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Generate a binary file with all ones (0xff) in it
This is similar to how you would generate a file with all zeros $ dd if=/dev/zero of=allzeros bs=1024 count=2k

automount samba shares as devices in /mnt/
the middle command between the ; and ; is the vi commands that insert that line into the last line of the file, the esc with the carets is literally hitting the escape key, you have to have the smbfs package installed to do it, I use it to access my iTunes music on my mac from my linux PC's with amarok so I can play the music anywhere in the house. among other things, it allows you to access the files on that share from your computer anytime you're on that network.

Get ethX mac addresses
I much prefer using /sbin/ip over /sbin/ifconfig for most everything. I find the interface and output to be much more consistent and it has many abilities that ifconfig, route, etc. do not. To get the mac address for only one interface, add 'show dev [interface]' to the 'ip link' part of the command: ip link show dev eth0 | grep 'link/ether' | awk '{print $2}' . Also, both this command and the ifconfig one do not require root access to run, so the sudo is not necessary.

Change the From: address on the fly for email sent from the command-line
It's very common to have cron jobs that send emails as their output, but the From: address is whatever account the cron job is running under, which is often not the address you want replies to go to. Here's a way to change the From: address right on the command line. What's happening here is that the "--" separates the options to the mail client from options for the sendmail backend. So the -f and -F get passed through to sendmail and interpreted there. This works on even on a system where postfix is the active mailer - looks like postfix supports the same options. I think it's possible to customize the From: address using mutt as a command line mailer also, but most servers don't have mutt preinstalled.

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

Put a console clock in top right corner
This puts a clock in the top right of the terminal. This version doesn't use tput, but uses escape codes

Display Motherboard Info

List all files/folders in working directory with their total size in Megabytes

Perl one-liner to determine number of days since the Unix epoch
There are some environments that use this value for password and account expiration. It's helpful to be able to quickly determine the number of days since the Unix epoch (dse) when working directly with the configuration files as an administrator.

escape any command aliases
e.g. if rm is aliased for 'rm -i', you can escape the alias by prepending a backslash: rm [file] # WILL prompt for confirmation per the alias \rm [file] # will NOT prompt for confirmation per the default behavior of the command


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