Simple Linux Tips and Tricks
Published
Updated
Using Ubuntu(Pop!_OS) and Arch for a decade and I still forget how to do simple tasks. I am documenting a few here and will keep updating this for future reference.
tar archives
Tar has following options
-c
is crate archive mode, others are options in that mode-x
is extract archive mode-v
verbosepopOS-z
create gzip-f
tar filename
Create and Extract
tar -cvzf test.tar.gz test-dir/
tar -xvzf test.tar.gz /op/test
Split and combine large files
Split command can be used to split large files into many smaller ones:
e.g. split -b 50M thunderbird-profile.tar.gz "profile.tar.gz.part."
Similarly to combine these files again, use cat:
e.g. cat profile.tar.gz.part.* > thunderbird.profile.tar.gz
Combine multiple pdf files
Poppler is a PDF rendering library which provides a lot of utilities to work with PDF files. To combine multiple pdf files to one, we can use pdfunite
sudo apt install poppler-utils
pdfunite input1.pdf input2.pdf input3.pdf output.pdf
How to remove password from pdf file
- Install
pdftk
sudo apt install pdftk
pdftk <path-to-encrypted.pdf> input_pw <password> output <new-file.pdf>
Socks proxy
ssh -D 8123 -f -C -q -N <user@example.com>
I have this setup as my bash alias.
Monitor ongoing tcp traffic
sudo tcpdump -i eth0
List open TCP ports
sudo netstat -plnt
Disable Gnome tracker daemon
It hogs cores when files are changing fast.
From here
tracker daemon -t
cd ~/.config/autostart
cp -v /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-*.desktop ./
for FILE in tracker-*.desktop; do echo Hidden=true >> $FILE; done
rm -rf ~/.cache/tracker ~/.local/share/tracker
Flatpack nextcloud autostart setup
Flatpack provided nextcloud doesn't do autostart by itself. Create a file at ~/.config/autostart/flatpak-nextcloud.desktop
with following content:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=flatpak run com.nextcloud.desktopclient.nextcloud --background
Hidden=false
NoDisplay=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_IN]=Nextcloud(flatpak)
Name=Nextcloud(flatpak)
Comment[en_IN]=custom command - flatpak
Comment=custom command - flatpak
Install obs virtual camera
From here
sudo apt install v4l2loopback-dkms
Flash windows ISO to usb
Installation
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tomtomtom/woeusb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install woeusb wimtools
Then flash ISO
sudo woeusb --device windows.iso /dev/sda