All commands

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Alternative size (human readable) of files and directories (biggest last)

using mb it's still readable;) a symbol variation $ du -ms {,.[^.]}* | sort -nk1 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
186     Foto
213     .mozilla
260     .eclipse
295     .kde
301     Desktop
```
3

du -ms * .[^.]*| sort -nk1

ioggstream · 2009-07-01 13:38:13 8

kpartx can be found inside of the multipath-tools package -a adds the mappings and -d deletes them Show Sample Output

kpartx -a /dev/mapper/space-foobar

flart · 2009-07-01 09:53:33 8

List programs with open ports and connections

I prefer to use this and not the -n variety, so I get DNS-resolved hostnames. Nice when I'm trying to figure out who's got that port open.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
13

lsof -i

unixmonkey4503 · 2009-06-30 22:36:00 8
Using netcat to copy files between servers

It bypasses encryption overhead of SSH and depending on configuration can be significantly faster. It's recommended to use only in trusted networks.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

On target: "nc -l 4000 | tar xvf -" On source: "tar -cf - . | nc target_ip 4000"

tiagofischer · 2009-06-30 19:36:19 8
Alternative size (human readable) of directories (biggest first)

Taken from http://www.earthinfo.org/linux-disk-usage-sorted-by-size-and-human-readable/
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

function duf { du -k $@ | sort -rn | perl -ne '($s,$f)=split(/\t/,$_,2);for(qw(K M G T)){if($s<1024){$x=($s<10?"%.1f":"%3d");printf("$x$_\t%s",$s,$f);last};$s/=1024}' }

illicium · 2009-06-30 19:20:30 15
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
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

grep -v "\ *#\|^$" /etc/path/to.config

geekboxjockey · 2009-06-30 18:14:46 17
c_rehash replacement

When you don't have c_rehash handy. Really simple - if you have a .pem file that doesn't really contain a x509 cert (let's say, newreq.pem), it will create a link, simply called '.0', pointing to that file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

for file in *.pem; do ln -s $file `openssl x509 -hash -noout -in $file`.0; done

darkpand · 2009-06-30 17:42:07 98
Matrix Style
This is sample output - yours may be different.
67

tr -c "[:digit:]" " " < /dev/urandom | dd cbs=$COLUMNS conv=unblock | GREP_COLOR="1;32" grep --color "[^ ]"

allinurl · 2009-06-30 17:23:49 25
Recursive when needed

avoid rm to be recursive until you complete the command: put the -rf at the end!
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

rm strangedirs -rf

ioggstream · 2009-06-30 15:10:31 15
Check if filesystem hangs

When a fs hangs and you've just one console, even # ls could be a dangerous command. Simply put a trailing "&" and play safe
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

ls /mnt/badfs &

ioggstream · 2009-06-30 14:40:22 9
Smiley Face Bash Prompt

If your last command was a dud, your bash prompt will be angry at you. Otherwise it's happy. Soon you will crave its constant approval and your linux skills will improve simply to avoid low self-esteem. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
^_^ # true
^_^ # false
-_- #
```
17

PS1="\`if [ \$? = 0 ]; then echo \e[33\;40m\\\^\\\_\\\^\e[0m; else echo \e[36\;40m\\\-\e[0m\\\_\e[36\;40m\\\-\e[0m; fi\` \u \w:\h)"

digitalsushi · 2009-06-30 14:29:55 376
quickly backup or copy a file with bash

less symbols, tab completion. including # export SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX="_`date +%F`" in your .bashrc provides you to easily timestamp your files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

cp -bfS.bak filename filename

ioggstream · 2009-06-30 14:17:28 33
stop windows update

Windows only: stops windows update and the nagging restart window. You need your admin password for this one.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

runas /user:administrator net stop wuauserv

oernii2 · 2009-06-30 09:29:03 18
reload bash_profile

when editing .bash_profile (or .bashrc), run this to use the new version without having to exit and open a new terminal
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-6

source ~/.bash_profile

unixmonkey743 · 2009-06-29 19:26:43 16
Trim linebreaks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

cat myfile.txt | tr -d '\n'

Cowboy · 2009-06-29 12:49:08 6
SVN Status log to CSV

Note you have also the --xml option ;) Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1 | author | 2009-09-09 12:12:12 +200 | Initial import
2 | author | 2009-09-09 12:15:16 +200 | ADDED: great feature
```
3

svn log | tr -d '\n' | sed -r 's/-{2,}/\n/g' | sed -r 's/ $[^$]+\)//g' | sed -r 's/^r//' | sed -r "s/[0-9]+ lines?//g" | sort -g

Cowboy · 2009-06-29 12:48:30 6
Define a quick calculator function

defines a handy function for quick calculations from cli. once defined: ? 10*2+3 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
23?
```
58

? () { echo "$*" | bc -l; }

fizz · 2009-06-28 20:15:30 27
Uniformly correct filenames in a directory

Useful if non-ascii characters in filenames have been improperly encoded. Replace "PROBLEM" with the incorrect characters (e.g. 'é'), and "FIX" with the correct ones (e.g. '?').
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

for i in *;do mv "$i" "$(echo $i | sed s/PROBLEM/FIX/g)";done

AlecSchueler · 2009-06-28 01:50:25 18
replace spaces in filenames with underscores

This command will replace all the spaces in all the filenames of the current directory with underscores. There are other commands that do this here, but this one is the easiest and shortest.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
68

rename 'y/ /_/' *

signal9 · 2009-06-27 22:20:47 84

Twitter update from terminal (pok3's snipts ?)

Found it on snipt, pok3, is it yours? I put my user = m33600, the password and the status was my robot message: Settima robot message: ALARM ZONE 3 (sent via command line). Now bots may have their identity on twitter... Show Sample Output

curl -u YourUsername:YourPassword -d status="Your status message go here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

m33600 · 2009-06-27 21:47:48 12

Extract the emoticons regex from a running skype process

Skype has an internal regex which depicts the emoticons it supports. However you cannot simply search the binary file for it. This small 181 character line will do just that, provided skype is running. And of course, only works in linux. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
(...) |$banghead$|$bear$|$beer$|$blush$|$bow$|$bricklayers$|$brokenheart$|$bug$|$bye$|$cake$|$call$|$cash$|$chuckle$| (...)
```
1

S=`pidof skype`;grep heap /proc/$S/maps|cut -f1 -d' '|awk -F- '{print "0x" $1 " 0x" $2}'|xargs echo "du me t ">l;gdb -batch -p $S -x l>/dev/null 2>&1;strings t|grep \(smirk|head -n1

alvieboy · 2009-06-26 20:03:17 6
Print line immediately before a matching regex.

Use this if you don't have access to GNU grep's -B option.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

awk '/regex/{print x};{x=$0}'

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:29:54 10
VIM: Replace a string with an incrementing number between marks 'a and 'b (eg, convert string ZZZZ to 1, 2, 3, ...)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
11

:let i=0 | 'a,'bg/ZZZZ/s/ZZZZ/\=i/ | let i=i+1

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:23:29 6
Move files around local filesystem with tar without wasting space using an intermediate tarball.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
7

( cd SOURCEDIR && tar cf - . ) | (cd DESTDIR && tar xvpf - )

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:13:51 14

Untar file with absolute pathname to relative location

Don't have GNU tar installed that supports the redirect option (-C)? Use this. Show Sample Output

pax -r -s ',^/,,' -f file.tar

res0nat0r · 2009-06-26 19:10:57 7

‹ First < 481 482 483 484 485 > Last ›

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

Bash Dialog

The dialog utility is used to create a basic level graphical user interface. We can use this in Shell script to create very useful programs.

Watch how many tcp connections there are per state every two seconds.

Find the process you are looking for minus the grepped one

As an alternative to using an additional grep -v grep you can use a simple regular expression in the search pattern (first letter is something out of the single letter list ;-)) to drop the grep command itself.

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"

Pause and Resume Processes

Add that and "cont () { ps -ec | grep $@ | kill -SIGCONT `awk '{print $1}'`; }" (without the quotes) to you bash profile and then use it to pause and resume processes safely

Create a persistent connection to a machine

Create a persistent SSH connection to the host in the background. Combine this with settings in your ~/.ssh/config: Host host ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p ControlMaster no All the SSH connections to the machine will then go through the persisten SSH socket. This is very useful if you are using SSH to synchronize files (using rsync/sftp/cvs/svn) on a regular basis because it won't create a new socket each time to open an ssh connection.

Remove a range of lines from a file

Save your open windows to a file so they can be opened after you restart

This will save your open windows to a file (~/.windows). To start those applications: $ cat ~/.windows | while read line; do $line &; done Should work on any EWMH/NetWM compatible X Window Manager. If you use DWM or another Window Manager not using EWMH or NetWM try this: $ xwininfo -root -children | grep '^ ' | grep -v children | grep -v '' | sed -n 's/^ *$0x[0-9a-f]*$ .*/\1/p' | uniq | while read line; do xprop -id $line _NET_WM_PID | sed -n 's/.* = $[0-9]*$$/\1/p'; done | uniq -u | grep -v '^$' | while read line; do ps -o cmd= $line; done > ~/.windows

Decrypt passwords from Google Chrome and Chromium.

Read this before you down voting and comment that it is not working -> Wont work on latest versions ~75> since database file is locked and has to be decrypted. This is useful if you have an old hdd with a chrome installation and want to decrypt your old passwords fast.

convert single digit to double digits

from 1.ogg 2.ogg 3.ogg 10.ogg 11.ogg to 01.ogg 02.ogg 03.ogg 10.ogg 11.ogg

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by