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 Linux from sorted by
Terminal - Commands tagged Linux - 233 results
tar -zcvf archive_name.tar.gz directory_to_compress
2013-10-09 18:14:57
User: shawn_abdushakur
Functions: tar
Tags: Linux archive compress
0
Up
Down
Archive and compress a directory using gunzip compression

use -xcvf to decompress

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
rsync -arvx --numeric-ids --stats --progress --bwlimit=1000 file server:destination_directory
2013-10-01 13:00:59
User: shawn_abdushakur
Functions: file rsync
Tags: Linux rsync
0
Up
Down
rsync Command that limits bandwidth

Useful for transferring large file over a network during operational hours

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
wbinfo -a username%password
2013-10-01 12:54:08
User: shawn_abdushakur
Tags: Linux winbind
0
Up
Down
Authenticate Windows user account through winbind

Useful for testing domain authentication through a Linux server

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
echo 0$(awk '/Pss/ {printf "+"$2}' /proc/$PID/smaps)|bc
2013-09-26 18:20:22
User: atoponce
Functions: awk echo
Tags: Linux awk echo bc proc
5
Up
Down
Found how how much memory in kB $PID is occupying in Linux

The "proportional set size" is probably the closest representation of how much active memory a process is using in the Linux virtual memory stack. This number should also closely represent the %mem found in ps(1), htop(1), and other utilities.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
echo "This is the message body" | mutt -s "Message subject" -a file_to_attach.zip fred@example.com
2013-09-26 08:05:26
User: jedifu
Functions: echo
Tags: Linux shell email
1
Up
Down
Email a file to yourself

This uses mutt to send the file, and doesn't require uuencode etc

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for f in ./*.xls; do mv "$f" "${f%.*}.ods"; done
2013-09-17 01:41:56
User: evilsoup
Functions: mv
Tags: bash Linux
3
Up
Down
Command to rename multiple file in one go

An entirely shell-based solution (should work on any bourne-style shell), more portable on relying on the rename command, the exact nature of which varies from distro to distro.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
rename 's/.xls/.ods/g' *.xls
2013-09-12 13:42:56
User: jedifu
Functions: rename
Tags: bash Linux
5
Up
Down
Command to rename multiple file in one go
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for I in $(awk -v LIMIT=500 -F: '($3>=LIMIT) && ($3!=65534)' /etc/passwd | cut -f 1-1 -d ':' | xargs); do usermod -g YOURGROUP $I ; done
2013-09-06 15:18:16
User: Edoard
Functions: awk cut usermod
Tags: Linux users
0
Up
Down
Changes the initial login group for all users with GID > 500 (specified with LIMIT), to group YOURGROUP

Credit for the awk command goes to: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-move-migrate-user-accounts-old-to-new-server/

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
hciconfig;hciconfig -a hci0;lsmod |grep bt;dmesg | grep tooth
2013-08-21 12:29:23
User: FadeMind
Functions: dmesg grep lsmod
Tags: Linux hardware bluetooth
0
Up
Down
Bluetooth hardware info

Info about Bluetooth devices.

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
diff <(sort <(md5deep -b -r /directory/1/) ) <(sort <(md5deep -b -r /directory/2/)
2013-08-19 18:20:49
User: unixmonkey64021
Functions: diff sort
Tags: bash Linux diff
0
Up
Down
Diff two directories by finding and comparing the md5 checksums of their contents.

Compares the md5 checksums of the contents of two directories, outputting the checksum and filename where any files differ. Shows only the file name, not the full path.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
diff <(sort <(md5deep -r /directory/1/) |cut -f1 -d' ') <(sort <(md5deep -r /directory/2/) |cut -f1 -d' ')
2013-08-18 22:13:07
User: unixmonkey64021
Functions: cut diff sort
Tags: bash Linux diff
1
Up
Down
Diff two directories by finding and comparing the md5 checksums of their contents.

Compute the md5 checksums for the contents of two mirrored directories, then sort and diff the results. If everything matches, nothing is returned. Otherwise, any checksums which do not match, or which exist in one tree but not the other, are returned. As you might imagine, the output is useful only if no errors are found, because only the checksums, not filenames, are returned. I hope to address this, or that someone else will!

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
wget -qO - http://www.asciiartfarts.com/random.cgi | sed -n '/<pre>/,/<\/pre>/p' | sed -n '/<table*/,/<\/table>/p' | sed '1d' | sed '$d' | recode html..ascii
2013-08-17 19:42:47
User: krunktron
Functions: sed wget
Tags: Linux solaris sed wget login ascii funny ascii art .bashrc recode
2
Up
Down
Display a random crass ascii art from www.asciiartfarts.com

Optionally, pipe the output into http://sed.sourceforge.net/grabbag/scripts/html2iso.sed

Or: wget -qO - http://www.asciiartfarts.com/random.cgi | sed -n '//,//p' | sed -n '/

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for i in '/tmp/file 1.txt' '/tmp/file 2.jpg'; do ln -s "$i" "$i LINK"; done
2013-08-02 08:30:50
User: qwertyroot
Functions: ln
Tags: bash Linux unix symlinks batch sh link softlink bulk
0
Up
Down
Batch symbolic links creation

Replace

'/tmp/file 1.txt' '/tmp/file 2.jpg'

with

"$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS"

for Nautilus script

Or with

%F

for Thunar action

If you linking the symlinks itself, but want to link to source files instead of symlinks, use

"`readlink -m "$i"`"

instead of

"$i"

like this:

for i in '/tmp/file 1.txt' '/tmp/file 2.jpg'; do ln -s "`readlink -m "$i"`" "$i LINK"; done

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
for i in {1..31}; do ls -1 *${YYYY}${MM}`printf "%02d" $i`* | wc -l; done
2013-07-26 07:08:04
User: Paulus
Functions: ls wc
Tags: bash Linux
0
Up
Down
find the number of files, date masked

RU: Найдет число файлов в папке по данной маске в цикле по дням месяца

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -m --max-depth=1 [DIR] | sort -nr
2013-07-26 07:04:41
User: Paulus
Functions: du sort
Tags: bash Linux system
1
Up
Down
directory size with subdirectories, sorted list
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
strace -ttvfo /tmp/logfile -s 1024 program
2013-07-06 08:19:29
User: ryanchapman
Functions: strace
Tags: Linux strace
0
Up
Down
strace a program

How to figure out what a program is doing.

-tt detailed timestamps

-f also strace any child processes

-v be very verbose, even with common structures

-o write output to file

-s N capture up to N characters of strings, rather than abbreviating with ...

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
mogrify -resize SIZE_IN_PIXELS *.jpg
2013-07-05 14:14:04
User: o0110o
Tags: bash ImageMagick Linux batch images mogrify
-1
Up
Down
Batch resize all images to a width of 'X' pixels while maintaing the aspect ratio

Batch resize all images to a width of 'X' pixels while maintaing the aspect ratio.

This makes uses of ImageMagick to make life easier.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
SSHPASS='your_password' sshpass -e ssh me@myhost.com
2013-06-03 12:26:40
User: djkadu
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh Linux login password sshpass
0
Up
Down
SSH Auto-login with password

The above is OK if you not worried about security, as per sshpass man pages:

" The -p option should be considered the least secure of all of sshpass's options. All system users can see the password in the command line with a simple "ps" command."

So, instead what I do is use the -e option:

" -e The password is taken from the environment variable "SSHPASS"."

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sshpass -p "YOUR_PASSWORD" ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no YOUR_USERNAME@SOME_SITE.COM
2013-05-24 14:33:38
User: o0110o
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh Linux apt-get login password sshpass
4
Up
Down
SSH Auto-login with password

You need to install "sshpass" for this to work.

apt-get install sshpass

Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -mx [directory] | grep -P '^\d{4}' | sort -rn
2013-05-24 09:52:41
User: mc0e
Functions: du grep sort
Tags: bash Linux du
0
Up
Down
list the top 15 folders by decreasing size in MB

I don't like doing a massive sort on all the directory names just to get a small set of them. the above shows a sorted list of all directories over 1GB. use head as well if you want.

du's "-x" flag limits this to one file system. That's mostly useful when you run it on "/" but don't want "/proc" and "/dev" and so forth. Remember though that it will also exclude "/home" or "/var" if those are separate partitions.

the "-a" option is often useful too, for listing large files as well as large directories. Might be slower.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
du -xB M --max-depth=2 /var | sort -rn | head -n 15
2013-05-23 10:45:21
User: bouktin
Functions: du head sort
Tags: bash Linux du
2
Up
Down
list the top 15 folders by decreasing size in MB

list the top 15 folders by decreasing size in MB

Show sample output | Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
sudo apt-cache dumpavail | grep Package | cut -d ' ' -f 2 > available.packages
2013-05-18 20:42:22
User: mered
Functions: cut grep sudo
Tags: Linux apt-cache
1
Up
Down
Get all available packages on Ubuntu (or any distro that uses apt)
Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
netstat -tuapen | grep LISTEN
2013-05-18 20:40:38
User: mered
Functions: grep netstat
Tags: Linux netstat
0
Up
Down
Check for listening services
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
fsarchvier probe simple
2013-04-28 10:16:18
User: 0xFF
Tags: Linux partition file fdisk disk devfs blkid fsarchiver lsblk detect /proc/paritions
0
Up
Down
fsarchiver - probe disks and partitions

Another alternative to blkid, lsblk, file -s, cat /proc/paritions, fdisk -l, etc..

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate
mencoder FILENAME.3gp -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2 -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o FILENAME.avi
2013-03-25 23:30:15
User: o0110o
Tags: video Linux mencoder convert command
-1
Up
Down
Convert videos to AVI format

Requires mencoder.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate