Commands tagged Linux (266)

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Secure copy from one server to another without rsync and preserve users, etc
Source: http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.shell/2008-04/msg00068.html

Keep a copy of the raw Youtube FLV,MP4,etc stored in /tmp/
Certain Flash video players (e.g. Youtube) write their video streams to disk in /tmp/ , but the files are unlinked. i.e. the player creates the file and then immediately deletes the filename (unlinking files in this way makes it hard to find them, and/or ensures their cleanup if the browser or plugin should crash etc.) But as long as the flash plugin's process runs, a file descriptor remains in its /proc/ hierarchy, from which we (and the player) still have access to the file. The method above worked nicely for me when I had 50 tabs open with Youtube videos and didn't want to have to re-download them all with some tool.

Tail -f at your own pace
The -s option allows you to specify the update interval

Continually monitor things
You can use this one-liner for a quick and dirty (more customizable) alternative to the watch command. The keys to making this work: everything exists in an infinite loop; the loop starts with a clear; the loop ends with a sleep. Enter whatever you'd like to keep an eye on in the middle.

Enable cd by variable names
Usage: $ mydir=/very/long/path/to/a/dir $ cd mydir I often need to cd where no man wants to go (i.e. long path). by enabling the shell option cdable_vars, I can tell cd to assume the destination is the name of a variable.

Find common lines between two files

For when GUI programs stop responding..
man xkill

Setup an ssh tunnel
Uses ssh as tunnel tunnel for an other connection. -f runs ssh in the background -N tell that there is no command to run -L deals with the forwarding aspect where the first number is the local port number, the second is parameter is the name of the server to forward to and the third parameter is the port number on that server. The last part of the command is the usual ssh form consisting of the user name and remote server name

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"

mplayer webcam window for screencasts
When recording screencast some people like to have the image from their webcam, so the can show something, that can't be seen on the desktop. So starting mplayer with these parameters you will have a window with no frames, borders whatsoever, and selecting the window a hitting the "F" key you will bring it in fullscreen. if you want to position the frame somewhere else, you could play with the --geomeptry option where 100%:100% mean bottom right corner. The HEIGHT and WIDTH can't be changed as you like, since the most webcams support specified dimensions, so you would have to play with it to see what is supported


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