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Lurk what's going on on remote console

Execute a command with a timeout
In this example the command "somecommand" will be executed and sent a SIGALARM signal if it runs for more than 10 seconds. It uses the perl alarm function. It's not 100% accurate on timing, but close enough. I found this really useful when executing scripts and commands that I knew might hang E.g. ones that connect to services that might not be running. Importantly this can be used within a sequential script. The command will not release control until either the command completes or the timeout is hit.

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

List the Sizes of Folders and Directories

Recursively grep thorugh directory for string in file.
-R, -r, --recursive Read all files under each directory, recursively; this is equivalent to the -d recurse option.

Backup a directory structure
Copies a directory structure from /home/ to /backups/home (notice that the destination does not have a trailing slash)

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.

flip faster and more precisely through commands saved in history
flip shell history with PG UP/PG DOWN like with arrows. just type ss and PG UP and see all ssh commands, type ls and PG DOWN - see all ls commands. need to uncomment two options in /etc/inputrc: "\e[5~": history-search-backward "\e[6~": history-search-forward hack found: http://broddlit.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/making-the-bash-history-a-better-place/

Extract content between the first " and the last " double quotes
Thanks to this user: https://stackoverflow.com/a/35636373/2394635

Alias for lazy tmux create/reattach


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