Toolbox

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• About
• Install
• Test
• License

About

toolbox is a collection of Unix shell utilities for everyday use. It also has a website. Each utility is a portable POSIX script built on the Unix shell framework shellbase:

• bak wraps rdiff-backup to create incremental backups.

• chowner changes the owner and permissions on a directory.

• copyright updates years in copyright notices.

• essid watches for changes to the connected Wi-Fi network’s ESSID and reports them.

• flactomp3 converts audio files to mp3 with tags.

• ival validates image files. The name stands for Image Validation.

• myip continuously displays the external IP address using dig.

• pingo adds timestamps to the ping command output.

• reel converts a video clip to a vertical 1080×1920 social media reel using ffmpeg, padding it with a blurred copy of itself. Options: -c center-crops to fill the frame instead of padding, -f sets the input file, -o the output file, -s the start time, -u the duration, and -z the horizontal crop shift in pixels (negative values allowed).

• remount remounts filesystems using a temporary fstab configuration, then restores the permanent one.

• rsynx wraps rsync and picks a safe option set for the installed rsync version.

• scanner detects whether a device with a given MAC address appears on the local network using arp-scan.

• sift copies a random subset of files from a source directory into a destination directory until it reaches a byte budget. Options: -s sets the byte budget (a number with an optional K, M, or G suffix, default 8G) and -o the destination directory (default: the current directory). The source directory is a required positional argument.

• speed continuously displays download and upload internet speeds using speedtest.

• tex compiles a TeX source file to PDF and opens the result.

• tru removes a torrent and its content, then adds it again to increase the share ratio. The name stands for Transmission Remote Updater. It can run under cron.

• ydata wraps yt-dlp: it downloads, converts, renames, and stores media, skipping videos it already downloaded. It can run under cron.

Install

Ensure /usr/local/bin is in your PATH.

git clone https://github.com/rdavid/toolbox.git &&
  ./toolbox/app/install

Or install a selection of the utilities with Homebrew from the tap:

brew install rdavid/tap/toolbox

Test

The project uses Daniel J. Bernstein’s build system redo. You can also use Sergey Matveev’s goredo implementation. redo lint runs whichever of the following linters you have installed: actionlint, checkbashisms, conform, gitleaks, reuse, shellcheck, shfmt, typos, vale, yamllint, zizmor. It also parses every script with dash -n and mksh -n to catch syntax errors and Bash-only constructs.

$ redo lint
20260803-14:02:01 » dash -n ./lint.do
20260803-14:02:01 » mksh -n ./lint.do
20260803-14:02:02 » shellcheck ./*.do ./app/*
# actionlint, checkbashisms, conform, gitleaks, reuse - not installed, nothing logged
20260803-14:02:04 shfmt failed, err=1.
20260803-14:02:05 » yamllint ./.github/*.yml ./.github/workflows/*.yml
OK

License

David Rabkin holds the copyright to toolbox and distributes it under the Zero-Clause BSD license.