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Exclude inserting a table from a sql import
Starting with a large MySQL dump file (*.sql) remove any lines that have inserts for the specified table. Sometimes one or two tables are very large and uneeded, eg. log tables. To exclude multiple tables you can get fancy with sed, or just run the command again on subsequently generated files.

Get My Public IP Address

Check host port access using only Bash:

Generate a list of installed packages on Debian-based systems
This command is useful when you want to install the same packages on another fresh OS install for example. To do that, use: $ sudo dpkg --set-selections < LIST_FILE

Create iso image of cd/dvd

keep an eye on system load changes
helps you keep watch on the load of a system, without having to stare constantly at the terminal. The -d argument to watch highlights the difference from the last run, making it easier to note how the load is fluctuating. The sed command just strips off the information about how long the box has been up, and how many users are logged in.

get a rough estimate about how much disk space is used by all the currently installed debian packages
The vaule is expressed in megabytes

Clean up poorly named TV shows.
Replace 'SHOWNAME' with the name of the TV show. Add -n to test the command without renaming files. Check the 'sample output'.

ls -qahlSr # list all files in size order - largest last
I find it useful, when cleaning up deleting unwanted files to make more space, to list in size order so I can delete the largest first. Note that using "q" shows files with non-printing characters in name. In this sample output (above), I found two copies of the same iso file both of which are immediate "delete candidates" for me.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }


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