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Dump a configuration file without comments or whitespace...
A short, *easy-er* to remember command for stripping whitespace and comments from a config file, (or any file for that matter). Remember regex as: slash, space, star. pound, slash, bar. pointy-hat, dollar. (or "caret, dollar" if you must) :-P

check open ports without netstat or lsof

exit without saving history
this exits bash without saving the history. unlike explicitly disabling the history in some way, this works anywhere, and it works if you decide *after* issuing the command you don't want logged, that you don't want it logged ... $$ ( or ${$} ) is the pid of the current bash instance this also works perfectly in shells that don't have $$ if you do something like $ kill -9 `readlink /proc/self`

Find name of package which installed a given shell command
Some command names are very different from the name of the package that installed them. Sometimes, you may want to find out the name of the package that provided a command on a system, so that you can install it on another system.

Replace + Find

Delete all but latest file in a directory
Useful for deleting old unused log files.

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

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Recursively chmod all dirs to 755 and all files to 644

Route outbound SMTP connections through a addtional IP address rather than your primary


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