All commands (14,211)


  • 56
    vim scp://username@host//path/to/somefile
    adminzim · 2009-02-18 15:09:53 35
  • It deletes all removed files, updates what was modified, and adds new files.


    55
    git add -u
    donnoman · 2009-09-16 00:13:14 26
  • 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 26
  • 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 31
  • 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
  • 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 17
  • 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 08:50:40 638
  • 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

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

  • 50
    find . -type d -empty -delete
    jmcantrell · 2010-03-23 15:21:33 22
  • 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 36
  • 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
  • just make some data scrolling off the terminal. wow.


    49
    cat /dev/urandom | hexdump -C | grep "ca fe"
    BOYPT · 2010-09-27 08:20:44 25
  • 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
  • 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 12:22:18 277
  • 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 11:21:16 199
  • Change Seville for your prefered city. Show Sample Output


    48
    curl wttr.in/seville
    nordri · 2016-08-28 09:43:38 35
  • 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 44
  • 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 92
  • 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 80
  • 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 36
  • Uses shell expansion to create a back-up called file.txt.bak


    48
    cp file.txt{,.bak}
    root · 2009-01-26 12:11:29 107
  • Also works with: chgrp --reference file1 file2 chown --reference file1 file2


    47
    chmod --reference file1 file2
    rpavlick · 2010-03-31 12:05:48 14
  • 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 59
  • I did not know this, i'd like to share...


    47
    open .
    vigo · 2009-06-10 10:55:20 25
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resize all images in a folder

Gives you what's between first string and second string included.
If the file content is : - Blah blah blah ABC hello blah blah blah bloh bloh bloh DEF Bah bah bah - You'll get: - ABC hello blah blah blah bloh bloh bloh DEF

Then end of the UNIX epoch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem Some other notable dates that have passed: $ date -d@1234567890 $ date -d@1000000000

Convert CSV to JSON
Replace 'csv_file.csv' with your filename.

Delete the specified line

Generate a random password 30 characters long

Block an IP address from connecting to a server
This appends (-A) a new rule to the INPUT chain, which specifies to drop all packets from a source (-s) IP address.

Propagate X session cookies on a different user and login as that user
Reads a username from

Rename files in batch

Get list of servers with a specific port open
Change the -p argument for the port number. See "man nmap" for different ways to specify address ranges.


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