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Monitor a file with tail with timestamps added
This is useful when watching a log file that does not contain timestamps itself. If the file already has content when starting the command, the first lines will have the "wrong" timestamp when the command was started and not when the lines were originally written.

extract element of xml
poor man's xml parser :)

Get the list of local files that changed since their last upload in an S3 bucket
Can be useful to granulary flush files in a CDN after they've been changed in the S3 bucket.

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"

Kill all processes belonging to a user
This is a 'killall' command equivalent where it is not available. Prior to executing it, set the environment variable USERNAME to the username, whose processes you want to kill or replace the username with the $USERNAME on the command above. Side effect: If any processes from other users, are running with a parameter of $USERNAME, they will be killed as well (assuming you are running this as root user) [-9] in square brackets at the end of the command is optional and strongly suggested to be your last resort. I do not like to use it as the killed process leaves a lot of mess behind.

Locate config files of the program
Locate config files of the program. May not be used for interactive programs like vim.

Copy via tar pipe while preserving file permissions (run this command as root!)
It's the same like 'cp -p' if available. It's faster over networks than scp. If you have to copy gigs of data you could also use netcat and the tar -z option in conjunction -- on the receiving end do: # nc -l 7000 | tar -xzvpf - ...and on the sending end do: # tar -czf - * | nc otherhost 7000

List the CPU model name
Extracts the model name of the CPU and displays it on screen.

Happy Days
This never gets old

Mount SMB share with password containing special characters
If the password for the share your trying to mount contains special characters you can use URL escape characters. The above command uses an example as follows: username: user password: p@ss URL Encoded password: p%40ss All credit goes to Richard York: http://www.smilingsouls.net/Blog/20110526100731.html Also check out this URL Decoder/Encoder to convert your passwords. http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/


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