All commands (14,187)


  • 55
    vim scp://username@host//path/to/somefile
    adminzim · 2009-02-18 15:09:53 17
  • It deletes all removed files, updates what was modified, and adds new files.


    54
    git add -u
    donnoman · 2009-09-16 00:13:14 21
  • Find random strings within /dev/urandom. Using grep filter to just Alphanumeric characters, and then print the first 30 and remove all the line feeds. Show Sample Output


    54
    strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '\n'; echo
    jbcurtis · 2009-02-16 00:39:28 26
  • Written for linux, the real example is how to produce ascii text graphs based on a numeric value (anything where uniq -c is useful is a good candidate). Show Sample Output


    53
    netstat -an | grep ESTABLISHED | awk '{print $5}' | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | awk '{ printf("%s\t%s\t",$2,$1) ; for (i = 0; i < $1; i++) {printf("*")}; print "" }'
    knassery · 2009-04-27 22:02:19 24
  • You're running a script, command, whatever.. You don't expect it to take long, now 5pm has rolled around and you're ready to go home... Wait, it's still running... You forgot to nohup it before running it... Suspend it, send it to the background, then disown it... The ouput wont go anywhere, but at least the command will still run... Show Sample Output


    53
    ^Z $bg $disown
    fall0ut · 2009-03-17 21:52:52 26
  • for one line per process: ss -p | cat for established sockets only: ss -p | grep STA for just process names: ss -p | cut -f2 -sd\" or ss -p | grep STA | cut -f2 -d\"


    52
    ss -p
    Escher · 2009-09-19 21:55:01 13
  • Grab X11 input and create an MPEG at 25 fps with the resolution 800x600


    51
    ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 25 -s 800x600 -i :0.0 /tmp/outputFile.mpg
    dcabanis · 2009-06-05 21:11:17 15
  • Pipe viewer is a terminal-based tool for monitoring the progress of data through a pipeline. It can be inserted into any normal pipeline between two processes to give a visual indication of how quickly data is passing through, how long it has taken, how near to completion it is, and an estimate of how long it will be until completion. Source: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/ Show Sample Output


    51
    pv access.log | gzip > access.log.gz
    p3k · 2009-02-06 08:50:40 180

  • 51
    du -s * | sort -n | tail
    bambambazooka · 2009-02-05 11:18:43 33
  • Same as http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/5876, but for bash. This will show a numerical value for each of the 256 colors in bash. Everything in the command is a bash builtin, so it should run on any platform where bash is installed. Prints one color per line. If someone is interested in formatting the output, paste the alternative.


    49
    for code in {0..255}; do echo -e "\e[38;05;${code}m $code: Test"; done
    scribe · 2010-06-19 02:14:42 13

  • 49
    find . -type d -empty -delete
    jmcantrell · 2010-03-23 15:21:33 18
  • This is how I typically grep. -R recurse into subdirectories, -n show line numbers of matches, -i ignore case, -s suppress "doesn't exist" and "can't read" messages, -I ignore binary files (technically, process them as having no matches, important for showing inverted results with -v) I have grep aliased to "grep --color=auto" as well, but that's a matter of formatting not function.


    49
    grep -RnisI <pattern> *
    birnam · 2009-09-22 15:09:43 29
  • This example, for example, produces the output, "Fri Feb 13 15:26:30 EST 2009"


    49
    date -d@1234567890
    kFiddle · 2009-04-11 22:26:41 20
  • Watch is a very useful command for periodically running another command - in this using mysqladmin to display the processlist. This is useful for monitoring which queries are causing your server to clog up. More info here: http://codeinthehole.com/archives/2-Monitoring-MySQL-processes.html


    49
    watch -n 1 mysqladmin --user=<user> --password=<password> processlist
    root · 2009-02-16 11:21:16 132
  • Change Seville for your prefered city. Show Sample Output


    48
    curl wttr.in/seville
    nordri · 2016-08-28 09:43:38 32
  • Usage: cmdfu hello world Show Sample Output


    48
    cmdfu(){ curl "http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/matching/$@/$(echo -n $@ | openssl base64)/plaintext"; }
    knoopx · 2009-08-19 02:18:24 72
  • This command displays a clock on your terminal which updates the time every second. Press Ctrl-C to exit. A couple of variants: A little bit bigger text: watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet -f big" You can try other figlet fonts, too. Big sideways characters: watch -n 1 -t '/usr/games/banner -w 30 $(date +%M:%S)' This requires a particular version of banner and a 40-line terminal or you can adjust the width ("30" here). Show Sample Output


    48
    watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet"
    dennisw · 2009-06-21 01:02:37 35
  • Read 32GB zero's and throw them away. How fast is your system? Show Sample Output


    48
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null bs=1M count=32768
    jacquesloonen · 2009-02-16 12:22:18 185
  • Uses shell expansion to create a back-up called file.txt.bak


    48
    cp file.txt{,.bak}
    root · 2009-01-26 12:11:29 90
  • just make some data scrolling off the terminal. wow.


    47
    cat /dev/urandom | hexdump -C | grep "ca fe"
    BOYPT · 2010-09-27 08:20:44 20
  • Remove security from PDF document using this very simple command on Linux and OSX. You need ghostscript for this baby to work.


    47
    gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=OUTPUT.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f INPUT.pdf
    deijmaster · 2009-12-14 21:30:22 26
  • Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages. For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac: curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*<name>(.*)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/' If you want to see the name of the last person, who added a message to the conversation, change the greediness of the operators like this: curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*?<name>(.*?)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/' Show Sample Output


    47
    curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | sed -n "s/<title>\(.*\)<\/title.*name>\(.*\)<\/name>.*/\2 - \1/p"
    postrational · 2009-09-07 21:56:40 43
  • Also works with: chgrp --reference file1 file2 chown --reference file1 file2


    46
    chmod --reference file1 file2
    rpavlick · 2010-03-31 12:05:48 12
  • The title is optional. Options: -t: expire time in milliseconds. -u: urgency (low, normal, critical). -i: icon path. On Debian-based systems you may need to install the 'libnotify-bin' package. Useful to advise when a wget download or a simulation ends. Example: wget URL ; notify-send "Done"


    46
    notify-send ["<title>"] "<body>"
    o6291408 · 2009-04-29 10:05:20 20
  • Create a persistent SSH connection to the host in the background. Combine this with settings in your ~/.ssh/config: Host host ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p ControlMaster no All the SSH connections to the machine will then go through the persisten SSH socket. This is very useful if you are using SSH to synchronize files (using rsync/sftp/cvs/svn) on a regular basis because it won't create a new socket each time to open an ssh connection.


    46
    ssh -MNf <user>@<host>
    raphink · 2009-02-26 14:11:19 19
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Numerically sorted human readable disk usage
Provides numerically sorted human readable du output. I so wish there was just a du flag for this.

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"

Split huge file into DVD+R size chunks for burning
Real DVD+R size is 4700372992 bytes, but I round down a little to be safe. To reconstitute use cat. "cat file.img.gz.aa file.img.gz.ab ..... > file.img.gz"

Find the package that installed a command

Delete all but the latest 5 files, ignoring directories

cat stdout of multiple commands
Concatenate the stdout of multiple commands.

Generates a TV noise alike output in the terminal
Generates a TV noise alike output in the terminal. Can be combined with https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/9728/make-some-powerful-pink-noise

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Check command history, but avoid running it
!whatever will search your command history and execute the first command that matches 'whatever'. If you don't feel safe doing this put :p on the end to print without executing. Recommended when running as superuser.

Convert file type to unix utf-8
converts encoding of a file to unix utf-8 useful for data files that contain what would be usable ascii text but are encoded as mpeg or some other encoding that prevents you from doing common manipulations like 'sed'


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