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Mount a VMware virtual disk (.vmdk) file on a Linux box
Assumes XP/2000/2003. For Server 2008+ try offset=105,906,176 You can find this number in the System Information utility under Partition Starting Offset. UEFI based boxes you want partition 2 since the first is just the boot files (and FAT). This works with (storage side) snapshots which is handy for single file restores on NFS mounted VMware systems

Get absolut path to your bash-script
Another way of doing it that's a bit clearer. I'm a fan of readable code.

Count the number of deleted files
It does not work without the verbose mode (-v is important)

Diff on two variables
You got some results in two variables within your shell script and would like to find the differences? Changes in process lists, reworked file contents, ... . No need to write to temporary files. You can use all the diff parameters you'll need. Maybe anything like $ grep "^>" is helpful afterwards.

Create new user with home dir and given password
The crypt function takes a password, key, as a string, and a salt character array which is described below, and returns a printable ASCII string which starts with another salt. It is believed that, given the output of the function, the best way to find a key that will produce that output is to guess values of key until the original value of key is found. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypt_(Unix)

Show a 4-way scrollable process tree with full details.
If you want a visual representation of the parent/child relationships between processes, this is one easy way to do it. It's useful in debugging collections of shell scripts, because it provides something like a call traceback. When a shell script breaks, just remember "awwfux".

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

Start a command on only one CPU core
This is useful if you have a program which doesn't work well with multicore CPUs. With taskset you can set its CPU affinity to run on only one core.

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Use AbiWord to generate a clean HTML document from a Microsoft Word document.
Credit goes to @Porges from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/67964/what-is-the-best-free-way-to-clean-up-word-html.


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