All commands (14,187)

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

backup system over ssh, exlucde common dirs

Using ASCII Art output on MPlayer
Not so useful. Just a cool feature.

Create a false directory structure for testing your commands
This will make a false directory with the same file names as whatever directory you choose. This is wise to use when testing scripts that alter contents, filenames, or move files. I wrote this after an OOPS I made when renaming a directory of JPGs, PNGs, PSDs that were mixed. I recommend this as I lost over 2000 vacation pictures and some graphics I designed for software and web sites. :( NOTE: This only creates name copies, that data itself is not copied.

tar the current directory wihtout the absolute path
tars the current directory (and its children) in an archive of the same name (plus ".tar" :)) in the parent directory without the absolute path, so that when the archive is extracted, only the current directory name is created for the path. Assumes bash/zsh.

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

locating packages held back, such as with "aptitude hold "
locating packages held back, such as with "aptitude hold "

Convert multiple flac files to mp3
make sure that flac and lame are installed sudo apt-get install lame flac

Download an entire ftp directory using wget
If the username includes an @ you can use this one: wget -r --user=username_here --password=pass_here ftp://ftp.example.com

Execute a command with a timeout
I like much more the perl solution, but without using perl. It launches a backgroup process that will kill the command if it lasts too much. A bigger function: check_with_timeout() { [ "$DEBUG" ] && set -x COMMAND=$1 TIMEOUT=$2 RET=0 # Launch command in backgroup [ ! "$DEBUG" ] && exec 6>&2 # Link file descriptor #6 with stderr. [ ! "$DEBUG" ] && exec 2> /dev/null # Send stderr to null (avoid the Terminated messages) $COMMAND 2>&1 >/dev/null & COMMAND_PID=$! [ "$DEBUG" ] && echo "Background command pid $COMMAND_PID, parent pid $$" # Timer that will kill the command if timesout sleep $TIMEOUT && ps -p $COMMAND_PID -o pid,ppid |grep $$ | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill & KILLER_PID=$! [ "$DEBUG" ] && echo "Killer command pid $KILLER_PID, parent pid $$" wait $COMMAND_PID RET=$? # Kill the killer timer [ "$DEBUG" ] && ps -e -o pid,ppid |grep $KILLER_PID | awk '{print $1}' | xargs echo "Killing processes: " ps -e -o pid,ppid |grep -v PID | grep $KILLER_PID | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill wait sleep 1 [ ! "$DEBUG" ] && exec 2>&6 6>&- # Restore stderr and close file descriptor #6. return $RET }

Find out which debian package a command (executable) belongs to on debian-based distros
This revision to my command (command #8851) was called for when it failed to find the parent package of 'rlogin', which is really a deep symbolic link to /usr/bin/ssh. This revision fixes this newfound issue, while ensuring fixes of other older issues work too.


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: