Commands by brettalton (5)

  • Convert PNG to GIF

    (relies on 'imagemagick') Convert all .png files to .gif. This can also go the other way if you reverse the file extensions in the command, e.g.: for file in *.gif; do convert "$file" "$(basename $file .gif).png"; done If the file is named 'example1.png' it will be named 'example1.gif' when it is complete.


    4
    for file in *.png; do convert "$file" "$(basename $file .png).gif"; done
    brettalton · 2009-02-15 23:39:08 15
  • Convert PDF to JPG

    (relies on 'imagemagick') This command will convert all .pdf files in a directory into a 800px (wide or height, whichever is smaller) image (with the aspect ratio kept) .jpg. If the file is named 'example1.pdf' it will be named 'example1.jpg' when it is complete. This is a VERY worthwhile command! People pay hundreds of dollars for this in the Windows world. My .jpg files average between 150kB to 300kB, but your's may differ. Show Sample Output


    29
    for file in `ls *.pdf`; do convert -verbose -colorspace RGB -resize 800 -interlace none -density 300 -quality 80 $file `echo $file | sed 's/\.pdf$/\.jpg/'`; done
    brettalton · 2009-02-15 23:27:43 20
  • Extract .daa files with PowerISO

    .daa is a non-standard disk image format that can not be read by any other program. This is how you can extract the files though. PowerISO binary for Linux: http://www.poweriso.com/poweriso-1.3.tar.gz "This is a free utility for linux which can extract, list, and convert image files (including ISO, BIN, DAA, and other formats). Type " poweriso -? " for detailed usage information. File Size: 278KB"


    -2
    ./poweriso extract $USER/file.daa / -od $USER/file_extracted
    brettalton · 2009-02-15 23:19:40 10
  • View your motherboard's ACPI tables (in Debian & Ubuntu)

    In July 2008, there was an uproar over Foxconn motherboards feeding Linux installs incorrect ACPI information (http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869249). Foxconn has gladly corrected their mistake, but make sure it's not happening on your motherboard! After running the command, just view the 'dsdt.dsl' in any editor you like. Show Sample Output


    -1
    sudo aptitude -y install iasl && sudo cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT > dsdt.dat && iasl -d dsdt.dat
    brettalton · 2009-02-15 23:13:50 13
  • Concatenate (join) video files

    Use mencoder to concatenate (join) multiple video files together. Show Sample Output


    9
    mencoder -forceidx -ovc copy -oac copy -o output.avi video1.avi video2.avi
    brettalton · 2009-02-15 23:05:32 13

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Stoppable sleep
A nice way to interrupt a sleep with a signal.

Copy an element from the previous command
'n' is a non-negative integer. Using 0 will expand to the name of the previous command.

Annoying PROMPT_COMMAND animation
unset PROMPT_COMMAND to disable.

Use /dev/full to test language I/O-failsafety
The Linux /dev/full file simulates a "disk full" condition, and can be used to verify how a program handles this situation. In particular, several programming language implementations do not print error diagnostics (nor exit with error status) when I/O errors like this occur, unless the programmer has taken additional steps. That is, simple code in these languages does not fail safely. In addition to Perl, C, C++, Tcl, and Lua (for some functions) also appear not to fail safely.

Remove color codes (special characters) with sed
Removes ANSI color and end of line codes to the [{attr1};...;{attrn}m format.

Terminal Escape Code Zen - Strace and Tput
Depending on the TERM, the terminfo version, ncurses version, etc.. you may be using a varied assortment of terminal escape codes. With this command you can easily find out exactly what is going on.. This is terminal escape zen! $ ( 2>&2 strace -f -F -e write -s 1000 sh -c 'echo -e "initc\nis2\ncnorm\nrmso\nsgr0" | tput -S' 2>&1 ) | grep -o '"\\[^"]*"' --color=always "\33]4;%p1%d;rgb:%p2%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X/%p3%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X/%p4%{255}%*%{1000}%/%2.2X\33\\\33[!p\33[?3;4l\33[4l\33>\33[?12l\33[?25h\33[27m\33(B\33[m" Lets say you want to find out what you need to echo in order to get the text to blink.. $ echo -e "`tput blink`This will blink`tput sgr0` This wont" Now you can use this function instead of calling tput (tput is much smarter for portable code because it works differently depending on the current TERM, and tput -T anyterm works too.) to turn that echo into a much faster executing code. tput queries files, opens files, etc.. but echo is very strait and narrow. So now you can do this: $ echo -e "\33[5mThis will blink\33(B\33[m This wont" More at http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html

Show a curses based menu selector
Not so much handy by itself, but very nice in shell scripts. This makes you a handy ncurses based checklist. Much like terminal installers, just use the arrow keys and hit 'Space' to adjust the selections. Returns all selected tags as strings, with no newline at the end. So, your output will be something like: "one" "two" "three" "four" "etc" For those who prefer bash expansion over gratuitious typing: $ whiptail --checklist "Simple checkbox menu" 12 35 3 $(echo {one,two,three,four}" '' 0"} ) Things to note: The height must includes the outer border and padding: add 7 to however many items you want to show up at the same time. If the status is 1, it will be selected by default. anything else, will be deselected.

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

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"

Convert seconds to [DD:][HH:]MM:SS
Converts any number of seconds into days, hours, minutes and seconds. sec2dhms() { declare -i SS="$1" D=$(( SS / 86400 )) H=$(( SS % 86400 / 3600 )) M=$(( SS % 3600 / 60 )) S=$(( SS % 60 )) [ "$D" -gt 0 ] && echo -n "${D}:" [ "$H" -gt 0 ] && printf "%02g:" "$H" printf "%02g:%02g\n" "$M" "$S" }

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