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Find usb device
I often use it to find recently added ou removed device, or using find in /dev, or anything similar. Just run the command, plug the device, and wait to see him and only him

Create a tar of directory structure only

print a cpu of a process

Compress a series of png pictures to an avi movie.
cd /path/to/your/png_pics mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=2 -o output.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 then you can get a movie named output.avi.

Find files and calculate size of result in shell
Use find's internal stat to get the file size then let the shell add up the numbers.

prevents replace an existing file by mistake
Use set +o noclobber and you will be able to replace files again

Write on the console without being registered
just use a space to prevent commands from being recorded in bash's history on most systems

count processes with status "D" uninterruptible sleep

Convert flv without re-encoding

extracts 64 bytes of random digits from random lines out of /dev/random sent to stdio
Use this the next time you need to come up with a reasonably random bitstring, like for a WPA/WPA2 PSK or something. Takes a continuous stream of bytes coming from /dev/urandom, runs it through od(1), picking a random field ($0 and $1 excluded) from a random line and then prints it.


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