Useful git commands, systemctl commands, and a python snippet

Just sharing some things I found useful recently.

Useful Git commands for working with ignored files and troubleshooting `.gitignore`

List all ignored files

git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard

Determine why a file is ignored

For example, I wanted to know why .env.314 was being automatically ignored when I only explicitly added an entry for .env to the top-level .gitignore file.

I was able to find the answer using Git’s git check-ignore command.

Note: the command requires a file, as git always ignores directories, so I used a file within the directory (.env.314/pyvenv.cfg).

Findings: The contents of the directory are automatically ignored because venv generates a .gitignore file within the virtual environment containing * (ignore all).

$ git check-ignore -v .env.314/pyvenv.cfg
.env.314/.gitignore:2:*	.env.314/pyvenv.cfg
$ cat .env.314/.gitignore 
# Created by venv; see https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html
*

Temporarily ignore a file without adding it to `.gitignore`

I have found this useful when I would rather not modify .gitignore, e.g. when I have some sort of temporary local modifications that I want to avoid committing (such as enabling debug logging). If such changes are not ignored, they may be accidentally committed, however modifying .gitignore in such cases introduces the risk of accidentially committing changes to .gitignore that were only intended for the local developer environment. Solution: Use git update-index --assume-unchanged to temporarily ignore files.

Ignore local changes to a file

git update-index --assume-unchanged <file-path>

Start tracking changes again

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged <file-path>

List all files marked as assume unchanged

git ls-files -v | grep "^[a-z]"

Useful Systemctl commands

Here’s some useful systemctl commands I’ve recently learned:

`systemctl status` without arguments outputs a tree view of all running services

You may be used to running systemctl status for a given service, but did you know if you run it without arguments it outputs a spectacular tree view of all running services?

● moongas-ubuntu-s-1vcpu-512mb-10gb-nyc1
    State: running
    Units: 441 loaded (incl. loaded aliases)
     Jobs: 0 queued
   Failed: 0 units
    Since: Sun 2026-09-06 23:15:44 UTC; 1h 14min ago
  systemd: 255.4-1ubuntu8.17
   CGroup: /
           ├─init.scope
           │ └─1 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd --system --deserialize=61
           ├─system.slice
           │ ├─ModemManager.service
           │ │ └─26193 /usr/sbin/ModemManager
           │ ├─cron.service
           │ │ └─26161 /usr/sbin/cron -f -P
           │ ├─dbus.service
           │ │ └─825 @dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd-activation --syslog-only
           │ ├─droplet-agent.service
           │ │ └─7103 /opt/digitalocean/bin/droplet-agent
           │ ├─multipathd.service
           │ │ └─16930 /sbin/multipathd -d -s
           │ ├─nginx.service
           │ │ ├─28077 "nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;"
           │ │ └─28078 "nginx: worker process"
           │ ├─polkit.service
           │ │ └─26175 /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkitd --no-debug
           │ ├─rsyslog.service
           │ │ └─11499 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -n -iNONE
           │ ├─ssh.service
           │ │ └─26246 "sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd -D [listener] 0 of 10-100 startups"
           │ ├─system-getty.slice
           │ │ └─getty@tty1.service
           │ │   └─968 /sbin/agetty -o "-p -- \\u" --noclear - linux
lines 1-33

Show contents of systemD unit file with `systemctl cat {servicename}`

(env) root@ubuntu-s-1vcpu-512mb-10gb-nyc1:/var/www/moongas/moongas-py-mediaserver# systemctl cat mediaserver
# /etc/systemd/system/mediaserver.service
[Unit]
Description=mediaserver
After=network.target

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/moongas/moongas-py-mediaserver
ExecStart=/home/brett/Git/bretttolbert/moongas/env/bin/python run.py mediaserver-config.yaml
Restart=always
RestartSec=30s
Type=simple

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Useful Python snippet

Useful Python script to list all console entry points of every installed python package (in the active environment)

import importlib.metadata

"""
List all console entry points (command line scripts) in every installed python package
in the active interpretor
"""

# Select only command line scripts
cli_scripts = importlib.metadata.entry_points().select(group='console_scripts')

for script in cli_scripts:
    print(f"Command: {script.name} -> Calls: {script.value}")