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firefox: how many eat?

Convert video files to XviD

Create .pdf from .doc
sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

Not a kismet replacement...
If you're like some individuals who rely on ndiswrapper and cannot use kismet, this command may be of service. watch -n .5 "iwlist wlan0 scan | egrep 'ESSID|Encryption'" Or... watch -n .5 "iwlist wlan0 scan | egrep 'ESSID|Encryption' | egrep 'linksys'" :-) Hopefully you'll find some dd-wrt compatible routers.

Timer with sound alarm

Prettify an XML file
Like `tidy`, `xmllint` can be used to prettify XML files. The --nsclean option is also useful to remove redundant namespaces.

bash/ksh function: given a file, cd to the directory it lives
fcd : file change directory A bash function that takes a fully qualified file path and cd's into the directory where it lives. Useful on the commadline when you have a file name in a variable and you'd like to cd to the directory to RCS check it in or look at other files associated with it. Will run on any ksh, bash, likely sh, maybe zsh.

Mount a VMware virtual disk (.vmdk) file on a Linux box
This does not require you to know the partition offset, kpartx will find all partitions in the image and create loopback devices for them automatically. This works for all types of images (dd of hard drives, img, etc) not just vmkd. You can also activate LVM volumes in the image by running $vgchange -a y and then you can mount the LV inside the image. To unmount the image, umount the partition/LV, deactivate the VG for the image $vgchange -a n then run $kpartx -dv to remove the partition mappings.

Umount only the NFS related to 'string'
Sometimes, you have a lot of NFS in the server and you can't or shouldn't use umount -a. Whis this command, you only umount the fs related to the 'string'

find previously entered commands (requires configuring .inputrc)
[Click the "show sample output" link to see how to use this keystroke.]   Meta-p is one of my all time most used and most loved features of working at the command line. It's also one that surprisingly few people know about. To use it with bash (actually in any readline application), you'll need to add a couple lines to your .inputrc then have bash reread the .inputrc using the bind command:   $ echo '"\en": history-search-forward' >> ~/.inputrc   $ echo '"\ep": history-search-backward' >> ~/.inputrc   $ bind -f ~/.inputrc     I first learned about this feature in tcsh. When I switched over to bash about fifteen years ago, I had assumed I'd prefer ^R to search in reverse. Intuitively ^R seemed better since you could search for an argument instead of a command. I think that, like using a microkernel for the Hurd, it sounded so obviously right fifteen years ago, but that was only because the older way had benefits we hadn't known about.     I think many of you who use the command line as much as I do know that we can just be thinking about what results we want and our fingers will start typing the commands needed. I assume it's some sort of parallel processing going on with the linguistic part of the brain. Unfortunately, that parallelism doesn't seem to work (at least for me) with searching the history. I realize I can save myself typing using the history shortly after my fingers have already started "speaking". But, when I hit ^R in Bash, everything I've already typed gets ignored and I have to stop and think again about what I was doing. It's a small bump in the road but it can be annoying, especially for long-time command line users. Usually M-p is exactly what I need to save myself time and trouble.     If you use the command line a lot, please give Meta-p a try. You may be surprised how it frees your brain to process more smoothly in parallel. (Or maybe it won't. Post here and let me know either way. ☺)


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