Practical notes for developers and system engineers
Find which ignore rule matches a path, check whether Git already tracks the file, and interpret --no-index, exceptions, and parent-directory patterns.
Diagnose systemctl PID 1 and bus errors in WSL by checking the WSL version, Linux init process, wsl.conf, and individual service state.
Read Linux df and du values alongside VHDX file length and Windows free space before considering WSL disk-space reclamation.
Check the storage location and DrvFs metadata when chmod seems ineffective in WSL, then compare permission changes using a new test file.
Compare Resolve-DnsName, getent, and curl results to separate WSL name lookup failures from HTTPS errors before changing VPN or DNS settings.
Inspect carriage returns with GNU sed, compare Bash and direct execution, create an LF copy without replacing the original, and check Git line-ending attributes.
Choose where to keep a WSL project by checking where its tools run, comparing Linux storage with mounted Windows drives, and testing a small working copy.
Calculate a file's SHA256 checksum with PowerShell and compare it with the official download value. Understand mismatches, literal paths and what a match proves.
Use git diff --check in PowerShell to find trailing whitespace, inspect staged changes, stage corrections again, and understand exit codes and untracked files.
Check file existence and distinguish files from folders with Test-Path. Handle square brackets with LiteralPath and understand why IsValid is different.