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Get info about remote host ports and OS detection
Where < target > may be a single IP, a hostname or a subnet -sS TCP SYN scanning (also known as half-open, or stealth scanning) -P0 option allows you to switch off ICMP pings. -sV option enables version detection -O flag attempt to identify the remote operating system Other option: -A option enables both OS fingerprinting and version detection -v use -v twice for more verbosity. $ nmap -sS -P0 -A -v < target >

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"

beep when a server goes offline
pings a server once per second, and beeps when the server is unreachable. Basically the opposite of: $ ping -a server-or-ip.com which would beep when a server IS reachable. You could also substitute beep with any command, which makes this a powerful alternative to ping -a: $ while true; do [ "$(ping -c1W1w1 server-or-ip.com 2>/dev/null | awk '/received/ {print $4}')" = 1 ] && date || echo 'server is down!'; sleep 1; done which would output the date and time every sec until the ping failed, in which case it would echo. Notes: Requires beep package. May need to run as root (beep uses the system speaker) Tested on Ubuntu which doesn't have beep out of the box... $ sudo apt-get install beep

a shell function to print a ruler the width of the terminal window.
A similar version for Bash that doesn't require cut and shortens the function in a few places. And it uses local variables. (similar to a version by eightmillion in a comment on the another version)

Number of CPU's in a system
This appears to do the same. Utility is verified to be present on Ubuntu and OpenSuse out-of-the-box.

Execute MySQL query send results from stdout to CSV
You can, of course, tell MySQL to output results to a file and dictate how to terminate lines, etc. But sometimes you don't have access to the file system MySQL is running on, complicating outputting your results to a CSV, necessitating either annoying hacks or this simple command :D

Get your external IP address if your machine has a DNS entry
Easy way to see your real external IP

Arch Linux: Search for missing libraries using pacman
If, while using a program, you get an error similar to: error while loading shared libraries: libusb-0.1.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory Use pacman or pkgfile to search for the package that owns the missing library https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/General_troubleshooting#Message:_%22error_while_loading_shared_libraries%22

Add existing user to a group

Find wich ports you probably want to open in your firewall on a fresh installed machine


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