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

create random string from /dev/urandom (or another length)

Purge configuration files of removed packages on debian based systems
Purge all configuration files of removed packages

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

GRUB2: set Super Mario as startup tune
I'll let Slayer handle that. Raining Blood for your pleasure.

Calculate N!
Same as the seq/bc solution but without bc.

Find inside files two different patterns in the same line and for matched files show number of matched lines
The option -print0 for find and -0 for grep help prevent issue with weird characters or spaces in filenames. Furthermore with xargs there is no limited number of arguments that find can throw.

Decrypt passwords from Google Chrome and Chromium.
Read this before you down voting and comment that it is not working -> Wont work on latest versions ~75> since database file is locked and has to be decrypted. This is useful if you have an old hdd with a chrome installation and want to decrypt your old passwords fast.

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"

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"

Synchronize both your system clock and hardware clock and calculate/adjust time drift
Do not run this command if you already have ntpd running! This needs to run as root, for example with sudo: $ sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org && sudo hwclock --systohc && sudo hwclock --adjust This command will fetch accurate time from NTP servers and synchronize your system clock, then it will use the system clock to synchronize your hardware clock, and will calculate the time drift.


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: