Its appointed time for everthing

If you are a command line junkie, you really need to check out @climagic on twitter.  Some days are better than others but I am constantly amazed at what is possible in bash/csh.  That said, here are a couple commands I have needed recently, many will be worthless to anyone else but oh well:

    • ar vx mypackage.deb – Unpackage a Debian binary install package. The result is actually three tar.gz files
    • dpkg -l  – List all installed Debian packges on a given system.
    • dpkg -c mypacakge.deb  –  List all files provided by the named Debian package.
    • hub pull-request -i 123 -b account/project:master -h account/project:branchtomerge  –  hub is a github utility that allows you to use some github functionality directly from the command line.  The preceding command will issue a pull request for branchtomerge into master and even tie the request to a given issue number (in this case issue #123.)
    • echo $(sha256sum $DEB | cut -f1 -d’ ‘) $(ls -l $DEB | cut -f5 -d’ ‘) $(basename $DEB)  –  This command creates the package hash structured named used INSIDE of Debian changes files.  Using the same command with (sha1sum|md5sum|sha256sum) will provided all three needed package id’s.  The reason this is useful is when you need to recreate a changes file without the original source package.  The rest of the file is fairly straight-forward but the signed package section has to absolutely precise. Also check out this link for more information.
    • asciiquarium  – OK, you might have to install this one first, but it is a full aquarium in ascii characters, including sharks that eat the fish.  Submarines, fishing hooks, and even the lock ness monster.
    • grc tail -f /var/log/maillog –  Note to self, I need to make an rpm for this package.  grc is a generic colorizer for other command line programs that don’t use color by default (like tail, traceroute, syslog, etc…)
    • isohybrid -h 64 -s 32 mycdimage.iso  –  Adds a simple filesystem layout to a standard iso image so it can be written to USB drive as well as an regular CD.  Really useful for building custom Linux CD/USB images.