[Quick Tips: Save Command to File]: How To Save Linux Command Output To An Image Or A File

How To Save Linux Command Output To An Image Or A File

Ever been in a situation where you have to send the output of a Linux command to your colleague or friend to get help? This simple Linux hack will definitely be useful to you. You can save a Linux command output to an image or a file and send it to the respective person who wants to review the output of a particular Linux commands. You don’t need to install any additional tools.  You need to install ImageMagick. This can be helpful if you need to send the output to a Technical support person or a Linux administrator.

Save Linux Command Output To An Image

Install ImageMagick tool first. In Ubuntu-like systems, you can install it a shown below.

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

In Arch Linux and its derivatives, run:

sudo pacman -S imagemagick

Now, To save a output of any Linux command to an image, just run the following command:

ifconfig | convert label:@- myipaddress.png

The above command will save the ifconfig command output to an Image and save it in the current working directory. Let us bread down the above command and see what each option does.

• ifconfig will display the IP address of your Linux system.
• convert command will save the output to an Image.
• label:@- myipaddress.png will save the command output to an called myipaddress.png.

Here is the output of the above command in my Arch Linux.


Here is another one. I saved my Linux Kernel output to an Image.

uname -a | convert label:@- mylinuxkernel.png

Sample output:

What we have seen above, we have saved the command’s output in an Image. Also, we can save the output on an existing Image file. To do this, run:

convert -font -misc-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* -fill black -draw "text 270,260 \" `ip addr` \"" Linux.jpg myipaddress.jpg

This command will print the output of “ip addr” command to an image called Linux.jpg and saves it with a new name “myipaddress.jpg”.

Here is the output of the above command:

Pretty easy, isn’t? You can save the output of any command and send it to anyone who can help you to fix your system.

Save Linux Command Output To A File

We know how to save a command’s output to/into a image. We can save the output of a Linux command to a file too.

For example, we can save the “ip addr” command’s output to a file called myipaddress.txt using command:

ip addr > myipaddress.txt

To verify it, view the text file using your favorite text viewers. Or, we can do using “cat” command like below.

cat myipaddress.txt

The following command will save my pacman.log to a file called mylogs.txt.

tail -f /var/log/pacman.log  > mylogs.txt

And, we can easily save the IP details using command:

ifconfig > mynetworkdetails.txt

That’s it. Now you know how to save any command’s output to an Image or a file without having to use any additional tools. Hope this helps. If you find this guide useful