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Print all 256 colors for testing TERM or for a quick reference
This is super fast and an easy way to test your terminal for 256 color support. Unlike alot of info about changing colors in the terminal, this uses the ncurses termcap/terminfo database to determine the escape codes used to generate the colors for a specific TERM. That means you can switch your terminal and then run this to check the real output. $ tset xterm-256color at any rate that is some super lean code! Here it is in function form to stick in your .bash_profile aa_256 () { ( x=`tput op` y=`printf %$((${COLUMNS}-6))s`; for i in {0..256}; do o=00$i; echo -e ${o:${#o}-3:3} `tput setaf $i;tput setab $i`${y// /=}$x; done ) } From my bash_profile: http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html

Fix Ubuntu's Broken Sound Server
Ever since the switch to pulseaudio, Ubuntu users including myself have found themselves with no sound intermittently. To fix this, just use this command and restarts firefox or mplayer or whatever.

Find the package that installed a command

Print stack trace of a core file without needing to enter gdb interactively
The pstack command prints a stack trace of running processes without needing to attach a debugger, but what about core files? The answer, of course, is to use this command. Usage: gdbbt program corefile

Webcam view with vlc
Quick command to test your webcam. Press 'f' to toggle fullscreen. Can also use 'vlc v4l2://' if you want gui controls. For higher/smoother framerate lower the default resolution: $ cvlc v4l2:// :v4l2-width=320 :v4l2-height=240 &

Find the most recently changed files (recursively)

Find and remove core files

Quick and dirty hardware summary
Quick and dirty hardware summary where lshw is not available. Requires util-linux, procps, pciutils, usbutils and net-tools, which should be preinstalled on most systems.

Encrypted chat with netcat and openssl (one-liner)
client$ while true; do read -n30 ui; echo $ui |openssl enc -aes-256-ctr -a -k PaSSw ; done | nc localhost 8877 | while read so; do decoded_so=`echo "$so"| openssl enc -d -a -aes-256-ctr -k PaSSw`; echo -e "Incoming: $decoded_so"; done This will establish a simple encrypted chat with AES-256-CTR using netcat and openssl only. More info here https://nixaid.com/encrypted-chat-with-netcat/

escape any command aliases
e.g. if rm is aliased for 'rm -i', you can escape the alias by prepending a backslash: rm [file] # WILL prompt for confirmation per the alias \rm [file] # will NOT prompt for confirmation per the default behavior of the command


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