Commands by darkfader (5)

  • List OSX applications and versions.

    Uses find, plutil and xpath. Note: Some applications don't have proper information. system_profiler might be better to use. It's a bit slow query. Due to command length limit, I removed -name "*.app" and CFBundleName. Show Sample Output


    -1
    find /Applications -type d -maxdepth 1 -exec sh -c 'echo "{}"; (plutil -convert xml1 -o - "{}/Contents/Info.plist" | xpath /dev/stdin "concat(\"v\", /plist/dict/string[preceding-sibling::key[1]=\"CFBundleShortVersionString\"]/node())" 2>/dev/null)' \;
    darkfader · 2013-03-29 14:01:23 0
  • bookmarklet for commandlinefu.com search

    If you add the bookmarklet to your browser's bookmarks with like say, the keyword 'cfu', you can for example type 'cfu hello' in the location bar and the %s gets replaced with 'hello'. The bookmarklet will convert the search text to base64 for use with the commandlinefu website and will take you there. Tested with Firefox. Show Sample Output


    -2
    echo "javascript:location.href='http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/matching/'+encodeURIComponent('%s')+'/'+btoa('%s')+'/sort-by-votes'"
    darkfader · 2011-03-07 22:01:46 0
  • sshdo, an alternative to sudo

    Run program as root by SSH key forwarding instead of sudoers. Put this alias line in .bashrc or wherever you like. Alias arguments might need extra escaping. You might wonder about security. But you'd block out root login as much as possible of course. In sshd_config you put this: PermitRootLogin no Match Address 127.0.0.1   PermitRootLogin without-password


    -2
    alias sshdo='ssh -q -t [email protected] -- cd $PWD \&\& sudo'
    darkfader · 2010-10-20 22:33:22 5
  • aptbackup restore

    Use when aptbackup will not start or you just want to see what's going on. Show Sample Output


    1
    for p in `grep -v deinstall /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/aptbackup_dpkg-packages.txt | cut --fields=1`; do apt-get -y --force-yes install $p; done
    darkfader · 2010-10-11 22:41:55 2
  • Change SSH RSA passphrase

    Protects your secret identity with a passphrase. OSX 10.6 automatically does key forwarding and can store the passphrase in the keychain. For other OSes, use ssh -A or set ForwardAgent in ssh_config to enable forwarding. Then use ssh-agent/ssh-add. Show Sample Output


    3
    ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -p
    darkfader · 2010-07-19 12:53:35 0

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands

Check These Out

Create a backup of file being edited while using vi
At the start of a vi session and *before* saving any changes use ":!cp % %-" to make a backup of the current file being edited. example: vi /data/some/long/path/file :!cp% %- creates /data/some/long/path/file-

Display a Lissajous curve in text
Use Ruby's standard Curses module to display a Lissajous curve in the console. Replace the "0.2" with different numbers for different curves.

Kill google chrome process

Pipe text from shell to windows cut and paste buffer using PuTTY and XMing.
Set up X forwarding in PuTTY, with X display location set to :0.0 Launch PuTTY ssh session. Launch Xming. Make sure that display is set to :0.0 (this is default). $ echo "I'm going to paste this into WINDERS XP" | xsel -i will insert the string into the windows cut and paste buffer. Thanks to Dennis Williamson at stackoverflow.com for sharing...

Detect illegal access to kernel space, potentially useful for Meltdown detection
Based on capsule8 agent examples, not rigorously tested

Backticks are evil
This is a simple example of using proper command nesting using $() over ``. There are a number of advantages of $() over backticks. First, they can be easily nested without escapes: $ program1 $(program2 $(program3 $(program4))) versus $ program1 `program2 \`program3 \`program4\`\`` Second, they're easier to read, then trying to decipher the difference between the backtick and the singlequote: `'. The only drawback $() suffers from is lack of total portability. If your script must be portable to the archaic Bourne shell, or old versions of the C-shell or Korn shell, then backticks are appropriate, otherwise, we should all get into the habit of $(). Your future script maintainers will thank you for producing cleaner code.

save your current environment as a bunch of defaults

Router discovery

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"

Send youtube video to Kodi
Kodi needs the youtube plugin to be installed.

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: