This script will run check for ubuntu launch once every 5 mins and let you know if there is an launch.

while [ 1 ]; do if [ -z "`curl -I "http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/9.10/release/"|grep "404"`" ]; then kdialog --msgbox "9.10 Released"; exit; fi; sleep 300;  done

An easier way to batch convert images using the ‘convert’ command…

#!/bin/sh
# An Easy command to use the convert command. Makes sure that the rename problem don't happen

if [ ! -d "Out" ]; then
        mkdir Out
fi

sel="*.*"
if [ $# -eq 2 ] ; then
        sel=$2
fi

for i in $sel; do
        echo -n "Converting $i ... "
        convert $1 $i Out/$i
        echo "Done"
done

This will convert a flv file to a avi file. I got this off linux.com. It uses mencoder – so make sure you have that.

#!/bin/sh

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 {-divx|-xvid} list_of_flv_files"
  exit 1
fi

# video encoding bit rate
V_BITRATE=1000

while [ "$1" ]; do
  case "$1" in
    -divx)
      MENC_OPTS="-ovc lavc -lavcopts \
        vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=$V_BITRATE:mbd=2:v4mv:autoaspect"
      ;;
    -xvid)
      MENC_OPTS="-ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=$V_BITRATE:autoaspect"
      ;;
    *)
      if file "$1" | grep -q "Macromedia Flash Video"; then
        mencoder "$1" $MENC_OPTS -vf pp=lb -oac mp3lame \
          -lameopts fast:preset=standard -o \
          "`basename $1 .flv`.avi"
      else
        echo "$1 is not Flash Video. Skipping"
      fi
      ;;
  esac
  shift
done

This shell script will create a build of a firefox extension in linux. This is created according to my details(eg, the guid has @binnyva.com in it) – but you can modify it and use it yourself.

app=$1
folder=$2

if [ $# -eq 0 ] ; then
	echo "Useage: sh build.sh  []"

elif [ $# -eq 1 ] ; then
	folder="$1@binnyva.com/"
fi

rm $app.xpi
cp -r $folder temp
cd temp
rm -rf .git

zip -r $app.xpi .>/dev/null
mv $app.xpi ..
cd ..
rm -rf temp
echo "Built $app successfully"

A perl script to stop crond if mysqld is down

#!/usr/bin/perl

# See if MySQL server is alive or not
$mysql_status = `/etc/init.d/mysqld status`;
print "MySQL Status: $mysql_status\n";
unless($mysql_status =~ /running/) {
	print "Stopping Cron... ";
	#If MySQL is not running, kill the crond
	$cron = `/etc/init.d/crond stop`;
	print $cron;
}

print "\n";

Prints all the arguments of the function. This function uses console.log if firebug is available – else, uses alert.

function p() {
                for(var i=0; i<<arguments.length; i++) {
			if(window.console) console.log(arguments[i]);
			else alert(arguments[i]);
		}
}

One can use awk to get a specific column from a command output…

First column of the command
date|awk '{print $1}'

11th Column of the command
ps aux|awk '{print $11}'

Use a different Field separator
cat /etc/passwd|awk -F ':' '{print $1}'

[tags]awk,sed,shell,script,output,filter,text,cli,linux,string,separator[/tags]

This command will list all the files a folder without their extensions. Comes handy when doing shell scripting

perl -e 'while(<*.*>){s/\..{3}$//i;print "File \"$_\"\n";}print "\n";'

This script will package your SVN code to a tar.gz file. Just give the name of the project as the first argument. Like this…

perl packager.pl jus5

#!/usr/bin/perl
#Package a Sourceforge project from its SVN source.

die("Please provide the name of the project as the argument") unless($ARGV[0]);

$project=$ARGV[0];
#$project='jus5';

`svn checkout https://$project.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/$project`;
`find $project/ -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \\;`;
`tar -czf $project.tar.gz $project/`;
`rm -rf $project/`;