All commands

All commands (14,187)

sorted by

List only the directories

to include hidden dirs use: tree -adL 1 (with ls, requires 'ls -ad */ .*/')
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

tree -dL 1

Escher · 2009-10-11 23:20:17 5
Remount a usb disk in Gnome without physically removing and reinserting

Remounts a usb disk /dev/sdb, without having to physically remove and reinsert. (Gnome desktop)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
7

eject /dev/sdb; sleep 1; eject -t /dev/sdb

Escher · 2009-10-11 23:16:49 8
download all the presentations from UTOSC2010

miss a class at UTOSC2010? need a refresher? use this to curl down all the presentations from the UTOSC website. (http://2010.utosc.com) NOTE/WARNING this will dump them in the current directory and there are around 37 and some are big - tested on OSX10.6.1 Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
http://2009.utosc.com/static/slides/Crowdsourcing_UTOSC.ppt
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 4819k  100 4819k    0     0   300k      0  0:00:16  0:00:16 --:--:--  250k
```
2

b="http://2010.utosc.com"; for p in $( curl -s $b/presentation/schedule/ | grep /presentation/[0-9]*/ | cut -d"\"" -f2 ); do f=$(curl -s $b$p | grep "/static/slides/" | cut -d"\"" -f4); if [ -n "$f" ]; then echo $b$f; curl -O $b$f; fi done

danlangford · 2009-10-11 17:28:46 3
convert filenames in current directory to lowercase

The simplest way I know. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
gfagreaa renamed as GFAGREAA
gfdfhf renamed as GFDFHF
req renamed as REQ
rewqr renamed as REVQR
```
22

rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' *

Karakh · 2009-10-11 11:36:07 16
Create an SSH connection (reverse tunnel) through your firewall.

Allows you to establish a tunnel (encapsulate packets) to your (Server B) remote server IP from your local host (Server A). On Server B you can then connect to port 2001 which will forward all packets (encapsulated) to port 22 on Server A. -- www.fir3net.com --
This is sample output - yours may be different.
8

ssh -R 2001:localhost:22 [username]@[remote server ip]

felix001 · 2009-10-11 09:51:04 4
convert filenames in current directory to lowercase
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

find my_root_dir -depth -exec rename 's/(.*)\/([^\/]*)/$1\/\L$2/' {} \;

evalinux · 2009-10-11 07:09:06 5
autossh + ssh + screen = super rad perma-sessions

Only useful for really flakey connections (but im stuck with one for now). Though if youre in this situation ive found this to be a good way to run autossh and it does a pretty good job of detecting when the session is down and restarting. Combined with the -t and screen commands this pops you back into your working session lickety split w/ as few headaches as possible. And if autossh is a bit slow at detecting the downed ssh connection, just run this in another tab/terminal window to notify autossh that it should drop it and start over. Basically for when polling is too slow. kill -SIGUSR1 `pgrep autossh` Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
<Your running screen session>
```
11

AUTOSSH_POLL=1 autossh -M 21010 hostname -t 'screen -Dr'

iamarchimedes · 2009-10-11 06:04:29 7

Sort all running processes by their memory & CPU usage

you can also pipe it to "tail" command to show 10 most memory using processes. Show Sample Output

This is sample output - yours may be different.

root        21  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   Oct10   0:11 [ata/0]
68        1417  0.0  0.2   6772  2900 ?        Ss   Oct10   0:14 hald   
root      1586  0.0  0.1  17184  1836 ?        Ssl  Oct10   0:14 NetworkManager --pid-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.pid
root      1554  0.0  0.0   3516   564 ?        S    Oct10   0:19 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec)                  
ali       2013  0.0  0.9 247540 10068 ?        S    Oct10   0:24 kwin -session 10dad4d46f000125200430400000021020032_1255123367_509351
dbus      1377  0.0  0.1  13492  1484 ?        Ssl  Oct10   0:25 dbus-daemon --system                                                 
root        47  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   Oct10   0:29 [scsi_eh_1]                                                          
ali       2047  0.0  1.5 123976 15816 ?        Rl   Oct10   0:44 yakuake -session 10dad4d46f000125165081500000020800011_1255123367_401521 -name Qt-subapplication
ali       2323  0.1  0.2 1610188 2528 ?        Ss   Oct10   0:52 C:\windows\system32\explorer.exe /desktop                                   
ali       2021  0.1  2.2 287952 23152 ?        Sl   Oct10   1:37 /usr/bin/plasma-desktop
ali       2299  0.2  0.0   5404   992 ?        Ss   Oct10   2:24 /usr/bin/wineserver
root      6341  0.5  7.0 122288 72160 pts/3    S+   00:33   0:33 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/yum groupinstall GNOME Desktop Environment
ali       2296  0.6  0.7 1694604 8076 ?        Sl   Oct10   5:03 C:\Program Files\www.cproxy.com\cproxy.exe                                  
ali       2191  0.8  0.2 100880  2160 ?        Ssl  Oct10   7:07 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
ali       6164  1.2  3.2 165432 33084 ?        Sl   00:30   1:20 /usr/bin/kopete -caption Kopete
ali       4854  2.6  2.2 147408 22468 ?        Sl   Oct10   6:07 /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/npviewer.bin --plugin /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so --connection /org/wrapper/NSPlugins/libflashplayer.so/4759-1
ali       4546  2.9  5.9 228028 61048 ?        Sl   Oct10   7:24 /usr/lib/songbird-1.2.0/./songbird-bin
root      1840  5.9  2.7  55864 28172 tty1     Ss+  Oct10  49:50 /usr/bin/X -br -nolisten tcp :0 vt1 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-lhNFjm
ali       4759 16.6 18.4 652080 187640 ?       Sl   Oct10  38:56 /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.3/firefox
ali       7231  2.0  0.0   4764   988 pts/0    R+   02:16   0:00 ps aux --sort=%mem,%cpu

ps aux --sort=%mem,%cpu

mrwill · 2009-10-10 22:48:51 7

Functions to display, save and restore $IFS

You can display, save and restore the value of $IFS using conventional Bash commands, but these functions, which you can add to your ~/.bashrc file make it really easy. To display $IFS use the function ifs shown above. In the sample output, you can see that it displays the characters and their hexadecimal equivalent. This function saves it in a variable called $saveIFS: sifs () { saveIFS=$IFS; } Use this function to restore it rifs () { IFS=$saveIFS; } Add this line in your ~/.bashrc file to save a readonly copy of $IFS: declare -r roIFS=$IFS Use this function to restore that one to $IFS rrifs () { IFS=$roIFS; } Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
' '     '\t'    '\n'
0x20    0x09    0x0a
```
2

ifs () { echo -n "${IFS}"|hexdump -e '"" 10/1 "'\''%_c'\''\t" "\n"' -e '"" 10/1 "0x%02x\t" "\n\n"'|sed "s/''\|\t0x[^0-9]//g; $,/^$/d"

dennisw · 2009-10-10 22:41:35 8
Directory Tree

tree has lots of parms - man is your friend Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
[17:44][~/junk]$ tree -d
.
|-- dira
|   |-- f
|   |   `-- r
|   `-- s
|       |-- l
|       |-- q
|       `-- w
|           `-- d
|-- dirb
|   |-- h
|   |   `-- k
|   |-- i
|   `-- j
`-- dirc

14 directories
```
2

tree -d

bsussman · 2009-10-10 21:40:56 3
Simple Find
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-2

find / -name FILENAME

theIndianMaiden · 2009-10-10 20:12:33 3
Directory Tree
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find . -type d -print | sed -e 's;[^/]*/;..........;g'|awk '{print $0"-("NR-1")"}'

theIndianMaiden · 2009-10-10 20:08:40 4
VIM: when Ctrl-D and Ctrl-U only scroll one line, reset to default

Resets the scroll parameter to the default (half the rows in the current window). The scroll parameter can be inadvertently set to 1, e..g., if you type '1 Ctrl-D' or '1 Ctrl-U' in normal mode.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

:set scroll=0

tmsh · 2009-10-10 07:38:27 6
Schedule Nice Background Commands That Won't Die on Logout - Alternative to nohup and at

Check out the usage of 'trap', you may not have seen this one much. This command provides a way to schedule commands at certain times by running them after sleep finishes sleeping. In the example 'sleep 2h' sleeps for 2 hours. What is cool about this command is that it uses the 'trap' builtin bash command to remove the SIGHUP trap that normally exits all processes started by the shell upon logout. The 'trap 1' command then restores the normal SIGHUP behaviour. It also uses the 'nice -n 19' command which causes the sleep process to be run with minimal CPU. Further, it runs all the commands within the 2nd parentheses in the background. This is sweet cuz you can fire off as many of these as you want. Very helpful for shell scripts.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

( trap '' 1; ( nice -n 19 sleep 2h && command rm -v -rf /garbage/ &>/dev/null && trap 1 ) & )

AskApache · 2009-10-10 04:43:44 7
Count the total number of files in each immediate subdirectory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

ps -ef | grep pmon

Sriregati · 2009-10-10 03:13:46 15
Count the total number of files in each immediate subdirectory

counts the total (recursive) number of files in the immediate (depth 1) subdirectories as well as the current one and displays them sorted. Fixed, as per ashawley's comment Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
>find . -type f -printf "%h\n" | cut -d/ -f-2 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
    694 Source
    312 Defaults
     50 Makeinfo
      5 CVS
      1 .
```
6

find . -type f -printf "%h\n" | cut -d/ -f-2 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

ivancho · 2009-10-09 23:49:53 5
Determine MAC address of remote host when you know its IP address

arping sends ARP requests to a neighboring host. This won't work if there is an ARP subnet gateway in the middle. If there is, you'll just get the gateway's MAC address not the host's address you are really trying to get to. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
ARPING 192.168.1.2 from 192.168.1.3 eth0
Unicast reply from 192.168.1.2 [0B:DE:36:AF:C1:C8]  0.968ms
```
5

arping 192.168.1.2

stinkerweed999 · 2009-10-09 21:39:35 3
Monitor a file's size

use "watch" instead of while-loops in these simple cases
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

watch -n60 du /var/log/messages

matrixguy · 2009-10-09 18:37:45 6
Monitor a file's size

Got a file you're generating and you want the size without typing in 'ls -l file' all the time? Use this instead. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
2380 messages
2396 messages
2401 messages
```
0

while [ 1 ]; do du /var/log/messages;sleep 60; done

savanik · 2009-10-09 17:22:19 3
Outputs a 10-digit random number

Makes use of $RANDOM environment variable.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

head -c10 <(echo $RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM)

jgc · 2009-10-09 15:09:02 6
Check if variable is a number

Using the standard numeric comparison but suppressing the STDERR output acts as the simplest way to check a value is numeric. See sample output for some examples. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ export testnum=123
$ if [ "$testnum" -eq "$testnum" 2>/dev/null ]; then echo It is numeric; fi
It is numeric
$ [ "$testnum" -eq "$testnum" 2>/dev/null ] && echo It is numeric
It is numeric
$ export testnum=123xxx
$ if [ "$testnum" -eq "$testnum" 2>/dev/null ]; then echo It is numeric; fi
$ [ "$testnum" -eq "$testnum" 2>/dev/null ] && echo It is numeric
$ 
```
0

if [ "$testnum" -eq "$testnum" 2>/dev/null ]; then echo It is numeric; fi

jgc · 2009-10-09 14:57:27 9
Check if variable is a number
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-1

echo $X | egrep "^[0-9]+$"

sharfah · 2009-10-09 13:59:47 6
Outputs a 10-digit random number
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

tr -c -d 0-9 < /dev/urandom | head -c 10

hfs · 2009-10-09 11:58:30 3
calulate established tcp connection of local machine

If you want prepend/append text just wrap in echo: echo Connected: `netstat -an|grep -ci "tcp.*established"` Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
39
```
3

netstat -an|grep -ci "tcp.*established"

romulusnr · 2009-10-09 01:08:18 3
print crontab entries for all the users that actually have a crontab

Lists crontab for all users on system that have crontabs. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
=== crontab for username ===
MAILTO="server@servername.com"

=== crontab for username2 ===
15 0 0 0 0 /some/command/to/run
```
-4

for USER in `ls /var/spool/cron`; do echo "=== crontab for $USER ==="; echo $USER; done

jemmille · 2009-10-08 23:51:43 3
‹ First < 438 439 440 441 442 > 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

preprocess code to be posted in comments on this site

Assuming that $script contains the filename of a script you'd like to post as part of a comment on this site, this will prefix each line with '$' and pipe it into the X selection. From there just put the cursor in the right place in the comments box and middle-click. Should work pretty much anywhere with xclip installed. On debian-ish systems this is installed as part of the package "xclip".

Grep by paragraph instead of by line.

This is a command that I find myself using all the time. It works like regular grep, but returns the paragraph containing the search pattern instead of just the line. It operates on files or standard input. $ grepp or $ | grepp

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

Calculate days on which Friday the 13th occurs (inspired from the work of the user justsomeguy)

Friday is the 5th day of the week, monday is the 1st. Output may be affected by locale.

Progress bar for MySQL import

Print out the progress of MySQL import using the pv command. Updates every second.

Find Out My Linux Distribution Name and Version

Another way of do it in debian like distros, don't know if works for others

Report bugs in Ubuntu

As of 10.04 LTS, you need to use this command-line to reports bugs to the launchpad.net tracking system (you need a launchpad acct for this to work). This command is preferred over using the website because it collects/sends info about your system to help developers. ubuntu-bug is a symlink to apport-bug which sees if KDE/Gnome is running and calls apport-gtk/apport-kde dialogs, otherwise apport-cli, so you can fill out a bug report. First run 'ubuntu-bug' without args to see a list of known symptoms. If there's no matching symptom, or you know which package is to blame, then run 'ubuntu-bug <package>'. If the process is still running, use 'ubuntu-bug <PID>'

Search for a string inside all files in the current directory

options: -n line nbrs, -i ignore case, -s no "doesn't exist", -I ignore binary args: * for all files of current dir (not hidden), .[!.]* for all hidden files I don't include by default the -R (recursive) option, which is not always useful. You add it by hand when needed.

Stream YouTube URL directly to MPlayer

A function for streaming youtube to mplayer. The option "-g" for youtube-dl tells it to output the direct video URL, instead of downloading the video. "-fs" tells MPlayer to go FullScreen, and "-quit" makes it less verbose. Requires: youdube-dl ( http://bitbucket.org/rg3/youtube-dl/ ) (Tested in zsh)

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"

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:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)

All commands (14,187) the last day the last week the last month all time sorted by date votes

What's this?

Check These Out

Stay in the loop…

All commands (14,187)

sorted by