I'm currently setting up a node.js server and I'm using the debug module here https://github.com/visionmedia/debug.
I'm trying to enable it so I can get the colored debugging information in my output, however my terminal looks like the last terminal screen at the bottom after it says:
When stdout is not a TTY, Date#toUTCString() is used, making it more useful for logging the debug information as shown below:
Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks.
The TTY is the terminal or command prompt itself.
The screenshots are demonstrating the different results when stdout is directed to the terminal/TTY (with colors and time diffs) vs. when it's redirected elsewhere, such as to a file (via > out and with timestamps).
It determines which format to use with tty.isatty.
Note that not all terminals support the ANSI escape codes it's using to display colors.
tty is one of those funky Unix commands that prints (or, displays) to standard output the name of the terminal connected to standard input.
These are commonly used as a way to get access to the computer to fix things, without actually logging into a possibly b0rked desktop.
Related: What is tty7 in the commandline?
By default Ubuntu has 7 tty's.
1-6 are command line only, 7 runs your X session (your normal desktop).
To access them, use this keyboard shortcut:
Ctrl + Alt + F1
(changing F1 to F1-F6 to access the terminal that you need)
To get back to your X session (the normal desktop),
Ctrl + Alt + F7