At times I find that I need to loop through a file where each value that I need to do something with is not on a separate line, but rather separated with a ":" or a ";". In this instance, I create a loop within which I define 'IFS' to be something other than a whitespace character. In this example, I iterate through a file which only has one line, and several fields separated with ":". The counter helps me define how many times I want to repeat the loop.

This is an easy way to quickly get a status for a device in multipath on SLES systems, as long as the server is configured based on Novell's standards, where multipathed disks are referred to by /dev/disk/by-... tree. Make sure to replace name_of_vg with your Volume Group name.

This is a quick and easy way of encrypting files in a datastream, without ever really creating an output file from gpg. Useful with cron also, when file(s) have to be sent based on a set schedule.

Sometimes it is handy to be able to list contents of a tar file within a compressed archive, such as 7Zip in this instance, without having to extract the archive first. This is especially helpful when dealing with larger sized files.

Using 7z to create archives is OK, but when you use tar, you preserve all file-specific information such as ownership, perms, etc. If that's important to you, this is a better way to do it.

This commands will make it easier to select only common items between two files being compared. If your lines start with things other than lowercase a-z, adjust this Regex appropriately. Number of lines in the output has been set to no more than 10000, and should be adjusted as needed.