Automation on Amit Agarwal Linux Blog

How to Use AI to Create Commit Messages with ZapGPT

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0530

Learn how to automate and improve your Git commit messages using ZapGPT, an open-source AI tool that generates context-aware commit suggestions.

How Vim Can Make a Hacker’s Life Easier with Macros and Registers

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0530

How Vim Can Make a Hacker’s Life Easier with Macros and Registers

Why Every Hacker Should Master Vim Macros and Registers

If you’re deep into hacking, pentesting, or security research, you know that automation is key. Repetitive tasks like manipulating payloads, encoding/decoding strings, or tweaking shell scripts can become tedious. Enter Vim macros and registers! These powerful features let you record and replay keystrokes, making your workflow insanely efficient.

No that I dont use IDE’s the likes of Visual Studio code (sometimes I do). However they can never match the raw power of vi/vim/nvim or any of the vim family of editors. To reap the maximum benefit, you have to learn the basics of using the editor in normal mode ( which is by the not the editing mode).

Send history of current host to some other host over ssh

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 00:44:11 +0000

Sometimes I want to save the history of current host on another host. This is to ensure that I can use copy/paste on other host to run the commands. To this, I found a simple solution –

history| ssh <user>@<host> 'cat - > /tmp/history'

And on the new host, you can find the history in file “/tmp/history”, cool :). Now I can quick edit this file to create this as shell script as well if required. How cool is that.

send mail using telnet from script

Mon, 25 Dec 2017 01:00:07 +0000

If you have no other option but to use telnet with authentication to send mail 🙂

( echo "ehlo"
sleep 1
auth login
sleep 1
$(echo username |base64)
sleep 1
$(echo password |base64)
sleep 1
mail from: from-address
sleep 1
rcpt to: recepient
sleep 1
data
sleep 1
subject: test 
test mail
. 

exit ) |telnet server port

ansible with docker dynamic inventory

Mon, 09 Jan 2017 00:50:55 +0000

So, I have a few dockers. Every now and then I want to run some command on all of them. Doing ‘docker exec’ is tiresome. I found this neat solution with ansible that I thought I should share with you.

To get started, you need to have the “docker.py” script. This script will be used as python script inventory for ansible. So, use the following command and get the script:

Executing commands on multiple hosts

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 00:33:38 +0000

If you have to execute the same command in multiple hosts, then you can use mussh:

Description : Mussh is a shell script that allows you to execute a command or script

over ssh on multiple hosts with one command. When possible mussh will use

ssh-agent and RSA/DSA keys to minimize the need to enter your password

more than once.

First install mussh with the following command

dnf install mussh

Now to run this for multiple hosts, you can run like this

script to get hard disk health in fedora/ubuntu

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 12:12:08 +0000

First, put this in a script.

#!/bin/bash

#Change as appropriate
HDD=sda

export sub="SmartCtl data for HDD"
echo 'To: &lt;Your Email&gt;
Sub: [Cron] $sub
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Disposition: inline

&lt;html&gt;&lt;pre&gt;'


echo '&lt;style&gt;

hr {
    display: block;
    height: 1px;
    border: 0;
    border-top: 1px solid #ccc;
    margin: 1em 0;
    padding: 0;
}
&lt;/style&gt;
'

echo '&lt;h2&gt;Errors on HDD:&lt;/h2&gt;'
echo '&lt;hr&gt;'
sudo smartctl -l error  /dev/$HDD
echo '&lt;h2&gt;Health of HDD:&lt;/h2&gt;'
echo '&lt;hr&gt;'
sudo smartctl -H  /dev/$HDD

echo '&lt;h2&gt;Detailed info&lt;/h2&gt;'
echo '&lt;hr&gt;'
sudo smartctl -a -d ata /dev/$HDD

echo '&lt;h2&gt;Journalctl output for smartd&lt;/h2&gt;'
echo '&lt;hr&gt;'

if [[ -f /etc/fedora-release ]]
then
journalctl -x --show-cursor -u smartd --since=yesterday
else
#This is for Ubuntu.. still using dmesg

dmesg -T -l err,crit,alert,emerg

fi


echo '&lt;h2&gt;All Details&lt;/h2&gt;'
echo '&lt;hr&gt;'

sudo smartctl --xall /dev/$HDD


echo "Thanks for using Amit Agarwal's script"
echo '&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'

and then put this in cron:

Quick tip on zipping logs in real time.

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:57:53 +0000

Sometimes, some small things that we don’t actually think can be useful are such useful. I faced this couple of days back when I was working on something and the amount of logs getting generated and the files getting rotated was too fast. If I had to use this for sometime, I needed some script, application or something to make sure that the logs are zipped every few seconds. Finding an application for this would take time and what good is bash if we need to find applications for this. So, a simple bash command did the trick. Most of us would know this but applying it and using it at the right time, was what saved my life. Thanks to bash. Here is the command:

Delete Files older than 14 days

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:17 +0000

Taken from Dzone.

@echo on

setlocal

set srcDir=.

Read more: <a href="http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/10441">http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/10441

bash one liner to change/remove test pattern from config file or text file.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:05 +0000

Problem:

I had a directory with a lot of config files in the ini file format, i.e. name and value separated by equals. Some/all of these contained some directory names and other values which had to be replaced. But there were other place where I should not not replace them, if there was no exact match. I also needed to have a backup copy of the file that I was modifying. Since the number of files that I needed to change was multiple so was quite difficult to do it without using some script.

Script to add all the partitions to the fstab.

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:51:27 +0000

I wrote a simple script today to get all the partitions on all the disks and then create <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/fstab" title="Fstab" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fstab">fstab entry with them. The script also gets the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/universally_unique_identifier" title="Universally Unique Identifier" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_Unique_Identifier">UUID and uses the same to make the entry 🙂

  <td>
    <div class="bash codecolorer">
      <span class="co0">#!/bin/bash -</span><br /> <span class="co0">#===============================================================================</span><br /> <span class="co0">#</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;FILE: &nbsp;mount_add_all.sh</span><br /> <span class="co0">#</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; USAGE: &nbsp;./mount_add_all.sh</span><br /> <span class="co0">#</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; DESCRIPTION: &nbsp;Find all the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/disk_partitioning" title="Disk partitioning" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning">disk partitions</a> and all those that are not present</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; in the fstab.</span><br /> <span class="co0">#</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; OPTIONS: &nbsp;---</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp;REQUIREMENTS: &nbsp;---</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;BUGS: &nbsp;---</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; NOTES: &nbsp;---</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;AUTHOR: &nbsp;<a class="zem_slink" title="Digital Inspiration" rel="homepage" href="http://amit-agarwal.co.in">Amit Agarwal</a> (AKA), amit.agarwal@amit-agarwal.co.in</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; COMPANY: &nbsp;Individual</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; VERSION: &nbsp;1.0</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; CREATED: &nbsp;06/19/2010 10:44:34 PM IST</span><br /> <span class="co0"># &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;REVISION: &nbsp;0.1</span><br /> <span class="co0">#===============================================================================</span><br /> <span class="re2">file</span>=<span class="st0">"/tmp/fstab"</span><br /> <span class="re2">disk_types</span>=<span class="br0">&#40;</span>hd sd<span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="re2">count</span>=<span class="co1">${#disk_types}</span><br /> <br /> find_disks <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#123;</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="co1">${#disk_types}</span> <span class="re1">$count</span><br /> <span class="kw1">for</span> i <span class="kw1">in</span> $<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="kw2">seq</span> <span class="nu0">1</span> <span class="re1">$count</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">do</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span> <span class="re2">j</span>=i-<span class="nu0">1</span> <span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$i</span> <span class="re1">$j</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$j</span> <span class="co1">${disk_types[0]}</span> <span class="co1">${disk_types[1]}</span><br /> disk_array<span class="br0">&#91;</span><span class="re1">$j</span><span class="br0">&#93;</span>=$<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="kw2">ls</span> <span class="sy0"><</span>a <span class="re2">class</span>=<span class="st0">"zem_slink freebase/en/device_file_system"</span> <span class="re2">title</span>=<span class="st0">"Device file"</span> <span class="re2">rel</span>=<span class="st0">"wikipedia"</span> <span class="re2">href</span>=<span class="st0">"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_file"</span><span class="sy0">>/</span>dev<span class="sy0"></</span>a<span class="sy0">>/</span><span class="co1">${disk_types[$j]}</span><span class="br0">&#91;</span>a-z<span class="br0">&#93;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="co1">${disk_array[$j]}</span><br /> <span class="kw1">done</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#125;</span> &nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="co0"># ---------- &nbsp;end of function find_disks &nbsp;----------</span><br /> <br /> find_partitions <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#123;</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="st0">"In find_partitions"</span><br /> <span class="re2">l</span>=<span class="nu0"></span><br /> <span class="re2">count</span>=<span class="co1">${#disk_types}</span><br /> <span class="kw1">for</span> i <span class="kw1">in</span> $<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="kw2">seq</span> <span class="nu0">1</span> <span class="re1">$count</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">do</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="re2">j</span>=i-<span class="nu0">1</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">for</span> k <span class="kw1">in</span> <span class="co1">${disk_array[$i]}</span><br /> <span class="kw1">do</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$k</span><br /> <span class="sy0"><!</span>--loginview start--<span class="sy0">></span>disk_partitions<span class="br0">&#91;</span><span class="re1">$l</span><span class="br0">&#93;</span>=<span class="sy0">`</span><span class="kw2">fdisk</span> <span class="re5">-l</span> <span class="re1">$k</span> <span class="sy0">|<</span>a <span class="re2">class</span>=<span class="st0">"zem_slink freebase/en/grep"</span> <span class="re2">title</span>=<span class="st0">"Grep"</span> <span class="re2">rel</span>=<span class="st0">"wikipedia"</span> <span class="re2">href</span>=<span class="st0">"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep"</span><span class="sy0">></span><span class="kw2">grep</span><span class="sy0"></</span>a<span class="sy0">></span> <span class="st0">"^/dev"</span> <span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">grep</span> <span class="re5">-v</span> <span class="st0">"Extended$"</span><span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">cut</span> <span class="re5">-d</span><span class="st0">" "</span> -f1<span class="sy0">`</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="co1">${disk_partitions[$l]}</span> <span class="re1">$l</span><span class="sy0"><!</span>--loginview end--<span class="sy0">></span><br /> <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span>l++<span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">done</span><br /> <span class="kw1">done</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#125;</span> &nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="co0"># ---------- &nbsp;end of function find_partitions &nbsp;----------</span><br /> <br /> add_fat <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#123;</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="st0">"# Added with script for <span class="es2">$label</span> and <span class="es2">$k</span>"</span> <span class="sy0">>></span> <span class="re1">$file</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="st0">"<span class="es2">$uuid</span> /mnt/<span class="es2">$label</span> vfat&nbsp; nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=500,gid=500,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077&nbsp; 0 0"</span> &nbsp;<span class="sy0">>></span> <span class="re1">$file</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#125;</span> &nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="co0"># ---------- &nbsp;end of function add_fat &nbsp;----------</span><br /> <br /> add_<span class="sy0"><</span>a <span class="re2">class</span>=<span class="st0">"zem_slink freebase/en/ext3"</span> <span class="re2">title</span>=<span class="st0">"Ext3"</span> <span class="re2">rel</span>=<span class="st0">"wikipedia"</span> <span class="re2">href</span>=<span class="st0">"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3"</span><span class="sy0">></span>ext3<span class="sy0"></</span>a<span class="sy0">></span> <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#123;</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="st0">"# Added with script for <span class="es2">$label</span> and <span class="es2">$k</span>"</span> <span class="sy0">>></span> <span class="re1">$file</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="st0">"<span class="es2">$uuid</span> /mnt/<span class="es2">$label</span> ext3     defaults     0 0"</span> <span class="sy0">>></span> <span class="re1">$file</span><br /> <br /> <span class="br0">&#125;</span> &nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="co0"># ---------- &nbsp;end of function add_ext3 &nbsp;----------</span><br /> <br /> find_UUID <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#123;</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="st0">"In find_UUID with <span class="es2">$l</span>"</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span>l--<span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">for</span> i <span class="kw1">in</span> $<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="kw2">seq</span> <span class="nu0"></span> <span class="re1">$l</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">do</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="co1">${disk_partitions[$i]}</span><br /> <span class="kw1">for</span> k <span class="kw1">in</span> <span class="co1">${disk_partitions[$i]}</span><br /> <span class="kw1">do</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$k</span><br /> <span class="sy0"><!</span>--loginview start--<span class="sy0">></span><span class="re2">temp</span>=$<span class="br0">&#40;</span>blkid <span class="re1">$k</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="re2">label</span>=$<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$temp</span><span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">grep</span> <span class="st0">"LABEL="</span><span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">sed</span> <span class="co3">\'</span>s<span class="sy0">/</span>.<span class="sy0">*</span><span class="re2">LABEL</span>=<span class="st0">"//\'|sed \'s/"</span>.<span class="sy0">*//</span><span class="co3">\'</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="re2">uuid</span>=$<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$temp</span><span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">grep</span> <span class="st0">"UUID="</span><span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">sed</span> <span class="co3">\'</span>s<span class="sy0">/</span>.<span class="sy0">*</span><span class="re2">UUID</span>=<span class="st0">"//\'|sed \'s/"</span>.<span class="sy0">*//</span><span class="co3">\'</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><br /> <span class="re2">atype</span>=$<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$temp</span><span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">grep</span> <span class="st0">"TYPE="</span><span class="sy0">|</span><span class="kw2">sed</span> <span class="co3">\'</span>s<span class="sy0">/</span>.<span class="sy0">*</span><span class="re2">TYPE</span>=<span class="st0">"//\'|sed \'s/"</span>.<span class="sy0">*//</span><span class="co3">\'</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0"><!</span>--loginview end--<span class="sy0">></span><br /> <span class="kw1">if</span> <span class="br0">&#91;</span> <span class="re1">$atype</span> = <span class="st0">"vfat"</span> <span class="br0">&#93;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">then</span><br /> add_fat <span class="re1">$label</span> <span class="re1">$uuid</span> <span class="re1">$k</span><br /> <span class="kw1">fi</span><br /> <span class="kw1">if</span> <span class="br0">&#91;</span> <span class="re1">$atype</span> = <span class="st0">"ext3"</span> <span class="br0">&#93;</span><br /> <span class="kw1">then</span><br /> add_ext3 <span class="re1">$label</span> <span class="re1">$uuid</span> <span class="re1">$k</span><br /> <span class="kw1">fi</span><br /> <span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="re1">$label</span> <span class="re1">$uuid</span> <span class="re1">$atype</span><br /> <span class="kw1">done</span><br /> <span class="kw1">done</span><br /> <span class="br0">&#125;</span> &nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="co0"># ---------- &nbsp;end of function find_UUID &nbsp;----------</span><br /> <br /> find_disks<br /> find_partitions<br /> find_UUID
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

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Fedora 11 – Mount options for vfat and other volumes for automount. (amit-agarwal.co.in)
ESX4 cannot create datastore (edugeek.net)
Creating a Partition on an External Hard Drive (brighthub.com)
Partition Assistant v2.1 (lockergnome.com)

bash script to change icon theme to check out all the installed themes (personal)

Wed, 19 May 2010 16:38:44 +0000

I am really annoyed with the time that is required and the number of clicks that it takes to change the gnome icon theme. So here’s a small script that I wrote to quickly check out all the icon themes that I have in my ~/.icons folder.

#!/bin/bash
[[ ”$1” == ”” ]] && time=5 || time=$1
[[ ”$2” == ”” ]] && (
cd ~/.icons
cont=”y”
echo ”Select one of the icon themes”
echo ”When you like some theme just press Ctrl+c”
for i in *
do
[[ -d $i/cursors ]] || (
echo ”Now trying …. : $i”
gconftool-2 –type string -s /desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme ”$i”
sleep $time
)
done
) || gconftool-2 –type string -s /desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme ”$2”

bash script to periodically change the cursor theme.

Fri, 07 May 2010 03:27:41 +0000

#!/bin/bash
[[ ”$1” == ”” ]] && time=5 || time=$1
[[ ”$2” == ”” ]] && (
cd ~/.icons
cont=”y”
echo ”Select one of the icon themes”
echo ”When you like some theme just press Ctrl+c”
for i in *
do
[[ -d $i/cursors ]] && (
echo ”Now trying …. : $i”
gconftool-2 –type string -s /desktop/gnome/peripherals/mouse/cursor_theme ”$i”
sleep $time
)
done
) || gconftool-2 –type string -s /desktop/gnome/peripherals/mouse/cursor_theme ”$2”

Bugzilla Automation with perl — add, update or query any bug in Bugzilla using perl and www series modules for perl.

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:11:43 +0000

Today I was trying to do some queries and see if I could create a new bug or update a existing bug in the Bugzilla. The one that I was trying to access was on version 2.0 and not on 3.0. This being the case, the XMLRPC interface was not working properly and to top it all, I was wanted to query quite a lot of bugs. So, I went out to evaluate how to avoid the manual work and get this done faster. Here’s some of my findings:

bash – change theme for gtk in gnome and take screenshot from script.

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:39:41 +0000

I wrote a blog on bash script to change the icon/cursor theme using a bash script. Lets extend the same concept a little more and use the script to change the gtk theme for gnome and at the same time take a screenshot also.

#!/bin/bash
path=”/tmp/screenshot”
[[ ”$1” == ”” ]] && time=5 || time=$1
[[ ”$2” == ”” ]] && (
cd ~/.themes
cont=”y”
echo ”Select one of the icon themes”
echo ”When you like some theme just press Ctrl+c”
for i in *
do
[[ -d $i/cursors ]] || (
echo ”Now trying …. : $i”
gconftool-2 –type string -s /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme ”$i”
sleep 1
j=$(echo ”$path/$i”).jpg
import -window root -quality 95 ”$j”
sleep $time
)
done
) || gconftool-2 –type string -s /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme ”$2”

Automation on Amit Agarwal Linux Blog

How to Use AI to Create Commit Messages with ZapGPT

How Vim Can Make a Hacker’s Life Easier with Macros and Registers

How Vim Can Make a Hacker’s Life Easier with Macros and Registers

Why Every Hacker Should Master Vim Macros and Registers

Send history of current host to some other host over ssh

send mail using telnet from script

ansible with docker dynamic inventory

Executing commands on multiple hosts

script to get hard disk health in fedora/ubuntu

Quick tip on zipping logs in real time.

Delete Files older than 14 days

bash one liner to change/remove test pattern from config file or text file.

Script to add all the partitions to the fstab.

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bash script to change icon theme to check out all the installed themes (personal)

bash script to periodically change the cursor theme.

Bugzilla Automation with perl — add, update or query any bug in Bugzilla using perl and www series modules for perl.

bash – change theme for gtk in gnome and take screenshot from script.