All commands (14,187)

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

tail: watch a filelog
-f file(s) to be monitorized -n number of last line to be printed on the screen in this example, the content of two files are displayed

from the console, start a second X server
This starts a very basic X session, with just a simple xterm. You can use this xterm to launch your preferred distant session. $ ssh -X john@otherbox gnome-session Try also startkde or fluxbox or xfce4-session. To switch between your two X servers, use CTRL+ALT+F7 and CTRL+ALT+F8.

ignore .DS_Store forever in GIT
With a couple of little commands, you?ll be able to ignore the .DS_Store files forever from your git repositories on mac! The following command will add the .gitignore file to the git configuration git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore then, the following, will add the .DS_Store to the list echo .DS_Store >> ~/.gitignore

Archive all SVN repositories in platform indepenent form
Use of hotcopy for safety/stability of the backups.

Solaris - check ports/sockets which process has opened

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

Averaging columns of numbers
This example calculates the averages of column one and column two of "file.dat". It can be easily modified if other columns are to be averaged.

check the status of 'dd' in progress (OS X)
"killall -USR1 dd" does not work in OS X for me. However, sending INFO instead of USR1 works.

list files recursively by size

Randomly run command
Randomly decide whether to run a command, or fail. It's useful for testing purposes. . Usage: ran PERCENTAGE COMMAND [ARGS] Note: In this version the percentage is required. . This is like @sesom42 and @snipertyler's commands but in a USABLE form. . e.g. In your complicated shell script, put "ran 99" before a crucial component. Now, it will fail 1% of the time allowing you to test the failure code-path. $ ran 99 my_complex_program arg1 arg2


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: