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convert MTS video file format into xvid/mp3 avi format

show where symlinks are pointing
displays the output of ls -l without the rest of the crud. pretty simple but useful.

Router discovery

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.

Use curl to save an MP3 stream
I use this with cron to timeshift radio programs from a station's live stream. You will get an error message at the end like "curl: (28) Operation timed out after 10000 milliseconds with 185574 bytes received"; to suppress that but not other error messages, you can append "2>&1 | grep -v "(28)"" to the end of the command.

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.

Netstat Connection Check
This command does a tally of concurrent active connections from single IPs and prints out those IPs that have the most active concurrent connections. VERY useful in determining the source of a DoS or DDoS attack.

Email yourself after a job is done
This is a two part command that comes in really handy if you're running commands that take longer than you're willing to wait. The commands are separated by the semicolon(;) The first command is whatever you're attempting to do. The second commands emails you after the job completes.

Best SSH options for X11 forwarding
grabbed from: http://blog.samat.org/2006/05/08/best-ssh-options-for-x11-forwarding

Get duration of an audio file in seconds.
This is an alternative to #9131. ffmpeg didn't work on my .au files, though it did on the .wav ones. Also useful if you don't have ffmpeg but do have sox. Handily, sox already reports in seconds (decimal).


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