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Follow the most recently updated log files
This command finds the 5 (-n5) most frequently updated logs in /var/log, and then does a multifile tail follow of those log files. Alternately, you can do this to follow a specific list of log files: sudo tail -n0 -f /var/log/{messages,secure,cron,cups/error_log}

Fibonacci numbers with awk
recursive version, "pure" AWK

Extract the MBR ID of a device
Useful when you want to know the mbrid of a device - for the purpose of making it bootable. Certain hybridiso distros, for eg the OpenSUSE live ISO uses the mbrid to find the live media. Use this command to find out the mbrid of your USB drive and then edit the /grub/mbrid file to match it.

Scan for nearby Bluetooth devices.
Scans local area for visible Bluetooth devices. Use 'hcitool inq' to discover the type of device it is. And use -i hciX option to specify the local Bluetooth device to use.

print contents of file from line 1 until we match regex
Start printing the contents of filename to stdout, until a matching line to regex is found, then stop.

Sort the size usage of a directory tree by gigabytes, kilobytes, megabytes, then bytes.
Probably only works with GNU du and modern perls.

cd into the latest directory

analyze traffic remotely over ssh w/ wireshark
Please check out my blog article on this for more detail. http://jdubb.net/blog/2009/08/07/monitor-wireshark-capture-real-time-on-remote-host-via-ssh/

log a command to console and to 2 files separately stdout and stderr

Read funny developer comments in the Linux source tree
These are way better than fortune(6).


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