Commands using watch (155)

  • Maybe this will help you to monitor your load balancers or reverse proxies if you happen to use them. This is useful to discover TIME OUTS and this will let you know if one or more of your application servers is not connected by checking. Show Sample Output


    2
    watch -n 1 "/usr/sbin/lsof -p PID |awk '/TCP/{split(\$8,A,\":\"); split(A[2],B,\">\") ; split(B[1],C,\"-\"); print A[1],C[1],B[2], \$9}' | sort | uniq -c"
    ideivid · 2011-08-12 19:16:38 3
  • In certain cases you mighy need to monitor the server load caused by certain process. For example HTTP, while stress testing apache using ab (apache benchmark) you may want to monitor the server status,load, # of spawned HTTP processes, # of established connections, # of connections in close wait state, apache memory footprint etc. Show Sample Output


    2
    watch -n1 "uptime && ps auxw|grep http|grep -v grep | grep -v watch|wc -l && netstat -ntup|grep :80 |grep ESTABLISHED|wc -l && netstat -ntup|grep :80|grep WAIT|wc -l && free -mo && ps -ylC httpd --sort:rss|tail -3|awk '{print \$8}'"
    rockon · 2012-06-06 12:12:10 5
  • This handles when you have a single call or channel. Other commands will strip out the result if there is a single channel or call active because the output changes the noun to be singular instead of plural. Show Sample Output


    2
    watch "asterisk -vvvvvrx 'core show channels' | egrep \"(call|channel)\""
    rowshi · 2012-08-29 13:40:45 5
  • Sends the "USR1" signal every 1 second (-n 1) to a process called exactly "dd". The signal in some systems can be INFO or SIGINFO ... look at the signals list in: man kill


    2
    watch -n 1 pkill -USR1 "^dd$"
    ivanalejandro0 · 2012-08-31 05:15:45 4
  • Sometimes top/htop don't give the fine-grained detail on memory usage you might need. Sum up the exact memory types you want


    2
    watch "awk '/Rss/{sum += \$2; } END{print sum, \"kB\"}' < /proc/$(pidof firefox)/smaps"
    gumnos · 2015-09-19 00:36:34 18

  • 2
    watch grep \"cpu MHz\" /proc/cpuinfo
    wuseman1 · 2018-11-11 00:45:28 473

  • 2
    $ watch -c "netstat -natp 2>/dev/null | tail -n +3 | awk '{print \$6}' | sort | uniq -c"
    emanuele · 2018-11-22 10:37:48 332

  • 2
    watch ss -stplu
    wuseman1 · 2019-07-16 20:41:36 43
  • Use the command watch, which is really hard to pass nested quotes to, and insert newlines where they are supposed to go in the HTTP request. that is after 1.1 after the host and two newlines at the end before the EOF. i use this all day what? no support for HEREDOCs on commandlinefu's interface? need more fu. Show Sample Output


    1
    watch -n 1 nc localhost 80 '<<EOF GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: tux-ninja Connection: Close EOF'
    JustinHop · 2009-08-06 23:20:31 4
  • If you're like some individuals who rely on ndiswrapper and cannot use kismet, this command may be of service. watch -n .5 "iwlist wlan0 scan | egrep 'ESSID|Encryption'" Or... watch -n .5 "iwlist wlan0 scan | egrep 'ESSID|Encryption' | egrep 'linksys'" :-) Hopefully you'll find some dd-wrt compatible routers.


    1
    watch -n .5 "iwlist wlan0 scan"
    Abiden · 2009-08-20 23:05:04 3
  • If you need to keep an eye on a command whose output is changing, use the watch command. For example, to keep an eye on your load average


    1
    watch 'cat /proc/loadavg'
    0disse0 · 2009-09-03 20:10:46 4
  • This time I added a print to reemaining energy, every minute, time stamped. The example shown here is complete and point to large discrepancies as time passes, converging to accuracy near the end. Show Sample Output


    1
    echo start > battery.txt; watch -n 60 'date >> battery.txt ; acpi -b >> battery.txt'
    m33600 · 2009-10-19 05:28:15 4

  • 1
    watch -n 60 du /var/log/messages
    rbossy · 2009-10-27 14:53:41 3
  • If you just executed some long command, like "ps -aefww | grep -i [m]yProcess", and if you don't want to retype it or cycle backwards in history and waste time quoting it, then you can use history substitution.


    1
    watch -n1 -d !!
    TeacherTiger · 2009-11-24 21:01:14 3

  • 1
    watch -n 1 -d "finger"
    tsiqueira · 2009-12-08 14:53:18 3
  • To monitor .vmdk files during snapshot deletion (commit) on ESX only (ESXi doesn't have the watch command): 1. Navigate to the VM directory containing .vmdk files. # watch "ls -tough --full-time *.vmdk" where: -t sorts by modification time -o do not list group information (to narrow the output) -u sorts by access time -g only here for the purpose to easily remember the created mnemonic word 'tough' -h prints sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G) --full-time sets the time style to full-iso and does not list user information (to narrow the output) optionally useful parameters to the watch command: -d highlight changes between updates -n seconds to wait between updates (default is 2) -t turn off printing the header


    1
    watch 'ls -tough --full-time *.vmdk'
    vRobM · 2010-08-20 17:28:28 6
  • Note: 1) -n option of watch accepts seconds 2) -t option of notify-send accepts milliseconds 3) All quotes stated in the given example are required if notification message is more than a word. 4) I couldn't get this to run in background (use of & at the end fails). Any suggestions/improvements welcome.


    1
    watch -n 900 "notify-send -t 10000 'Look away. Rest your eyes'"
    b_t · 2010-10-05 09:39:31 6
  • Great for watching things like Maildir's or any other queue directory.


    1
    watch "cat `ls -rcA1 | tail -n1`"
    donnoman · 2011-03-25 01:22:05 8

  • 1
    watch !!
    wincus · 2011-07-05 12:50:56 7
  • If you add the -d flag each difference in the command's output will be highlighted. I also monitor individual drives by adding them to df. Makes for a nice thin status line that I can shove to the bottom of the monitor.


    1
    watch -d -n 5 df
    pcphillips · 2011-08-24 19:45:36 6

  • 1
    watch -n 1 "netstat -ntu | sed '1,2d' | awk '{ print \$6 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -k 2"
    facecool · 2011-09-30 09:04:14 3

  • 1
    watch -t -c -n30 'wget -q -O- "http://wwwapps.ups.com/WebTracking/processInputRequest?TypeOfInquiryNumber=T&InquiryNumber1=1Z4WYXXXXXXXXXX" | html2text | sed -n "/Shipment Progress/,/Shipping Information/p" | grep -v "*" | ccze -A'
    mfr · 2013-06-20 06:01:25 15
  • Starts and shows a timer. banner command is a part of the sysvbanner package. Instead of the banner an echo or figlet commands could be used. Stop the timer with Ctrl-C and elapsed time will be shown as the result. Show Sample Output


    1
    alias timer='export ts=$(date +%s);p='\''$(date -u -d @"$(($(date +%s)-$ts))" +"%H.%M.%S")'\'';watch -n 1 -t banner $p;eval "echo $p"'
    ichbins · 2013-08-24 16:18:45 13
  • Like top, but for files


    1
    watch -d -n 2 'df; ls -FlAt;'
    G2G · 2013-09-17 05:44:47 6
  • Watch a dig in progress Show Sample Output


    1
    watch -n1 dig google.com
    ene2002 · 2013-12-26 19:23:27 13
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Watch and cat the last file to enter a directory
Great for watching things like Maildir's or any other queue directory.

Record live sound in Vorbis (eg for bootlegs or to take audio notes)
This will record the capture channel of your soundcard, directly encoded in Ogg Vorbis, in stereo at quality 5 (I'm using this to record live jam sessions from my line input). You can choose which device to capture (eg. line input, microphone or PCM output) with $ alsamixer -V capture You can do the same thing and live encode in MP3 or FLAC if you wish, just check FLAC and LAME man pages.

This allows you to find a string on a set of files recursivly
The -r is for recursive, -F for fixed strings, --include='*.txt' identifies you want all txt files to be search any wildcard will apply, then the string you are looking for and the final * to ensure you go through all files and folders within the folder you execute it.

Deleting / Ignoring lines from the top of a file
Output lines starting at line 2.

Print the IP address and the Mac address in the same line
Print the IP address and the Mac address in the same line

Multi line grep using sed and specifying open/close tags
This line does not include your closing tag in the output.

creating you're logging function for your script
You could also pipe to logger.

Find usb device
I often use it to find recently added ou removed device, or using find in /dev, or anything similar. Just run the command, plug the device, and wait to see him and only him

backup with mysqldump a really big mysql database to a remote machine over ssh
backup big mysql db to remote machine over ssh. "--skip-opt" option is needed when you can?t allocate full database in ram.

Remove annoying files from recently extracted zip archive
Inspired by http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/2573/remove-all-files-previously-extracted-from-a-tar.gz-file. .... yet for zip files


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