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 00:45:28 443

  • 2
    $ watch -c "netstat -natp 2>/dev/null | tail -n +3 | awk '{print \$6}' | sort | uniq -c"
    emanuele · 2018-11-22 10:37:48 330

  • 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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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"

Rename files in batch

Download an Entire website with wget

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

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

a short counter
Maybe you know shorter ?

Log colorizer for OSX (ccze alternative)
Download colorizer by @raszi @ http://github.com/raszi/colorize

add all files not under version control to repository
This should handle whitespaces well and will not get confused if your filenames have "?" in them

Sort netflow packet capture
Sort netflow packet capture by unique connections excluding source port.

back ssh from firewalled hosts
host B (you) redirects a modem port (62220) to his local ssh. host A is a remote machine (the ones that issues the ssh cmd). once connected port 5497 is in listening mode on host B. host B just do a ssh 127.0.0.1 -p 5497 -l user and reaches the remote host'ssh. This can be used also for vnc and so on.


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