mysql
Export a db
#mysqldump -uuser -ppassword -hlocalhost dbname > db.sql
Import a db
#mysql -uuser -ppassword -hlocalhost dbname < db.sql

you probably know mysql command line access if you are on this page. You have to know how to work with this because a database can exceed the size allowable for transfer over http, making into phpMyAdmin impossible. But a goodie that I found is that case when you want to wipe out all the tables in a db, but not the db itself, in order to preserve all the privleges, and access credentials. The following line can save a step:
#mysqldump -uuser -ppassword –add-drop-table –no-data dbname | grep ^DROP | mysql -uuser -ppassword dbname

rsync
get all those image files
#rsync -avz user@domain.com:/home/pathtofiles/ .
ah yes, but I will get a complaint  from subversion about my directory being out of sync because what I just did was downloaded the .svn file from the server over that directory. They arent the same, so your svn update now crashes. What do do?
# rsync -avz –exclude=.svn   …….then everything else after that. More options in the man pages.

scp
push a file
#scp localfile.txt user@domain.com:pathtofile/remotefile.txt
grab a file
#scp user@domain.com:pathtofile/remotefile.txt localfile.txt

find
find all those old CVS or .svn directories, and kill them:
to look:
#find . -type d -name “.svn”
to dump to a file
#find . -type d -name “.svn” > dump.txt
when you are ready:
#find . -type d -name “.svn” -exec rm -rf {} \;

Another way to wipe out everything:
#find . -name ‘*’ -print0 | xargs -0 rm
this means find here, the name of all, dont print it to stdout, then redirect the output to as an argument that the rm command will execute on.

grep
find instance and string in and below current directory, pipe it to less.
#grep -r “string” * | less