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parrallel execution of a command on remote hosts by ssh or rsh or ...
parrallel execution of a command on remote host by ssh or rsh or ... very useful for cluster management (software update)

Configure a serial line device so you can evaluate it with a shell script
I had a hard time in finding the correct settings to get reasonable output from a coin selector which sends its data over a serial line. In the end, minicom came to the rescue and pointed me on the right track. So, if you need to do something similar, these settings may help you. Replace ttyUSB0 with your device file, 9600 with your baud rate, 5 with your read timeout (10ths of a second), and 1 with the minimum numbers of characters you want to read. You can then open the device file like you are used to do, example: $ DATA="`xxd -ps -l 5 \"$DEV\"`"

start a VNC server for another user

Create incremental backups of individual folders using find and tar-gzip
Problem: I wanted to backup user data individually, using and incremental method. In this example, all user data is located in "/mnt/storage/profiles", and about 25 folders inside, each with a username ( /mnt/storage/profiles/mike; /mnt/storage/profiles/lucy ...) I need each individual folder backed up, not the whole "/mnt/storage/profiles". So, using find while excluding directories depth and creating two variables (tarfile=username & desdir=destination), tar will create a .tgz file for each folder, resulting in a "mike_2013-12-05.tgz" and "lucy_2013-12-05.tgz".

Install pip with Proxy
Installs pip packages defining a proxy

Change prompt to MS-DOS one (joke)

raw MySQL output to use in pipes
-N removes header -s removes separator chars -r raw output After using these options, the MySQL ouptut can be used with pipes very easily

File rotation without rename command
Rotates log files with "gz"-extension in a directory for 7 days and enumerates the number in file name. i.e.: logfile.1.gz > logfile.2.gz I needed this line due to the limitations on AIX Unix systems which do not ship with the rename command.

convert a pdf to jpeg
Converts a .pdf to .jpg . should work with jpeg | tiff | png | gif | jp2 | pict | bmp | qtif | psd | sgi | tga

Shows picture exif GPS info if any and converts coords to a decimal degree number
This oneliner uses Imagemagic's identify utility to show the exif GPS information of an image an also converts Grad/MIn/Sec representation to a decimal degree number


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