command-line-snippets

The following is a collection of useful command line snippets that I use regularly.

• PDF modification
• Text edition
• File management
• Software development
• Network
• Photos
• Video
• Web
• Pro
• Miscellaneous

PDF modification

Merge multiple PDF files

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=full.pdf page1.pdf page2.pdf page3.pdf

Split a multipage PDF file

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dSAFER -o p%d.pdf multipage.pdf

Extract pages from a PDF file

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -dFirstPage=1 -dLastPage=12 -sOutputFile=outfile_p1-p12.pdf original_input.pdf

Trim PDF margins

pdfjam –suffix out –trim '6.5cm 4.5cm 6.5cm 4.5cm' – source.pdf

Text edition

Insert a header at the top of a text file

sed -i -e "1i Here\nIs\nMy\nHeader\n" file.txt

File management

Delete all files that end with tilde

find . -type f -name '*~' -exec rm -f '{}' \;

Find duplicate files (asking for deletion)

fdupes -r ~/dir1 ~/dir2 -d

Recursively rename all file extensions to lower case

find . -type f | sed 's/\(.*\/\)\(.*\)/mv "\1\2" "\1\L\2"/' |sh

Software development

Search all .java files for a string

find . -name "*.java" -print | xargs grep "exampleOfString"

Release with Maven

mvn clean
mvn release:prepare -Darguments=-Dgpg.passphrase="My\ passphrase"
mvn release:perform -Darguments=""

Network

Change a network interface MAC address

ifconfig wlan0 down
macchanger -A wlan0
ifconfig wlan0 up

Measure TCP bandwidth performance

# On server station (ip=192.168.1.10)
iperf -s -f m
# On client station
iperf -c 192.168.1.10 -f m

Photos

Adjust time stored in the EXIF data by 30 minutes forward for all .jpg files

jhead -ta+0:30 *.jpg

Rename all .jpg photos to <date>_<time>.jpg (with date & time from EXIF data)

exiv2 rename *.jpg

Video

Convert .ogv files to .avi files

mencoder movie.ogv -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts pass=1 -o movie.avi

Convert AVCHD (.mts) files to .avi files

ffmpeg -i movie.mts -vcodec libx264 -crf 23 -acodec libmp3lame -ac 2 -ab 192k -s 640x360 movie.avi

Play a movie in ASCII art

mplayer -vo caca movie.avi

Web

Download all pdfs from given url

wget -r -A '*.pdf' url/path

Pro

Pulse Secure connection/disconnection

# Pulse Secure connection
"/path/to/Pulse Secure/Integration/pulselauncher.exe" -url "https://a.pulse.secure/url" -u "a_username" -p "a_password" -r "DOMAIN"
# Pulse Secure disconnection
"/path/to/Pulse Secure/Integration/pulselauncher.exe" -signout -url "https://a.pulse.secure/url"

Miscellaneous

Send a command to a serial/USB port

echo -ne '\xaa\xbb\x06\x00\xff\xff\x06\x01\x64\x63' > /dev/ttyUSB0

Sniff a serial/USB port

apt-get install jpnevulator
jpnevulator --ascii --timing-print --tty "/dev/ttyUSB0" --read

Generate a random number between 1024 and 4096

shuf -i 1024-4096 -n 1