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Purge configuration files of removed packages on debian based systems

tar exclude files or directories
If you want to exclude only one file or directory you should use as --exclude=file_or_directory

Diff two directories by finding and comparing the md5 checksums of their contents.
Compute the md5 checksums for the contents of two mirrored directories, then sort and diff the results. If everything matches, nothing is returned. Otherwise, any checksums which do not match, or which exist in one tree but not the other, are returned. As you might imagine, the output is useful only if no errors are found, because only the checksums, not filenames, are returned. I hope to address this, or that someone else will!

Get information about memory modules
To take information about the characteristics of the installed memory modules.

Schedule a script or command in x num hours, silently run in the background even if logged out
doesn't require "at", change the "2h" to whatever you want... (deafult unit for sleep is seconds)

How many days until the end of the year

Makefile argument passing
This would allow reference of $(VAR) (if defined) with the value 'foobar' within the Makefile.

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"

concat multiple videos into one (and add an audio track)
This is an extract from a larger script which formats the video for DVD. The videos I use have no audio track so I need to add one. Tweak as you like...

ionice limits process I/O, to keep it from swamping the system (Linux)
This command is somewhat similar to 'nice', but constrains I/O usage rather than CPU usage. In particular, the '-c3' flag tells the OS to only allow the process to do I/O when nothing else is pending. This dramatically increases the responsiveness of the rest of the system if the process is doing heavy I/O. There's also a '-p' flag, to set the priority of an already-running process.


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