Commands by GeckoDH (7)

  • append content of a file to itself

    The command `cat file >> file` failes with the following error message: cat: file: input file is output file `tee` is a nice workaround without using any temporary files. Show Sample Output


    0
    cat file | tee >> file
    GeckoDH · 2009-07-30 07:34:03 3
  • Break lines after, for example 78 characters, but don't break within a word/string

    Per default, linux/unix shells are configured with a width of 80 characters. If you like to edit a phrase or string on a line with more than 80 characters it might take long to go there (for example a line with 1000 characters and you like to edit the 98th word which is character 598-603). Maybe you might wish to use 78 characters, because if you forward the text via mail and the text will be quoted (2 extra characters at the beginning to the line "> "), you use 80 characters, otherwise 82, which are lame.


    3
    fold -w 78 -s file-to-wrap
    GeckoDH · 2009-05-19 19:33:10 1
  • Share a 'screen'-session

    Ater person A starts his screen-session with `screen`, person B can attach to the srceen of person A with `screen -x`. Good to know, if you need or give support from/to others.


    13
    screen -x
    GeckoDH · 2009-05-19 19:10:52 0
  • Backup your OpenWRT config (only the config, not the whole system)

    You only have to fill in your administrative account and password, and the router FQDN! I recommand to execute this command not over the internet, because there is no encryption (the username and password will be transmitted in plaintext!)


    3
    curl -d 'username=root&password=your-good-password' "http://router/cgi-bin/luci/admin/system/backup?backup=kthxbye" > `date +%Y%d%m`_config_backup.tgz
    GeckoDH · 2009-05-19 11:32:30 1
  • Create variables from a list of names

    VARNAMES='ID FORENAME LASTNAME ADDRESS CITY PHONE MOBILE MAIL ...' cat customer.csv | while read LINE ; do COUNT=1 for VAR in $VARNAMES ; do eval "${VAR}=`echo $LINE | /usr/bin/awk {'print $'$COUNT''}`" let COUNT=COUNT+1 done done Maybe you have a CSV-File with addresses, where you have to process each contact (one per line, write each value to own variable). Of course you can define every variable, but this way is more simple and faster (to write). VARNAMES includes the variable names. Pay attention: the number of names in VARNAMES have to be the same than in the CSV-file the fields. If the CSV is not seperated with ";", you can set the seperator after the awk-binary with -F"_" for example.


    -1
    VARNAMES='ID FORENAME LASTNAME ADDRESS CITY PHONE MOBILE MAIL' ; cat customer.csv | while read LINE ; do COUNT=1 ; for VAR in $VARNAMES ; do eval "${VAR}=`echo $LINE | /usr/bin/awk {'print $'$COUNT''}`" ; let COUNT=COUNT+1 ; done ; done
    GeckoDH · 2009-05-19 11:23:00 0
  • Backup with SSH in a archive

    PRIVATEKEY - Of course the full path to the private key \n HOST - The host where to get the backup \n SOURCE - The directory you wish to backup \n DESTINATION - The destination for the backup on your local machine


    1
    ssh -i $PRIVATEKEY $HOST -C 'cd $SOURCE; tar -cz --numeric-owner .' | tee $DESTINATION/backup.tgz | tar -tz
    GeckoDH · 2009-05-18 20:36:45 0
  • Validate date, also a date within a leap year

    Important to know: a valid date will return 0, otherwise 1!


    2
    date -d2009-05-18 > /dev/null 2>&1 ; echo $?
    GeckoDH · 2009-05-18 20:30:05 0

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Capture all plaintext passwords

Faster find and move using the find and xargs commands. Almost as fast as locate.
Only tested on Linux Ubunty Hardy. Works when file names have spaces. The "-maxdepth 2" limits the find search to the current directory and the next one deeper in this example. This was faster on my system because find was searching every directory before the current directory without the -maxdepth option. Almost as fast as locate when used as above. Must use double quotes around pattern to handle spaces in file names. -print0 is used in combination with xargs -0. Those are zeros not "O"s. For xargs, -I is used to replace the following "{}" with the incoming file-list items from find. Echo just prints to the command line what is happening with mv. mv needs "{}" again so it knows what you are moving from. Then end with the move destination. Some other versions may only require one "{}" in the move command and not after the -I, however this is what worked for me on Ubuntu 8.04. Some like to use -type f in the find command to limit the type.

Search apache virtual host by pattern
Outputs contents of virtual hosts containing PATTERN. Particularly useful for pefrorming complex searches. E.g. search for docroot of www.example.com: $ sed -n '/^[^#]*

Benchmark SQL Query
Benchmark a SQL query against MySQL Server. The example runs the query 10 times, and you get the average runtime in the output. To ensure that the query does not get cached, use `RESET QUERY CACHE;` on top in the query file.

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" }

Read choice from user instantaneously
Usage exaple cmd $echo 'Sure to continue ??'; read -n1 choi; if [ "$choi" = 'y' ] || [ "$choi" = 'Y' ]; then echo -e '\nExecuting..'; else echo 'Aborted'; fi

Downmix first audio stream from 7.1 to 5.1 keeping all other streams
Useful for Roku which does not support 7.1. Useful resources: - https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Map - https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/HighQualityAudio - https://superuser.com/questions/852400/properly-downmix-5-1-to-stereo-using-ffmpeg

combining streams
2>&1 permit to combinate stdout and stderr. grep will catch stderr and stdout instead of stdout only.

Matrix Style
I like the fact the Patola's version uses only ones and zeros, but I also like the sparse output of the other versions. This one combines both of those features and eliminates some unnecessary cruft. You can vary the sparseness by changing "$(($RANDOM % 5))" to another number. The number in this term "$(($RANDOM % 4))" controls how frequently the numbers are output bold.

Look for English words in /dev/urandom
Little faster alternative.

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