Commands by lowjax (8)

  • Efficiently clear all Windows Event log entries from within a Cygwin terminal. Uses "cygstart" to launch a hidden "PowerShell" session passing a Powershell command to loop through and clear all Windows Event Log entries. Very useful for troubleshooting and debugging. The command should in theory elevate you session if needed. One liner is based on the PowerShell command: wevtutil el | foreach { wevtutil cl $_ }


    2
    cygstart --hide -wa runas powershell -WindowStyle Hidden -Command '"&{wevtutil el | foreach{wevtutil cl $_}}"'
    lowjax · 2015-02-15 22:56:20 31
  • Outputs Windows Services service name and display name using "sc query", pipes the output to "awk" for processing, then "column" for formatting. List All Services: sc query state= all | awk '/SERVICE_NAME/{printf"%s:",$2;getline;gsub(/DISP.*:\ /,"");printf"%s\n",$0}' | column -ts\: List Started Services: sc query | awk '/SERVICE_NAME/{printf"%s:",$2;getline;gsub(/DISP.*:\ /,"");printf"%s\n",$0}' | column -ts\: List Stopped Services: sc query state= inactive| awk '/SERVICE_NAME/{printf"%s:",$2;getline;gsub(/DISP.*:\ /,"");printf"%s\n",$0}' | column -ts\: Show Sample Output


    1
    sc query state= all | awk '/SERVICE_NAME/{printf"%s:",$2;getline;gsub(/DISP.*:\ /,"");printf"%s\n",$0}' | column -ts\:
    lowjax · 2015-02-15 22:35:10 12
  • Using "wmic get * /value" within any Cygwin shell will return lots of Win/Dos newline junk ie "^M$" at the end of found value line, two lines ("$" Unix newline) above, and three below. This makes storing and or evaluating wmic queries as variables a pain. The method i suggest strips the mentioned junk, only returns the value after "OSArchitecture=", and includes only one Unix style newline. Other methods using sed|awk|cut can only handle the output of wmic cleanly when piped or using multiple sed statements. wmic OS get OSArchitecture /value | sed 's/\r//g;s/^M$//;/^$/d;s/.*=//' making wmic OS get OSArchitecture /value | grep -Eo '[^=]*$' a much cleaner and slightly less costly alternative. Show Sample Output


    0
    wmic OS get OSArchitecture /value | grep -Eo '[^=]*$'
    lowjax · 2014-03-15 02:04:08 13
  • Pass the files path to finfo(), can be unix path, dos path, relative or absolute. The file is converted into an absolute nix path, then checked to see if it is in-fact a regular/existing file. Then converted into an absolute windows path and sent to "wmic". Then magic, you have windows file details right in the terminal. Uses: cygwin, cygpath, sed, and awk. Needs Windows WMI "wmic.exe" to be operational. The output is corrected for easy... finfo notepad.exe finfo "C:\windows\system32\notepad.exe" finfo /cygdrive/c/Windows/System32/notepad.exe finfo "/cygdrive/c/Program Files/notepad.exe" finfo ../notepad.exe Show Sample Output


    0
    finfo() { [[ -f "$(cygpath "$@")" ]] || { echo "bad-file";return 1;}; echo "$(wmic datafile where name=\""$(echo "$(cygpath -wa "$@")"|sed 's/\\/\\\\/g')"\" get /value)"|sed 's/\r//g;s/^M$//;/^$/d'|awk -F"=" '{print $1"=""\033[1m"$2"\033[0m"}';}
    lowjax · 2013-12-30 07:47:41 27
  • Download latest NVIDIA Geforce x64 Windows7-8 driver from Nvidia's website. Pulls the latest download version (which includes beta). This is the "English" version. The following command includes a 'sed' line to replace "english" with "international" if needed. You can also replace the starting subdomain with "eu." "uk." and others. Enjoy this one liner! 1 character under the max :) wget "us.download.nvidia.com$(wget -qO- "$(wget -qO- "nvidia.com/Download/processFind.aspx?psid=95&pfid=695&osid=19&lid=1&lang=en-us" | awk '/driverResults.aspx/ {print $4}' | cut -d "'" -f2 | head -n 1)" | awk '/url=/ {print $2}' | sed -e "s/english/international/" | cut -d '=' -f3 | cut -d '&' -f1)" Show Sample Output


    1
    wget "us.download.nvidia.com$(wget -qO- "$(wget -qO- "nvidia.com/Download/processFind.aspx?psid=95&pfid=695&osid=19&lid=1&lang=en-us"|awk '/driverResults.aspx/ {print $4}'|cut -d "'" -f2|head -n 1)"|awk '/url=/ {print $2}'|cut -d '=' -f3|cut -d '&' -f1)"
    lowjax · 2013-11-21 03:04:59 11
  • Usage: google "[search string]" Example: google "something im searching for" This will launch firefox and execute a google search in a new tab with the provided search string. You must provide the path to your Firefox binary if using cygwin to $ff or create an alias like follows: alias firefox='/cygdrive/c/Program Files (x86)/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe' Most Linux flavors with Firefox installed will use just ff="firefox" and even OSX.


    3
    google() { gg="https://www.google.com/search?q="; ff="firefox"; if [[ $1 ]]; then "$ff" -new-tab "$gg"$(echo ${1//[^a-zA-Z0-9]/+}); else echo 'Usage: google "[seach term]"'; fi }
    lowjax · 2013-08-01 22:21:53 18
  • Quickly remove the conflicting line (key) from current users known_hosts file when there is an SSH host conflict. Very nice when you get tired of writing out full commands. Ideally you would place this into your .bash_profile Usage: rhost [n] Example: rhost 33 (removes line 33 from ~/.ssh/known_hosts) Function assumes the $HOME exists, you could alternatively use "~/.ssh/known_hosts" Mac OSX likes a space for sed -i "$1" d


    -1
    rhost() { if [[ $1 =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then sed -i "$1"d ${HOME}/.ssh/known_hosts; else echo "rhost [n]"; fi }
    lowjax · 2013-08-01 21:10:34 13
  • This alternative either opens the current working directory by just issuing the open function in the commandline. Or you can specify what directory you would like to open. Example: open /cygdrive/c/Windows Usage: open [path] When no option is specified it will open the current working directory


    1
    open(){ if [[ -n "$1" ]];then explorer /e, $(cygpath -mal "$PWD/$1");else explorer /e, $(cygpath -mal "$PWD");fi }
    lowjax · 2013-07-31 01:15:14 12

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

list block level layout

awk date convert
Convert readable date/time with `date` command

Alias TAIL for automatic smart output
Run the alias command, then issue $ps aux | tail and resize your terminal window (putty/console/hyperterm/xterm/etc) then issue the same command and you'll understand. $ ${LINES:-`tput lines 2>/dev/null||echo -n 12`} Insructs the shell that if LINES is not set or null to use the output from `tput lines` ( ncurses based terminal access ) to get the number of lines in your terminal. But furthermore, in case that doesn't work either, it will default to using the default of 80. The default for TAIL is to output the last 10 lines, this alias changes the default to output the last x lines instead, where x is the number of lines currently displayed on your terminal - 7. The -7 is there so that the top line displayed is the command you ran that used TAIL, ie the prompt. Depending on whether your PS1 and/or PROMPT_COMMAND output more than 1 line (mine is 3) you will want to increase from -2. So with my prompt being the following, I need -7, or - 5 if I only want to display the commandline at the top. ( http://www.askapache.com/linux/bash-power-prompt.html ) 275MB/748MB [7995:7993 - 0:186] 06:26:49 Thu Apr 08 [askapache@n1-backbone5:/dev/pts/0 +1] ~ $ In most shells the LINES variable is created automatically at login and updated when the terminal is resized (28 linux, 23/20 others for SIGWINCH) to contain the number of vertical lines that can fit in your terminal window. Because the alias doesn't hard-code the current LINES but relys on the $LINES variable, this is a dynamic alias that will always work on a tty device.

generate a unique and secure password for every website that you login to
usage: sitepass MaStErPaSsWoRd example.com description: An admittedly excessive amount of hashing, but this will give you a pretty secure password, It also eliminates repeated characters and deletes itself from your command history. tr '!-~' 'P-~!-O' # this bit is rot47, kinda like rot13 but more nerdy rev # this avoids the first few bytes of gzip payload, and the magic bytes.

Route outbound SMTP connections through a addtional IP address rather than your primary

View all images
So you are in directory with loads of pictures laying around and you need to quickly scan through them all

Renaming a file without overwiting an existing file name
Sometimes in a hurry you may move or copy a file using an already existent file name. If you aliased the cp and mv command with the -i option you are prompted for a confirmation before overwriting but if your aliases aren't there you will loose the target file! The -b option will force the mv command to check if the destination file already exists and if it is already there a backup copy with an ending ~ is created.

Extract the MBR ID of a device
Useful when you want to know the mbrid of a device - for the purpose of making it bootable. Certain hybridiso distros, for eg the OpenSUSE live ISO uses the mbrid to find the live media. Use this command to find out the mbrid of your USB drive and then edit the /grub/mbrid file to match it.

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

Find files that were modified by a given command
Traces the system calls of a program. See http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/05/strace-very-powerful-troubleshooting.html for more information.


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: