Commands using cat (514)


  • 2
    cat /etc/passwd | column -nts:
    kev · 2011-08-31 02:08:20 6
  • This command shows a sorted list of the IP addresses from which there have been authentication errors via SSH (possible script kiddies trying to gain access to your server), it eliminates duplicates so it's easier to read, but you can remove the "uniq" command at the end, or even do a "uniq -c" to have a count of how many times each IP address shows in the log (the path to the log may vary from system to system) Show Sample Output


    2
    cat /var/log/auth.log | grep -i "pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure;" | cut -d' ' -f14,15 | cut -d= -f2 | sort | uniq
    JohnQUnknown · 2011-10-25 04:58:09 8
  • - excel date compatible with a separate hour field - added a fixed 1 for easier request counter aggregation - split URL in directory, filename, fileext, query - used with tomcat valve with response bytes replaced by elapsed time Show Sample Output


    2
    #(see sample) $ cat x | perl -pe 'BEGIN{ print "TIME;...\n"; } s!(\S+) - (\S+) - \[(\d\d)/(\S\S\S)/(\S+):(\d\d):(\d\d:\d\d) \S+\] "(\S+) (.*/)(\S+)(?:\.([^?]*)(\?\S*)?) HTTP/\S+" (\d+) (\S+)!$3-$4-$5 $6:$7;$6;$2;$1;$8;$13;1;$14;$11;$10;$9;$12;!' > x.csv
    hute37 · 2012-02-10 16:58:50 3
  • Let's take a rest. How about watch a horror? The Shining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(film) Show Sample Output


    2
    yes "" | cat -n | awk '{print "S=`echo All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. | cut -c",($1 - 1) % 43 + 1 "`;echo -n \"$S\";seq 500000 > /dev/null"}'| bash
    nati · 2012-04-08 07:53:43 26
  • merge pdf from pg_0001.pdf until pg_0009.pdf into MyFile.pdf


    2
    pdftk pg_000{1..9}.pdf cat output MyFile.pdf
    eastwind · 2012-08-27 08:57:00 4
  • Alternative for machines without ssh-copy-id


    2
    cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@host 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'
    eneko · 2012-12-08 17:00:47 15
  • This example will close the pipe after transferring 100MB at a speed of 3MB per second.


    2
    cat /dev/zero | pv -L 3m -Ss 100m > /dev/null
    bugmenot · 2012-12-15 10:17:52 5
  • PRoot is a user-space implementation of chroot, mount --bind, and binfmt_misc. This means that users don't need any privileges or setup to do things like using an arbitrary directory as the new root filesystem, making files accessible somewhere else in the filesystem hierarchy, or executing programs built for another CPU architecture transparently through QEMU user-mode. Also, developers can use PRoot as a generic Linux process instrumentation engine thanks to its extension mechanism, see CARE for an example. Technically PRoot relies on ptrace, an unprivileged system-call available in every Linux kernel. https://github.com/cedric-vincent/PRoot Show Sample Output


    2
    proot -r /media/user/ubuntu12.10/ cat /etc/motd
    totti · 2014-01-21 07:50:22 15
  • Feel free to put this in your ~/.profile: random(){ cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc $1 | head -c $2; echo; } Then use it to generate passwords: random [:alnum:] 16 Or DNA sequences: random ACGT 256


    2
    cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc a-zA-Z0-9 | head -c 16; echo
    yakovlev · 2014-02-05 15:04:07 6
  • Merge Multiple PDFs In Alphabetical Order


    2
    pdftk *.pdf cat output merged.pdf
    o0110o · 2014-03-02 01:53:37 7

  • 2
    cat /var/log/mosquitto/mosquitto.log | awk -F : '{"date -d @"$1 |& getline D; print D, $0}'
    ifebi · 2019-06-09 07:35:25 39
  • With this command you can convert a tab separate file (TSV) into a JSON file with jq. For example, this input.tsv i-0b9adca882e5e6326 172.16.0.188 i-088dd69e5c3624888 172.16.0.102 i-0e70eac180537d4aa 172.16.0.85 will produce the showed output. Show Sample Output


    2
    cat input.tsv | jq --raw-input --slurp 'split("\n") | map(split("\t")) | .[0:-1] | map( { "id": .[0], "ip": .[1] } )'
    nordri · 2019-10-01 10:52:35 230
  • Using the csv tool `miller` you can transform a csv file into a json array of objects, where the properties are the values of the csv header line and the values are the values of the subsequent lines. Show Sample Output


    2
    mlr --c2j --jlistwrap cat file.csv
    pepa65 · 2019-12-06 07:16:58 107
  • Useful for containers and environments where you need to know if a port is currently in listen mode but you have not easy way or privileges to install net-tools like netstat or ss. "0A" is the code for listen state. The IP hex is reverse order and all in hex format. Show Sample Output


    2
    cat /proc/net/tcp | grep " 0A " | sed 's/^[^:]*: \(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\):\(....\).*/echo $((0x\4)).$((0x\3)).$((0x\2)).$((0x\1)):$((0x\5))/g' | bash
    glaudiston · 2020-05-23 12:36:21 152

  • 1
    cat /proc/cpuinfo
    kumara · 2009-02-05 12:46:50 38
  • Takes input from the connected terminal and dumps it to the specified file. Stop writing and close file with control + D or the end of line character. Useful for copying+pasting large blobs of text over SSH to a new machine. Show Sample Output


    1
    cat /dev/tty > FILE
    Jo · 2009-02-25 01:43:47 11

  • 1
    $ cat /etc/*-release
    unixmonkey1855 · 2009-02-26 21:04:43 8
  • Displays the duplicated lines in a file and their occuring frequency.


    1
    cat file.txt | sort | uniq -dc
    Vadi · 2009-03-21 18:15:14 7
  • xml with verbose commenting can be difficult to read. remove comments from xml.


    1
    cat <filename> | perl -e '$/ = ""; $_ = <>; s/<!--.*?-->//gs; print;'
    unixx · 2009-04-15 20:29:11 37
  • replace "/usr/src/linux/kernel/signal.c" with any file you want and listen to its output ! :P you can also replace "cat" with "echo" or anything you can come up with have fun :-}


    1
    while true; do cat /usr/src/linux/kernel/signal.c > /dev/dsp; done
    JesusSuperstar · 2009-05-16 14:44:57 6
  • The variable WIRELESSINTERFACE indicates your wireless interface


    1
    while [ i != 0 ]; do sleep 1 | dialog --clear --gauge "Quality: " 0 0 $(cat /proc/net/wireless | grep $WIRELESSINTERFACE | awk '{print $3}' | tr -d "."); done
    ncaio · 2009-05-31 16:09:23 12
  • Ever compress a file for the web by replacing all newline characters with nothing so it makes one nice big blob? It is a great idea, however what about when you want to edit that file? ...Serious pain in the butt. I ran into this today in that my only copy of a CSS file was "compressed" with no newlines. I whipped this up and it converted back into nice human readable CSS :-) It could be nicer, but it does the job.


    1
    cat somefile.css | awk '{gsub(/{|}|;/,"&\n"); print}' >> uncompressed.css
    lrvick · 2009-06-02 15:51:51 37
  • command | my_irc Pipe whatever you want to this function, it will, if everything goes well, be redirected to a channel or a user on an IRC server. Please note that : - I am not responsible of flood excesses you might provoke. - that function does not reply to PINGs from the server. That's the reason why I first write in a temporary file. Indeed, I don't want to wait for inputs while being connected to the server. However, according to the configuration of the server and the length of your file, you may timeout before finishing. - Concerning the server, the variable content must be on the form "irc.server.org 6667" (or any other port). If you want to make some tests, you can also create a fake IRC server on "localhost 55555" by using netcat -l -p 55555 - Concerning the target, you can choose a channel (beginning with a '#' like "#chan") or a user (like "user") - The other variables have obvious names. Show Sample Output


    1
    function my_irc { tmp=`mktemp`; cat > $tmp; { echo -e "USER $username x x :$ircname\nNICK $nick\nJOIN $target"; while read line; do echo -e "PRIVMSG $target :$line"; done < $tmp; } | nc $server > /dev/null ; rm $tmp; }
    Josay · 2009-06-11 22:14:48 7
  • This just combines multiple mp3's into one mp3 file. Basically it is a easy join for mp3's


    1
    cat 1.mp3 2.mp3 > combined.mp3
    scottix · 2009-07-27 18:39:44 9
  • use find to grep all .c files from the target directory, cat them into one stream, then piped to wc to count the lines Show Sample Output


    1
    find . -type f -name "*.c" -exec cat {} \; | wc -l
    foremire · 2009-07-30 10:06:51 14
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Get last sleep time on a Mac
Similarly for last wake time: $ sysctl -a | grep waketime

Open Remote Desktop (RDP) from command line having a custom screen size
This example uses xfreerdp, which builds upon the development of rdesktop. This example usage will also send you the remote machine's sound.

one-line log format for svn
the output of svn log is annoying to grep, since it spreads the useful info over multiple lines. This compacts the output down to one line so eg you can grep for a comment and see the rev, date & committer straight away. Updated: MUCH shorter, easier to remember. Now it just replaces newlines with spaces, except on '---' lines.

faster version of ls *
I know its not much but is very useful in time consuming scripts (cron, rc.d, etc).

list block devices
Shows all block devices in a tree with descruptions of what they are.

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" }

Record a screencast and convert it to an mpeg
Grab X11 input and create an MPEG at 25 fps with the resolution 800x600

Lists unambigously names of all xml elements used in files in current directory
This set of commands was very convenient for me when I was preparing some xml files for typesetting a book. I wanted to check what styles I had to prepare but coudn't remember all tags that I used. This one saved me from error-prone browsing of all my files. It should be also useful if one tries to process xml files with xsl, when using own xml application.

Find files that have been modified on your system in the past 60 minutes
Useful mainly for debugging or troubleshooting an application or system, such as X11, Apache, Bind, DHCP and others. Another useful switch that can be combined with -mmin, -mtime and so forth is -daystart. For example, to find files that were modified in the /etc directory only yesterday: $ sudo find /etc -daystart -mtime 1 -type f

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"


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