progress report for dd

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/demo bs=1M count=1536

when running above command, you don't get any progress report, if you want, you can open another window,
run the following command so that dd will show up the progress every 5 minutes

watch -n5 -- pkill -USR1 ^dd$

http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/08/10/cobbler-how-to-set-up-a-network-boot-server-in-10-minutes/

http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/08/10/cobbler-how-to-set-up-a-network-boot-server-in-10-minutes/

use ethtool to identify the network interface easily

# ethtool -p eth0 5

this will blink the network interface eth0 for 5 seconds, then you know which physical interface is for eth0

some Linux user and group intergrity checking tools

pwck
grpck

usermod

get server motherboard serial number from Linux command line

• # dmidecode | grep 'Serial Number' | head -n1