All commands (14,187)

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

find files containing text
-l outputs only the file names -i ignores the case -r descends into subdirectories

Backup files older than 1 day on /home/dir, gzip them, moving old file to a dated file.
Useful for backing up old files, custom logs, etc. via a cronjob.

Show line numbers in a text file

Synthesize text as speech
The Festival Speech Synthesis System converts text into sound. Or: links -dump http://youfavoritewebsite.com | festival --tts

Stream YouTube URL directly to mplayer
The original doesn't work for me - but this does. I'm guessing that Youtube updated the video page so the original doesn't work.

Using NMAP to check if a port is open or close
Using NMAP to check to see if port 22(SSH) is open on servers and network devices.

Generate pretty secure random passwords
These are my favourite switches on pwgen: -B Don't include ambiguous characters in the password -n Include at least one number in the password -y Include at least one special symbol in the password -c Include at least one capital letter in the password It just works! Add a number to set password length, add another to set how many password to output. Example: pwgen -Bnyc 12 20 this will output 20 password of 12 chars length.

Set a user password without passwd
Slightly shorter. It doesn't create a subprocess either.

Delete specific remote 'origin' branch 'gh-pages'

pretend to be busy in office to enjoy a cup of coffee
The first parameter after timeout is the key parameter; number of seconds to wait. With a 6 you have 600 seconds for your coffee break (10min).


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: