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Alias HEAD for automatic smart output
Run the alias command, then issue $ps aux | head and resize your terminal window (putty/console/hyperterm/xterm/etc) then issue the same command and you'll understand. $ ${LINES:-`tput lines 2>/dev/null||echo -n 12`} Insructs the shell that if LINES is not set or null to use the output from `tput lines` ( ncurses based terminal access ) to get the number of lines in your terminal. But furthermore, in case that doesn't work either, it will default to using the deafault of 12 (-2 = 10). The default for HEAD is to output the first 10 lines, this alias changes the default to output the first x lines instead, where x is the number of lines currently displayed on your terminal - 2. The -2 is there so that the top line displayed is the command you ran that used HEAD, ie the prompt. Depending on whether your PS1 and/or PROMPT_COMMAND output more than 1 line (mine is 3) you will want to increase from -2. So with my prompt being the following, I need -7, or - 5 if I only want to display the commandline at the top. ( https://www.askapache.com/linux/bash-power-prompt/ ) 275MB/748MB [7995:7993 - 0:186] 06:26:49 Thu Apr 08 [askapache@n1-backbone5:/dev/pts/0 +1] ~ $ In most shells the LINES variable is created automatically at login and updated when the terminal is resized (28 linux, 23/20 others for SIGWINCH) to contain the number of vertical lines that can fit in your terminal window. Because the alias doesn't hard-code the current LINES but relys on the $LINES variable, this is a dynamic alias that will always work on a tty device.

Generate random password on Mac OS X
Feel free to put this in your ~/.profile: $ random(){ cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc $1 | head -c $2; echo; } Then use it to generate passwords: $ random [:alnum:] 16 Or DNA sequences: $ random ACGT 256

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance
You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

Find and remove core files

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

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"

Get the current svn branch/tag (Good for PS1/PROMPT_COMMAND cases)
uses just one sed

Find the package that installed a command

Show contents of all git objects in a git repo
This script finds all git objects and `git cat-file`'s their content. This is really just a helper function to play around with the internals of git repositories. See https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects of more info.

autossh + ssh + screen = super rad perma-sessions
Only useful for really flakey connections (but im stuck with one for now). Though if youre in this situation ive found this to be a good way to run autossh and it does a pretty good job of detecting when the session is down and restarting. Combined with the -t and screen commands this pops you back into your working session lickety split w/ as few headaches as possible. And if autossh is a bit slow at detecting the downed ssh connection, just run this in another tab/terminal window to notify autossh that it should drop it and start over. Basically for when polling is too slow. kill -SIGUSR1 `pgrep autossh`


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