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

git remove files which have been deleted

I've used technicalpickles command a lot, but this one handles whitespaces in filenames. I'm sure you want to create an alias for it :)

Download all files from podcast RSS feed

Neither of the others worked for me. This does.

Discovering all open files/dirs underneath a directory

It may be helpful in case you need to umount a directory and some process is preventing you to do so keeping the folder busy. The lsof may process the +D option slowly and may require a significant amount of memory because it will descend the full dir tree. On the other hand it will neither follow symlinks nor other file systems.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS

Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

Select rectangular screen area

Hold 'Ctrl' + 'Alt' key while selecting rectangular text area of the screen with left mouse button. Should work in any terminal screen (xterm, konsole, ...) under X, if not then try with 'Ctrl' + 'Shift' + 'Alt' or two-combination of these.

Add all unversioned files to svn

No need for grep, let awk do the match. This will not behave properly if the filenames contains whitespace, which is awk's default field separator.

Remote backups with tar over ssh

Execute it from the source host, where the source files you wish backup resides. With the minus '-' the tar command deliver the compressed output to the standar output and, trough over the ssh session to the remote host. On the other hand the backup host will be receive the stream and read it from the standar input sending it to the /path/to/backup/backupfile.tar.bz2

Show sorted list of files with sizes more than 1MB in the current dir

no fancy grep stuff here.

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"

Start dd and show progress every X seconds

Adjust "sleep X" to your needs. *NOTE: First sleep is required because bash doesn't have a "post-test" syntax (do XXX while).

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