All commands sorted by votes

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

Login as another user in shell
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

su <username>

dsetton · 2014-02-01 19:45:37 6
shell bash iterate number range with for loop

iterating range of numer with for loop in shell or bash Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
```
-1

rangeBegin=10; rangeEnd=20; for numbers in $(eval echo "{$rangeBegin..$rangeEnd}"); do echo $numbers;done

aysadk · 2019-07-26 09:19:44 232
use curl to resume a failed download

If you are downloading a big file (or even a small one) and the connection breaks or times out, use this command in order to RESUME the download where it failed, instead of having to start downloading from the beginning. This is a real win for downloading debian ISO images over a buggy DSL modem. Take the partially downloaded file and cat it into the STDIN of curl, as shown. Then use the "-C -" option followed by the URL of the file you were originally downloading. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 17.1M  100 17.1M    0     0   746k      0  0:00:23  0:00:23 --:--:--  793k
```
-1

cat file-that-failed-to-download.zip | curl -C - http://www.somewhere.com/file-I-want-to-download.zip >successfully-downloaded.zip

linuxrawkstar · 2009-08-05 13:33:06 16
Send web page by e-mail

This will send the web page at $u to recipient@example.com . To send the web page to oneself, recipient@example.com can be replaced by $(whoami) or $USER. The "charset" is UTF-8 here, but any alternative charset of your choice would work. `wget -O - -o /dev/null $u` may be considered instead of `curl $u` . On some systems the complete path to sendmail may be necessary, for instance /sys/pkg/libexec/sendmail/sendmail for some NetBSD.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

{ u="http://twitter.com/commandlinefu"; echo "Subject: $u"; echo "Mime-Version: 1.0"; echo -e "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\n\n"; curl $u ; } | sendmail $USER

pascalvaucheret · 2010-02-24 04:18:30 5
Better PS aliases

#ps aliases PSO='user,pid,ppid,%cpu,%mem,time,start,state,command' PSOA='user,pid,time,state,command' PSOL='user,pid,ppid,%cpu,%mem,nice,pri,etime,time,tt,state,ucomm' export PSO PSOA PSOL function _ps { /bin/ps $@ ; } alias ps='_ps ax -o $PSO' alias psa='_ps ax -o $PSOA' alias psl='_ps ax -o $PSOL' alias psm='_ps -U $USER -o $PSOA'
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

export PSOA='user,pid,time,state,command' ; function _ps { /bin/ps $@ ; } ; alias psa='_ps ax -o $PSOA'

mattmartini · 2010-05-27 02:07:56 3
Move files around local filesystem with tar without wasting space using an intermediate tarball.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tar -C <source> -cf - . | tar -C <destination> -xf -

Tekhne · 2009-07-10 21:16:23 4
show the log of a branch since its creation

The command show the log of a branch, stopping the output at the time of branch creation.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

svn log . --stop-on-copy

reaper · 2010-02-24 12:37:18 3
Serve current directory tree at http://$HOSTNAME:8080/

Install twistd first with sudo apt-get install python-twistd-web
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

twistd -no web

nkorth · 2014-02-01 22:35:50 7
find unmaintained ports that are installed on your system

only works for freeBSD where ports are installed in /usr/ports credit to http://wiki.freebsd.org/PortsTasks
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

cd /usr/ports; grep -F "`for o in \`pkg_info -qao\` ; \ do echo "|/usr/ports/${o}|" ; done`" `make -V INDEXFILE` | \ grep -i \|ports@freebsd.org\| | cut -f 2 -d \|

grep · 2009-02-16 21:07:35 8
Go to begin of current command line

Go to begin of the current command line.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

CTRL + a

hardest · 2009-03-23 16:41:04 8
Day Date Time> Instead of $ or # at the terminal
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

export PS1='\D{%a %D %T}> '

hemanth · 2009-08-22 08:07:47 4
Go to next dir

Add dirs to list: pushd /tmp /tmp ~ then cd - /home/user cd - /tmp
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

cd -

magicjohnson_ · 2011-07-05 05:28:32 6
creates a xkcd #936-style password
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

RANGE=`wc -l /usr/share/dict/words | sed 's/^$[0-9]*$ .*$/\1/'`; for i in {1..4}; do let "N = $RANDOM % $RANGE"; sed -n -e "${N}p" /usr/share/dict/words | tr -d '\n'; done; RANGE=100; let "N = $RANDOM % $RANGE"; echo $N

unixmonkey24597 · 2011-08-16 07:04:57 3
share single file in LAN via netcat
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

while :; do cat file.txt | nc -l 80; done

kev · 2011-09-15 13:16:20 5
make comments invisible when editing a file

you should choose proper color to make comments invisible.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

vim -c'highlight Comment ctermfg=white' my.conf

kev · 2011-10-21 00:53:03 67
Cloning hard disks over the network:

This is a bit to bit copy so if you have a 500GB hard disk it will take a long time even if have Gigabit Ethernet
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

Boot up destination machine with Knoppix live CD and run nc -l -p 9000 | dd of=/dev/sda Then on the master dd if=/dev/sda | nc <dest-ip> 9000 You can monitor bandwidth usage to see progress: nload eth0 -u M

lv4tech · 2009-05-07 05:26:58 6
List files that DO NOT match a pattern

There's no need for ls or grep; printf is builtin to most modern shells
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

printf "%s\n" !(pattern) ## ksh, or bash with shopt -s extglob

cfajohnson · 2009-11-26 14:09:56 3
Terrorist threat level text

Numbers are less understandable then words. Also this may put out a different result.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

echo "Terrorist threat level: `sed $(perl -e "print int rand(99999)")"q;d" /usr/share/dict/words`"

houghi · 2011-01-28 09:49:37 4
Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password

Doesn't use shuf, its much faster with "shuf -n4" instead of sort -R Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
trample tylenol parawing bycatch 
```
-1

sort -R /usr/share/dict/british | grep -v -m4 ^\{1,10\}$ | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] | tr "\n" " " | tr -d "'s" | xargs -0 echo

takac · 2011-08-16 10:11:21 4
multiline re search recursive
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

pcregrep --color -M -N CRLF -e "SQLEngine\.\w+\W*$[^$]*\)" -r --include='\.java$'

hute37 · 2012-01-16 09:19:40 6
Show header HTTP with tcpdump

This is a better way to do the "src X or dst X" filter; plus you might not want to bother with DNS lookups (-n).
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

tcpdump -s 1024 -l -A -n host 192.168.9.56

wejn · 2013-02-02 22:29:52 5
Dump an aspell dictionary as a word list
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

aspell -d en dump master | aspell -l en expand > words

xocoalt · 2014-05-05 21:28:24 7
bored of listing files with ls wanna see them in file browser in gnome try this

Opens the current working directory in the user's preferred application using freedesktop.org's xdg-open.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

xdg-open .

schlaegel · 2010-10-05 04:20:31 6
Convert windows text file to linux text document
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

sed 's/.$//' Win-file.txt

totti · 2011-09-15 19:07:51 4
Show the system properties in a Sun VirtualBox server

How to show the system properties of a Sun VirtualBox server
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

VBoxManage list systemproperties

0disse0 · 2010-04-23 06:43:49 6
‹ First < 472 473 474 475 476 > 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

Set gnome wallpaper to a random jpg from the specified directory

Every time this is run it will change your background picture. For added fun Add some DBUS magic: . $HOME/.dbus/session-bus/`cat /var/lib/dbus/machine-id`-0 export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS and a crontab entry: */5 * * * * above_command_in_script.sh >/dev/null 2>/dev/null now wallpaper changes every 5 mins

Display a block of text with AWK

I find this terribly useful for grepping through a file, looking for just a block of text. There's "grep -A # pattern file.txt" to see a specific number of lines following your pattern, but what if you want to see the whole block? Say, the output of "dmidecode" (as root): $ dmidecode | awk '/Battery/,/^$/' Will show me everything following the battery block up to the next block of text. Again, I find this extremely useful when I want to see whole blocks of text based on a pattern, and I don't care to see the rest of the data in output. This could be used against the '/etc/securetty/user' file on Unix to find the block of a specific user. It could be used against VirtualHosts or Directories on Apache to find specific definitions. The scenarios go on for any text formatted in a block fashion. Very handy.

Configure second monitor to sit to the right of laptop

You'll need to make sure your xorg.conf permits a virtual screen size this big. If it doesn't then xrandr should return a suitable error message that tells you the required size.

Bypass with hexencoding, dump /etc/passwd

Use mplayer to save video streams to a file

I use this command to save RTSP video streams over night from one of our national TV stations, so I won't have to squeeze the data through my slow internet connection when I want to watch it the next day. For ease of use, you might want to put this in a file: #!/bin/bash FILE="`basename \"$1\"`" mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile "$FILE" -playlist "$1"

Gzip files older than 10 days matching *

Useful for a cron job that runs nightly, gzipping or alternatively deleting files from a specific directory that are older than 10 days (in this case)

Migrate Server with rsync

Copies the complete root-dir of a linux server to another one, where the new harddisks formated and mountet. Very useful to migrate a root-server to another one.

Create a mirror of a local folder, on a remote server

Create a exact mirror of the local folder "/root/files", on remote server 'remote_server' using SSH command (listening on port 22) (all files & folders on destination server/folder will be deleted)

Command to rename multiple file in one go

An entirely shell-based solution (should work on any bourne-style shell), more portable on relying on the rename command, the exact nature of which varies from distro to distro.

Swap the two last arguments of the current command line

Say you just typed a long command like this: $ rsync -navupogz --delete /long/path/to/dir_a /very/long/path/to/dir_b but you really want to sync dir_b to dir_a. Instead of rewriting all the command line, just type followed by , and your command line will read $ rsync -navupogz --delete /very/long/path/to/dir_b /long/path/to/dir_a

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