Commands by ilyxa (2)

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Copy structure
Copies a dir structure without the files in it.

Limit the transfer rate and size of data over a pipe
This example will close the pipe after transferring 100MB at a speed of 3MB per second.

Set laptop display brightness
Run as root. Path may vary depending on laptop model and video card (this was tested on an Acer laptop with ATI HD3200 video). $ cat /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness to discover the possible values for your display.

clone an USB stick using dd + see its process
The following command will clone usb stick inside /dev/sdc to /dev/sdd Double check you got the correct usb sticks (origional-clone)with fdisk -l.

Create a new file

Monitor memory fine-grained usage (e.g. firefox)
Sometimes top/htop don't give the fine-grained detail on memory usage you might need. Sum up the exact memory types you want

Erase CD RW

Quick calculator at the terminal
Useful for quick calculations at the command line. $math_expr is any arithmetic expression (see sample output): 4.5*16+3^2 s(3.1415926/2) More options in the bc man page.

Adhoc tar backup
Creates a quick backup with tar to a remote host over ssh.

Inverted cowsay
It's quite fun to invert text using "flip.pl" (ref: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2078323 ). Slightly more challenging is to flip a whole "cowsay". :-)

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