Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. 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.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

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:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

All commands from sorted by
Terminal - All commands - 12,022 results
rsync --daemon --port 9999 --no-detach -v --config .rsyncd.conf
2011-09-22 20:48:31
User: pykler
Functions: rsync
Tags: backup copy unix rsync daemon rsync daemon
-3
Up
Down
Start a quick rsync daemon for fast copying on internal secure network

An example config file is placed in the sample output along with the command line call to use it.

The rsync daemon here is setup on the destination, thus requiring the read only = false flag. Also it uses uid and gid of root, change as required.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
exec 3<>/dev/tcp/whatismyip.com/80; echo -e "GET /automation/n09230945.asp HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: whatismyip.com\r\n" >&3; a=( $(cat <&3) ); echo ${a[${#a[*]}-1]};
2009-11-03 21:57:00
User: yaccovs
Functions: cat echo exec
Tags: Network IP external
-3
Up
Down
Get your external IP address

bash neto..

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ifconfig -a|grep Bcast:|cut -d\: -f2|awk '{print $1}'
2009-12-04 21:00:46
User: metalx1000
Functions: awk cut grep ifconfig
Tags: ifconfig cut ip address awk grep
-3
Up
Down
Return IP Address

grabs your local IP Address.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ps -axgu | cut -f1 -d' ' | sort -u
2010-07-07 12:29:46
User: dfaulkner
Functions: cut ps sort
Tags: sort sorting ps users processes
-3
Up
Down
Shows users and 'virtual users' on your a unix-type system
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ifconfig -a | awk '/Bcast/{print $2}' | cut -c 5-19
2013-04-10 14:18:47
User: BigCow
Functions: awk cut ifconfig
Tags: Network IP network card
-3
Up
Down
Get the IP address of a machine. Just the IP, no junk.
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
wget -O gsplitter.crx "https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx?response=redirect&x=id%3Dlnlfpoefmdfplomdfppalohfbmlapjjo%26uc%26lang%3Den-US&prod=chrome&prodversion=8.0.552.224" ; google-chrome --load-extension gspliter.crx
2010-12-14 19:12:18
User: strzel_a
Functions: wget
-3
Up
Down
Execute extension with chrome

Download Gsplitter extension, and execute it with Chrome !

Or download it here :

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lnlfpoefmdfplomdfppalohfbmlapjjo

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
buf () {oldname=$1; if [ "$oldname" != "" ]; then datepart=$(date +%Y-%m-%d); firstpart=`echo $oldname | cut -d "." -f 1`; newname=`echo $oldname | sed s/$firstpart/$firstpart.$datepart/`; cp -i ${oldname} ${newname}; fi }
2010-12-14 19:58:34
User: Seebi
Functions: cp cut date sed
Tags: backup date function cp
-3
Up
Down
Backup a file with a date-time stamp

This backup function preserve the file suffix allowing zsh suffix aliases and desktop default actions to work with the backup file too.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
egrep '(expr1|expr2)' file
2011-07-14 14:22:11
User: evandrix
Functions: egrep
-3
Up
Down
Regex or

to find occurances of expr1 OR expr2

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
msiexec.exe /i product.msi /l* c:\folder\LogFileName.txt
2009-02-17 22:39:30
User: CuJoe
-3
Up
Down
Force log creation when running an msi install
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
apt-get remove `deborphan`
2010-11-15 15:15:39
User: ironmarc
Functions: apt
Tags: apt-get aptitude deborphan
-3
Up
Down
Remove unused libs/packages in debian-based distros
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
mv file_name.extension ..
2009-03-09 15:35:58
User: takealeft
Functions: mv
Tags: Filesystem Ubuntu Linux mv
-3
Up
Down
Move a file up a directory.

cd into the directory that contains the file.

this is just the usual move command but shortcut'd.

say you wanted to move a photo img1.png from ~/photos/holidayphotos into the parent directory which is ~/photos

command would be:

~/photos/holidayphotos$ mv img1.png ..

I use Ubuntu so this'll work in debian but not sure what else.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
check(){ power=$(acpi -a) ; if [[ $power == *on-line* ]] ; then echo "supply is on"; else echo "somebody is steeling your laptop"; amixer -c0 set Master 100+ unmute ; mpg123 nuclear-alarm.mp3 ; fi } ;while true; do check ; sleep 2 ; done
2011-12-10 13:42:52
User: hoodie
Functions: acpi amixer echo mpg123 set sleep
-3
Up
Down
Power Supply Triggered Alert

Checks whether your power supply is still plugged in.

If not it will trigger an alarm at maximum volume.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
#Client# cat "The Meters - People Say.mp3" | nc -vv 192.168.1.100 8080; #Server# nc -vv -l -s 192.168.1.100 -p 8080 | mpg123 -v -
2010-01-30 08:50:17
User: Abiden
Functions: cat mpg123
-3
Up
Down
Pipe music over netcat with mpg123

I think I picked this one up from Hak5 (yeah I know.. kinda lame)

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
<TBD>
2010-12-15 07:48:25
User: chaliyans
-3
Up
Down
print line and execute it in BASH

Is there a way to print the line BASH is executing without copy+paste the line inside an 'echo' command?

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
apache2ctl -V | grep SERVER_CONFIG_FILE
2011-06-03 17:02:49
User: userevolution
Functions: grep
-3
Up
Down
Apache server config file
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
awk '/inet end/ {print $3}' <(ifconfig eth0)
2009-12-05 10:45:31
User: voyeg3r
Functions: awk ifconfig
-3
Up
Down
Return IP Address
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
python -c "print 1+1"
2010-08-09 01:20:44
User: wannjanjic
Functions: python
Tags: calculation
-3
Up
Down
calculate in commandline with python
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
nc <ip> <port> -v
2011-03-11 16:37:09
User: andreisid
Tags: netcat nc
-3
Up
Down
determine if tcp port is open
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
curl whatismyip.org
2009-11-04 21:40:31
User: m8t
Tags: Network IP external
-3
Up
Down
Get your external IP address
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
txt="";for i in {1..20};do txt=$txt"$i. ";done;say $txt" Ready or not, here I come"
2011-12-11 05:51:22
User: antic
Tags: osx say hide seek parenting counting
-3
Up
Down
OSX: Use Say Command to Help You Play Hide-and-Seek

Hide-and-Seek is one of the greatest games in the parent's arsenal. Your kid runs off and hides for several minutes, while waiting for you to find him/her. This gives you time to catch a breath and check your email without feeling like a loser. If you'd also like to take advantage of the counting time--claiming that thinking space as your own--use this command on your OSX terminal to maximize downtime. Also, if your kid is like mine, you can get away with "for i in {1..100};" :)

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
iotop
2014-06-05 19:53:22
User: jmorganwalker
-3
Up
Down
Easy way to check disk I/O culprits
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
find . | grep deleteme | while read line; do rm $line; done
2009-02-18 00:55:57
User: tec
Functions: find grep read rm
-3
Up
Down
rm all files you grep

This command deletes all files in all subfolders if their name or path contains "deleteme".

To dry-run the command without actually deleting files run:

find . | grep deleteme | while read line; do echo rm $line; done
Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
fuser -n tcp -s <port> && echo "+open"
2011-03-11 19:06:10
User: cicatriz
Functions: echo fuser
Tags: netcat nc fuser
-3
Up
Down
determine if tcp port is open
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
aticonfig --pplib-cmd "set fanspeed 0 <number>"
2009-02-09 20:30:41
User: cinan
-3
Up
Down
set fan speed (ATI cards)

see aticonfig --help

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
cat [ENTER]^V^O[ENTER]^D
2009-04-17 13:16:56
User: minliu2k
Functions: cat
-3
Up
Down
Reset scrambled screen

^V means CTRL-V

[ENTER] means ENTER key

Comments (8) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate