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Command
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Description
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apropos whatis
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Show commands pertinent to string. See also threadsafe
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man -t ascii | ps2pdf - > ascii.pdf
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make a pdf of a manual page
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which command
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Show full path name of command
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time command
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See how long a command takes
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time cat
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Start stopwatch. Ctrl-d to stop. See also sw
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dir navigation
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cd -
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Go to previous directory
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cd
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Go to $HOME directory
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(cd dir && command)
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Go to dir, execute command and return to current dir
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pushd .
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Put current dir on stack so you can popd back to it
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file searching
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alias l='ls -l --color=auto'
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quick dir listing
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ls -lrt
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List files by date. See also newest and find_mm_yyyy
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ls /usr/bin | pr -T9 -W$COLUMNS
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Print in 9 columns to width of terminal
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find -name '*.[ch]' | xargs grep -E 'expr'
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Search 'expr' in this dir and below. See also findrepo
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find -type f -print0 | xargs -r0 grep -F 'example'
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Search all regular files for 'example' in this dir and below
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find -maxdepth 1 -type f | xargs grep -F 'example'
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Search all regular files for 'example' in this dir
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find -maxdepth 1 -type d | while read dir; do echo $dir; echo cmd2;
done
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Process each item with multiple commands (in while loop)
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find -type f ! -perm -444
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Find files not readable by all (useful for web site)
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find -type d ! -perm -111
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Find dirs not accessible by all (useful for web site)
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locate -r 'file[^/]*\.txt'
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Search cached index for names. This re is like glob *file*.txt
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look reference
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Quickly search (sorted) dictionary for prefix
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grep --color reference /usr/share/dict/words
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Highlight occurances of regular expression in dictionary
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archives and compression
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gpg -c file
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Encrypt file
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gpg file.gpg
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Decrypt file
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tar -c dir/ | bzip2 > dir.tar.bz2
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Make compressed archive of dir/
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bzip2 -dc dir.tar.bz2 | tar -x
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Extract archive (use gzip instead of bzip2 for tar.gz files)
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tar -c dir/ | gzip | gpg -c | ssh user@remote 'dd of=dir.tar.gz.gpg'
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Make encrypted archive of dir/ on remote machine
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find dir/ -name '*.txt' | tar -c --files-from=- | bzip2 >
dir_txt.tar.bz2
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Make archive of subset of dir/ and below
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find dir/ -name '*.txt' | xargs cp -a --target-directory=dir_txt/
--parents
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Make copy of subset of dir/ and below
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( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ( cd /where/to/ && tar -x -p )
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Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to /where/to/ dir
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( cd /dir/to/copy && tar -c . ) | ( cd /where/to/ &&
tar -x -p )
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Copy (with permissions) contents of copy/ dir to /where/to/
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( tar -c /dir/to/copy ) | ssh -C user@remote 'cd /where/to/
&& tar -x -p'
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Copy (with permissions) copy/ dir to remote:/where/to/ dir
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dd bs=1M if=/dev/sda | gzip | ssh user@remote 'dd of=sda.gz'
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Backup harddisk to remote machine
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rsync (Network efficient file copier: Use the --dry-run option for
testing)
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rsync -P rsync://rsync.server.com/path/to/file file
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Only get diffs. Do multiple times for troublesome downloads
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rsync --bwlimit=1000 fromfile tofile
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Locally copy with rate limit. It's like nice for I/O
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rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~/public_html/ remote.com:'~/public_html'
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Mirror web site (using compression and encryption)
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rsync -auz -e ssh remote:/dir/ . && rsync -auz -e ssh .
remote:/dir/
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Synchronize current directory with remote one
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ssh (Secure SHell)
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ssh $USER@$HOST command
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Run command on $HOST as $USER (default command=shell)
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ssh -f -Y $USER@$HOSTNAME xeyes
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Run GUI command on $HOSTNAME as $USER
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scp -p -r $USER@$HOST: file dir/
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Copy with permissions to $USER's home directory on $HOST
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scp -c arcfour $USER@$LANHOST: bigfile
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Use faster crypto for local LAN. This might saturate GigE
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ssh -g -L 8080:localhost:80 root@$HOST
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Forward connections to $HOSTNAME:8080 out to $HOST:80
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ssh -R 1434:imap:143 root@$HOST
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Forward connections from $HOST:1434 in to imap:143
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ssh-copy-id $USER@$HOST
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Install public key for $USER@$HOST for password-less log in
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wget (multi purpose download tool)
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(cd dir/ && wget -nd -pHEKk
http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html)
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Store local browsable version of a page to the current dir
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wget -c http://www.example.com/large.file
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Continue downloading a partially downloaded file
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wget -r -nd -np -l1 -A '*.jpg' http://www.example.com/dir/
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Download a set of files to the current directory
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wget ftp://remote/file[1-9].iso/
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FTP supports globbing directly
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wget -q -O- http://www.pixelbeat.org/timeline.html | grep 'a href' |
head
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Process output directly
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echo 'wget url' | at 01:00
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Download url at 1AM to current dir
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wget --limit-rate=20k url
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Do a low priority download (limit to 20KB/s in this case)
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wget -nv --spider --force-html -i bookmarks.html
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Check links in a file
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wget --mirror http://www.example.com/
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Efficiently update a local copy of a site (handy from cron)
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networking (Note ifconfig, route, mii-tool, nslookup commands are
obsolete)
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ethtool eth0
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Show status of ethernet interface eth0
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ethtool --change eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full
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Manually set ethernet interface speed
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iwconfig eth1
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Show status of wireless interface eth1
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iwconfig eth1 rate 1Mb/s fixed
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Manually set wireless interface speed
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iwlist scan
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List wireless networks in range
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ip link show
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List network interfaces
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ip link set dev eth0 name wan
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Rename interface eth0 to wan
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ip link set dev eth0 up
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Bring interface eth0 up (or down)
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ip addr show
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List addresses for interfaces
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ip addr add 1.2.3.4/24 brd + dev eth0
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Add (or del) ip and mask (255.255.255.0)
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ip route show
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List routing table
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ip route add default via 1.2.3.254
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Set default gateway to 1.2.3.254
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host pixelbeat.org
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Lookup DNS ip address for name or vice versa
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hostname -i
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Lookup local ip address (equivalent to host `hostname`)
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whois pixelbeat.org
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Lookup whois info for hostname or ip address
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netstat -tupl
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List internet services on a system
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netstat -tup
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List active connections to/from system
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windows networking (Note samba is the package that provides all
this windows specific networking support)
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smbtree
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Find windows machines. See also findsmb
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nmblookup -A 1.2.3.4
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Find the windows (netbios) name associated with ip address
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smbclient -L windows_box
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List shares on windows machine or samba server
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mount -t smbfs -o fmask=666,guest //windows_box/share /mnt/share
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Mount a windows share
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echo 'message' | smbclient -M windows_box
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Send popup to windows machine (off by default in XP sp2)
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text manipulation (Note sed uses stdin and stdout. Newer versions
support inplace editing with the -i option)
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sed 's/string1/string2/g'
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Replace string1 with string2
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sed 's/\(.*\)1/\12/g'
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Modify anystring1 to anystring2
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sed '/ *#/d; /^ *$/d'
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Remove comments and blank lines
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sed ':a; /\\$/N; s/\\\n//; ta'
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Concatenate lines with trailing \
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sed 's/[ \t]*$//'
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Remove trailing spaces from lines
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sed 's/\([`"$\]\)/\\\1/g'
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Escape shell metacharacters active within double quotes
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seq 10 | sed "s/^/ /; s/ *\(.\{7,\}\)/\1/"
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Right align numbers
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sed -n '1000{p;q}'
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Print 1000th line
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sed -n '10,20p;20q'
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Print lines 10 to 20
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sed -n 's/.*<\/title>.*/\1/ip;T;q'
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Extract title from HTML web page
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sed -i 42d ~/.ssh/known_hosts
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Delete a particular line
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sort -t. -k1,1n -k2,2n -k3,3n -k4,4n
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Sort IPV4 ip addresses
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echo 'Test' | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'
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Case conversion
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tr -dc '[:print:]' < /dev/urandom
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Filter non printable characters
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tr -s '[:blank:]' '\t'
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cut fields separated by blanks
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history | wc -l
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Count lines
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set operations (Note you can export LANG=C for speed. Also these assume
no duplicate lines within a file)
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sort file1 file2 | uniq
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Union of unsorted files
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sort file1 file2 | uniq -d
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Intersection of unsorted files
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sort file1 file1 file2 | uniq -u
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Difference of unsorted files
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sort file1 file2 | uniq -u
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Symmetric Difference of unsorted files
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join -t'\0' -a1 -a2 file1 file2
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Union of sorted files
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join -t'\0' file1 file2
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Intersection of sorted files
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join -t'\0' -v2 file1 file2
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Difference of sorted files
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join -t'\0' -v1 -v2 file1 file2
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Symmetric Difference of sorted files
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math
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echo '(1 + sqrt(5))/2' | bc -l
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Quick math (Calculate φ). See also bc
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seq -f '4/%g' 1 2 99999 | paste -sd-+ | bc -l
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Calculate π the unix way
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echo 'pad=20; min=64; (100*10^6)/((pad+min)*8)' | bc
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More complex (int) e.g. This shows max FastE packet rate
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echo 'pad=20; min=64; print (100E6)/((pad+min)*8)' | python
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Python handles scientific notation
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echo 'pad=20; plot [64:1518] (100*10**6)/((pad+x)*8)' | gnuplot
-persist
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Plot FastE packet rate vs packet size
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echo 'obase=16; ibase=10; 64206' | bc
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Base conversion (decimal to hexadecimal)
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echo $((0x2dec))
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Base conversion (hex to dec) ((shell arithmetic expansion))
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units -t '100m/9.58s' 'miles/hour'
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Unit conversion (metric to imperial)
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units -t '500GB' 'GiB'
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Unit conversion (SI to IEC prefixes)
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units -t '1 googol'
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Definition lookup
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seq 100 | (tr '\n' +; echo 0) | bc
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Add a column of numbers. See also add and funcpy
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calendar
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cal -3
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Display a calendar
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cal 9 1752
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Display a calendar for a particular month year
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date -d fri
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What date is it this friday. See also day
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[ $(date -d '12:00 +1 day' +%d) = '01' ] || exit
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exit a script unless it's the last day of the month
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date --date='25 Dec' +%A
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What day does xmas fall on, this year
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date --date='@2147483647'
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Convert seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 UTC) to date
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TZ='America/Los_Angeles' date
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What time is it on west coast of US (use tzselect to find TZ)
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date --date='TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 09:00 next Fri'
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What's the local time for 9AM next Friday on west coast US
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locales
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printf "%'d\n" 1234
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Print number with thousands grouping appropriate to locale
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BLOCK_SIZE=\'1 ls -l
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Use locale thousands grouping in ls. See also l
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echo "I live in `locale territory`"
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Extract info from locale database
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LANG=en_IE.utf8 locale int_prefix
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Lookup locale info for specific country. See also ccodes
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locale -kc $(locale | sed -n 's/\(LC_.\{4,\}\)=.*/\1/p') | less
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List fields available in locale database
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recode (Obsoletes iconv, dos2unix, unix2dos)
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recode -l | less
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Show available conversions (aliases on each line)
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recode windows-1252.. file_to_change.txt
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Windows "ansi" to local charset (auto does CRLF conversion)
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recode utf-8/CRLF.. file_to_change.txt
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Windows utf8 to local charset
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recode iso-8859-15..utf8 file_to_change.txt
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Latin9 (western europe) to utf8
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recode ../b64 < file.txt > file.b64
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Base64 encode
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recode /qp.. < file.qp > file.txt
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Quoted printable decode
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recode ..HTML < file.txt > file.html
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Text to HTML
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recode -lf windows-1252 | grep euro
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Lookup table of characters
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echo -n 0x80 | recode latin-9/x1..dump
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Show what a code represents in latin-9 charmap
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echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..latin-9/x
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Show latin-9 encoding
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echo -n 0x20AC | recode ucs-2/x2..utf-8/x
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Show utf-8 encoding
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CDs
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gzip < /dev/cdrom > cdrom.iso.gz
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Save copy of data cdrom
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mkisofs -V LABEL -r dir | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz
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Create cdrom image from contents of dir
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mount -o loop cdrom.iso /mnt/dir
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Mount the cdrom image at /mnt/dir (read only)
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cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast
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Clear a CDRW
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gzip -dc cdrom.iso.gz | cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -
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Burn cdrom image (use dev=ATAPI -scanbus to confirm dev)
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cdparanoia -B
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Rip audio tracks from CD to wav files in current dir
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cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -audio -pad *.wav
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Make audio CD from all wavs in current dir (see also cdrdao)
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oggenc --tracknum='track' track.cdda.wav -o 'track.ogg'
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Make ogg file from wav file
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disk space (See also FSlint)
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ls -lSr
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Show files by size, biggest last
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du -s * | sort -k1,1rn | head
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Show top disk users in current dir. See also dutop
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du -hs /home/* | sort -k1,1h
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Sort paths by easy to interpret disk usage
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df -h
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Show free space on mounted filesystems
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df -i
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Show free inodes on mounted filesystems
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fdisk -l
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Show disks partitions sizes and types (run as root)
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rpm -q -a --qf '%10{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n' | sort -k1,1n
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List all packages by installed size (Bytes) on rpm distros
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dpkg-query -W -f='${Installed-Size;10}\t${Package}\n' | sort -k1,1n
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List all packages by installed size (KBytes) on deb distros
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dd bs=1 seek=2TB if=/dev/null of=ext3.test
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Create a large test file (taking no space). See also truncate
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> file
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truncate data of file or create an empty file
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monitoring/debugging
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tail -f /var/log/messages
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Monitor messages in a log file
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strace -c ls >/dev/null
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Summarise/profile system calls made by command
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strace -f -e open ls >/dev/null
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List system calls made by command
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strace -f -e trace=write -e write=1,2 ls >/dev/null
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Monitor what's written to stdout and stderr
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ltrace -f -e getenv ls >/dev/null
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List library calls made by command
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lsof -p $$
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List paths that process id has open
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lsof ~
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List processes that have specified path open
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tcpdump not port 22
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Show network traffic except ssh. See also tcpdump_not_me
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ps -e -o pid,args --forest
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List processes in a hierarchy
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ps -e -o pcpu,cpu,nice,state,cputime,args --sort pcpu | sed '/^ 0.0
/d'
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List processes by % cpu usage
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ps -e -orss=,args= | sort -b -k1,1n | pr -TW$COLUMNS
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List processes by mem (KB) usage. See also ps_mem.py
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ps -C firefox-bin -L -o pid,tid,pcpu,state
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List all threads for a particular process
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ps -p 1,$$ -o etime=
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List elapsed wall time for particular process IDs
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last reboot
|
Show system reboot history
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free -m
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Show amount of (remaining) RAM (-m displays in MB)
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watch -n.1 'cat /proc/interrupts'
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Watch changeable data continuously
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udevadm monitor
|
Monitor udev events to help configure rules
|
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system information (see also sysinfo) ('#' means root access is
required)
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uname -a
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Show kernel version and system architecture
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head -n1 /etc/issue
|
Show name and version of distribution
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cat /proc/partitions
|
Show all partitions registered on the system
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grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
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Show RAM total seen by the system
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grep "model name" /proc/cpuinfo
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Show CPU(s) info
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lspci -tv
|
Show PCI info
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lsusb -tv
|
Show USB info
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mount | column -t
|
List mounted filesystems on the system (and align output)
|
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grep -F capacity: /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info
|
Show state of cells in laptop battery
|
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dmidecode -q | less
|
Display SMBIOS/DMI information
|
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smartctl -A /dev/sda | grep Power_On_Hours
|
How long has this disk (system) been powered on in total
|
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hdparm -i /dev/sda
|
Show info about disk sda
|
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hdparm -tT /dev/sda
|
Do a read speed test on disk sda
|
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badblocks -s /dev/sda
|
Test for unreadable blocks on disk sda
|
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interactive (see also linux keyboard shortcuts)
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readline
|
Line editor used by bash, python, bc, gnuplot, ...
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screen
|
Virtual terminals with detach capability, ...
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mc
|
Powerful file manager that can browse rpm, tar, ftp, ssh, ...
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gnuplot
|
Interactive/scriptable graphing
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links
|
Web browser
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xdg-open .
|
open a file or url with the registered desktop application
|
