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copy working directory and compress it on-the-fly while showing progress
What happens here is we tell tar to create "-c" an archive of all files in current dir "." (recursively) and output the data to stdout "-f -". Next we specify the size "-s" to pv of all files in current dir. The "du -sb . | awk ?{print $1}?" returns number of bytes in current dir, and it gets fed as "-s" parameter to pv. Next we gzip the whole content and output the result to out.tgz file. This way "pv" knows how much data is still left to be processed and shows us that it will take yet another 4 mins 49 secs to finish. Credit: Peteris Krumins http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/

count total number of lines of ruby code
Adapted from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1358540/how-to-count-all-the-lines-of-code-in-a-directory-recursively#answer-1359246

check open ports without netstat or lsof

renames multiple files that match the pattern
Useful when you want to quickly rename a bunch of files.

Encode text in Base64 using Perl
MIME::Base64 is a part of Perl5 distribution. You can also use decode_base64 for oposite result.

copy root to new device
Clone a root partition. The reason for double-mounting the root device is to avoid any filesystem overlay issues. This is particularly important for /dev. Also, note the importance of the trailing slashes on the paths when using rsync (search the man page for "slash" for more details). rsync and bash add several subtle nuances to path handling; using trailing slashes will effectively mean "clone this directory", even when run multiple times. For example: run once to get an initial copy, and then run again in single user mode just before rebooting into the new disk. Using file globs (which miss dot-files) or leaving off the trailing slash with rsync (which will create /mnt/target/root) are traps that are easy to fall into.

Creates a proxy based on tsocks.

Detect illegal access to kernel space, potentially useful for Meltdown detection
Based on capsule8 agent examples, not rigorously tested

Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password
4 random words are better than one obfuscated word http://xkcd.com/936/

Run CPU benchmark from command line
Run CPU benchmark from command line


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