Commands using head (314)

  • Find random strings within /dev/urandom. Using grep filter to just Alphanumeric characters, and then print the first 30 and remove all the line feeds. Show Sample Output


    54
    strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '\n'; echo
    jbcurtis · 2009-02-16 00:39:28 26
  • You have an external USB drive or key. Apply this command (using the file path of anything on your device) and it will simulate the unplug of this device. If you just want the port, just type : echo $(sudo lshw -businfo | grep -B 1 -m 1 $(df "/path/to/file" | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}' | cut -c 6-8) | head -n 1 | awk '{print $1}' | cut -c 5- | tr ":" "-") Show Sample Output


    30
    echo $(sudo lshw -businfo | grep -B 1 -m 1 $(df "/path/to/file" | tail -1 | awk '{print $1}' | cut -c 6-8) | head -n 1 | awk '{print $1}' | cut -c 5- | tr ":" "-") | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind
    tweet78 · 2014-04-06 12:06:29 19
  • This makes an alias for a command named 'busy'. The 'busy' command opens a random file in /usr/include to a random line with vim. Drop this in your .bash_aliases and make sure that file is initialized in your .bashrc.


    23
    alias busy='my_file=$(find /usr/include -type f | sort -R | head -n 1); my_len=$(wc -l $my_file | awk "{print $1}"); let "r = $RANDOM % $my_len" 2>/dev/null; vim +$r $my_file'
    busybee · 2010-03-09 21:48:41 19
  • Print out list of all branches with last commit date to the branch, including relative time since commit and color coding. Show Sample Output


    16
    for k in `git branch|perl -pe s/^..//`;do echo -e `git show --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%ci %Cblue%cr%Creset" $k|head -n 1`\\t$k;done|sort -r
    brunost · 2009-06-03 08:25:00 303
  • This will give you the Dell Service tag number associated with your machine. Incredibly useful when you need that number for tech support or downloads. Show Sample Output


    15
    sudo dmidecode | grep Serial\ Number | head -n1
    nlinux · 2009-02-18 14:54:28 3131
  • Plot your most used commands with gnuplot.


    14
    history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head > /tmp/cmds | gnuplot -persist <(echo 'plot "/tmp/cmds" using 1:xticlabels(2) with boxes')
    sthrs · 2010-06-13 23:35:13 7
  • This one uses dictionary.com


    13
    pronounce(){ wget -qO- $(wget -qO- "http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/$@" | grep 'soundUrl' | head -n 1 | sed 's|.*soundUrl=\([^&]*\)&.*|\1|' | sed 's/%3A/:/g;s/%2F/\//g') | mpg123 -; }
    matthewbauer · 2010-03-13 04:23:56 12
  • /dev/urandom is cryptographically secure, and indistinguishable from true random, as it gathers data from external sources, influenced by human timing interactions with computers, to fill the entropy pool, and hashes the input with SHA-1. As such, this is a quick way to do a "true random" fair-6 dice roll. Using this method, you could easily create passphrases with Diceware http://diceware.com. Change the head(1) count to something other than 5 for more or less numbers.


    12
    tr -cd '1-6' < /dev/urandom | head -c 1; echo
    atoponce · 2012-09-21 02:16:42 22
  • If you want a password length longer than 6, changing the -c6 to read -c8 will give you 8 random characters instead of 6. To end up with a line-feed, use this with echo: # echo `< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c6` Modern systems need higher strenght, so add some special characters: # < /dev/urandom tr -dc '12345!@#$%qwertQWERTasdfgASDFGzxcvbZXCVB' | head -c8


    11
    < /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c6
    dstiller · 2009-02-24 09:43:40 12
  • using cat WAR_AND_PEACE_By_LeoTolstoi.txt | tr -cs "[:alnum:]" "\n"| tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" | sort -S16M | uniq -c |sort -nr | cat -n | head -n 30 ("sort -S1G" - Linux/GNU sort only) will also do the job but as some drawbacks (caused by space/time complexity of sorting) for bigger files... Show Sample Output


    11
    cat WAR_AND_PEACE_By_LeoTolstoi.txt | tr -cs "[:alnum:]" "\n"| tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" | awk '{h[$1]++}END{for (i in h){print h[i]" "i}}'|sort -nr | cat -n | head -n 30
    cp · 2010-07-05 06:39:20 15
  • Search for files and list the 20 largest. find . -type f gives us a list of file, recursively, starting from here (.) -print0 | xargs -0 du -h separate the names of files with NULL characters, so we're not confused by spaces then xargs run the du command to find their size (in human-readable form -- 64M not 64123456) | sort -hr use sort to arrange the list in size order. sort -h knows that 1M is bigger than 9K | head -20 finally only select the top twenty out of the list Show Sample Output


    11
    find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 du -h | sort -hr | head -20
    flatcap · 2012-03-30 10:21:12 9
  • Pump up the chatter, run this script on a regular basis to listen to your twitter timeline. This is a rough first cut using several cli clips I have spotted around. There is no facility to not read those things already read to you. This could also easily be put in a loop for timed onslaught from the chatterverse, though I think it might violate several pointsof the Geneva Convention UPDATE - added a loop, only reads the first 6 twits, and does this every 5 mins. Show Sample Output


    10
    while [ 1 ]; do curl -s -u username:password http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss|grep title|sed -ne 's/<\/*title>//gp' | head -n 6 |festival --tts; sleep 300;done
    tomwsmf · 2009-02-20 20:20:21 16
  • Not as taxing on the CPU.


    10
    while [ true ]; do head -n 100 /dev/urandom; sleep .1; done | hexdump -C | grep "ca fe"
    campassi · 2010-10-05 16:23:31 5
  • This Anti-TarBomb function makes it easy to unpack a .tar.gz without worrying about the possibility that it will "explode" in your current directory. I've usually always created a temporary folder in which I extracted the tarball first, but I got tired of having to reorganize the files afterwards. Just add this function to your .zshrc / .bashrc and use it like this; atb arch1.tar.gz and it will create a folder for the extracted files, if they aren't already in a single folder. This only works for .tar.gz, but it's very easy to edit the function to suit your needs, if you want to extract .tgz, .tar.bz2 or just .tar. More info about tarbombs at http://www.linfo.org/tarbomb.html Tested in zsh and bash. UPDATE: This function works for .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tgz, .tbz and .tar in zsh (not working in bash): atb() { l=$(tar tf $1); if [ $(echo "$l" | wc -l) -eq $(echo "$l" | grep $(echo "$l" | head -n1) | wc -l) ]; then tar xf $1; else mkdir ${1%.t(ar.gz||ar.bz2||gz||bz||ar)} && tar xf $1 -C ${1%.t(ar.gz||ar.bz2||gz||bz||ar)}; fi ;} UPDATE2: From the comments; bepaald came with a variant that works for .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tgz, .tbz and .tar in bash: atb() {shopt -s extglob ; l=$(tar tf $1); if [ $(echo "$l" | wc -l) -eq $(echo "$l" | grep $(echo "$l" | head -n1) | wc -l) ]; then tar xf $1; else mkdir ${1%.t@(ar.gz|ar.bz2|gz|bz|ar)} && tar xf $1 -C ${1%.t@(ar.gz|ar.bz2|gz|bz|ar)}; fi ; shopt -u extglob} Show Sample Output


    10
    atb() { l=$(tar tf $1); if [ $(echo "$l" | wc -l) -eq $(echo "$l" | grep $(echo "$l" | head -n1) | wc -l) ]; then tar xf $1; else mkdir ${1%.tar.gz} && tar xf $1 -C ${1%.tar.gz}; fi ;}
    elfreak · 2010-10-16 05:50:32 8
  • Avoiding a for loop brought this time down to less than 3 seconds on my old machine. And just to be clear, 33554432 = 8192 * 4086.


    10
    base64 /dev/urandom | head -c 33554432 | split -b 8192 -da 4 - dummy.
    pdxdoughnut · 2013-11-12 17:56:23 8

  • 9
    cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 | head -c 32
    noqqe · 2011-11-20 17:29:45 3

  • 9
    find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 du -h | sort -hr | head -10
    netaxiz · 2012-06-30 10:03:31 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
  • 64 elements max on 16 rows, 4 cols. GNU Barcode will adapt automagically the width and the eight of your elements to fill the page. Standard output format is PostScript.


    8
    ls /home | head -64 | barcode -t 4x16 | lpr
    flux · 2009-04-21 22:54:45 16

  • 7
    vim $( ls -t | head -n1 )
    salamando · 2009-03-11 00:07:49 6
  • bash.org is a collection of funny quotes from IRC. WARNING: some of the quotes contain "adult" jokes... may be embarrassing if your boss sees them... Thanks to Chen for the idea and initial version! This script downloads a page with random quotes, filters the html to retrieve just one liners quotes and outputs the first one. Just barely under the required 255 chars :) Improvment: You can replace the head -1 at the end by: awk 'length($0)>0 {printf( $0 "\n%%\n" )}' > bash_quotes.txt which will separate the quotes with a "%" and place it in the file. and then: strfile bash_quotes.txt which will make the file ready for the fortune command and then you can: fortune bash_quotes.txt which will give you a random quote from those in the downloaded file. I download a file periodically and then use the fortune in .bashrc so I see a funny quote every time I open a terminal. Show Sample Output


    7
    curl -s http://bash.org/?random1|grep -oE "<p class=\"quote\">.*</p>.*</p>"|grep -oE "<p class=\"qt.*?</p>"|sed -e 's/<\/p>/\n/g' -e 's/<p class=\"qt\">//g' -e 's/<p class=\"qt\">//g'|perl -ne 'use HTML::Entities;print decode_entities($_),"\n"'|head -1
    Iftah · 2009-05-07 13:13:21 13
  • fancy command line ncdu clone Show Sample Output


    7
    for i in `du --max-depth=1 $HOME | sort -n -r | awk '{print $1 ":" $2}'`; do size=`echo $i | awk -F: '{print $1}'`; dir=`echo $i | awk -F: '{print $NF}'`; size2=$(($size/1024)); echo "$size2 MB used by $dir"; done | head -n 10
    tuxifier · 2009-06-02 21:27:48 8
  • order the files by modification (thanks stanishjohnd) time, one file per output line and filter first 10


    7
    ls -1t | head -n10
    wires · 2009-06-23 12:15:12 9
  • Next time you are leaching off of someone else's wifi use this command before you start your bittorrent ...for legitimate files only of course. It creates a hexidecimal string using md5sum from the first few lines of /dev/urandom and splices it into the proper MAC address format. Then it changes your MAC and resets your wireless (wlan0:0). Show Sample Output


    7
    ran=$(head /dev/urandom | md5sum); MAC=00:07:${ran:0:2}:${ran:3:2}:${ran:5:2}:${ran:7:2}; sudo ifconfig wlan0 down hw ether $MAC; sudo ifconfig wlan0 up; echo ifconfig wlan0:0
    workingsmart · 2009-07-16 16:21:44 5

  • 7
    echo $(shuf -i 1-49 | head -n6 | sort -n)
    twfcc · 2009-10-22 06:48:20 4
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Find the package that installed a command

Generate a random password 30 characters long

Generate a random left-hand password
Generates a random 8-character password that can be typed using only the left hand on a QWERTY keyboard. Useful to avoid taking your hand off of the mouse, especially if your username is left-handed. Change the 8 to your length of choice, add or remove characters from the list based on your preferences or kezboard layout, etc.

vi a new file with execution mode
$ vix /tmp/script.sh Open a file directly with execution permission. Put the function in your .bashrc You can also put this in your vimrc: $ command XX w | set ar | silent exe "!chmod +x %" | redraw! and open a new file like this: $ vi +XX /tmp/script.sh

Check reverse DNS
I'm just a simple programmer. I find dig too verbose. host tells me alias(es) and IP address in a quick to grok format with nothing special to remember for input parameters. With thanks to http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-test-or-check-reverse-dns/

Update IP filter for qBittorrent
Downloads Bluetack's level 1 IP blocklist in .p2p format, suitable for various Bittorrent clients.

Swap a file or dir with quick resotre
This lets you replace a file or directory and quickly revert if something goes wrong. For example, the current version of a website's files are in public_html. Put a new version of the site in public_html~ and execute the command. The names are swapped. If anything goes wrong, execute it again (up arrow or !!).

Transforms a file to all uppercase.
Transforms a file to all uppercase.

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

Search and play MP3 from Skreemr
This use the Screemr search engine to play mp3 songs


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