status


Ubuntu: install / start/stop enable/disable ssh server 2

OpenSSH is a freely available version of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol family of tools for remotely controlling, or transferring files between, computers.

Install SSH server

To install the openssh-server on an Ubuntu, you need execute the following command as root or using sudo:

apt-get install openssh-server -y;

Disable SSH server

To disable the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl disable ssh;

Enable SSH server

To enable the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl enable ssh;

Stop SSH server

To stop (or deactivate) the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl stop ssh;

Start SSH server

To start (or activate) the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl start ssh;

Status of SSH server

To check the status of the ssh service, execute the following command as root or using sudo:

systemctl status ssh;

CONCEPTS

In a nutshell:

  • enabled is a service that is configured to start when the system boots
  • disabled is a service that is configured to not start when the system boots
  • active is a service that is currently running
  • inactive is a service that is currently stopped and may be disabled, but it can be started and become active

In much more detail:

systemd provides a dependency system between various entities called “units” of 12 different types. Units encapsulate various objects that are relevant for system boot-up and maintenance. The majority of units are configured in unit configuration files, whose syntax and basic set of options is described in systemd.unit(5), however some are created automatically from other configuration, dynamically from system state or programmatically at runtime. Units may be “active” (meaning started, bound, plugged in, …, depending on the unit type, see below), or “inactive” (meaning stopped, unbound, unplugged, …), as well as in the process of being activated or deactivated, i.e. between the two states (these states are called “activating”, “deactivating”). A special “failed” state is available as well, which is very similar to “inactive” and is entered when the service failed in some way (process returned error code on exit, or crashed, or an operation timed out). If this state is entered, the cause will be logged, for later reference. Note that the various unit types may have a number of additional substates, which are mapped to the five generalized unit states described here.
— From man systemd

 


Status of an executing dd 1

Recently, we were cloning a large hard disk on another using dd.
This operation took a really long time, at some point we got curious on what the status of the execution was.
Due to the minimal output dd offers, there was no indication for us whether the system was still copying and if it had a long way to go or not.

Fortunately, the developers of dd added a feature where sending a USR1 signal to a running dd process makes it print I/O statistics to standard error and then resume copying.

To achieve that we used a second terminal and followed these steps:

  1. We used pgrep to look up the running process based on its name and get the dd running process ID (PID): pgrep ^dd$ .
  2. We passed that PID to kill -USR1 which triggered the printing of the statistics on the terminal where dd was executing: kill -USR1 $(pgrep ^dd$).

Solution

kill -USR1 $(pgrep ^dd$);

Bonus

Additionally, we wanted to have dd statistics printed automatically every minute.
To achieve that, we used watchwatch executes a program periodically, showing it’s output in full-screen.
We defined the interval in seconds using the parameter -n. (Please note that, the command will not allow less than 0.1 second interval.)

In the end, our command became as follows:

watch -n 60 kill -USR1 $(pgrep ^dd$)

The above command was sending a USR1 signal to dd via the kill application every minute (60 seconds) forcing it to print on standard output the I/O statistics.

Example

On terminal 1, we executed the command dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb;, which will copy disk sda over sdb.

On terminal 2, we executed the command kill -USR1 $(pgrep ^dd$);, which forced dd to print I/O statistics back on terminal 1.

0+49728 records in
7218+0 records out
3695616 bytes (3.7 MB) copied, 2.85812 s, 1.3 MB/s
0+78673 records in
11443+0 records out
5858816 bytes (5.9 MB) copied, 4.49477 s, 1.3 MB/s
0+99003 records in
14386+0 records out
7365632 bytes (7.4 MB) copied, 5.75575 s, 1.3 MB/s
^C0+172104 records in
24918+0 records out
12758016 bytes (13 MB) copied, 10.197 s, 1.3 MB/s