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Essential UNIX Tricks and Tools?

Posted by Cliff on from the show-how-much-you-know dept.

Chris Lesner asks: "What handy UNIX tricks/tools do you use everyday? I'm asking for stuff that amazes your friends and makes you wonder how they use UNIX w/o them. Some simple examples include: job control (with fg, bg/&, jobs, Ctrl-Z); moving login sessions between machines with Screen for vt100 and VNC for X11 and using screen and VNC to share login session b/w users for demos etc.; using find, xargs -i and echo to build command strings which after inspection can be piped back though bash e.g. `find . -type f | xargs -i{} echo "cp {} {}.bak" | bash` I'm asking b/c my source for this kind of information has dried up as my UNIX skills have matured. I'm guessing other Slashdot readers have the same problem. By the way, if you think the examples I give are lame I challenge you to better them!"

6 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Impressed like a gnu under a 18-wheeler by Chinese+Karma+Whore · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, seeing that my friends don't know much about UNIX, the following usually impresses them:

    1. Connect to home router (FreeBSD) w/ PuTTy SSH client
    2. smbclient to windows share (i.e. smbclient //empire/files -U jesus)
    3. mget files to /tmp
    4. run command shell on client box
    5. pscp files from router
    6. in the meantime, as a finishing touch, perl -e $#29%% something

    To impress normal people, you don't need to type anything fancy. Just type FAST, and as soon as a command returns, pretend to contemplate for a second, and then type your next command.

  2. One of my all time favorites by Froze · · Score: 3, Funny

    su root cd /; rm -rf *

    This one works really nice when your getting ready to do a fresh install, since it allows to vent all that pent up frustation with your now obsolete system :-)

    --
    -- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
  3. Eh... by jo42 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Does "FORMAT C:" count?

  4. I'm surprised by Neillparatzo · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm surprised no one's yet mentioned the command to "read mail, real fast".

    1. Re:I'm surprised by Mr+Z · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or, to read mail from relatives and friends you met on Slashdot:

      rm -rf /.

      Works best if you're root.

      --Joe
      --
      Program Intellivision!
  5. Re:Real shell timesaver... by bobdown2001 · · Score: 2, Funny

    But you simply can't forget about 'cd +' which takes you to the directory you're about to change to ;0)

    --
    Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?