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split and combine different pages from different pdf's
The command shows the real power of the pdftk tool, you can do basically everything you want with multiple pdf's. In the command a book is created from chapters, headings and covers.

Watch the progress of 'dd'
Only slightly different than previous commands. The benefit is that your "watch" should die when the dd command has completed. (Of course this would depend on /proc being available)

switch case of a text file

Unix commandline history substitution like ^foo^bar BUT for multiple replacements
#1 You invoked a command chain. #2 You globaly replace the scriptnames and execute them direct #3 The new executed command chain [# ^foo^bar] would only replace the firts match [foo] with [bar].

Create a mirror of a local folder, on a remote server
Create a exact mirror of the local folder "/root/files", on remote server 'remote_server' using SSH command (listening on port 22) (all files & folders on destination server/folder will be deleted)

Random quote from Borat -- no html parsing
Turns out smacie.com has a text file containing every single one of the borat quotes, each one on a newline. This makes it very convenient, as this can be done without any sed-parsing, and uses less bandwitdth! Note that borate quotes are quite offensive, much more so than "fortunes-off"!

Find the ratio between ram usage and swap usage.
it provides the ratio used for the RAM and The SWAP under Linux. When swappiness is high, Swap usage is high. When swappiness is low, Ram usage is high.

kill a process(e.g. conky) by its name, useful when debugging conky:)

Change SSH RSA passphrase
Protects your secret identity with a passphrase. OSX 10.6 automatically does key forwarding and can store the passphrase in the keychain. For other OSes, use ssh -A or set ForwardAgent in ssh_config to enable forwarding. Then use ssh-agent/ssh-add.

check open ports without netstat or lsof


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