Linux
Enhance The Experience of Logitech Keyboards and Mice on Linux
Just brought the Logitech Corded Wave keyboard, which is very comfortable and great (As long as one can ignore the ugly windows/internet explorer/msn messenger symbols printed on some of its keys).
The keyboard has many extra keys, like the function keys, a dedicated zoom in/out keys and more. The problem is that they don’t work on Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 in my case) out of the box, which is a little sad.
Fortunately, I found a simple solution in the internet, and now I can use all the features of the keyboard. The following solution can be used for almost all models of Logitech keyboards and mice.
Move Gnome Panel To The Second Monitor – Ubuntu
Say you have two monitors set up as “extended desktop”, and you want to move the gnome-panel from one monitor to the other monitor.
Here is how to do it in Ubuntu (Tested on Ubuntu 10.04):
1. Right click the panel, choose “properties”.
2. In “General” tab, uncheck “expand”.
3. Drag the panel from its left or right edge to the other monitor.
4. Right click the panel, choose “properties”, in “General” tab recheck “expand”.
You’re done. Have fun 
Found the tip here.
Update:
An easier way, is just to hold “Alt” key, and drag the panel from one monitor to the other. No need to play with the “expand” setting.
NumPad Problems When Using Vim over Tmux
I use vim as my main text editor, and I usually split the screen to edit a few buffers in parallel. To make resizing the windows faster, I mapped the numpad keys “/*-+” to resize the windows (see original vim tip here).
Recently, I started to use tmux, and opened vim, split the windows as usual, and tried to resize them. It didn’t work 
I use Ubuntu 10.04 (Don’t remember the exotic name..), and I found that the latest tmux package in their repo is 1.1-1.
Anyway, version 1.1-1 has a bug with the NumPad. The solution is to download the source of tmux 1.2 and build it. It depends on libevent so you’ll need to get it first:
this is how to make it work:
1. sudo apt-get install libevent-dev
2. Get the source tarball of tmux from here.
3. tar xzf tmux-1.2.tar.gz
4. cd tmux-1.2
5. ./configure
6. make
7. sudo make install
Done. Now your life is better. Have fun
Re-Use A Bash Command With Different Parameters
Suppose you have typed and executed this command in your Linux shell:
1 | ./script_a.sh 1.23 && ./script_b.sh 1.23 && ./script_c.sh 1.23.45 |
Now you want to run the same command, but with 2.34 instead of 1.23
A nice way to do it is this:
1 | !!:gs/1.23/2.34 |
Meaning, run the last command (!! is also called ‘bang bang’, and it’s substituted by the last command you executed), and replace every instance of 1.23 by 2.34
via Unix Bash Scripting.
Have fun
Make Shell Scripts Executable By Default
If you use vim to write shell scripts, you might want to save the “chmod +x” command after saving the script.
By adding the following line to your vimrc file (typically, it’s located at ~/.vimrc), scripts will automatically become executable.
au BufWritePost * if getline(1) =~ “^#!” | if getline(1) =~ “/bin/” | silent !chmod a+x <afile> | endif | endif
(meaning, if the file includes #! with “/bin/” in the path, apply “chmod a+x” on this file).
via shell-fu.
Have fun
Strip Leading Characters Off A String
Say you have a bash variable (say x) storing the string “MyLongString”
This bash command:
1 | echo ${x##My} |
Will strip the leading string “My” off the original string. And thus the output will be:
LongString
via @bashcookbook
Strip the File Name Suffix off a Bash Variable
Suppose you have a bash variable storing a file name, say x =file.jpg
You can use this substitution command in order to strip out the file suffix off the string:
1 | echo ${x%.*} |
The output will be the base name of the file without the suffix.
via @bashcookbook
Enjoy
Create Multiple Nested Directories in Linux
Did you know that you can create a complete directory tree with one command?
Let’s start with a simple example:
mkdir -p a/b/c
will create this tree:
`-- a
`-- b
`-- c
And any of these:
mkdir -p a/{b1,b2}/c
or
mkdir -p a/b{1,2}/c
Will create this tree:
› Continue reading
Edit The Command Line With Vim
This is a quick (and great) tip I found at Daily Vim:
Open a linux terminal, and type some (long) command.
Now type [ctrl]+[x] and then [ctrl]+[e]
The command should be moved now to a vim window.
Edit the command (fix typos, change parameters, etc..) and save.
The command will now be executed.
Enjoy
Renaming Files In Linux
In a previous post, I wrote about converting strings from camelCase to undescore delimited format.
In this post, we’ll do the same but for file names. We’ll use the command line program “rename” for this purpose.
Here we go:
1. Convert all file names in current directory which are of the form “myFileName” or “MyFileName” into the form of “my_file_name”:
1 | rename 's/(.)([A-Z])/$1_\l$2/g' * && rename 's/([A-Z])/\l$1/g' * |
2. Convert all file names in current directory which are of the form “my_file_name” into the form “myFileName”:
1 | rename 's/([a-z])_([a-z])/$1\u$2/g' * |
3. Convert all file names in current directory which are of the form “my_file_name” into the form “MyFileName”:
1 | rename 's/([a-z])_([a-z])/$1\u$2/g' * && rename 's/^([a-z])/\u$1/g' * |
Enjoy
About Me
My name is Amir Watad. I have a BSc. in biomedical engineering from The Biomedical Engineering school , Technion , Israel, and a BSc. in electrical engineering from The Electrical Engineering school , Technion , Israel.
I'm a Verification Engineer in Mellanox Technologies Ltd.
I love Linux, the Command Line and the OpenSource Community.
I used to write Poems (Arabic) when I was able to find time for this.
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