All commands (14,187)

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commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

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Ctrl+S Ctrl+Q terminal output lock and unlock
These are simple shortcuts to pause and continue terminal output, works in most terminals and screen multiplexers like screen. You can use it to catch something if things change too fast, and scroll with Shift + PgUp PgDown. On linux console ScrollLock can also be used.

Show max lengths of all fields in a pipe delimited file with header row

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.

Another way to see the network interfaces
Like many other thing in Linux ,you can see the same thing in different way.

Create a QR code image in MECARD format
Add the QR code image on your webpage, business card ., etc, so people can scan it and quick add to their Contact Address Book. Tested on iPhone with QRreader.

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Generate random number with shuf
If you don't have seq or shuf, bash can be used.

When was your OS installed?

power off system in X minutes
Replace 60 with the number of minutes until you want the machine to shut down. Alternatively give an absolute time in the format hh:mm (shutdown -h 9:30) Or shutdown right away (shutdown -h now)

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


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Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
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» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

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Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

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