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Optimal way of deleting huge numbers of files

Using xargs is better than: find /path/to/dir -type f -exec rm \-f {} \; as the -exec switch uses a separate process for each remove. xargs splits the streamed files into more managable subsets so less processes are required.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
12

find /path/to/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm

root · 2009-01-26 11:30:47 64
Display PHP files that directly instantiate a given class

This greps all PHP files for a given classname and displays both the file and the usage. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
tao/tests/filter/TestUrl.php:        $this->objFilter = new filter_Url();
tao/classes/local/view/Photos.php:        $objFilter  = new filter_Url();
```
1

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep \-H "new filter_" {} \;

root · 2009-01-26 10:43:09 77
Run the last command as root

Useful when you forget to use sudo for a command. "!!" grabs the last run command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1218

sudo !!

root · 2009-01-26 10:26:48 263
Creates a customized search command

Creates a command alias ('cr' in the above example) that searches the contents of files matching a set of file extensions (C & C++ source-code in the above example) recursively within the current directory. Search configured to be in colour, ignore-case, show line numbers and show 4 lines of context. Put in shell initialisation file of your choice. Trivially easy to use, e.g: cr sha1_init Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./openssl/signatures.c-600-xmlSecOpenSSLDsaSha1EvpInit(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx)
./openssl/signatures.c-601-{
./openssl/signatures.c:602:    return SHA1_Init(ctx->md_data);
./openssl/signatures.c-603-}
./openssl/signatures.c-604-
--
./openssl/signatures.c-706-    NULL,
./openssl/signatures.c-707-#else /* XMLSEC_OPENSSL_096 */
./openssl/signatures.c:708:    SHA1_Init,
./openssl/signatures.c-709-    SHA1_Update,
./openssl/signatures.c-710-    SHA1_Final,
```
0

alias cr='find . 2>/dev/null -regex '\''.*\.$c\|cpp\|pc\|h\|hpp\|cc$$'\'' | xargs grep --color=always -ni -C2'

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 08:54:25 56
Outputs a sorted list of disk usage to a text file

Recursively searches current directory and outputs sorted list of each directory's disk usage to a text file. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
712     .
328     ./test
176     ./lib
144     ./doc
100     ./test/data
96      ./lib/rake
64      ./doc/release_notes
```
6

du | sort -gr > file_sizes

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 01:12:54 62
Watch how fast the files in a drive are being deleted

This can be useful when a large remove operation is taking place.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

watch "df | grep /path/to/drive"

root · 2009-01-25 21:16:41 674
Execute a command at a given time

This is an alternative to cron which allows a one-off task to be scheduled for a certain time.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
266

echo "ls -l" | at midnight

root · 2009-01-25 21:07:42 86
Analyse an Apache access log for the most common IP addresses

This uses awk to grab the IP address from each request and then sorts and summarises the top 10.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
22

tail -10000 access_log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail

root · 2009-01-25 21:01:52 47
Add SVN keywords property to all PHP and Javascript files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

find . $ -name "*.php" -o -name "*.js" $ -exec svn propset svn:keywords Id {} \;

root · 2009-01-24 00:54:35 63
Count files beneath current directory (including subfolders)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
18

find . -type f | wc -l

root · 2009-01-23 17:19:32 74

Display the top ten running processes - sorted by memory usage

ps returns all running processes which are then sorted by the 4th field in numerical order and the top 10 are sent to STDOUT. Show Sample Output

106

ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail

root · 2009-01-23 17:12:33 295

Checks all MySQL tables

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myisamchk.html for further details. You can also repair all tables by running: myisamchk -r *.MYI
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

myisamchk /path/to/mysql/files/*.MYI

root · 2009-01-22 10:20:00 133
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generate 30 x 30 matrix

or $ od /dev/urandom -w60 -An|sed 's/ ..../ /g'|head -n 30 (this one lacks digits 8 and 9)

Generate a list of items from a couple of items lists A and B, getting (B - A ) set

ItemsListtoAvoid (A) could be a list of files with a special characteristic to exclude. It can be a result of previous processing list, ex. a list of files containing a special string. AlItemsList.txt (B) Is a complete list of items including some or all items in A. $Difference is saved in ItemsDifference.txt

Print a row of characters across the terminal

Pure Bash This will print a row of characters the width of the screen without using any external executables. In some cases, COLUMNS may not be set. Here is an alternative that uses tput to generate a default if that's the case. And it still avoids using tr. $ printf -v row "%${COLUMNS:-$(tput cols)}s"; echo ${row// /#} The only disadvantage to either one is that they create a variable.

Create backup copy of file, adding suffix of the date of the file modification (NOT today's date)

When I go to change a configuration file I always like to make a backup first. You can use "cp -p" to preserve the modification time, but it gets confusing to have file.prev, file.prev2, etc. So I like to add a YYMMDD suffix that shows when the file was last changed. "stat -c %Y" gives you the modification time in epoch seconds, then "date -d @" converts that to whatever format you specify in your "+format" string.

Find usb device in realtime

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

Get your Firefox history

This is the way to get access to your Firefox history...

total percentage of memory use for all processes with a given name

This command will add up RAM usage of all processes whose name contains "java" and output the sum of percentages in HRF. Also, unlike the original #15430, it wont fail on processes with a usage of >9.9%. Pleases note that this command wont work reliably in use cases where a significant portion of processes involved are using less than 0.1% of RAM, because they will be counted as "0", even though a great number of them could add up to significant amounts.

Auto Rotate Cube (compiz)

Strip my code to: wmctrl -o 0,0 # autorotates to the first face. In fact [0-1279],0 wmctrl - 1280,0 # goes to the second face wmctrl -o 2560,0 # goes to the third face, and so on. # Use multiples of the horizontal display resolution. My example work for 1280x800 display, been 1280 the number of interest. Tweak the number, try a biiiig one and see your cube spinning... I put a complex example to show how fun things can be, even for my ademco and paradox alarm central network advisor interface xpto etc. It rotates two faces, print the alarm message, and goes back tho where it was. Tested on BIGLINUX 4.2, equivalent to ubuntu LTS hardy. Do not forget to activate 3D efects ( compiz cube )

list files recursively by size

Check your unread Gmail from the command line

Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages. For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac: $ curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '' '{for (i=2; i

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