Commands using tail (292)

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

Check for Firewall Blockage.
This is just one method of checking to see if an IP is blocked via IP tables or CSF. Simple and to the point. Replace xx.xx.xx.xx with the IP you wish to check.

Coping files, excluding certain files
Preserve file structure when coping and exclude some file o dir patterns

Simple addicting bash game.
Really bored during class so I made this... Basically, you hold period (or whatever) and hit enter after a second and you need to make the next line of periods the same length as the previous line... My record was 5 lines of the same length. It's best if you do it one handed with your pointer on period and ring on enter.

Run netcat to server files of current folder

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

List your largest installed packages (on Debian/Ubuntu)

sort the contents of a text file in place.
sorts the contents of a file without the need for a second file to take the sorted output. This was previously entered as `sort -g list.txt -o $_` but as others have pointed out the $_ references the previous command. so this would've worked had that been the second part of a command joined with && like: cat list.txt && sort -g list.txt -o $_ The user below me Robin had the most correct command.

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" }

Display current bandwidth statistics
ifstat, part of ifstat package, is a tool for displaying bandwidth and other statistics. The -n option avoid to display header periodically, the -t option put a timestamp at the beginning of the line. Works for me on Debian and CentOS

Check to make sure the whois nameservers match the nameserver records from the nameservers themselves
Change the $domain variable to whichever domain you wish to query. Works with the majority of whois info; for some that won't, you may have to compromise: domain=google.com; for a in $(whois $domain | grep "Domain servers in listed order:" --after 3 | grep -v "Domain servers in listed order:"); do echo ">>> Nameservers for $domain from $a


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: