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Terminal - Show directories in the PATH, one per line with sed and bash3.X `here string'

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

Clean way of re-running bash startup scripts.
This replaces the current bash session with a new bash session, run as an interactive non-login shell... useful if you have changed /etc/bash.bashrc, or ~/.bashrc If you have changed a startup script for login shells, use $ exec bash -l Suitable for re-running /etc/profile, ~/.bash_login and ~/.profile. edit: chinmaya points out that $ env - HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM bash -s "exec bash -l" will clear any shell variables which have been set... since this verges on unwieldy, might want to use $ alias bash_restart='env - HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM bash -s "exec bash -l"'

Command to keep an SSH connection open
This runs the uptime command every 30 seconds to avoid an SSH connection dropping due to inactivity. Granted there are better ways of solving this problem but this is sometimes the right tool for the job.

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

ssh to machine behind shared NAT
Useful to get network access to a machine behind shared IP NAT. Assumes you have an accessible jump host and physical console or drac/ilo/lom etc access to run the command. Run the command on the host behind NAT then ssh connect to your jump host on port 2222. That connection to the jump host will be forwarded to the hidden machine. Note: Some older versions of ssh do not acknowledge the bind address (0.0.0.0 in the example) and will only listen on the loopback address.

move you up one directory quickly
In bash, this turns on auto cd. If a command is just a directory name, it cd's into that directory.

Run a command for blocks of output of another command
The given example collects output of the tail command: Whenever a line is emitted, further lines are collected, until no more output comes for one second. This group of lines is then sent as notification to the user. You can test the example with $ logger "First group"; sleep 1; logger "Second"; logger "group"

Send multiple attachments using mailx
If you're users have ever asked your script to email their reports in separate attachments instead of tar'ring them into one file, then you can use this. You'll need the mailx package of course. In Unix you'd want to add an additional parameter "-m" (uuencode foo.txt foo.txt; uuencode /etc/passwd passwd.txt)|mailx -m -s "Hooosa!" someone@cmdfu.com

quick integer CPU benchmark
This is a quick and dirty way to generate a (non-floating-point) CPU-bound task to benchmark. Adjust "20" to higher or lower values, as needed. As a benchmark this is probably a little less bogus than bogomips, and it will run anywhere 'bc' does.


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