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iso to USB with dd and show progress status
need package: pv apt-get install pv get the iso size in byte with ls -l install-cd.iso /dev/sdb is your USB Device (without partitionNr.)

Recursive chmod all files and directories within the current directory

Generate random valid mac addresses
Ruby version. Also, a perl version: $perl -e 'printf("%.2x.",rand(255))for(1..5);printf("%.2x\n",rand(255))'

Replace Solaris vmstat numbers with human readable format
% cat ph-vmstat.awk # Return human readable numbers function hrnum(a) { b = a ; if (a > 1000000) { b = sprintf("%2.2fM", a/1000000) ; } else if (a > 1000) { b = sprintf("%2.2fK", a/1000) ; } return(b) ; } # Return human readable storage function hrstorage(a) { b = a ; if (a > 1024000) { b = sprintf("%2.2fG", a/1024/1024) ; } else if (a > 1024) { b = sprintf("%2.2fM", a/1024) ; } return(b) ; } OFS=" " ; $1 !~ /[0-9].*/ {print} $1 ~ /[0-9].*/ { $4 = hrstorage($4) ; $5 = hrstorage($5) ; $9 = hrnum($9) ; $10 = hrnum($10) ; $17 = hrnum($17) ; $18 = hrnum($18) ; $19 = hrnum($19) ; print ; }

check open ports without netstat or lsof

find and delete empty directories recursively
this will show the names of the deleted directories, and will delete directories that only no files, only empty directories.

Execute a command without saving it in the history
Yes, by correctly setting the HIST* variables you can make certain commands not saved in history. But that's complicated and easy to make a mistake. If you set HISTFILE= to blank, nothing in your current shell session will be saved in history. Although this is not a precise answer to the subject, but it's very simple.

Find dead symbolic links

Download all Delicious bookmarks

Re-read partition table on specified device without rebooting system (here /dev/sda).


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