Commands using watch sorted by votes

Commands using watch (155)

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Keep track of diff progress

You're running a program that reads LOTS of files and takes a long time. But it doesn't tell you about its progress. First, run a command in the background, e.g. find /usr/share/doc -type f -exec cat {} + > output_file.txt Then run the watch command. "watch -d" highlights the changes as they happen In bash: $! is the process id (pid) of the last command run in the background. You can change this to $(pidof my_command) to watch something in particular. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Every 2.0s: ls -l /proc/4958/fd                                                                                                                   Fri Jan 31 23:44:07 2014

total 0
lrwx------. 1 flatcap flatcap 64 Jan 31 23:43 0 -> /dev/pts/3
l-wx------. 1 flatcap flatcap 64 Jan 31 23:43 1 -> /home/flatcap/output_file.txt
lrwx------. 1 flatcap flatcap 64 Jan 31 23:43 2 -> /dev/pts/3
lr-x------. 1 flatcap flatcap 64 Jan 31 23:43 3 -> /usr/share/doc/
```
1

watch -d "ls -l /proc/$!/fd"

flatcap · 2014-01-31 23:51:17 8
World Cup Live Score

World Cup Live Score of the ongoing match. Alternative to have the live score with the match statistics: watch -n10 --no-title "w3m http://www.livescore.com/ |awk '/live [0-9H]+[^ ]/,/red cards/'" Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
live 82'        Brazil                  2 - 1         Croatia
```
1

watch -n10 --no-title "w3m http://www.livescore.com/ |egrep 'live [0-9H]+[^ ]'"

boustrophedon757 · 2014-06-12 21:44:26 6
Monitor iptables in realtime
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

watch -n1 iptables -vnL

Creek · 2014-07-14 21:06:50 9
Periodic Display of Fan Speed with Change Highlights

Uses the lm-sensors package in Linux to display fan speed. Grep RPM is used to discover lines containing the text RPM, and sed is used to edit out everything but the RPM number. The watch utility is used to update the display every 10 seconds and -d highlights any changes from the previous value. The eval function of Bash is used to execute the command enclosed in the ".." string. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
1182
0
0
1220
1104
0
0
0
```
1

watch -n 10 -d eval "sensors | grep RPM | sed -e 's/.*: *//;s/ RPM.*//'"

omap7777 · 2015-04-07 14:28:32 9
Watch active calls on an Asterisk PBX
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

watch "asterisk -vvvvvrx 'core show channels verbose'"

qboney · 2016-01-18 15:16:16 10
Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

watch -n 0,2 lsusb

kot9pko · 2016-03-11 20:00:48 108
Watch how many tcp connections there are per state every two seconds.

slighty shorter
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

watch -c "netstat -nt | awk 'FNR > 3 {print \$6}' | sort | uniq -c"

sreimann · 2018-11-22 12:13:43 348
monitor my process group tree
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

watch "ps --forest -o pid=PID,tty=TTY,stat=STAT,time=TIME,pcpu=CPU,cmd=CMD -g $(ps -o sid= -p $(pgrep -f "<my_process_name>"))"

tomash · 2019-04-26 11:48:09 38

Show whats going on restoring files from a spectrum protect backup

spectrum protect's dsmc command shows file names and total amount of restore. This command shows which files are actually open and their siz in GB and highlights the change to the previous output Show Sample Output

watch -n60 -d 'lsof -w /filesysname|grep -v NAME|awk '\''{$7=int($7/1073741824) " GB"; print $7, $9}'\'''

BodoGreif · 2019-09-02 11:49:20 94

Monitor memory without top or htop

It repeats a command, such as free, every five seconds and highlights the differences
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

watch -n 5 -d '/bin/free -m'

mikhail · 2021-12-22 22:28:59 234
what the free memory grow or shink
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -d "free -mt"

srineer · 2009-02-18 14:46:54 8
How to know if your NIC receive link

verifry if link detected or no and speed of network. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
require: ethtool
```
0

watch ethtool eth0

israel · 2009-03-24 20:03:25 6
Simple countdown from a given date

Might be more useful if you were able to print it in Days HH:MM:SS format as: perl -e '@p=gmtime(234234);printf("%d Days %02d:%02d:%02ds\n",@p[7,2,1,0]);' But I'm not exactly sure how to replace the 234234 with the output of the countdown time. (Having some problems with nested quoting/command substitution). Help would be appreciated :)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch --no-title -d -n 1 'echo `date -d "next Thursday" +%s` "-" `date +%s` | bc -l'

jnash · 2009-03-29 06:53:09 9
Watch changeable interrupts continuously
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -n1 'cat /proc/interrupts

theIndianMaiden · 2009-08-19 11:10:55 3
How to watch files

To highlight the difference between screen updates
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -d 'ls -l'

0disse0 · 2009-09-03 20:12:36 3
Do you really believe on Battery Remaining Time? Confirm it from time to time!

Fully recharge your computer battery and start this script. It will create or clean the file named battery.txt, print a start on it and every minute it will append a time stamp to it. Batteries last few hours, and each hour will have 60 lines of time stamping. Really good for assuring the system was tested in real life with no surprises. The last time stamp inside the battery.txt file is of interest. It is the time the computer went off, as the battery was dead! Turn on your computer after that, on AC power of course, and open battery.txt. Read the first and last time stamps and now you really know if you can trust your computer sensors. If you want a simple line of text inside the battery.txt file, use this: watch -n 60 'date > battery.txt' The time of death will be printed inside Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
I made a 10s interval to printout quicky this output. For pratical purposes and less file size, 60s interval sounds enought. Here's the contents of battery.txt:

start  
Dom Out 18 03:36:33 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:36:43 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:36:53 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:37:03 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:37:13 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:37:23 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:37:33 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:37:43 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:37:53 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:38:03 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:38:13 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:38:23 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:38:33 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:38:44 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:38:54 BRST 2009
Dom Out 18 03:39:04 BRST 2009

# the last time stamp inside the battery.txt file is of interest. It is the time the computer went off, as the battery was dead! 
```
0

echo start > battery.txt; watch -n 60 'date >> battery.txt'

m33600 · 2009-10-18 07:00:26 4
StopWatch, OnScreen version, blinking shily on all desktops

Variation of the theme, this one blinks in low profile on top level of X, ie, it is visible, indeed small. Try changing fonts and sizes of osd_cat
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

export I=$(date +%s); watch -t -n 1 'T=$(date +%s);E=$(($T-$I));hours=$((E / 3600)) ; seconds=$((E % 3600)) ; minutes=$((seconds / 60)) ; seconds=$((seconds % 60)) ; echo $(printf "%02d:%02d:%02d" $hours $minutes $seconds) | osd_cat -o 20 -d 1 -p bottom'

m33600 · 2009-10-23 07:47:11 3
StopWatch, toilet version, amazing format inside terminal

already described on the other two versions, this one uses ascii characters on game style to display elapsed time. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
  _ \    _ \     ___ \  ___ /      |  |  ___|
 |   |  |   | _)    ) |   _ \  _)  |  |  __ \
 |   |  |   |      __/     ) |    ___ __|  ) |
\___/  \___/  _) _____| ____/  _)    _| ____/
```
0

export I=$(date +%s); watch -t -n 1 'T=$(date +%s);E=$(($T-$I));hours=$((E / 3600)) ; seconds=$((E % 3600)) ; minutes=$((seconds / 60)) ; seconds=$((seconds % 60)) ; echo $(printf "%02d:%02d:%02d" $hours $minutes $seconds) | toilet -f shadow'

m33600 · 2009-10-23 07:56:30 10
Watch those evil Red Hat states code D Uninterruptible sleep (usually IO).

On my cluster a D in the states column means it is time to reboot the server.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -n 1 "ps aux | sed -n 's/ D /&/p'"

lunarblu · 2009-12-03 18:22:44 3
Show directory sizes, refreshing every 2s

This command shows the size of directories below here, refreshing every 2s. It will also track directories created after running the command (that what the find bit does). Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
Every 2s: find -type d -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 |xargs du -csh                     Wed May 19 14:11:09 2010

4.9M    ./centos44
7.2M    ./centos52
7.8M    ./centos53
20K     ./pxelinux.cfg
5.6M    ./rhel47
7.2M    ./rhel52
110M    ./srcd032
142M    total
```
0

watch 'find -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d |xargs du -csh'

shadycraig · 2010-05-19 13:13:57 6
Console clock

Clock will appear in the top-right corner
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -n 1 :

daniele · 2011-02-16 13:38:37 13
Watch netstat output every 2 seconds
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -n 2 netstat -antu

wilbercarmona · 2011-06-02 23:27:33 4
Monitoring a port connections
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -n1 'netstat -tn | grep -P :22'

danslinky · 2011-09-28 14:47:35 31
Watching directories
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

watch -n1 "ls -p | grep '/$'"

dbykov · 2011-10-26 09:21:27 6

Realtime clock cowsay

You need to have figlet(for font) and cowsay installed. Just copy n paste this command and you can see..... Show Sample Output

watch -tn1 'figlet -f slant `date +%T` | cowsay -n -f telebears'

namakukingkong · 2011-11-25 14:35:01 50

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Label EXT2/EXT3 File System

Archive a directory with datestamp on filename

A useful bash function: gztardir() { if [ $# -ne 1 ] ; then echo "incorrect arguments: should be gztardir " else tar zcvf "${1%/}-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M).tar.gz" "$1" fi }

Slow down IO heavy process

Some IO intensive process make the system unresponsive. This function periodically starts/stops a process, which hopefully releases some resources for other activities. This function is useful when ionice is not available

Changing the terminal title to the last shell command

You can set the previous bash command as the terminal title by this command. Explanation: -trap assigns a command to execute at a given bash signal. -in the $BASH_COMMAND you find the last command -you can set the terminal title with the escape sequence: \e]0;this is the title\007 -to let the echo care about the backslashes give the -e to it Since trap is a built in bash command you find more informatin in 'man bash'for more Source: http://www.davidpashley.com/articles/xterm-titles-with-bash.html

exit without saving history

this exits bash without saving the history. unlike explicitly disabling the history in some way, this works anywhere, and it works if you decide *after* issuing the command you don't want logged, that you don't want it logged ... $$ ( or ${$} ) is the pid of the current bash instance this also works perfectly in shells that don't have $$ if you do something like $ kill -9 `readlink /proc/self`

Step#2 Create a copy of the bootload and partition table!

List files by quoting or escaping special characters.

Tested and works on Linux.

Add temporary swap space

In addition to a swap partition, Linux can also use a swap file. Some programs, like g++, can use huge amounts of virtual memory, requiring the temporary creation of extra space.

Batch rename extension of all files in a folder, in the example from .txt to .md

Batch rename extension of all files in a folder, in the example from .txt to .md mmv most likely must be installed, but is very powerfull when you want to move/copy/append/link multiple files by wildcard patterns.

Find usb device in realtime

Using this command you can track a moment when usb device was attached.

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Commands using watch (155)

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