Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. 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.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID
or
Sign in Register

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

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:

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation
Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands
To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner
Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed
Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.
Hide

Tags

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Commands tagged ssh from sorted by
Terminal - Commands tagged ssh - 164 results
ssh root@HOST tcpdump -iany -U -s0 -w - 'not port 22' | wireshark -k -i -
2011-09-13 21:10:40
User: dr3s
Functions: ssh tcpdump
Tags: ssh wireshark capture sniff
0
Up
Down
analyze traffic remotely over ssh w/ wireshark

analyze traffic remotely over ssh w/ wireshark

When using tcpdump, specify -U option to prevent buffering and -iany to see all interfaces.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sshmysql() { ssh -L 13306:127.0.0.1:3306 -N $* & }
2011-09-01 10:21:55
User: peterRepeater
Functions: ssh
Tags: mysql ssh function ssh tunnel
-1
Up
Down
Function to bind MySQL hostport to forward remote MySQL connection to localhost.

Create a secure tunnelled connection for access to a remote MySQL database.

For example, connect with MySQL Workbench to root@127.0.0.1:13306.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
date `ssh user@server date "+%y%m%d%H%M.%S"`
2011-08-30 22:32:14
User: wu
Functions: date
Tags: ssh ,NTP ,Date
0
Up
Down
Synchronize date and time with a server over ssh

Neat idea! This variation works on FreeBSD.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
date --set="$(ssh user@server date)"
2011-08-30 20:03:06
User: splante
Functions: date
Tags: ssh ,NTP ,Date
32
Up
Down
Synchronize date and time with a server over ssh

Shorter, easier to remember version of cmd#7636

NTP is better, but there are situations where it can't be used. In those cases, you can do this to sync the local time to a server.

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
var=host ;while ! nc -zw 1 $var 22;do sleep 1; done ; ssh user@$var
2011-06-22 21:07:57
User: Pieton217
Functions: sleep ssh
Tags: ssh ssh connect back
1
Up
Down
Automatically connect to a host with ssh once it is online
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
complete -W "$(sed 's/;.*//;' /etc/hosts | awk ' /^[[:digit:]]/ {$1 = "";print tolower($0)}')" ssh
2011-06-20 03:54:45
User: daodennis
Tags: ssh bashrc tab completion /etc/hosts
0
Up
Down
Enable tab completion for known SSH hosts

If you have a lot of hosts in /etc/hosts this would be very useful. Anyone have any more concise examples?

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
[enter]~?
2011-06-17 18:29:59
User: xeor
Tags: ssh
30
Up
Down
Control ssh connection

SSH can be controlled trough an ~ escape sequence. Example, to terminate the current ssh connection, type a newline, then the ~ character, and last a . character.

This is useful eg when an ssh connection hangs after you reboot a machine and the connection hangs.

Show sample output | Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
complete -W "$(echo `cat ~/.ssh/known_hosts | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | sed -e s/,.*//g | uniq | grep -v "\["`;)" ssh
2011-06-01 23:21:06
User: sammcj
Tags: ssh bashrc tab completion
-2
Up
Down
Enable tab completion for known SSH hosts
Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
while true; do date; ssh <YOUR HOST HERE> "echo" && echo "HOST UP" && break; sleep 60; done
2011-05-29 19:54:16
User: unixmonkey11685
Functions: echo sleep ssh
Tags: ssh host
-1
Up
Down
monitor when target host will be up
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh -R 9000:localhost:9000 you@remote-php-web-server.com
2011-05-28 09:39:16
User: nadavkav
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh remote debug PHP xdebug
2
Up
Down
Debug a remote php application (behind firewall) using ssh tunnel for XDEBUG port 9000

If you need to xdebug a remote php application, which is behind a firewall, and you have an ssh daemon running on that machine. you can redirect port 9000 on that machine over to your local machine from which you run your xdebug client (I am using phpStorm)

So, run this command on your local machine and start your local xdebug client, to start debugging.

more info:

http://code.google.com/p/spectator/wiki/Installing

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
apt-get install `ssh root@host_you_want_to_clone "dpkg -l | grep ii" | awk '{print $2}'`
2011-05-10 13:33:51
User: TuxOtaku
Functions: apt awk install
Tags: ssh apt awk apt-get grep dpkg
12
Up
Down
"Clone" a list of installed packages from one Debian/Ubuntu Server to another
Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh vm-user@`VBoxManage guestproperty get "vm-name" "/VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP" | awk '{ print $2 }'`
2011-05-04 18:01:36
User: lucasrangit
Functions: awk get ssh
Tags: ssh VBoxHeadless VBoxManage
9
Up
Down
Connect via SSH to VirtualBox guest VM without knowing IP address

Booting the VM headless via VBoxHeadless requires knowledge of the VM's network in order to connect. Using VBoxManage in this way and you can SSH to the VM without first looking up the current IP, which changes depending on how you have your VM configured.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
pbpaste | ssh user@hostname pbcopy
2011-04-24 16:30:48
User: DavidLudwig
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh osx clipboard
1
Up
Down
Transfers clipboard content from one OS X machine to another

This uses ssh to transfer the contents of one Mac's clipboard to another's. This only works with plain text, sadly. Trying to transfer images will just clear out the remote machine's clipboard, and rich text will be converted to plain text. Using the "Remote Login" must be enabled on the remote machine (via System Preferences' Sharing panel) for this to work.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh username@remotehost 'mysqldump -u <dbusername> -p<dbpassword> <dbname> tbl_name_1 tbl_name_2 tbl_name_3 | gzip -c -' | gzip -dc - | mysql -u <localusername> -p<localdbpassword> <localdbname>
2011-03-11 14:57:04
User: putnamhill
Functions: gzip ssh
Tags: mysql ssh gzip mysqldump
1
Up
Down
A command to copy mysql tables from a remote host to current host via ssh.

This version compresses the data for transport.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh username@remotehost 'mysqldump -u <dbusername> -p<dbpassword> <dbname> tbl_name_1 tbl_name_2 tbl_name_3' | mysql -u <localusername> -p<localdbpassword> <localdbname> < /dev/stdin
2011-03-09 18:35:07
User: tur_ki_sh
Functions: ssh
Tags: mysql ssh mysqldump
1
Up
Down
A command to copy mysql tables from a remote host to current host via ssh.

In the example above 3 tables are copied. You can change the number of tables. You should be able to come up with variants of the command by modifying the mysqldump part easily, to copy some part of remote mysql DB.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
cat tarfile.tar.gz | ssh server.com " cd /tmp; tar xvzf - directory/i/want"
2011-02-11 17:10:01
User: alf
Functions: cat ssh
Tags: ssh tar
0
Up
Down
Untar a directory in a tar file over ssh

This may be listed already but this command is useful to untar a specific directory to a different server.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
date +%Y%m%d%T -s "`ssh user@server 'date "+%Y%m%d %T"'`"
2011-01-11 10:33:32
User: unixmonkey16473
Functions: date
Tags: ssh ,NTP ,Date
0
Up
Down
Synchronize date and time with a server over ssh

If you are stuck behind a firewall and want to synchronize time with another server but you do not want to port forward NTP (which uses UDP) then this command is handy. It gets the time from a server and sets the local time. It is not that accurate but I can live with a second or so drift.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh -T user@server < script.sh
2011-01-10 20:09:55
User: dlebauer
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh bash script server
4
Up
Down
Run local bash script on remote server

Run local scripts on remote server. "-T Disable pseudo-tty allocation"

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh -f -L 5900:localhost:5900 your.ssh.server "x11vnc -safer -localhost -nopw -once -display :0"; vinagre localhost:5900
2010-12-29 08:41:10
User: johnquail
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh vnc ssh tunnel x11vnc ssh tunneling
19
Up
Down
Single use vnc-over-ssh connection

This command

1. SSH into a machine

2. Tunnels VNC port to your local computer ("-L 5900:localhost:5900")

3. Runs a single use vnc server ("x11vnc -safer -localhost -nopw -once -display :0")

4. Goes into the background ("-f")

5. Runs VNC viewer on the local computer connecting to the remote machine via the newly created SSH tunnel ("vinagre localhost:5900")

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh-keygen -l -f ~/.ssh/known_hosts
2010-12-05 04:03:07
User: atoponce
Functions: ssh ssh-keygen
Tags: ssh
10
Up
Down
View ~/.ssh/known_hosts key information

Will return the SSH server key information for each host you have in your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, including key size, key fingerprint, key IP address or domain name, and key type.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
command | ssh myHost xsel -i --display :0
2010-11-23 19:59:22
User: wincus
Functions: command ssh
Tags: ssh bash xsel
1
Up
Down
Send remote command output to your local clipboard

This command will copy command's output into your local clipboard

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
autossh -M 0 -p 22 -C4c arcfour,blowfish-cbc -NfD 8080 -2 -L localport1:server1:remoteport1 -L bind_address2:localport2:server2:remoteport2 user@sshserver
2010-11-13 23:49:09
User: Alz
Tags: ssh autossh ssh tunneling tunneling tunnel
2
Up
Down
SSH tunneling self-connection

- port 8080 on localhost will be a SOCKSv5 proxy

- at localhost:localport1 you will be connected to the external source server1:remoteport1 and at bind_address2:localport2 to server2:remoteport2

- you will be using only IPv4 and arcfour/blowfish-cbc, in order to speed up the tunnel

- if you lose the connection, autossh will resume it at soon as possible

- the tunnel is here a background process, wiithout any terminal window open

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
alias sshv='ssh -vvv -o LogLevel=DEBUG3'
2010-10-30 11:23:52
User: AskApache
Functions: alias
Tags: ssh bash alias log Encryption debug tty askapache SSH_TTY logging loglevel
3
Up
Down
Debug SSH at the Maximum Verbosity Level

When debugging an ssh connection either to optimize your settings ie compression, ciphers, or more commonly for debugging an issue connecting, this alias comes in real handy as it's not easy to remember the '-o LogLevel=DEBUG3' argument, which adds a boost of debugging info not available with -vvv alone.

Especially useful are the FD info, and the setup negotiation to create a cleaner, faster connection.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh root@HOST tcpdump -U -s0 -w - 'not port 22' | wireshark -k -i -
2010-10-28 09:02:39
User: abb
Functions: ssh tcpdump
Tags: ssh wireshark capture sniff
10
Up
Down
analyze traffic remotely over ssh w/ wireshark

When using tcpdump, specify -U option to prevent buffering.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
ssh user@remoteserver "PGPASSWORD='passwd' pg_dump -U user bd_name | bzip2 -zv9" | bzcat | psql -U user bd_name
2010-09-24 20:25:42
User: chronos
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh remote PostGres dump populate
0
Up
Down
dump a remote db via ssh and populate local db with postgres
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate