Commands using head (314)

  • Get an approximation of who the workstation is assigned to. You can wrap it in su - "$()" if you want to log into a shell as that user. Show Sample Output


    0
    last | grep -i console | grep -iv 'root' | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '{print $2}' | head -1
    phyxia · 2015-07-20 18:07:40 10
  • Useful when you need to generate password or random hash string. If you need longer string adjust parameter for "head -c 20" Show Sample Output


    0
    dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1k count=1 2>/dev/null|LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789!@#%^&*(-_=+)'|head -c 20
    nitrogear · 2015-07-25 21:24:28 9

  • 0
    ls -1 /proc/$(ps ax | grep <Process Name> | head -n 1 | awk '{print $1;}')/task | tail -n +2
    happymarmoset · 2015-10-06 07:44:48 10

  • 0
    cut -f1 -d" " ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 30
    kenorb · 2015-10-09 16:11:37 10
  • Quick way to get the URL of the most recent audio file out of a podcast xml feed without any fancy xml parsing tools. Just curl, grep and head


    0
    mpc add `curl -s http://link.to/podcast/feed.xml | grep -o 'https*://[^"]*mp3' | head -1`
    tbon3r · 2015-10-11 09:17:35 9
  • this one includes special characters. note some some chars may be disallowed on windows systems. *nix will allow pretty much any character in a password except a carriage return. you do not want non printing characters in your password, so this is limited to the printable chars displayed on a keyboard , less space and return. edited to fix minor typo Show Sample Output


    0
    tr -dc '[:print:]' < /dev/urandom | fold -w10 |head -n1 |sed 's/ //g'
    wr250 · 2016-01-09 13:43:16 12
  • Returns a list, with attributes (think `ls -l`), in reverse chronological order. N is a single numeric parameter. Robust against unfriendly filenames and directory structures. Show Sample Output


    0
    nmf() { find . -type f -printf '%T@ ' -print0 -printf '\n' | sort -rn | head -"$1" | cut -f2- -d" " | tr -d "\0" | tr "\n" "\0" | xargs -0 ls -Ulh; }
    incidentnormal · 2016-03-04 14:53:14 12
  • Display the top processes sorted by memory usage. This is mostly useful because it's easy to remember and can give me a quick 'top' view of a group of servers when used over pssh. (Though I'd recommend |head -10 to minimize the output). Show Sample Output


    0
    top -b -o +%MEM |head -17
    dak1n1 · 2016-03-16 22:14:34 12
  • Grabs the first JSON file in the directory, reads its keys, prints TSV, then prints all the json files' values as TSV. Nested objects appear as json. Unhappy times if your json has literal tabs in it. Show Sample Output


    0
    jq -r 'keys | join("\t")' $(ls -f *.json | head -1) && jq -Sr 'to_entries | [ .[] | .value | tostring ] | join("\t")' *.json
    drjeats · 2016-04-08 23:30:30 12
  • This command will find any named file types in / between two dates then will list all the metadata of those files in long format and human readable form. Adding a 't' flag to the ls command sorts the files by modified time. After all that the head -5 lists the first 5 which can be changed.


    0
    ls -laht `find / -name "*.*" -type f -newermt "2016-04-05" ! -newermt "2016-04-10"`|head -5
    ubercoo · 2016-04-19 14:26:23 10
  • by determining most popular use in history using percentage . Show Sample Output


    0
    history | awk '{CMD[$2]++;count++;}END { for (a in CMD)print CMD[a] " " CMD[a]/count*100 "% " a;}' | grep -v "./" | column -c3 -s " " -t | sort -nr | nl | head -n10
    turrtle13 · 2016-04-24 17:21:35 9
  • This server can be access by a browser or other remote terminal with ncat. I have to use de test && break to allow ctrl-c to close. Show Sample Output


    0
    while [ 1 ]; do cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc ' -~' | head -c 10 | ncat -l 8080 &> /dev/null; test $? -gt 128 && break; done
    xxjcaxx · 2016-05-04 14:36:47 10

  • 0
    cat access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort -n | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20
    prees · 2016-05-05 20:52:03 13
  • This is a alternate command I like to use instead of TOP or HTOP to see what are the processes which are taking up the most memory on a system. It shows the username, process ID, CPU usage, Memory usage, thread ID, Number of threads associated with parent process, Resident Set Size, Virtual Memory Size, start time of the process, and command arguments. Then it's sorted by memory and showing the top 10 with head. This of course can be changed to suit you needs. I have a small system which is why Firefox is taking so much resources. Show Sample Output


    0
    watch -n .8 'ps -eaLo uname,pid,pcpu,pmem,lwp,nlwp,rss,vsz,start_time,args --sort -pmem| head -10'
    ubercoo · 2016-05-11 01:05:53 11

  • 0
    find /var -type f -exec du -h {} \; | sort -rh | head -10
    jiananmail · 2016-05-31 00:21:32 10
  • Finds the login id of the user that owns the console. I use it to reset my touchpad after resume from suspend in /etc/pm/sleep.d/s99local


    0
    who | grep :0 | head -1 | cut -d " " -f 1
    mikef5410 · 2016-06-22 17:33:38 12

  • 0
    tr "\|\;" "\n" < ~/.bash_history | sed -e "s/^ //g" | cut -d " " -f 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
    turrtle13 · 2016-07-01 19:27:12 10

  • 0
    ps aux | awk '{if ($5 != 0 ) print $2,$5,$6,$11}' | sort -k2rn | head -10 | column -t
    turrtle13 · 2016-07-01 19:40:56 12
  • When bundle install sucks ...This runs isuckat_ruby.rb and when stderror matches find gem ' it will gem install what ever is missing ... Show Sample Output


    0
    gem install `ruby ./isuckat_ruby.rb 2>&1 | sed -e 's/.*find gem .//g' -e 's/ .*//g' | head -n 1`
    operat0r · 2016-08-03 19:41:27 13

  • 0
    last -x | grep shutdown | head -1
    creepyjones · 2016-08-10 21:51:48 12
  • to simulating connections Simultaneous to specific server adress to test penetrations Show Sample Output


    0
    for i in {0..60}; do (curl -Is http://46.101.214.181:10101 | head -n1 &) 2>/dev/null; sleep 1; done;
    aysadk · 2017-01-15 14:32:02 16

  • 0
    for i in {0..60}; do (curl -Is http://<domain/ip> | head -n1 &) 2>/dev/null; sleep 1; done;
    aysadk · 2017-01-24 02:47:13 13
  • To allow recursivity : find -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -c -w 33 | sort -gr | head -n 5 | cut -c1-7,41- Display only filenames : find -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -c -w 33 | sort -gr | head -n 5 | cut -c43- Show Sample Output


    0
    find -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq -c -w 33 | sort -gr | head -n 5 | cut -c1-7,41-
    MaDCOw · 2017-02-09 11:36:31 18

  • 0
    head filename.txt | column -t -s $'\t'
    NLKNguyen · 2017-02-10 23:26:10 20
  • alex@alex-box:~$ sl The program 'sl' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install sl alex@alex-box:~$ dolast Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: sl 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.


    0
    alias dolast='$( $(history 2| head -n 1| sed "s/.* //") 2>&1 | tail -n 1)'
    aheinous · 2017-02-25 01:26:49 19
  • ‹ First  < 8 9 10 11 12 >  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

Kill all processes that listen to ports begin with 50 (50, 50x, 50xxx,...)
Run netstat as root (via sudo) to get the ID of the process listening on the desired socket. Use awk to 1) match the entry that is the listening socket, 2) matching the exact port (bounded by leading colon and end of column), 3) remove the trailing slash and process name from the last column, and finally 4) use the system(…) command to call kill to terminate the process. Two direct commands, netstat & awk, and one forked call to kill. This does kill the specific port instead of any port that starts with 50. I consider this to be safer.

see the TIME_WAIT and ESTABLISHED nums of the network
see the TIME_WAIT and ESTABLISHED nums of the network

Check if the LHC has destroyed the world
This says if the LHC has destroyed the world. Run it in a loop to monitor the state of Earth. Might not work reliable, if the world has actually been destroyed.

iso to USB with dd and show progress status
need package: pv apt-get install pv get the iso size in byte with ls -l install-cd.iso /dev/sdb is your USB Device (without partitionNr.)

find all non-html files

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance
You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

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"

Show what PID is listening on port 80 on Linux

Place the argument of the most recent command on the shell
This works if your terminal is in Vi mode

list files recursively by size


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: