A nice way to use the console in full screen without forget the current time. you can too add other infos like cpu and mem use. Show Sample Output

This command takes a snapshot of the open files for a PID 1234 then waits 10 seconds and takes another snapshot of the same PID, it then displays the difference between each snapshot to give you an insight into what the application is doing.

I often use it to find recently added ou removed device, or using find in /dev, or anything similar. Just run the command, plug the device, and wait to see him and only him Show Sample Output

doesn't require "at", change the "2h" to whatever you want... (deafult unit for sleep is seconds)

Seen here: http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/terminal_colours/

This will turn it in an infinite loop and also shows random words from a file, so it won't be the same each time and also not just a number.

Just a simple way without the need of additional tools. Of course, replace eth0 with your IF. Show Sample Output

Displays an animated hourglass for x amount of seconds Show Sample Output

just for fun

pings a server once per second, and beeps when the server is unreachable. Basically the opposite of: ping -a server-or-ip.com which would beep when a server IS reachable. You could also substitute beep with any command, which makes this a powerful alternative to ping -a: while true; do [ "$(ping -c1W1w1 server-or-ip.com 2>/dev/null | awk '/received/ {print $4}')" = 1 ] && date || echo 'server is down!'; sleep 1; done which would output the date and time every sec until the ping failed, in which case it would echo. Notes: Requires beep package. May need to run as root (beep uses the system speaker) Tested on Ubuntu which doesn't have beep out of the box... sudo apt-get install beep

Very useful in shell scripts because you can run a task nicely in the background using job-control and output progress until it completes. Here's an example of how I use it in backup scripts to run gpg in the background to encrypt an archive file (which I create in this same way). $! is the process ID of the last run command, which is saved here as the variable PI, then sleeper is called with the process id of the gpg task (PI), and sleeper is also specified to output : instead of the default . every 3 seconds instead of the default 1. So a shorter version would be sleeper $!; The wait is also used here, though it may not be needed on your system. echo ">>> ENCRYPTING SQL BACKUP" gpg --output archive.tgz.asc --encrypt archive.tgz 1>/dev/null & PI=$!; sleeper $PI ":" 3; wait $PI && rm archive.tgz &>/dev/null Previously to get around the $! not always being available, I would instead check for the existance of the process ID by checking if the directory /proc/$PID existed, but not everyone uses proc anymore. That version is currently the one at http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html but I plan on upgrading to this new version soon. Show Sample Output

I'd prefer this one, you have to install espeak to get this running

Dialog's gauge widget accepts progress updates on stdin. This version runs dialog once and updates it every second. There's no need to use timeout which causes screen flicker since it restarts dialog for each update.

The above code is just an example of printing on the same line, hit Ctrl + C to stop When using echo -ne "something\r", echo will: - print "something" - dont print a new line (-n) - interpret \r as carriage return, going back to the start of the line (-e) Remember to print some white spaces after the output if your command will print lines of different sizes, mainly if one line will be smaller than the previous Edit from reading comments: You can achieve the same effect using printf (more standardized than echo): while true; do printf "%-80s\r" "$(date)"; sleep 1; done

Simple countdown clock that should be quite portable across any Bourne-compatible shell. I used to teach for a living, and I would run this code when it was time for a break. Usually, I would set "MIN" to 15 for a 15-minute break. The computer would be connected to a projector, so this would be projected on screen, front and center, for all to see. Show Sample Output

Displays a scrolling banner which loops until you hit Ctrl-C to terminate it. Make sure you finish your banner message with a space so it will loop nicely.

Countdown clock - Counts down from $MIN minutes to zero. I let the date command do the maths. This version doesn't use seq. Show Sample Output

Pump up the chatter, run this script on a regular basis to listen to your twitter timeline. This is a rough first cut using several cli clips I have spotted around. There is no facility to not read those things already read to you. This could also easily be put in a loop for timed onslaught from the chatterverse, though I think it might violate several pointsof the Geneva Convention UPDATE - added a loop, only reads the first 6 twits, and does this every 5 mins. Show Sample Output

Rainbow, instead of greys

This will log your internet download speed. You can run gnuplot -persist <(echo "plot 'bps' with lines") to get a graph of it.

Not as taxing on the CPU.

Console screensaver.