Commands tagged Linux (266)


  • 101
    lsof -i
    hank · 2009-04-25 14:24:04 23
  • This command displays a clock on your terminal which updates the time every second. Press Ctrl-C to exit. A couple of variants: A little bit bigger text: watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet -f big" You can try other figlet fonts, too. Big sideways characters: watch -n 1 -t '/usr/games/banner -w 30 $(date +%M:%S)' This requires a particular version of banner and a 40-line terminal or you can adjust the width ("30" here). Show Sample Output


    48
    watch -t -n1 "date +%T|figlet"
    dennisw · 2009-06-21 01:02:37 35
  • Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages. For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac: curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*<name>(.*)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/' If you want to see the name of the last person, who added a message to the conversation, change the greediness of the operators like this: curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*?<name>(.*?)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/' Show Sample Output


    47
    curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | sed -n "s/<title>\(.*\)<\/title.*name>\(.*\)<\/name>.*/\2 - \1/p"
    postrational · 2009-09-07 21:56:40 43
  • Remove security from PDF document using this very simple command on Linux and OSX. You need ghostscript for this baby to work.


    47
    gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=OUTPUT.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f INPUT.pdf
    deijmaster · 2009-12-14 21:30:22 26
  • The empty file /forcefsck causes the file system check fsck to be run next time you boot up, after which it will be removed. This works too: sudo >/forcefsck


    38
    sudo touch /forcefsck
    johnraff · 2009-10-29 17:04:47 16

  • 27
    sudo strings /dev/mem
    point_to_null · 2009-08-09 02:07:26 12
  • Instead of deleting an existing symlink and then re-creating it pointing at the new location, it is possible to perform the same action with this one command. Interesting discussion on whether this is possible to do atomically here: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=526119


    22
    ln -nsf <TARGET> <LINK>
    rdc · 2011-07-14 14:07:06 25
  • If you are doing some tests which require reboots (e. g. startup skripts, kernel module parameters, ...), this is very time intensive, if you have got a hardware with a long pre-boot phase due to hardware checks. At this time, kexec can help, which only restarts the kernel with all related stuff. First the kernel to be started is loaded, then kexec -e jumps up to start it. Is as hard as a reboot -f, but several times faster (e. g. 1 Minute instead of 12 on some servers here). Show Sample Output


    21
    /sbin/kexec -l /boot/$KERNEL --append="$KERNELPARAMTERS" --initrd=/boot/$INITRD; sync; /sbin/kexec -e
    olorin · 2009-08-03 07:36:49 18
  • This is useful if you have a program which doesn't work well with multicore CPUs. With taskset you can set its CPU affinity to run on only one core.


    20
    taskset -c 0 your_command
    Alanceil · 2009-02-28 22:38:02 18
  • The `export` is unnecessary if it's only applicable to the one command.


    18
    DISPLAY=":0.0" import -window root screenshot.png
    walterl · 2010-02-17 13:02:24 16
  • I have come across a situation in the past where someone has unlinked a file by running an 'rm' command against it while it was still being written to by a running process. The problem manifested itself when a 'df' command showed a filesystem at 100%, but this did not match the total value of a 'du -sk *'. When this happens, the process continues to write to the file but you can no longer see the file on the filesystem. Stopping and starting the process will, more often than not, get rid of the unlinked file, however this is not always possible on a live server. When you are in this situation you can use the 'lsof' command above to get the PID of the process that owns the file (in the sample output this is 23521). Run the following command to see a sym-link to the file (marked as deleted): cd /proc/23521/fd && ls -l Truncate the sym-link to regain your disk space: > /proc/23521/fd/3 I should point out that this is pretty brutal and *could* potentially destabilise your system depending on what process the file belongs to that you are truncating. Show Sample Output


    16
    lsof +L1
    dopeman · 2010-07-14 17:21:01 6
  • Uses inotifywait from inotify-tools ( http://wiki.github.com/rvoicilas/inotify-tools/ ), that is compatible only with linux. Usefull when you work with files that have to be compiled.. latex, haml, c..


    15
    while true; do inotifywait -r -e MODIFY dir/ && make; done;
    fain182 · 2010-06-04 17:07:03 12
  • Ever needed to test firewalls but didn't have netcat, telnet or even FTP? Enter /dev/tcp, your new best friend. /dev/tcp/(hostname)/(port) is a bash builtin that bash can use to open connections to TCP and UDP ports. This one-liner opens a connection on a port to a server and lets you read and write to it from the terminal. How it works: First, exec sets up a redirect for /dev/tcp/$server/$port to file descriptor 5. Then, as per some excellent feedback from @flatcap, we launch a redirect from file descriptor 5 to STDOUT and send that to the background (which is what causes the PID to be printed when the commands are run), and then redirect STDIN to file descriptor 5 with the second cat. Finally, when the second cat dies (the connection is closed), we clean up the file descriptor with 'exec 5>&-'. It can be used to test FTP, HTTP, NTP, or can connect to netcat listening on a port (makes for a simple chat client!) Replace /tcp/ with /udp/ to use UDP instead.


    15
    exec 5<>/dev/tcp/time.nist.gov/13; cat <&5 & cat >&5; exec 5>&-
    tyzbit · 2015-07-30 21:12:38 24
  • Though without infinite time and knowledge of how the site will be designed in the future this may stop working, it still will serve as a simple straight forward starting point. This uses the observation that the only item marked as strong on the page is the single logical line that includes the italicized fact. If future revisions of the page show failure, or intermittent failure, one may simply alter the above to read. wget randomfunfacts.com -O - 2>/dev/null | tee lastfact | grep \<strong\> | sed "s;^.*<i>\(.*\)</i>.*$;\1;" The file lastfact, can then be examined whenever the command fails.


    13
    wget randomfunfacts.com -O - 2>/dev/null | grep \<strong\> | sed "s;^.*<i>\(.*\)</i>.*$;\1;"
    tali713 · 2010-03-30 23:49:30 81
  • Very simple web server listening on port 80 will serve index.html file or whatever file you like pointing your browser at http://your-IP-address/index.html for example. If your web server is down for maintenance and you'd like to inform your visitors about it, quickly and easily, you just have to put into the index.html file the right HTML code and you are done! Of course you need to be root to run the command using port 80.


    12
    while true ; do nc -l 80 < index.html ; done
    ztank1013 · 2011-08-31 15:17:33 10
  • This command asks for the station name and then connects to somafm, Great for those who have linux home entertainment boxes and ssh enabled on them, just for the CLI fiends out there ( I know I'm one of them ;) Also, don't forget to add this as alias(ie alias somafm="read -p 'Which Station? "; mplayer --reallyquite -vo none -ao sdl


    11
    read -p "Which station? "; mplayer --reallyquiet -vo none -ao sdl http://somafm.com/startstream=${REPLY}.pls
    denzuko · 2009-05-04 00:26:19 23
  • Fetches the IPs and ONLY the IPs from ifconfig. Simplest, shortest, cleanest. Perl is too good to be true... (P.S.: credit should go to Peteris Krumins at catonmat.net) Show Sample Output


    11
    ifconfig | perl -nle'/dr:(\S+)/ && print $1'
    xsawyerx · 2009-07-23 09:33:31 11

  • 10
    while true; do X=$Y; sleep 1; Y=$(ifconfig eth0|grep RX\ bytes|awk '{ print $2 }'|cut -d : -f 2); echo "$(( Y-X )) bps"; done
    stuntdawg · 2009-03-27 08:26:39 10
  • rot13 maps a..mn..z (A..MN..Z) to n..za..m (n..za..m) and so does this alias.


    10
    alias rot13="tr '[A-Za-z]' '[N-ZA-Mn-za-m]'"
    penpen · 2009-03-30 19:08:49 9

  • 10
    alias rot13="tr a-zA-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M"
    mathias · 2011-03-17 11:21:19 4
  • Suppose you made a backup of your hard disk with dd: dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/disk/backup.img This command enables you to mount a partition from inside this image, so you can access your files directly. Substitute PARTITION=1 with the number of the partition you want to mount (returned from sfdisk -d yourfile.img). Show Sample Output


    8
    INFILE=/path/to/your/backup.img; MOUNTPT=/mnt/foo; PARTITION=1; mount "$INFILE" "$MOUNTPT" -o loop,offset=$[ `/sbin/sfdisk -d "$INFILE" | grep "start=" | head -n $PARTITION | tail -n1 | sed 's/.*start=[ ]*//' | sed 's/,.*//'` * 512 ]
    Alanceil · 2009-03-06 21:29:13 11
  • Produces secure passwords that satisfy most rules for secure passwords and can be customized for correct output as needed. See "man pwgen" for details. Show Sample Output


    8
    pwgen --alt-phonics --capitalize 9 10
    CafeNinja · 2009-10-24 08:36:36 39
  • This should do the same thing and is about 70 chars shorter. Show Sample Output


    8
    aptitude remove $(dpkg -l|egrep '^ii linux-(im|he)'|awk '{print $2}'|grep -v `uname -r`)
    dbbolton · 2010-06-10 21:23:00 10
  • Let me suggest using wget for obtaining the HTTP header only as the last resort because it generates considerable textual overhead. The first ellipsis of the sample output stands for Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists. --2009-03-31 20:42:46-- http://www.example.com/ Resolving www.example.com... 208.77.188.166 Connecting to www.example.com|208.77.188.166|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... and the second one looks for Length: 438 [text/html] Remote file exists and could contain further links, but recursion is disabled -- not retrieving. Show Sample Output


    7
    wget --server-response --spider http://www.example.com/
    penpen · 2009-03-31 18:49:14 15
  • This is a very powerful command line tool to gather statistics for a Linux system. http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/dstat/ Show Sample Output


    7
    dstat -ta
    vutcovici · 2009-04-02 14:19:12 9
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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"

Rename files in batch

Download an Entire website with wget

Run a program transparently, but print a stack trace if it fails
For automated unit tests I wanted my program to run normally, but if it crashed, to add a stack trace to the output log. I came up with this command so I wouldn't have to mess around with core files. The one downside is that it does smoosh your program's stderr and stdout together.

Get AWS temporary credentials ready to export based on a MFA virtual appliance
You might want to secure your AWS operations requiring to use a MFA token. But then to use API or tools, you need to pass credentials generated with a MFA token. This commands asks you for the MFA code and retrieves these credentials using AWS Cli. To print the exports, you can use: `awk '{ print "export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\"" $1 "\"\n" "export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\"" $2 "\"\n" "export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=\"" $3 "\"" }'` You must adapt the command line to include: * $MFA_IDis ARN of the virtual MFA or serial number of the physical one * TTL for the credentials

a short counter
Maybe you know shorter ?

Log colorizer for OSX (ccze alternative)
Download colorizer by @raszi @ http://github.com/raszi/colorize

Hold off any screensavers/timeouts
Moves the mouse 1 pixel down and to the right, then immediately back again, every 4 minutes. This keeps screensavers from turning on. I have used this extensively and I've never even noticed the mouse movement because it is so subtle.

back ssh from firewalled hosts
host B (you) redirects a modem port (62220) to his local ssh. host A is a remote machine (the ones that issues the ssh cmd). once connected port 5497 is in listening mode on host B. host B just do a ssh 127.0.0.1 -p 5497 -l user and reaches the remote host'ssh. This can be used also for vnc and so on.

Get your outgoing IP address


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