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Make a zip file with date/time created in the name of the file , zip all sub-directorys
zip -r /tmp/filename-`date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S`.zip /directory/

Create higher quality gif from videos
I had to compress it a bit to meet the 255 limit. See sample for full command (274) usage: ffgif foo.ext Supports 3 arguments (optional) ffgif filename seek_time time_duration scale ffgif foo 10 5 320 will seek 10 seconds in, convert for 5 seconds at a 320 scale. Default will convert whole video to gif at 320 scale. Inspiration - http://superuser.com/questions/556029/how-do-i-convert-a-video-to-gif-using-ffmpeg-with-reasonable-quality/556031#556031

Most Commonly Used Grep Options
This is very helpful to place in a shell startup file and will make grep use those options all the time. This example is nice as it won't show those warning messages, skips devices like fifos and pipes, and ignores case by default.

List your largest installed packages (on Debian/Ubuntu)

fast access to any of your favorite directory.
example: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- user@ubuntu:~/workspace/SVN/haystak-repos/trunk/internal/src$ addpi -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now that directory is in the list of fast access directories. You can switch to it anytime like this: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- user@ubuntu:~$ pi internal` user@ubuntu:~/workspace/SVN/haystak-repos/trunk/internal/src$ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note the backquote ( the symbol that shares its key with ~ in the keyboard ) pi will switch you to that directory. To see the list of all fast access directories you have to say "cat ~/.pi"

Notify me when users log in
Notifyme is a program that listen in background for users login, and report on login and logout. Users can be specified from a list or in a ~/notify.rc file. -C options force to display messages on the center of the screen.See man notifyme for more details. Part of notifyme package, tested on Debian.

Shows size of dirs and files, hidden or not, sorted.
Enhanced version: fixes sorting by human readable numbers, and filters out non MB or GB entries that have a G or an M in their name.

Force GNU/Linux keyboard settings, layout and configuration
Bash snippet to force GNU/Linux keyboard settings, layout and configuration. Usefull when some GNU/Linux distributions such as *Ubuntu's store only limited configation options due to demonstration purposes on LiveUSB or Live persistent devices. Overcomes the English QWERTY to French AZERTY settings failure. Code bash en ligne de commande pour forcer l'adoption du clavier AZERTY sur les cl? USB bootable en Ubuntu.

Rsync using SSH and outputing results to a text file
--delete will delete copies on remote to match local if deleted on local --stats will output the results -z zip -a archive -A preserve ACL -x don't cross filesystem boundaries -h human readable -e specify the remote shell to use

Redirect incoming traffic to SSH, from a port of your choosing
Stuck behind a restrictive firewall at work, but really jonesing to putty home to your linux box for some colossal cave? Goodness knows I was...but the firewall at work blocked all outbound connections except for ports 80 and 443. (Those were wide open for outbound connections.) So now I putty over port 443 and have my linux box redirect it to port 22 (the SSH port) before it routes it internally. So, my specific command would be: $iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 22 Note that I use -A to append this command to the end of the chain. You could replace that with -I to insert it at the beginning (or at a specific rulenum). My linux box is running slackware, with a kernel from circa 2001. Hopefully the mechanics of iptables haven't changed since then. The command is untested under any other distros or less outdated kernels. Of course, the command should be easy enough to adapt to whatever service on your linux box you're trying to reach by changing the numbers (and possibly changing tcp to udp, or whatever). Between putty and psftp, however, I'm good to go for hours of time-killing.


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