Commands using xargs (769)

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Convert text to picture
generates a picture file with the text. Some other samples in: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/text/

Dump a configuration file without comments or whitespace...
A short, *easy-er* to remember command for stripping whitespace and comments from a config file, (or any file for that matter). Remember regex as: slash, space, star. pound, slash, bar. pointy-hat, dollar. (or "caret, dollar" if you must) :-P

Write comments to your history.
A null operation with the name 'comment', allowing comments to be written to HISTFILE. Prepending '#' to a command will *not* write the command to the history file, although it will be available for the current session, thus '#' is not useful for keeping track of comments past the current session.

Remove a range of lines from a file

Length of longest line of code
Here's an awk version.

Paste OS X clipboard contents to a file on a remote machine
Redirects the contents of your clipboard through a pipe, to a remote machine via SSH.

A DESTRUCTIVE command to render a drive unbootable
THIS COMMAND IS DESTRUCTIVE. That said, lets assume you want to render your boot drive unbootable and reboot your machine. Maybe you want it to boot off the network and kickstart from a boot server for a fresh OS install. Replace /dev/fd0 with the device name of your boot drive and this DESTRUCTIVE command will render your drive unbootable. Your BIOS boot priority should be set to boot from HD first, then LAN.

Create/open/use encrypted directory
Create/open/use an encrypted directory encfs needs to be installed During creation easiest to use default values The encrypted files will be in ~/.crypt and you will work as usual in ~/crypt To close the encrypted directory run: fusermount -u ~/crypt When you switch off the computer the encrypted directory will be automatically closed This example uses /home/user/crypt as encrypted directory I use ubuntu linux 8.04 and I am also the creator of www.minihowto.org

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"

Change the primary group of a user


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