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Generat a Random MAC address
Just increase the 1 at the end if you want to generate more than one. (Alternative to "| head -n N" you could use the -b flag of od: -b $[6*N]

External IP (raw data)
can be used in script like : echo $(wget -qO- http://utils.admin-linux.fr/ip.php)

list files recursively by size

xargs for builtin bash commands
Similar to xargs -i, but works with builtin bash commands (rather than running "bash -c ..." through xargs)

Expand shortened URLs
curl(1) is more portable than wget(1) across Unices, so here is an alternative doing the same thing with greater portability. This shell function uses curl(1) to show what site a shortened URL is pointing to, even if there are many nested shortened URLs. This is a great way to test whether or not the shortened URL is sending you to a malicious site, or somewhere nasty that you don't want to visit. The sample output is from: $ expandurl http://t.co/LDWqmtDM

Query Wikipedia via console over DNS
Shorter version, works with multiple words.

Show one line summaries of all DEB packages installed on Ubuntu based on pattern search
I sometimes want to know what packages are installed on my Ubuntu system. I still haven't figured out how to use aptitude effectively, so this is the next best thing. This allows finding by name. The grep '^ii' limits the display to only installed packages. If this is not specified, then it includes listing of non-installed packages as well.

Stop long commands wrapping around and over-writing itself in the Bash shell
add the command either in /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile so that this is available to your shell.

check open ports without netstat or lsof

List the Sizes of Folders and Directories
I wanted an easy way to list out the sizes of directories and all of the contents of those directories recursively.


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