Linux Commands

dd

Convert and copy a file.

dd returns current copy status when sent an HUP signal. Type in another shell:

while :; sleep 5; do killall -s SIGHUP1 dd; done

This will force dd to update its status every 5sec.

diff

Use diff to compare 2 files together and/or to generate patch files

$ cp project_dir project_dir-patched     
$ cd project_dir-patched
$ vi somefile                                             # We start modifying the copy
$ vi someotherfile
$ cd ..
$ diff -u project_dir project_dir-patched >project.patch  # We generate the patch file (universal format)

Patch can be applied with the command patch (see below). Be careful regarding file names / directory structures when generating patch files! Sometimes you'll need to edit the generate patch files to fix the directory structure.

dpkg

Package manager for Debian / Ubuntu. See Package Management#Ubuntu / Debian

echo

echo -e "Some text\n...on 2 lines..."                    # Enable interpretation of backslash escapes (must be quoted!)

find

See here for further examples on how to combine find and xargs.

Frequent pitfall! The semi-colon ; must be escaped in Bash !

find . -name "*.jpg"                                     # find files/directories whose name matches specified pattern
find . -path "*/cur/*"                                   # find files/directories whose path spec matches specified pattern
find . -type d -name "cur"                               # find only directories whose name matches specified pattern
find . -exec echo '{}' \;                                # semi-colon must be escaped!
find . -exec echo one '{}' \; -exec echo two '{}' \;     # to execute several commands on one match
find . -name \*.jpg | xargs echo                         # much faster version using xargs
find . -name \*.jpg | xargs -n 2 echo                    # limit #args passed to echo to 2 max.
find . -name \*.jpg -print0 | xargs -0 ls                # Use NULL separator if files contains space or special char !!!

grep

grep -Rsl PATTERN [FILE]            # Recursive, no error output, only list filename
grep BASIC-REG-EXP-PATTERN [FILE]   # Use classic regexp (like "dma\|DMA")
egrep EXT-REG-EXP-PATTERN [FILE]    # Same as grep -E. Use extended regexp (like "dma|DMA")
fgrep FIXED-STRINGS-REG-EXP [FILE]  # Same as grep -F. Pattern is a list of strings to match.
grep -n PATTERN [FILE]              # Print matched line numbers.
grep -- "-s" [FILE]                 # Search for text "-s"
grep -e "-s" [FILE]                 # Search for text "-s" - alternative solution
grep -R -include=*.in PATTERN *     # Search recursively through folders, limiting to files matching pattern "*.in"
grep -R PATTERN *.in                # Idem, but matching pattern "*.in" also applies to folders.
grep -o PATTERN [FILE]              # (--only-matching) Print only the matched (non-empty) parts of a matching line.

multitee

multitee sends multiple inputs to multiple outputs.
Check this page.
Original is here, or can also be found here on Debian.

Here a patch to build it on Cygwin. The patch ports calls to BSD signal.h API (struct sigvec, sigvec(), sigmask(), sigblock()...) to the POSIX API (struct sigaction, sigaction(), sigprocmask(), sigfillset()...):

$ patch -Np1 <../multitee-3.0-cygwin.patch
$ make
$ cp multitee.1 /usr/local/man/man1
$ cp multitee.exe /usr/local/bin

Example of use:

$ multitee 0-1,4,5 4> foo 5> bar             # same as tee foo bar with better blocking behavior
$ multitee 0:1 3:1 4:1,2 6:7                 # various merge and copy
$ tcpclient server smtp multitee 0:7 6:1e0   # e0 tell multitee to quit as soon connection close
$ multitee 0:3 3:1                           # same as 'socat - FD:3'

netcat

TCP-IP swiss army knife (equivalent of the telnet program. Check wikipedia:netcat. Also known as command nc).

netstat

Print network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masqurade connections, and multicast memberships

netstat -utpn      #Active ports, tcp, socket program PID, numeric
netstat -lutpn     #Listen ports, tcp, socket program PID, numeric
netstat -autpn     #All (active and listen), tcp, socket program PID, numeric
netstat -rn        #Kernel route table, numeric

When listing sockets (default output), you'll get an output like:

% netstat -at Active Internet connections (servers and established) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 0 *:time *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 localhost:mysql *:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 andLinux.local:43449 windows-host:x11 ESTABLISHED

% netstat -atn Active Internet connections (servers and established) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:37 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN tcp 0 0 192.168.11.150:43449 192.168.11.1:6000 ESTABLISHED

Local Address

* or 0.0.0.0 means that the process accepts connection from any interface.

127.0.0.1 means it only accepts connection on localhost loopback (and so only connection that originates from local PC as well).

Any other IP address means that the process listen on the given port at the given IP address

patch

Use patch to apply a patch previously generated with the command diff. patch use is pretty much straightforward, one mainly has to pay attention to directory structure / blanks.

Starting from the end of our example in diff above:

$ cd project_dir                 # We cd into project directory to patch
$ patch -lNp1<../project.patch   # We apply the patch in place

• The option l is to ignore white spaces (very handy when copying patch from internet page for instance).
• The option p1 tells patch to ignore the first (i.e. one level of) directory in the file name given in the patch header.

The value to use for option p depends actually on the patch header:

• First example - same root directory for both to and from file

--- outguess-0.2/jpg.c       2001-02-13 01:29:07.000000000 +0100
+++ outguess-0.2/jpg.c       2009-08-25 16:06:05.242378300 +0200

• second example - different root directory between to and from file

--- outguess-0.2/jpg.c       2001-02-13 01:29:07.000000000 +0100
+++ outguess-0.2-patched/jpg.c       2009-08-25 16:06:05.242378300 +0200

$ patch -lNp0 <project.patch                        # For first example header above
$ cd project_dir; patch -lNp1 <../project.patch     # For second example header above

recode

recode /cl../cr <dos.txt >mac.txt
recode /cr.. <mac.txt >unix.txt
recode ../cl <unix.txt >dos.txt
recode charset1/surface1..charset2/surface2 <input.txt >output.txt
recode /QP.. <qp.txt >normal.txt                                    # To convert quoted-printable text

charset		surface
us	ASCII (7 bits)	/cr	Carriage return as end of line (Mac text)
l1	ISO Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1, Western Europe, 8 bits)	/cl	Carriage return line feed as end of line (DOS text)
EUCJP	EUC-JP for Japanese (Unix)	/	Line feed as end of line (Unix text)
SJIS	Shift-JIS for Japanese (Microsoft)	/d1	Human readable bytewise decimal dump
ISO2022JP	Mail encoding for Japanese (7 bits)	/x1	Human readable bytewise hexidecimal dump
u2	UCS-2 (Universal Character Set, 2 bytes)	/64	Base64 encoded text
u8	UTF-8 (Universal Transformation Format, 8 bits)	/QP	Quoted-Printable encoded text

rpm

See Package Management#RPM's

sed

Moved to page dedicated to Sed.

socat

Command-line utility that establishes two bidirectional byte streams and transfers data between them ([1]). socat is the more powerful version of netcat. Check the homepage.

socat -ly 'TCP4-LISTEN:143,reuseaddr,fork' PROXY:ton.imap.server:143|TCP:134.27.168.36:8080
ProxyCommand socat - 'PROXY:%h:%p,proxyauth=user:pass|SSL,verify=0|PROXY:my.server:443,proxyauth=user:pass|TCP:big.brother.proxy:8080'     # Using v2.0.0 beta

socat can be easily used as a replacement of telnet:

socat tcp:<host>:<port> -       # <port> can be a port number or service name (telnet,imap...)

Some useful command-line options:

socat -ly                       # Writes messages to syslog instead of stderr; severity as defined with option -d
socat -v                        # Writes the transferred data to their target stream but also to stderr (text mode)

XSel / XSelection

XSel is a command-line program for getting and setting the contents of the X selection and context-menu clipboard. Normally the former is only accessible by manually highlighting information and pasting it with the middle mouse button, and the latter is only accessible by using context-menu cut/copy/paste command.

xselection is an equivalent package on OpenSUSE.

On Cygwin, one has to use getclip, putclip or device /dev/clipboard.

xsel -p                                 # To get content of PRIMARY buffer (X selection)
xselection PRIMARY                      # (equivalent command for xselection)
xsel -b                                 # To get content of CLIPBOARD (context-menu clipboard)
xselection CLIPBOARD                    # (equivalent command for xselection)
echo sometext | xsel -p                 # To set PRIMARY buffer
echo sometext | xselection PRIMARY -    # (equivalent command for xselection)
xselection PRIMARY sometext             # (equivalent command for xselection)
echo sometext | xsel -b                 # To set CLIPBOARD buffer
echo sometext | xselection CLIPBOARD -  # (equivalent command for xselection)
xselection CLIPBOARD sometext           # (equivalent command for xselection)

Miscellaneous

htop

an improved top command

iconv

locale encoding conversions

konwert

fancy encoding conversions

mimencode

binary file conversion for the mail.;mkfifo

make FIFOs (named pipes)

pv, pipeview, pipebench

monitor the progress of data through a pipe

reformime

MIME E-mail reformatting tool

stat

display file or file system status

strace

trace system calls and signals

tee

read from standard input and write to standard output and files

tree

List the contents of directories in a tree-like format.

uuencode, uudecode

binary file conversion for Unix.

watch

Execute a program periodically, showing output full screen

wc

Counts lines, words and character in a file

xclip

xclip is a command line interface to the X11 clipboard. It can also be used for copying files, as an alternative to sftp/scp, thus avoiding password prompts when X11 forwarding has already been setup. Check this guide.

xxd

Make a hexdump or do the reverse

$ echo 202122 | xxd -r -ps -                 # To decode a hexdump string
$ echo ' !"' | xxd -u -ps -                  # to code as a hexdump string (uppercase)