Commands I always forget...

I always seem to be forgetting stuff.  My Sister uses recall as her benchmark of how our aging mother is "doing" brain wise.  When hearing some of the stuff she expects Mom to remember I think I must be loosing it too, and I'm 45yrs younger than my Mom!

>Rsync

rsync is a cool little app that has been around for ages, it allows you to copy stuff from one system to another using ssh.
rsync -avhPn --del -e 'ssh -p xxxxx' --exclude 'Dir_of_BigFiles' ~/Personal/ user@remote_host:Personal/
the -n means "dry-run" so it pretends to copy stuff but doesn't. -a means archive (most likely what you want for files like personal photos), -v for verbose incase something goes wrong, -h for human readable sizes, -P for progress, and --del for delete stuff on the destination that is not on the source (so be careful with paths, hence -n).

I run this on my work laptop to sync the personal files (mostly pictures of my kid) from there to my home server.  My home server is allowing ssh incoming on a high port (to keep the script kiddies away) and I keep forgetting the syntax to rsync over ssh on a non standard port.  Oh, I also exclude the directory with big files (movies) since my bandwidth at home is kinda limited.

>SSH tricks

ssh is one of the best nerd tools around!  I use it for connecting to my home when on the road and as a poor mans vpn to my home for web browsing:

ssh -DN 8080 user@host -p xxxxx
The -D dynamically links the local port 8080 (this is on my laptop) through ssh to the host (my home server).  The I configure my browser to use a SOCKS proxy on 8080 and BLAM, I'm on my local network surfing the internet or any other web based service I have at my home (XBMC, DD-WRT, development web pages, etc)
The -N means don't bother giving me an interactive shell, meaning, the terminal prompt on my laptop can't use the ssh connection through the terminal (ie, although I have an ssh connection open I can't do normal ssh stuff through this window) which is nice because it keeps the tunnel from closing because of a time-out.

This also works for connecting any to any TCP port within the network of the host (home) so if I want to use VNC I can
ssh user@host -NL 5900:additional_host:5900
The -L is for linking a single port, this passes traffic from my laptop port 5900 through "host" into "additional_host" port 5900 allowing my laptop to VNC to localhost 5900 (screen 0) and see the remote system behind the network accessible via "host".

Another common use is to remotely connect and use screen for continued administration/development

ssh -t user@host -p xxxxx screen -dR Ivan
This tells ssh to make a connection to the host system (home) as "user" (me) on port xxxxxx and launch screen connecting to or creating a session called Ivan.  The -t forces the creation of a "terminal" which means, if you do not have -t having ssh launch some applications fail.  Lots of awesome tricks with ssh, I'll put more in the future.
If you are in need of sending command substitution variables to get the remote system to add the current time to the name of a file that you are creating so need to put an escape character  before the $ or you will get the command substitution of the local system.  [ex: ssh root@ "zip -r /path/to/dir/\$(date +%F-%H_%M)-\$(hostname | grep -i something | awk '{print \$2;}')-logs.zip /path/to/things/to/zip"] [hint: notice the \ in front of all the $'s]

>GNU Screen

GNU screen gives a server admin the ability to connect to a multi-user terminal/shell or just a persistent shell session that can be disconnected from and re connected to later without interrupting the commands being run.  Lets say I am going to parse a bunch of files looking for duplicates and I'm working on bonding a few NICs together for additional functionality, and I have a little loop running to monitor uptime on a switch, etc, etc, all within a network I access through a ssh server.  I connect and launch screen session and use a bunch of screen windows (or multiple session) to manage all those tasks... then, when I'm heading home and want to pick it all up once I'm there, I disconnect before I leave and reconnect to that same screen session(s) later as if I never left!

Of course screen is all configurable with options for making life a little easier:

#CODE: .screenrc

   #All single lines
   #shutoff the start up message
startup_message off
   #allow a big scroll back buffer so you don't "loose" anything
defscrollback 5000
   #allows screen redraw for some apps like VIM or LESS
altscreen on
   #give me my normal prompt
shell -/bin/bash
   #give me some "tabs" at the bottom of the screen to help me visualize where I am
caption splitonly "%{= wK}%-w%?%F%{= bw}%:%{= Wk}%? %n %t %{-}%+w %-= "
   #same but not just when split
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{= B}%H (ctl-a) %{= r}[ %{= d}%Y-%m-%d %c:%s %{= r}]%{= d} - %{= wk}%-Lw%{= Bw} %n$f*  %t %{-}%+Lw %-= :)"
   #pre-launch screen windows with different options#
   #ssh to my home and launch screen there
screen -t ssh-home 0 ssh -t -D 8080 user@host -p xxxxxx screen -dR Ivan
   #ssh to a VM on my laptop
screen -t ssh-VM 1 ssh -t user@192.168.10.101 screen -dR Ivan
   #ssh to a work system in the lab as a comon host but use my .screenrc config
screen -t ssh-lab 2 ssh -t user@host screen -dR Ivan -c .screenrc.Ivan
   #ssh to a freelance location to work on their systems
screen -t freelance 4 ssh -t user@host screen -dR Service
   #give me a normal shell prompt
screen -t bash 5

So I can just launch screen and let it connect to all the places I "usually" go via ssh.  It could also be running scripts or other apps so learn about the .screenrc file.

>Read a text file in a zip inplace

use less to read a text file in a zip:
unzip -p [archive.zip] [inner/zip/path/to/file.txt] | less
unzip -c [archive.zip] [inner/zip/path/to/file.txt] | less
In a tar.gz
tar --to-stdout -zxf file.tar.gz | less
or just a file that is gzipped
gzip -c file.gz | less
I think this is a good nerd start!  I'm gonna try and keep this up to date to concatenate all the useful nerd info I find out there.