All commands (14,212)

  • Edit a file on a remote host using vim


    56
    vim scp://username@host//path/to/somefile
    adminzim · 2009-02-18 15:09:53 33
  • git remove files which have been deleted

    It deletes all removed files, updates what was modified, and adds new files.


    55
    git add -u
    donnoman · 2009-09-16 00:13:14 24
  • Graph # of connections for each hosts.

    Written for linux, the real example is how to produce ascii text graphs based on a numeric value (anything where uniq -c is useful is a good candidate). Show Sample Output


    54
    netstat -an | grep ESTABLISHED | awk '{print $5}' | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | awk '{ printf("%s\t%s\t",$2,$1) ; for (i = 0; i < $1; i++) {printf("*")}; print "" }'
    knassery · 2009-04-27 22:02:19 24
  • Job Control

    You're running a script, command, whatever.. You don't expect it to take long, now 5pm has rolled around and you're ready to go home... Wait, it's still running... You forgot to nohup it before running it... Suspend it, send it to the background, then disown it... The ouput wont go anywhere, but at least the command will still run... Show Sample Output


    54
    ^Z $bg $disown
    fall0ut · 2009-03-17 21:52:52 30
  • Generate a random password 30 characters long

    Find random strings within /dev/urandom. Using grep filter to just Alphanumeric characters, and then print the first 30 and remove all the line feeds. Show Sample Output


    54
    strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '\n'; echo
    jbcurtis · 2009-02-16 00:39:28 32
  • Show apps that use internet connection at the moment. (Multi-Language)

    for one line per process: ss -p | cat for established sockets only: ss -p | grep STA for just process names: ss -p | cut -f2 -sd\" or ss -p | grep STA | cut -f2 -d\"


    53
    ss -p
    Escher · 2009-09-19 21:55:01 15
  • Monitor progress of a command

    Pipe viewer is a terminal-based tool for monitoring the progress of data through a pipeline. It can be inserted into any normal pipeline between two processes to give a visual indication of how quickly data is passing through, how long it has taken, how near to completion it is, and an estimate of how long it will be until completion. Source: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/ Show Sample Output


    52
    pv access.log | gzip > access.log.gz
    p3k · 2009-02-06 08:50:40 540
  • Record a screencast and convert it to an mpeg

    Grab X11 input and create an MPEG at 25 fps with the resolution 800x600


    51
    ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 25 -s 800x600 -i :0.0 /tmp/outputFile.mpg
    dcabanis · 2009-06-05 21:11:17 16
  • Get the 10 biggest files/folders for the current direcotry


    51
    du -s * | sort -n | tail
    bambambazooka · 2009-02-05 11:18:43 34
  • Recursively remove all empty directories


    50
    find . -type d -empty -delete
    jmcantrell · 2010-03-23 15:21:33 21
  • Search for a <pattern> string inside all files in the current directory

    This is how I typically grep. -R recurse into subdirectories, -n show line numbers of matches, -i ignore case, -s suppress "doesn't exist" and "can't read" messages, -I ignore binary files (technically, process them as having no matches, important for showing inverted results with -v) I have grep aliased to "grep --color=auto" as well, but that's a matter of formatting not function.


    50
    grep -RnisI <pattern> *
    birnam · 2009-09-22 15:09:43 33
  • Convert seconds to human-readable format

    This example, for example, produces the output, "Fri Feb 13 15:26:30 EST 2009"


    50
    date -d@1234567890
    kFiddle · 2009-04-11 22:26:41 29
  • Show numerical values for each of the 256 colors in bash

    Same as http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/5876, but for bash. This will show a numerical value for each of the 256 colors in bash. Everything in the command is a bash builtin, so it should run on any platform where bash is installed. Prints one color per line. If someone is interested in formatting the output, paste the alternative.


    49
    for code in {0..255}; do echo -e "\e[38;05;${code}m $code: Test"; done
    scribe · 2010-06-19 02:14:42 15
  • Processor / memory bandwidthd? in GB/s

    Read 32GB zero's and throw them away. How fast is your system? Show Sample Output


    49
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null bs=1M count=32768
    jacquesloonen · 2009-02-16 12:22:18 266
  • Monitor the queries being run by MySQL

    Watch is a very useful command for periodically running another command - in this using mysqladmin to display the processlist. This is useful for monitoring which queries are causing your server to clog up. More info here: http://codeinthehole.com/archives/2-Monitoring-MySQL-processes.html


    49
    watch -n 1 mysqladmin --user=<user> --password=<password> processlist
    root · 2009-02-16 11:21:16 196
  • Nice weather forecast on your shell

    Change Seville for your prefered city. Show Sample Output


    48
    curl wttr.in/seville
    nordri · 2016-08-28 09:43:38 33
  • pretend to be busy in office to enjoy a cup of coffee

    just make some data scrolling off the terminal. wow.


    48
    cat /dev/urandom | hexdump -C | grep "ca fe"
    BOYPT · 2010-09-27 08:20:44 23
  • Remove security limitations from PDF documents using ghostscript

    Remove security from PDF document using this very simple command on Linux and OSX. You need ghostscript for this baby to work.


    48
    gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=OUTPUT.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f INPUT.pdf
    deijmaster · 2009-12-14 21:30:22 42
  • Search commandlinefu.com from the command line using the API

    Usage: cmdfu hello world Show Sample Output


    48
    cmdfu(){ curl "http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/matching/$@/$(echo -n $@ | openssl base64)/plaintext"; }
    knoopx · 2009-08-19 02:18:24 89
  • Display a cool clock on your terminal

    This command displays a clock on your terminal which updates the time every second. Press Ctrl-C to exit. A couple of variants: A little bit bigger text: watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet -f big" You can try other figlet fonts, too. Big sideways characters: watch -n 1 -t '/usr/games/banner -w 30 $(date +%M:%S)' This requires a particular version of banner and a 40-line terminal or you can adjust the width ("30" here). Show Sample Output


    48
    watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet"
    dennisw · 2009-06-21 01:02:37 63
  • Create a persistent connection to a machine

    Create a persistent SSH connection to the host in the background. Combine this with settings in your ~/.ssh/config: Host host ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p ControlMaster no All the SSH connections to the machine will then go through the persisten SSH socket. This is very useful if you are using SSH to synchronize files (using rsync/sftp/cvs/svn) on a regular basis because it won't create a new socket each time to open an ssh connection.


    48
    ssh -MNf <user>@<host>
    raphink · 2009-02-26 14:11:19 35
  • Create a quick back-up copy of a file

    Uses shell expansion to create a back-up called file.txt.bak


    48
    cp file.txt{,.bak}
    root · 2009-01-26 12:11:29 100
  • Makes the permissions of file2 the same as file1

    Also works with: chgrp --reference file1 file2 chown --reference file1 file2


    47
    chmod --reference file1 file2
    rpavlick · 2010-03-31 12:05:48 14
  • Check your unread Gmail from the command line

    Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages. For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac: curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*<name>(.*)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/' If you want to see the name of the last person, who added a message to the conversation, change the greediness of the operators like this: curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*?<name>(.*?)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/' Show Sample Output


    47
    curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | sed -n "s/<title>\(.*\)<\/title.*name>\(.*\)<\/name>.*/\2 - \1/p"
    postrational · 2009-09-07 21:56:40 54
  • Send pop-up notifications on Gnome

    The title is optional. Options: -t: expire time in milliseconds. -u: urgency (low, normal, critical). -i: icon path. On Debian-based systems you may need to install the 'libnotify-bin' package. Useful to advise when a wget download or a simulation ends. Example: wget URL ; notify-send "Done"


    47
    notify-send ["<title>"] "<body>"
    o6291408 · 2009-04-29 10:05:20 22
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Print a row of 50 hyphens
This feels more intuitive to me.

Remote backups with tar over ssh
Execute it from the source host, where the source files you wish backup resides. With the minus '-' the tar command deliver the compressed output to the standar output and, trough over the ssh session to the remote host. On the other hand the backup host will be receive the stream and read it from the standar input sending it to the /path/to/backup/backupfile.tar.bz2

Ping all hosts on 192.168.1.0/24
Will report back IP address's of all hosts that are UP.

Get the size of all the directories in current directory

Remove orphaned dependencies on Arch
-Qdt Lists dependencies/packages which are no longer required by any packages -q Output only package name (not the version number) -R Remove package(s) Rest is self-explanatory. I just started out with Arch - so if there is any better/standard method to achieve the same - please suggest.

Write a bootable Linux .iso file directly to a USB-stick
Writes hybrid ISO directly to USB stick; replace /dev/sdb with USB device in question and the ISO image link with the link of your choice

Show errors in the kernel ring buffer
Much more useful then parsing syslog

Replace "space" char with "dot" char in current directory file names

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Search for a string in all files recursively

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