Yesterday I posted about having an existing ssh-agent load on all new shells. Here are two more handy snippets of code from my .bash_profile
The first code snippet is a follow on from yesterday, were I can type ‘lock’ or ‘unlock’ into my shell and the ssh-agent will follow on accordingly. When your ssh-agent is locked, users that have access to the ssh-agent will be required to type in your SSH agent password.
function lock () { ssh-add -x }
function unlock () { ssh-add -X }
The next snippet of code adds a ‘ns’ command. I have issues trying to remember IPs – especially when they are not used too often. This command lets me easily remember 
alias ns='for x in ns1 ns2 ns3 ns4 ; do host $x.google.com; done'
When run:
[tim@2-xlc-controller ~]$ ns ns1.google.com has address 216.239.32.10 ns2.google.com has address 216.239.34.10 ns3.google.com has address 216.239.36.10 ns4.google.com has address 216.239.38.10
The last dirty one liner that I love is another simple time saver. Many people use the ‘whois‘ command to find out what nameservers are used by a domain name. It’s not too long before you work out that it is not really the best way to be finding out what the domain name’s nameservers are.
function nameservers() { echo $1\'s nameservers are:; dig +trace $1 | grep NS | grep "^$1."; }
This handy one liner allows me to do awesome things like:
[tim@3-xlc-controller ~]$ nameservers google.com google.com's nameservers are: google.com. 172800 IN NS ns2.google.com. google.com. 172800 IN NS ns1.google.com. google.com. 172800 IN NS ns3.google.com. google.com. 172800 IN NS ns4.google.com.
