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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" }

Do not clear the screen after viewing a file with less
From the manpage: $ man less -X or --no-init Disables sending the termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. This is sometimes desirable if the deinitialization string does something unnecessary, like clearing the screen. Bonus: If you want to clear the screen after viewing a file this way that had sensitive information, hit or just type clear. Since is readily available, I don't know why less bothers to automatically clear. If you're viewing the file at all, chances are you want to see the output from it after you quit.

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"

Find the process you are looking for minus the grepped one
preferred way to query ps for a specific process name (not supported with all flavors of ps, but will work on just about any linux afaik)

diff process output
Execute a process or list of commands in the given interval and output the difference in output.

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"

Serial console to a Vmware VM
Create a serial console with "socket (named pipe)" of "/tmp/socket", "from:server, to:virtual machine" in vmware player, etc.. gui. Run the above command after you have booted the guest OS (which should also be configured for serial console).

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

use mplayer to watch Apple Movie Trailer instead of quicktime player
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/ just copy the .mov link and use mplayer to stream

Testing reading speed with dd


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