on MacOS
Hides all Files and Folders on the MacOS Desktop. To show files and folders, type "true" instead of "false". "Finder" at the end is case sensitive, "finder" doesn’t work

Changes a User Password via command line without promt
Used to change a password via a winscp faux shell

For when GUI programs stop responding..
man xkill

Show bandwidth use oneliner
poorman's ifstat using just sh and awk. You must change "eth0" with your interface's name.

Print average GPU core temperature

Import SQL into MySQL with a progress meter
This uses PV to monitor the progress of the MySQL import and displays it though Zenity. You could also do this pv ~/database.sql | mysql -u root -pPASSWORD -D database_name and get a display in the CLI that looks like this 2.19MB 0:00:06 [ 160kB/s] [> ] 5% ETA 0:01:40 My Nautalus script using this command is here http://www.daniweb.com/forums/post1253285.html#post1253285


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