Commands using ps (300)

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Get information about memory modules
To take information about the characteristics of the installed memory modules.

Show a Package Version on Debian based distribution
if you don't want to show string "version?, then use awk or cut filter it: apt-cache show pkgname | grep -i "version:" | awk '{ print $2 }' we can also use regex to search many packages and show their versions: apt-cache search pkgregex | grep -i "version:"

Big Countdown Clock in seconds
Requires figlet. Other than that, this should be portable enough across all the Bourne-compatible shells (sh, bash, ksh, zsh, etc). Produces a massive number using figlet that counts down the number of seconds for any given minute interval. For example, here's a 4-minute timer: $ i=$((4*60)); while [ $i -gt 0 ]; do clear; echo $i | figlet; sleep 1; i=$(($i-1)); done; And a 1-minute timer: $ i=$((1*60)); while [ $i -gt 0 ]; do clear; echo $i | figlet; sleep 1; i=$(($i-1)); done;

drop first column of output by piping to this

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"

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.

ffmpeg command that transcodes a MythTV recording for Google Nexus One mobile phone
This command will transcode a MythTV recording. The target device is a Google Nexus One mobile phone. My recordings are from a HDHomerun with Over The Air content. Plays back nicely on the N1.

easily find megabyte eating files or directories

commandline dictionary
Note: 1) Replace 'wonder' with any word you looking the meaning for in the above example 2) Need to install these packages: wordnet & wordnet-base (latter should be automatically installed because of dependency) 3) Combined size of packages is about 30MB on my old ubuntu system (I find it worth it)

Check how far along (in %) your program is in a file
Imagine you've started a long-running process that involves piping data, but you forgot to add the progress-bar option to a command. e.g. $ xz -dc bigdata.xz | complicated-processing-program > summary . This command uses lsof to see how much data xz has read from the file. $ lsof -o0 -o -Fo FILENAME Display offsets (-o), in decimal (-o0), in parseable form (-Fo) This will output something like: . p12607 f3 o0t45187072 . Process id (p), File Descriptor (f), Offset (o) . We stat the file to get its size $ stat -c %s FILENAME . Then we plug the values into awk. Split the line at the letter t: -Ft Define a variable for the file's size: -s=$(stat...) Only work on the offset line: /^o/ . Note this command was tested using the Linux version of lsof. Because it uses lsof's batch option (-F) it may be portable. . Thanks to @unhammer for the brilliant idea.


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