All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Extract all urls from the last firefox sessionstore.js file used.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

sed -e 's/{"url":/\n&/g' ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/sessionstore.js | cut -d\" -f4

cfajohnson · 2009-12-10 04:31:31 4
Change the homepage of Chromium
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

change-homepage(){ sed -ri 's|( "homepage": ").*(",)|\1'"$@"'\2|' .config/chromium/Default/Preferences; }

matthewbauer · 2010-04-10 21:21:55 3
Add EC2 pem key to SSH

This command adds your pem key to SSH so that you no longer have to manually specify it when connecting to EC2 instances. # you can do this: ssh ec2-instance.amazonaws.com # instead of this: ssh -i ~/.ssh/KEY_PAIR_NAME.pem ec2-instance.amazonaws.com Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Identity added: /Users/johndoe/.ssh/KEY_PAIR_NAME.pem (/Users/johndoe/.ssh/KEY_PAIR_NAME.pem)
```
-1

ssh-add ~/.ssh/KEY_PAIR_NAME.pem

brockangelo · 2012-11-03 02:59:52 5
Creating rapidly an html menu

This will create rapidly an html menu. You can paste it in you're html page with the middle button(the wheel). I didn't test it in an html with css, but it seems alright. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
<ul>
 <li>menu 1</li>
  <ul>
   <li>item 1</li>
   <li>item 2</li>
   <li>item 3</li>
   <li>item 4</li>
   <li>item 5</li>
  </ul>
</ul>
<ul>
 <li>menu 2</li>
  <ul>
   <li>item 1</li>
   <li>item 2</li>
   <li>item 3</li>
   <li>item 4</li>
   <li>item 5</li>
  </ul>
</ul>
<ul>
 <li>menu 3</li>
  <ul>
   <li>item 1</li>
   <li>item 2</li>
   <li>item 3</li>
   <li>item 4</li>
   <li>item 5</li>
  </ul>
</ul>
<ul>
 <li>menu 4</li>
  <ul>
   <li>item 1</li>
   <li>item 2</li>
   <li>item 3</li>
   <li>item 4</li>
   <li>item 5</li>
  </ul>
</ul>
```
-1

for menu in {1..4}; do echo -e "<ul>\n <li>menu $menu</li>\n <ul>"; for items in {1..5}; do echo " <li>item $items</li>"; if [ $items -eq 5 ];then echo -e " </ul>";fi;done; echo "</ul>";done | xclip

qcjn · 2013-09-22 06:34:32 6
List complete size of directories (do not consider hidden directories)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

du --max-depth=1 | grep -v '\.\/\.'

netkavu · 2010-04-10 22:14:49 3
find names of files ending in *log that have both foo and bar

Uses xargs to call the second grep with the first grep's results as arguments
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

grep -l bar *.log | xargs grep -l foo

dlebauer · 2011-01-10 19:54:46 3
Convert DOS newlines (CR/LF) to Unix format

requires the package tofrodos on Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install tofrodos
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

fromdos <file>

jbuitt · 2011-02-14 17:28:53 3
measure answer time of a web service

This uses curl to find out the access times of a web service Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1. 13:54:15: real 0m0.393s
2. 13:54:21: real 0m0.053s
3. 13:54:28: real 0m0.678s
4. 13:54:34: real 0m0.166s
....
40. ...
```
-1

for i in {1..40};do echo -n $i. $(date +%H:%M:%S):\ ; (time curl 'http://ya.ru/' &> /dev/null) 2>&1|grep real;sleep 1;done

AntonyC · 2011-11-11 10:40:38 3
Change all instances of a word in all files in the current directory

This command will replace all instances of 'foo' with 'bar' in all files in the current working directory.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar/g' $(grep -l foo ./*)

dopeman · 2009-03-27 17:18:08 6
Generate a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_Unique_Identifier http://www.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/ You'll first need to install the uuid package. Available immediately from apt in Ubuntu, Debian, or other myriad Debian variants. You could always compile it from source as well. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
bfcca18a-8857-11de-bdc3-0024e80e2d83
```
-1

uuid

linuxrawkstar · 2009-08-14 14:02:37 7
List complete size of directories (do not consider hidden directories)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

du -sh * | grep -v '\.\/\.'

marcopferreira · 2010-04-10 23:19:46 4
Get Informed by your box that you are awesome ;)

sends notification msg within repeated intervals of time to notify-send ;) Just for fun.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

while $i;do `notify-send -t 200 "You are awesome :)"`;sleep 60; done;

pahnin · 2011-02-14 18:49:38 7
Clear Cached Memory on Ubuntu

"That's it. Not much to see here. The first command writes any cache data that hasn't been written to the disk out to the disk. The second command tells the kernel to drop what's cached. Not much to it. This invalidates the write cache as well as the read cache, which is why we have the sync command first. Supposedly, it is possible to have some cached write data never make it to disk, so use it with caution, and NEVER do it on a production server. You could ... but why take the risk? As long as you are running a post 2.6.16 kernel,..." Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3621283&postcount=1
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

sudo sync && sudo echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

StephenJudge · 2012-03-17 08:27:58 13
Useful to check if the disks as of same size or not. Helpful in checking Raid configs
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

df | awk '{if ($2!=dspace) print "different"; dspace=$2;}'

adimania · 2013-03-08 12:09:35 14
purge half of files in backup directory

If you have a directory with lot of backups (full backups I mean), when it gets to some size, you could want to empty some space. With this command you'll remove half of the files. The command assumes that your backup files starts with YYYYMMDD or that they go some alphabetical order. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
(nothing, it will remove half of the files)
```
-1

find . | sort | awk 'NR%2==0' | xargs rm $1

sucotronic · 2013-07-11 07:36:18 10
Shuffle mp3 files in current folder (and subfolders) and play them.

Add `-maxdepth 1` to find to exclude subfolders.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

find . -iname "*.mp3" | mpg123 -Z --list -

bjodah · 2013-12-16 14:07:59 9
Change all instances of a word in all files in the current directory and it's sub-directories

This command will replace all instances of 'foo' with 'bar' in all files in the current working directory and any sub-directories.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar/g' $(grep -rl foo ./*)

dopeman · 2009-03-27 17:21:35 10
For finding out if something is listening on a port and if so what the daemon is.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

lsfo -i :[port number]

unixmonkey11400 · 2010-08-17 19:25:37 3
Get your external IP address

Additionally it may give your geolocation if it's known by hostip.info Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
ipv4: 188.165.241.33
hostname: ns390090.ovh.net
city: Roubaix
country: FRANCE (FR)
latitude: 50.7
longitude: 3.1667
```
-1

curl http://my-ip.cc/host.txt

samleb · 2011-09-01 00:28:49 3
find all minimum values in file with at least 100 lines
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

for ff in directory; do numLines=`wc -l $ff`; numLines=$(echo $numLines | sed 's/ .*//g'); min=$(sort -nrk 1 $ff | tail -1); if [ $numLines -gt 100 ]; then echo $min >> minValues; fi;done;

user1234 · 2013-09-23 04:04:52 7
return external ip

alternative using 'host' Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
67.207.139.81
```
-1

host -t a dartsclink.com | sed 's/.*has address //'

dartsclink · 2009-08-14 16:11:18 13
List complete size of directories (do not consider hidden directories)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

du -sh `ls -p | grep /`

sarcilav · 2010-04-11 02:53:51 11

Get your external IP address

XML version. Additionally it may give your geolocation if it's known by hostip.info Show Sample Output

-1

curl http://my-ip.cc/host.xml

samleb · 2011-09-01 00:30:03 3

Keep gz file after uncompressing
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

gunzip -c x.txt.gz >x.txt

zluyuer · 2014-10-24 10:00:21 10
display IP addresses with 5 or more unsuccessful login attempts today

display IP's that unsuccessfully attempted to login 5 or more times today may want to filter any trusted IP's and the localhost useful for obtaining a list IP addresses to block on the firewall Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
the output is zero or more IP addresses
```
-1

lastb -i | grep "$(date '+%a %b %d')" | awk '{ print $3 }' | sort | uniq -c | awk '{ if ($1 >= 5) print $2; }'

forestb · 2015-11-20 07:19:20 10
‹ First < 493 494 495 496 497 > 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

Write comments to your history.

A null operation with the name 'comment', allowing comments to be written to HISTFILE. Prepending '#' to a command will *not* write the command to the history file, although it will be available for the current session, thus '#' is not useful for keeping track of comments past the current session.

Include a remote file (in vim)

Like vim scp://yourhost//your/file but in vim cmds.

Your GeoIP location on Google Maps

Get the full path of a bash script's Git repository head.

Rather than complicated and fragile paths relative to a script like "../../other", this command will retrieve the full path of the file's repository head. Safe with spaces in directory names. Works within a symlinked directory. Broken down: $cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" temporarily changes directories within this expansion. Double quoted "$(dirname" and ")" with unquoted ${BASH_SOURCE[0]} allows spaces in the path. $git rev-parse --show-toplevel gets the full path of the repository head of the current working directory, which was temporarily changed by the "cd".

Install pip with Proxy

Installs pip packages defining a proxy

A DESTRUCTIVE command to render a drive unbootable

Overwrites the boot sector. Since this doesn't overwrite any data, you can usually recover by re-creating the partition table exactly the same as before you zeroed it. This can also help sometimes if you install a new drive in a Windows machine which can't read it.

Generate MD5 of string and output only the hash checksum in a readable format

Generates the md5 hash, without the trailing " -" and with the output "broken" into pairs of hexs.

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.

For Gentoo users : helping with USE / emerge

This command puts all the flags of the USE variable actually used by the packages you emerged to the file "use", and those which are unused but available to the file "notuse"

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"

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