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ps -ef | grep PROCESS | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9
kills all pids matching the search term of "PROCESS". Be careful what you wish for :)

Quick and dirty convert to flash
This converts any media ffmpeg handles to flash. It would actually convert anything to anything, it's based on the file extension. It doesn't do ANY quality control, sizing, etc, it just does what it thinks is best. I needed an flv for testing, and this spits one out easily.

Getting Screen's Copy Buffer Into X's Copy Buffer (on Linux)
This command will let you just type c-a b (which means press 'ctrl' then 'a' then 'b'), and screen will save your copy buffer to /tmp/screen-exchange, and then execute xsel to copy the contents of that file into the system's X clipboard. 1. Install Conrad Parker's xsel from http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/software/xsel/ 2. Add these lines to your .screenrc # Add cool line to make copying to x clipboard possible. # This binds C-a b to copy screen's copy buffer to the system clipboard. bind b eval writebuf 'exec /bin/sh -c "xsel -i -b < /tmp/screen-exchange"' 'exec /bin/sh -c "killall xsel"' 3. Restart screen. 4. Test it by typing c-a [ to enter copy mode. 5. Select some text using vi movement keys (h, j, k, l, etc...) and starting your selection by hitting the space bar, moving with vi movement keys, and then ending your selection with the space bar. 6. Type C-a b, and screen will use xsel to copy your screen copy buffer to the system's X clipboard buffer. 7. Then you can paste the screen copy buffer into any X program. Note: If you're using Mac OSX, you can use pbcopy instead of xsel. Also Note: The second exec in the .screenrc file, which runs killall on xsel, is necessary, because even when you redirect a file to xsel, xsel waits for you to press ctrl-c to kill it, and have it stop waiting for more input. Since xsel forces screen to wait, and I don't want to press ctrl-c, I send the equivalent of ctrl-c with killall causing xsel to write /tmp/screen-exchange to the X clipboard, and then exit. It's a hack, but it works. If you know how to get this to work without a lame hack leave a comment explaining how.

Monitor all DNS queries seen by the local machine

Summarize Apache Extended server-status to show longest running requests
Ever need to know why Apache is bogging down *right now*? Hate scanning Apache's Extended server-status for the longest running requests? Me, too. That's why I use this one liner to quickly find suspect web scripts that might need review. Assuming the Extended server-status is reachable at the target URL desired, this one-liner parses the output through elinks (rendering the HTML) and shows a list of active requests sorted by longest running request at the bottom of the list. I include the following fields (as noted in the header line): Seconds: How long the request is alive PID: Process ID of the request handler State: State of the request, limited to what I think are the relevant ones (GCRK_.) IP: Remote Host IP making the request Domain: Virtual Host target (HTTP/1.1 Host: header). Important for Virtual Hosting servers TYPE: HTTP verb URL: requested URL being served. Putting this in a script that runs when triggered by high load average can be quite revealing. Can also capture "forgotten" scripts being exploited such as "formmail.pl", etc.

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"

Remove all HTML tags from a file
A shorter version of command #3014, using awk instead of sed. Useful when scraping websites with a script.

Use AWS CLI and JQ to get a list of instances sorted by launch time
Use the AWS CLI tools to generate a list instances, then pipe them to JQ to show only their launch time and instance id. Finally use sort to bring them out in runtime order. Find all those instances you launched months ago and have forgotten about.

Batch rename extension of all files in a folder, in the example from .txt to .md
Same thing using bash built-in features instead of a sub-shell.

Print text string vertically, one character per line.
Define a function $ vert () { echo $1 | grep -o '.'; } Use it to print some column headers $ paste


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