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this toggles mute on the Master channel of an alsa soundcard

Display a block of text: multi-line grep with perl
-n reads input, line by line, in a loop sending to $_ Equivalent to while () { mycode } -e execute the following quoted string (i.e. do the following on the same line as the perl command) the elipses .. operator behaves like a range, remembering the state from line to line.

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

MySQL dump restore with progress bar and ETA
Display a progress bar while restoring a MySQL dump.

Generate a random text color in bash
The expression $(( $RANDOM * 6 / 32767 + 1 )) generates a random number between 1 and 6, which is then inserted into the escape sequence \e[3_m to switch the foreground color of the terminal to either red, green, yellow, blue, purple or cyan. The color can be reset using the escape sequence \e[0m. The full list of colors can be found here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt#List_of_colors_for_prompt_and_Bash

Commands on svn stat

Start a new command in a new screen window
If you are already running screen then you often want to start a command in a fresh window. You use this alias by typing 's whatever' from your command line and 'whatever' starts running in a new window. Good with interactive commands like info, vim, and nethack.

Rolling upgrades via aptitude
This has been my "sysupgrade" alias since ca. 2006, first used on Debian Sid, then Sabayon, and it still does its duty on Mint nowadays without breaking stuff.

Clear terminal Screen

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.


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