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Get all mac address
I prefer the ip command to ifconfig as ifconfig is supposedly going to be deprecated. Certain IP address aliases can only be seen with the ip command (such as the ones applied by RHCS).

connect via ssh using mac address
Connect to a machine running ssh using mac address by using the "arp" command

Search back through previous commands
Searches backwards through your command-history for the typed text. Repeatedly hitting Ctrl-R will search progressively further. Return invokes the command.

updatedb for MAC OSX
MAC OSX doesn't come with an updatedb command by default, this will emulate the updatedb thats on a typical Linux OS. Simply add it to your ~/.bash_profile

Extract track 9 from a CD
Using mplayer to extract audio file from a CD

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

File rotation without rename command
Rotates log files with "gz"-extension in a directory for 7 days and enumerates the number in file name. i.e.: logfile.1.gz > logfile.2.gz I needed this line due to the limitations on AIX Unix systems which do not ship with the rename command.

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

search ubuntu packages to find which package contains the executable program programname
search ubuntu's remote package source repositories for a specific program to see which package contains it

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