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Use -t when using find and cp
-t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY (copy all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY).

Function to check whether a regular file ends with a newline
tail -c 1 "$1" returns the last byte in the file. Command substitution deletes any trailing newlines, so if the file ended in a newline $(tail -c 1 "$1") is now empty, and the -z test succeeds. However, $a will also be empty for an empty file, so we add -s "$1" to check that the file has a size greater than zero. Finally, -f "$1" checks that the file is a regular file -- not a directory or a socket, etc.

Find processes stuck in dreaded "D" state aka IO Wait
Lots of fun to run on nfs clients when the server or network connection is having issues

Access to specific man page section
You can view the man pages from section five by passing the section number as an argument to the man command

mount a cdrom

lines in file2 that are not in file1

Quick searching with less

Find all files larger than 500M and less than 1GB

Get the time from NIST.GOV
The format is JJJJJ YR-MO-DA HH:MM:SS TT L DUT1 msADV UTC(NIST) OTM and is explained more fully here: http://tf.nist.gov/service/acts.htm

find read write traffic on disk since startup
The iostat command is used for monitoring system input/output device loading by observing the time the devices are active in relation to their average transfer rates. in ubuntu to get the iostat program do this: sudo apt-get install sysstat i found this command here: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54379


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