Commands using whatis (8)

  • Do some learning...

    no loop, only one call of grep, scrollable ("less is more", more or less...)


    12
    ls /usr/bin | xargs whatis | grep -v nothing | less
    michelsberg · 2010-01-26 12:59:47 1
  • Do some learning...

    compgen -c finds everything in your path. Show Sample Output


    8
    whatis $(compgen -c) 2>/dev/null | less
    bashrc · 2013-02-01 00:03:33 0
  • Do some learning...


    7
    for i in $(ls /usr/bin); do whatis $i | grep -v nothing; done | more
    Abiden · 2010-01-26 06:15:54 0
  • Show a Command's Short Description

    The whatis command displays a short description for the command you list on the command line. It is useful to quickly learn what a command does Show Sample Output


    5
    whatis [command-name]
    haivu · 2009-04-02 17:30:13 0
  • for newbies, how to get one line info about all /bin programs

    Get simple description on each file from /bin dir, in list form, usefull for newbies. Show Sample Output


    4
    ls -1 /bin | xargs -l1 whatis 2>/dev/null | grep -v "nothing appropriate"
    stinger · 2009-02-17 14:46:01 0
  • Do some learning...

    Just realized how needless the 'ls' has been... This version is also multilingual, since there is no need to grep for a special key word ("nothing"/"nichts"/"rien"/"nada"...). And it makes use of all the available horizontal space. Show Sample Output


    3
    whatis /usr/bin/* 2> /dev/null | less
    michelsberg · 2013-01-31 22:25:30 0
  • Do some learning...

    I like it sorted... 2> /dev/null was also needless, since our pipes already select stdin, only.


    2
    whatis $(compgen -c) | sort | less
    michelsberg · 2013-02-01 09:13:56 0
  • Listing package man page, services, config files and related rpm of a file, in one alias

    Many times I give the same commands in loop to find informations about a file. I use this as an alias to summarize that informations in a single command. Now with variables! :D Show Sample Output


    2
    fileinfo() { RPMQF=$(rpm -qf $1); RPMQL=$(rpm -ql $RPMQF);echo "man page:";whatis $(basename $1); echo "Services:"; echo -e "$RPMQL\n"|grep -P "\.service";echo "Config files:";rpm -qc $RPMQF;echo "Provided by:" $RPMQF; }
    nnsense · 2015-05-11 16:46:01 3

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Easily scp a file back to the host you're connecting from
Place in .bashrc and invoke like this: "mecp /path/to/file", and it will copy the specified file(s) back to the desktop of the host you're ssh'ing in from. To easily upload a file from the host you're ssh'ing in from use this: ucp (){ scp ${SSH_CLIENT%% *}:Desktop/upload/* .; }

create an emergency swapfile when the existing swap space is getting tight
Create a temporary file that acts as swap space. In this example it's a 1GB file at the root of the file system. This additional capacity is added to the existing swap space.

cut audio file

Write on the console without being registered
just use a space to prevent commands from being recorded in bash's history on most systems

Use result of the last command
\$ which python /usr/bin/python \$ ll `!!` lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2010-11-08 22:01 /usr/bin/python -> python2.6

umount --rbind mount with submounts
Original: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=194342

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"

Virtual Console lock program
vlock command locks the current console by default. Also you can lock all the consoles on the server by using -a parameter. For details, pl man vlock. ps: Generally speaking , system will not install vlock programme . So you should use ' $ sudo apt-get install vlock ' to install vlock .

Search for an active process without catching the search-process
This does the same thing as many of the 'grep' based alternatives but allows a more finite control over the output. For example if you only wanted the process ID you could change the command: $ ps -ef | awk '/mingetty/ && !/awk/ {print $2}' If you wanted to kill the returned PID's: $ ps -ef | awk '/mingetty/ && !/awk/ {print $2}' | xargs -i kill {}

search string in _all_ revisions

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