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Add page numbers to a PDF
Put this code in a bash script. The script expects the PDF file as its only parameter. It will add a header to the PDF containing the page numbers and output it to a file with the suffix "-header.pdf" Requires enscript, ps2pdf and pdftk.

Remove specific entries from iptables
Then you can remove the specific entry: iptables -D INPUT 10 Just make sure these are set: IPTABLES_SAVE_ON_STOP="yes" IPTABLES_SAVE_ON_RESTART="yes" Else your changes won't stick when you restart iptables.

Exclude inserting a table from a sql import
Starting with a large MySQL dump file (*.sql) remove any lines that have inserts for the specified table. Sometimes one or two tables are very large and uneeded, eg. log tables. To exclude multiple tables you can get fancy with sed, or just run the command again on subsequently generated files.

To print a specific line from a file
Just one character longer than the sed version ('FNR==5' versus -n 5p). On my system, without using "exit" or "q", the awk version is over four times faster on a ~900K file using the following timing comparison: $ testfile="testfile"; for cmd in "awk 'FNR==20'" "sed -n '20p'"; do echo; echo $cmd; eval "$cmd $testfile"; for i in {1..3}; do time for j in {1..100}; do eval "$cmd $testfile" >/dev/null; done; done; done Adding "exit" or "q" made the difference between awk and sed negligible and produced a four-fold improvement over the awk timing without the "exit". For long files, an exit can speed things up: $ awk 'FNR==5{print;exit}'

Reuse all parameter of the previous command line
!* is all of the arguments to the previous command rather than just the last one. This is useful in many situations. Here's a simple example: $ vi cd /stuff oops! [exit vi, twice] $ !* expands to: cd /stuff

bypass any aliases and functions for the command
A simple directive which disables all aliases and functions for the command immediately following it. Shortcut for the bash built-in 'command' - "command linefoo". Think, {sic}...

burn an ISO image to writable CD
Does life get much easier? Read up about wodim for an understanding of its origins in relation to the older `cdrecord` utility

Install pip with Proxy
Installs pip packages defining a proxy

Enable cd by variable names
Usage: $ mydir=/very/long/path/to/a/dir $ cd mydir I often need to cd where no man wants to go (i.e. long path). by enabling the shell option cdable_vars, I can tell cd to assume the destination is the name of a variable.

Increase SCT of external USB disk enclosure to one hour.
So I had this 2TB Seagate external disk/USB enclosure which by default would spin-down its internal drive (it enters a standby mode) after four minutes of inactivity.. Spinning-up the inactive drive was an annoying delay when accessing files and also it severely interfered with NFS.. SCT stands for "Standby Condition Timer". To completely disable SCT: $ sdparm --clear STANDBY -6 /dev/sdb To return to original (default) SCT settings: $ sdparm -D -p 0x1a -6 /dev/sdb To verify the settings (before and after): $ sdparm -a /dev/sdb No need for vendor-provided MSWIN tools, etc.


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