Linux systemd can be your friend

systemd messes with your mind.  Definitely.  The easy management of /etc/init.d/ files or /etc/rc.d files is easy to grasp; easy to get the mind around a simple ordering of complex events. Replace that with systemd, and the brain wants to revolt.

But there are some upsides to this trend.  systemd is smart.  It can do a lot in parallel.  Yes, ‘systemctl enable myapp.service’ is a heck of a lot to type.  Yet, systemd gives you features like:

systemd-analyze blame

 

systemctl –order

and, one of the really cool ones:

systemd-analyze plot > plot.svg && eog plot.svg

What is this “notty” host?

In looking at the process listing on a linux server, an administrator may see a process listed as “sshd: root@notty”. An administrator, even a seasoned one, may immediately wonder “what is this ‘notty’ host?” and start down the path of trying to determine what host that is.

However, sit back and take a deep breath: “notty” means “NO TTY”.  In other words, there is no TTY associated to the process, which means that the process was initiated remotely. In this case, a non-interactive process was initiated remotely over SSH.

How To Clear / Remove the GUID Partition Table (GPT) from a drive

If a drives has a GPT (GUID Parition Table) on it, Windows 7 and Linux will happily use it.  HOWEVER, all of the add-on tools to format a partition on that drive as fat32 (for those that are using large drives) do not understand that partition table type.

To clear the GPT entirely from a linux machine:

 parted /dev/sdc
 mklabel msdos
 quit