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Simple complete system backup excluding files or directories
You can exclude more system folders or individual files which are not necessary for the backup and can be recreated after the restore procedure, like /lost+found, /mnt, /media, /tmp, /usr ... Restoring the above backup procedure is as simple as becoming root and typing: $ tar zxpf backup.tgz -C / You can extract any file or directory out of the backup.tgz file for recovery, for instance, if you have a corrupt or mis-configured fstab file, you could simply issue the command: $ tar zxpf backup.tgz /ect/fstab -C / Other options: v add verbose option to see files processed A far safer solution is to restore the desired files under a different directory, and then compare, move, or update the files to their original locations afterward.

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Typing the current date ( or any string ) via a shortcut as if the keys had been actually typed with the hardware keyboard in any application.
That works in all softs, CLI or GUI... I don't want to waste time to all the time typing the same stuff . So, I have that command in my window manager shortcuts ( meta+l ). All the window managers have editable shortcuts AFAIK. If not, or you don't want to use it that way, you can easily use the xbindkeys soft. I you're using kde4, you can run : $ systemsettings then open "inputs actions" and create a new shortcut. For Gnome take a look there : http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-create-keyboard-shortcuts-in-gnome/ A more advanced one, with strings and newlines : $ xvkbd -xsendevent -text "---8

Extracting frames from a video as jpeg files
This command extracts 10 seconds worth of frames, starting from 00:15:45 position, from filename.avi and stores them into out_frames folder as jpeg files. Subtitles are turned off with -sid 999 option.

Get line number 12 (or n) from a file
Extracts only file number 12 from file. It's meant for text files. Replace 12 with the number you want. First line starts at 1 not 0. We use q on next line so doesn't process any line more.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Which processes are listening on a specific port (e.g. port 80)
swap out "80" for your port of interest. Can use port number or named ports e.g. "http"

Install pip with Proxy
Installs pip packages defining a proxy

Add thousand separator with sed, in a file or within pipe
Does not necessarily require a file to process, it can be used in a pipe as well: $ cat filename | sed -e :a -e 's/\(.*[0-9]\)\([0-9]\{3\}\)/\1,\2/;ta' I don't remember where I copy/pasted this from, I wish I credited the original author

Write a shell script that removes files that contain a string
Deletes files in the current directory or its subdirectories that match "regexp" but handle directories, newlines, spaces, and other funky characters better than the original #13315. Also uses grep's "-q" to be quiet and quit at the first match, making this much faster. No need for awk either.


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