Commands using tail sorted by votes

Commands using tail (292)

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last mounted device
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

mount |tail -1 | less -p "/dev/[^ ]*"

totti · 2011-08-28 16:29:42 5
find the 10 largest directories

http://superuser.com/questions/9847/linux-utility-for-finding-the-largest-files-directories
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-3

find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 du -s | sort -n | tail -10 | cut -f2 | xargs -I{} du -sh {} | sort -rn

noah · 2013-06-26 02:08:21 7
Pick a random line from a file

prints a random line
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

head -$(($RANDOM % $(wc -l < file.txt) +1 )) file.txt | tail -1

sharfah · 2009-07-23 12:00:49 3
Get Futurama quotations from slashdot.org servers
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

echo -e "HEAD / HTTP/1.1\nHost: slashdot.org\n\n" | nc slashdot.org 80 | head -n5 | tail -1 | cut -f2 -d-

beerbrain · 2009-07-31 06:49:52 3
Get your external IP address
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

echo -e "GET /automation/n09230945.asp HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: whatismyip.com\r\n" | nc whatismyip.com 80 | tail -n1

Marko · 2009-11-03 15:18:20 14
Show the single most recently modified file in a directory

Takes a directory name as an argument (defaults to current directory if no arguments are given). Prints the newest file in the directory. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ ls -lart /tmp | tail -3
-rw-rw-rw-  1 bchittenden bchittenden    25919 Oct 17 10:37 image.txt
drwx------  2 bchittenden bchittenden     4096 Oct 17 11:30 orbit-bchittenden
drwxrwxrwt 22 root        root           12288 Oct 17 11:30 .

$ lastfile /tmp
/tmp/image.txt
```
-4

lastfile () { find ${1:-.} -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf "%T+ %p\n" | sort -n | tail -n1 | sed 's/[^[:space:]]\+ //'; }

bartonski · 2011-10-17 16:08:02 3
colorize and continuously tail two files

(follow with next command) tail -f from.log | colorize.pl +l20:".*" & Use with http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/10031/intercept-monitor-and-manipulate-a-tcp-connection. - can use to view output of tees that send traffic to files - output will be interwoven with red for sent traffic and green for received. get colorize.pl from http://www.flinkmann.de/71-1-Colorizepl.html
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

tail -f to.log | colorize.pl +l10:".*" &

peter4512 · 2012-01-20 21:46:47 6
Poll and print end of lates modified file

Watches for file modifications in the current directory and tails the file.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-4

watch 'ls -tr1 | tail -n1 | xargs tail'

batandwa · 2013-05-09 11:37:59 10
Print just line 4 from a textfile
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-5

tail -n +4 | head -n 1

unixmonkey10745 · 2010-07-09 12:10:03 27
show space used by postgres

this command shows the space used in postgres directory. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
4	./pg_twophase
5364	./base/17868
5268	./base/11563
5268	./base/1
114288	./base/11564
4	./base/pgsql_tmp
5736	./base/19846
135932	./base
268584	.
268584	total
```
-5

while (( 1==1 )); do du -c . >> output.log; sleep 2; done; tail -f output.log

aceiro · 2010-07-12 17:23:45 4
Go to the Nth line of file

Silly approach, but easy to remember... Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
tcpmux		1/tcp				# TCP port service multiplexer
```
-5

head -n 13 /etc/services | tail -n 1

muonIT · 2011-09-15 19:39:49 13
To print a specific line from a file

Tail is much faster than sed, awk because it doesn't check for regular expressions. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ tail -n +5 /var/log/dmesg | head -n 1
[    0.000000] KERNEL supported cpus:
```
-5

tail -n +<N> <file> | head -n 1

qweqq · 2011-09-30 08:30:30 6
Check syntax of cron files (by restarting the service and checking the logs)

Debian-specific but very useful as cron files are prone to very subtle gotchas
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-7

/etc/init.d/cron restart && tail -100 /var/log/syslog

root · 2010-05-05 09:56:30 3
Print just line 4 from a textfile

tail -n X | head -n 1 prints a specific line, where X is the line number
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-7

tail -n 4 | head -n 1

puddy · 2010-07-08 19:50:06 3
Easily find an old command you run

I know how hard it is to find an old command running through all the files because you couldn't remember for your life what it was. Heres the solution!! Grep the history for it. depending on how old the command you can head or tail or if you wanted to search all because you cannot think how long ago it was then miss out the middle part of the command. This is a very easy and effective way to find that command you are looking for.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-9

cat .bash_history | tail -100 | grep {command}

techie · 2013-04-10 10:40:52 8
get you public ip address
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-11

/usr/bin/lynx -dump http://www.netins.net/dialup/tools/my_ip.shtml | grep -A2 "Your current IP Address is:" | tail -n1 | tr -d ' '|sed '/^$/d'| sed 's/^ *//g'

juanmi · 2010-12-20 15:29:53 4
Look at logs startring at EOF

In cases when the user is following a log file that rotates then it is advisable to use the -F option as it keeps following the log even when it is recreated, renamed, or removed as part of log rotation. To interrupt tail while it is monitoring, break-in with Ctrl+C.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
-12

tail -f <file>

adrruiz · 2015-06-01 16:55:00 14
‹ First < 10 11 12

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Find usb device

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

burn backed up xbox 360 games

burn all those sweet iso's from the command line. replace speed=2 with more if your media supports it and you're brave!

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"

Remove BOM (Byte Order Mark) from text file

Takes file (text.txt), removes BOM from it, and outputs the result to a new file (newFile.txt). BOM is "Byte Order Mark" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark]), an invisible, non-breaking, zero-length character. In other words, if you see a DIFF with "" at the beginning, you've got a byte order mark, which can't be removed without this command or a hex editor. It can appear for a number of reasons, such as getting copied to/from a UNIX filesystem...

encode image to base64 and copy to clipboard

I use it for embedding images in CSS for Stylish, the Firefox addon. Thought it might be useful to others.

Annotate tail -f with timestamps

Uses the command ts in order to add a timestamp on each line. This command is provided in the moreutils package on Debian, and you may need libtime-duration-perl to be able to format the date.

find out which directories in /home have the most files currently open

Display the inodes number of /

Recompress all files in current directory from gzip to bzip2

Find all .gz files and recompress them to bz2 on the fly. No temp files. edit: forgot the double quotes! jeez!

A simple way to securely use passwords on the command line or in scripts

In this example, where the users gpg keyring has a password, the user will be interactively prompted for the keyring password. If the keyring has no password, same as above, sans the prompt. Suitable for cron jobs. ~/.gnupg/passwd/http-auth.gpg is the encrypted http auth password, for this particular wget use case. This approach has many use cases. example bash functions: function http_auth_pass() { gpg2 --decrypt ~/.gnupg/passwd/http-auth.gpg 2>/dev/null; } function decrypt_pass() { gpg2 --decrypt ~/.gnupg/passwd/"$1" 2>/dev/null; }

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Commands using tail (292)

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