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Remove all unused kernels with apt-get
A little aptitude magic. Note: this will remove images AND headers. If you just want to remove images: aptitude remove ?and(~i~nlinux-im ?not(~n`uname -r`)) I used this in zsh without any problems. I'm not sure how other shells will interpret some of the special characters used in the aptitude search terms. Use -s to simulate.

List the libraries used by an application
For example, you need to make a copy of all the libraries that a certain application uses, with this command you can list and copy them.

reverse order of file

Search big files with long lines
This is a handy way to circumvent the "Maximum line length of 2048 exceeded" grep error. Once you have run the above command (or put it in your .bashrc), files can be searched using: $ lgrep search-string /file/to/search

find out zombie process
$8~osstat, $2~pid, $11~cmd

slow down CPU and IO for process and its offsprings.

Smart `cd`.. cd to the file directory if you try to cd to a file
This little function will smarten 'cd'. If you try to cd into a file (which I guess we all have done), it cd's into the directory of that file instead. I had to use nesten if's, to get cd to still work with 'cd' (to get to $HOME), 'cd -' (to get to last directory), and 'cd foo\ bar'.

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"

Check reverse DNS
I'm just a simple programmer. I find dig too verbose. host tells me alias(es) and IP address in a quick to grok format with nothing special to remember for input parameters. With thanks to http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-test-or-check-reverse-dns/

Create a file of a given size in linux


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