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Optimal way of deleting huge numbers of files

Using xargs is better than: find /path/to/dir -type f -exec rm \-f {} \; as the -exec switch uses a separate process for each remove. xargs splits the streamed files into more managable subsets so less processes are required.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
12

find /path/to/dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rm

root · 2009-01-26 11:30:47 63
Display PHP files that directly instantiate a given class

This greps all PHP files for a given classname and displays both the file and the usage. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
tao/tests/filter/TestUrl.php:        $this->objFilter = new filter_Url();
tao/classes/local/view/Photos.php:        $objFilter  = new filter_Url();
```
1

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep \-H "new filter_" {} \;

root · 2009-01-26 10:43:09 73
Run the last command as root

Useful when you forget to use sudo for a command. "!!" grabs the last run command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1219

sudo !!

root · 2009-01-26 10:26:48 262
Creates a customized search command

Creates a command alias ('cr' in the above example) that searches the contents of files matching a set of file extensions (C & C++ source-code in the above example) recursively within the current directory. Search configured to be in colour, ignore-case, show line numbers and show 4 lines of context. Put in shell initialisation file of your choice. Trivially easy to use, e.g: cr sha1_init Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
./openssl/signatures.c-600-xmlSecOpenSSLDsaSha1EvpInit(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx)
./openssl/signatures.c-601-{
./openssl/signatures.c:602:    return SHA1_Init(ctx->md_data);
./openssl/signatures.c-603-}
./openssl/signatures.c-604-
--
./openssl/signatures.c-706-    NULL,
./openssl/signatures.c-707-#else /* XMLSEC_OPENSSL_096 */
./openssl/signatures.c:708:    SHA1_Init,
./openssl/signatures.c-709-    SHA1_Update,
./openssl/signatures.c-710-    SHA1_Final,
```
0

alias cr='find . 2>/dev/null -regex '\''.*\.$c\|cpp\|pc\|h\|hpp\|cc$$'\'' | xargs grep --color=always -ni -C2'

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 08:54:25 56
Outputs a sorted list of disk usage to a text file

Recursively searches current directory and outputs sorted list of each directory's disk usage to a text file. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
712     .
328     ./test
176     ./lib
144     ./doc
100     ./test/data
96      ./lib/rake
64      ./doc/release_notes
```
6

du | sort -gr > file_sizes

chrisdrew · 2009-01-26 01:12:54 62
Watch how fast the files in a drive are being deleted

This can be useful when a large remove operation is taking place.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

watch "df | grep /path/to/drive"

root · 2009-01-25 21:16:41 674
Execute a command at a given time

This is an alternative to cron which allows a one-off task to be scheduled for a certain time.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
266

echo "ls -l" | at midnight

root · 2009-01-25 21:07:42 85
Analyse an Apache access log for the most common IP addresses

This uses awk to grab the IP address from each request and then sorts and summarises the top 10.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
22

tail -10000 access_log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail

root · 2009-01-25 21:01:52 47
Add SVN keywords property to all PHP and Javascript files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

find . $ -name "*.php" -o -name "*.js" $ -exec svn propset svn:keywords Id {} \;

root · 2009-01-24 00:54:35 63
Count files beneath current directory (including subfolders)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
18

find . -type f | wc -l

root · 2009-01-23 17:19:32 74

Display the top ten running processes - sorted by memory usage

ps returns all running processes which are then sorted by the 4th field in numerical order and the top 10 are sent to STDOUT. Show Sample Output

106

ps aux | sort -nk +4 | tail

root · 2009-01-23 17:12:33 295

Checks all MySQL tables

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myisamchk.html for further details. You can also repair all tables by running: myisamchk -r *.MYI
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

myisamchk /path/to/mysql/files/*.MYI

root · 2009-01-22 10:20:00 133
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list block devices

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

Mount important virtual system directories under chroot'ed directory

The command is useful when, e.g., booting an existing system with a rescue or installation CD where you need to chroot into the hard-disk and be able to do stuff which accesses kernel info (e.g. when installing Ubuntu desktop with LVM2 you need to mount and chroot the hard disk from a shell window in order to install packages and run initramfs inside chroot). The command assumes that /mnt/xxx is where the chroot'ed environment's root file system on the hard disk is mounted.

Check if your desired password is already available in haveibeenpwnd database. This command uses the API provided by HIBP

sort monthwise

sort command can sort month-wise (first three letters of each month). See the sample output for clarification. Sorting Stable ? NO. Take note if that matters to you. Sample output suggests that sort performs unstable sorting (see the relative order of two 'feb' entries).

Measure, explain and minimize a computer's electrical power consumption

Run this command as root to get enough stats. It works on AMD and Intel machines, including desktops. If ran on a laptop it'll give you suggestions on extending your battery life. You'll need to install PowerTOP if you don't have, via 'apt-get install powertop', etc. To grep the output use: sudo powertop -d | grep ... The many command suggestions PowerTOP gives you alone will increase your command-line fu!

Find the package that installed a command

Convert all files for iPhone with HandbrakeCLI

JSON processing with Python

Validates and pretty-prints the content fetched from the URL.

export iPad App list to txt file

This will generate the same output without changing the current directory, and filepath will be relative to the current directory. Note: it will (still) fail if your iTunes library is in a non-standard location.

Run bash on top of a vi session (saved or not saved), run multiple commands, instead of one at a time with :!(bashcommand), type exit and [enter] to get back to where you left off in vi.

Helps when I'm editing a script and want to double check some commands without having to exit out of vi multiple times or having to use another terminal session.

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