0ink.net

javascript snippets

alex — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Compute how an element is hidden Iterate over LI elements Adding/removing classes to/from elements Get current date as YYYY-MM-DD escape HTML characters ...

Additional OpenSSL tips

alex — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Self-signed certificates Display cert extensions Viewing certificate information Checking server certificate How to create a certificate chain ? ...

Deploying your CA's root certificate

alex — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Linux Windows 10 iOS 14 Authenticating clients Authenticating clients with nginx ...

Revoking Certificates

alex — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Certificate revocation lists Prepare the configuration file Create the CRL Revoke a certificate Server-side use of the CRL ...

Your own Certificate Authority

alex — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Generating root cert Preparation Creating the root key Creating the root certificate ...

Certificate Authorities

alex — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

For home users there is not much use for running you own Certificate Authority (CA), and with availability of Letsencrypt and the plethora of ACME libraries setting TLS encryption is quite straight forward. ...

NEW YEAR 2026

alex — Sat, 10 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Happy New Year! ...

More Python GUI programming

alex — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Using threads with Python and Tkinter Impelementation using queue.Queue Key Components Why Use Threads and Queues? ...

Installing source using PIP

alex — Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Installing from github Installing from ZIP file How It Works: Alternative: Local ZIP File Installation ...

Copper anniversary

alex — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Today, this blog reaches the 12.5 year mark (In the Netherlands, copper annyversary). Actually 0ink.net has been running for much longer than that, but as a blog format, it is from 2013-05-15 when it was migrated to Wordpress. You can find the firs post here. ...

Using the Github Container Registry

alex — Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Initialization Basic env variables Job declaration Steps ...

Using Excel files from Python

alex — Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Intro XlsxWriter openpyxl xlwings pywin32 ...

Using Podman on Alpine Linux

alex — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Introduction What is Podman? Installation on Alpine Linux Rootful vs Rootless ...

AdGuard Home

alex — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

How does AdGuard Home compare to traditional ad blockers Known limitations Installation Configuration Reverse Proxy ...

Using SSLH on Alpine Linux

alex — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Install sslh apk add sslh Configure sslh startup: # /etc/conf.d/sslh # configuration for /etc/init.d/sslh ...

Writting a Geany plugin

alex — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Pre-requisites Registering Building Binding keys Callbacks ...

Cinnamon Keyboard shortcuts

alex — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

To familiarize with the Cinnamon desktop, here is a list of its shortcuts: Function ...

Lookup Ansible vars from the command line

alex — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This is a quickie. If you want to look-up the value of an Ansible variable from the command line: ansible localhost -m ansible.builtin.debug -a "var=my_variable" ...

Booting Refind on KVM

alex — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This is a quick recipe to boot a refind image on KVM. This is just to test UEFI boot configuration in virtualized environments. First step is to create a refind boot image. For that I use this script: To use this script, you need to download the binary zip file refind image from here. ...

Saving Cinnamon customizations

alex — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

When I switched Desktop Environments towards Cinnamon, I wanted to save configuration settings so I could restore them later if I moved to a different PC. Pre-requisites: We need the following packages ...

Linux booting Linux

alex — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Backing up Installing Refind Custom Linux ...

Nemo file explorer custom actions

alex — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Adding a "Copy File Path" Option to Nemo in Linux Cinnamon Step 1: Create a Nemo Action File Step 2: Define the Action ...

Stretch Cluster notes

alex — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Clustering Stretched Clusters Calculating latencies Common storage stretched clusters ...

Rewriting history in git

alex — Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Coordinate with your team The secret is in the last commit and there is nothing else The secret is in the last commit but there are other changes The secret is beyond the last commit ...

Baremetal backup

alex — Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Preparation Disabling BitLocker Get Clonezilla ...

tcpdump snippets

alex — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

List interfaces GUI Capture file rotation stftime codes ...

About JS2Py

alex — Tue, 06 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Js2Py translates JavaScript to Python code. Js2Py is able to translate and execute virtually any JavaScript code. Js2Py is written in pure python and does not have any dependencies. Basically an implementation of JavaScript core in pure python. While intriguing, I do not see the point to do this. Going from Python to JavaScript seems to be more useful. ...

How SanDisk's ranges compare

alex — Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This is not a SanDisk advertisement! ...

Using hooks in git

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Add additional files to commit List files that will be committed Making hooks available ...

Switching to Giscus

alex — Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

So since last year I have been using utterances to add comments to my BLOG. After reading this post from Max Brenner, I decided to switch to giscus. Giscus is a comments system powered by GitHub Discussions. It lets visitors leave comments and reactions on your website via GitHub! I agree with the comments from Mr. Brenner: ...

Brython

alex — Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Brython (Browser Python) is an implementation of Python 3 running in the browser, with an interface to the DOM elements and events. In a way it is similar to pyjs, however, looks like development has stalled. Brython is designed to replace Javascript as the scripting language for the Web. As such, it is a Python 3 implementation (you can take it for a test drive through a web console), adapted to the HTML5 environment, that is to say with an interface to the DOM objects and events. ...

Using LLDP on Linux

alex — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Enabling LLDP on Linux Using open-lldp Using lldpd ...

Using 7z for benchmarks

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Syntax LZMA benchmark details LZMA benchmark in multithreading mode 7-Zip benchmark Examples ...

Replacing failed drives in a md array

alex — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

In a Linux softraid, you may have to replace failed drives. As usual, backups are still needed, but hardware failures can be covered by RAID levels. ...

3D Prints

alex — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The other day, the 3D model I created back in 2016 finally broke. So, as such I created an updated model: For this I am using the same service from my 3D Printing updates ...

Filesystem discard

alex — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Now with the prevalence of SSD's for storage, it is important to make sure that the DISCARD operation is used. This is specially true as this can increase the lifetime of your flash storage by reducing the need to re-map blocks by simply marking them as freed. ...

DRBD Preload

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a continuation to VM disk replication. One of the steps needed for VM disk replication is the need to pre-load the replicated volume. For the project I wrote, we had two mechanisms: ...

VM managed disk replication

alex — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction High level overview Deployment Required packages ...

Documenting Architecture Decisions

alex — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Context Approach Format Conclusion ...

Alpine Boot

alex — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This is a quick note. In Alpine linux you can run start-up scripts by enabling the local service: rc-update add local default When this is enabled, it will run all executable scripts that end with .start on start-up and scripts that end with .stop on shutdown. ...

Y2K38 filesystems

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Background What to do xfs ext4 ...

NEW YEAR 2025

alex — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

This year this Blog would have been up and running for 12 years! Happy new year sticker created by Icon home - Flaticon ...

Single Page Application

alex — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

As the last post of the year, I am posting my attempt at a simple "Single Page Application". A single-page application (SPA) is a web application or website that interacts with the user by dynamically rewriting the current web page, instead of the default method of loading entire new pages. The goal is faster transitions that make the website feel more like a native app. ...

Fitbit reset

alex — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

How to reset your Fibit Charge 5, 6 or Fitbit Luxe? You can reset your Fitbit Charge 5, Charge 6, or Fitbit Luxe in 2 ways: Soft reset: restart your Fitbit. You keep your data. ...

Python development tips 2024

alex — Sat, 03 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Local install packages Better debugging Built-in exceptions Adding site specific customizations Constants ...

Z-Wave Associations with Home Assistant

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Configuring associations Setting associations Removing associations Last words ...

Ansible Snippets

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Bootstraping Execution order Create a file without external template Creating inventory script Writing ansible modules in sh ...

Modifying VM configuration with libvirtd

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The other day, I had to update a VM configuration managed via libvirt from the command line. There are different ways to do this. The easiest probably is to use the virt-manager application and use the GUI to modify things. ... virt-manager screenshot ... ...

Comments enabled

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Today I enabled comments on this blog. You need to have an github account in order to make comment. This is because the main audience for this blog is developers and this should cut down on the spam. Comments are stored GitHub Issues using the Utterances comments widget. I chose Utterances because: ...

Tweaking HDMI dummies

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Prepare EDID blob Modify Kernel command line Update initramfs Reboot Post boot EDID ...

Docker in Docker

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Method 1: Mounting /var/run/docker.sock docker.sock permission error ...

Telekom Cloud CI/CD demo

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Pre-requisites Preparation Base infrastructure Notes ...

Linux desktop default apps

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

User configuration System-wide configuration Additional files References ...

Linux Serial Consoles

alex — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Intro Hardware Null modem Cisco style ports ...

Adding a serial port to a QNAP TS-251D

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I am using a QNAP TS-251D NAS. Because I would like to switch from QTS to Alpine Linux I though it would be useful to enable the serial port. The TS-251D has a built-in serial port that is already enabled and only needs to be connected. For that you need a number of parts: ...

3D Printing updates

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A quick guide to 3D printing materials

UEFI boot on Raspberry PI

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Prepare SD card Copy UEFI UEFI boot Adding grub ...

Ansible Best Practices

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a conversion from a presentation/pdf by Tim Appnel. I attached a copy here too. Roles and Modules ...

hoses: enhanced socks5 tools

alex — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Features Where to find Examples ...

OpenSSH Certificate Authority

alex — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Intro Creating CA Configuring Hosts Singing user public keys Using certificates ...

Why Ansible?

alex — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

As part of an effort of standardising my home lab I decided to migrate my ad-hoc configuration scripts into a more standard tool set. So I looked at: puppet chef ...

OpenTofu

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Origins Why use OpenTofu Using OpenTofu ...

Inetd like service with systemd

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is an example of a socket-activated per-connection service (which is usually referred to as inetd-like service). A thorough explanation can be found at 0pointer.de. Define a socket unit The key point here is to specify Accept=yes, which will make the socket accept connections (behaving like inetd) and pass ...

Locking down SFTP

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a small recipe to increase the security around a SFTP interface. In the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file include the following settings: Subsystem sftp internal-sftp This configures the sftp subsystem to use the internal sftp implementation. This is because inside the chroot, we usually will not have the normal ...

Python GUI

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

After looking a multiple options of GUI programming under python I eventually settled for tkinter. The main reason was that tkinter is very ubiquitous and initially though the learning curve wuld have shorter as I was very used to GUI programming using TCL/TK. Turned out that what I known TCL/TK did not translate ...

cisco bridging

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This article is here as a reminder. So, for testing, I needed to configure a Cisco CSR1000V virtual router as a bridge. So I used a version 16 Cisco IOS XE image. To make my life easier I used the "wizard" that runs the first time to automatically configure bridgning. Ironically, this created an invalid ...

Tunneling NFS over SSH

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This recipe is for tunneling NFS traffic over SSH. This adds encryption and Public Key authentication to otherwise insecure NFS traffic. For this recipe to work, requires NFSv4. Earlier versions were not tested, but I expect not all the functionality to work. server configuration ...

Optimizing shell scripts

alex — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Introduction Input Data Desired Output Approach Original Script ...

Happy New Year 2024

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Best wishes for 2024! ...

IPv6 on 2023

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a sequel to my article IPv6 blues. Layout Enabling forwarding Configure networking ...

libnss-db HOWTO

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This mini-howto illustrate how to use libnss-db on a Ubuntu Linux system. Other installations should work to after adjusting package names and directory paths. I myself use as a "serverless" lightweight user directory. Essentially, I mount the db directory and the home directory from an NFS server. Package installation ...

Alpine Linux Custom Interface names

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article is a copy of this article and shows how to rename/change name of a network interface. Alpine Linux uses busybox mdev to manage devices in /dev. mdev reads /etc/mdev.conf and according to mdev documentation one can define a command to be executed per device definition. The command which is going to be used to change network interface name is nameif. ...

Alpine boot menu

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This article is an update to my Alpine Boot Switcher article. Contents: Preparing boot device ...

Adding static routes in alpine linux

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0200

There are several ways to do this documented in the alpine linux wiki. My preferred way is to configure it in /etc/network/interfaces. For example: auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static ...

New NacoWiki

Alejandro Liu — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Release new version (3.2.1) of NacoWiki. The following changes are included: Added document properties Added opts.yaml API improvements ...

Migrated to NacoWiki Albatros

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This edition marks the migration of my Blog from Pelican to NacoWiki Albatros. This is a mostly transparent change. I wrote Albatros specifically to migrate this web site from Pelican to a php based markdown implementation. As such, it uses a slightly modified version of the Pelican theme. ...

File system encryption in Alpine Linux

alex — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is similar to my previous article Encrypting Filesystem in Void Linux but for Alpine Linux The point of this recipe is to create a encrypted file sytem so that when the disc is disposed, it does not need to be securely erased. This is particularly important for SSD devices ...

CSS Tips

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 18 May 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Style editor Sending query string with PHP Position sticky Flexbox and Grid ...

Local Startup

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a method to control start-up of applications in a Linux Desktop session that are run by a local default configuration, but can also be overriden by the user. This is unlike the /etc/xdg/autostart which is mostly under the control of the distro packager. Aslo unlike the /etc/X11/profile.d directory, this runs inside the Desktop Session. /etc/X11/profile.d gets started before the Desktop session is available. ...

Pulse Audio control in python

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I have been using a shell script to toggle pulse audio sinks for some time. It worked well enough for switching output among several profiles on a single audio card. I recently upgraded my set-up to new hardware. This hardware for some reason, reported the analog stereo output and the digital HDMI output as different sound cards. So my patoggle script did not work well enough anymore. Since parsing the output of the pacmd in shell script was becoming a pain, I decided to re-write ...

Global hotkeys

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

To make it easier to switch desktop environment I am using a Desktop Environment independant hot keys configuration using xbindkeys. This lets me use the same keybindings on different Window managers and Desktop Environments. This code can be found in github. Included are the follwoing: ...

XPrinterMgr

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a small utility to manage a local printer(s) in a home office setting. It will show the state of the printer: accepting or rejecting jobs enable or disabled printing ...

rsync filter rules

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Rules Simple include/exclude rules Simple include/exclude example Filter rules when deleting Filter rules in depth ...

Munin-tweaks

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Small recipes to tweak munin configurations. Overriding critical and warning levels In the node configuration enter: plugin.field_name.critical value plugin.field_name.warning value The plugin name can be found by clicking in the graph with the value ...

Desktop Environments 2023

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Around April 2023, I decided to look for a new Linux Desktop Environment for my personal void linux. So I tried these distros: lxqt: This is the one I eventually chose to switch to. I liked it that it was very small and light, and very modular, almost like a kit that you assemble yourself. Because I have thinking for some time that I would like to make my ...

Personal thoughts on GUI programming

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I have been programming for about 40 years. Going through a lot of different languages and programming paradims. Lately most of my programming is done in: bash/shell script Python ...

NacoWiki

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200

A few months ago I extensibly modify picowiki and creeated NanoWiki. After using NanoWiki for a few months, the code became somewhat of an spaghetti mess. This has to do that picowiki was designed as a single file, single class application with Plugin extension. Since every change went to a single class this quickly became difficult to manage. Additionally, I realized that "NanoWiki" was not a very good name as this ...

Python Development 2023

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Python development on Windows Distributing Python scripts as single EXE or Directory Installing netifaces on Windows Documentation generation ...

Raspberry Pi emulation with Qemu

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The idea here is that we use a Desktop PC for developing/debugging Raspberry Pi set-ups using qemu for emulating Rasperrby Pi. qemu currently supports the following configurations: Raspberry Pi Zero and 1A+ (armhf) Raspberry Pi 2B (armv7) ...

Home Assistant Wall Panel

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

For a while I was using TabletClock with old tablets. But this has not been updated in a while. I was thinking of writing my own version until I found WallPanel. Essentially it is purposely built web-browser with special features which makes it possible to use it to replaces TabletClock. Essentially, I could replace TabletClock with a web-page showing the time and a weather ...

RDP vs VNC

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

For years I have been using VNC for my remote desktop needs. This works usually well enough. The features that I like are: Basic set-up is easy Desktop sessions are persistent Can be used to view an actual X11.org desktop. ...

QNAP Snapshots

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I wrote a small tool to access QNAP snapshots from the Linux command line. Pre-requistes: Snapshots have to be enabled You need a /share/netcfg containing the file: ...

Docker on Void

alex — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This is a quick recipe to run Docker on void: Make sure your system is up-to-date: sudo xbps-install -Syu ...

Home Assistant sensors

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

I finished migrating my VeraEdge to Home Assistant. I think after using it for some time, I find Home Assistant far superior to the VeraEdge in every way. So, I took the time to mostly standardise my sensors which make things simpler to manage/mantain. As such, essentially I am only using 4 types of sensors: ...

Happy New Year 2023

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Best wishes for 2023! This website is now 10 Years Old. ...

Home Assistant RFXCOM Integration

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

RFXCOM RFXtrx This integration is to control RFXtrx devices. I am using to control Somfy blinds and KlikAanKlikUit remotes. Add integration: RFXCOM RFXtrx ...

Home Assistant Behind Reverse Proxy

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

To set-up a reverse proxy I took the following steps: configure DNS get Letsencrypt certificates Configure NGINX Configure Home Assistant to trust the proxy ...

Looking up docker image tags

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This recipe is to check the tags defined for a specific Docker image in docker.hub. The basic API is at https://registry.hub.docker.com/v2 So the format is as follows: https://registry.hub.docker.com/v2/repositories/{namespace}/{image}/tags/ Where: ...

Home Assistant Large Clock

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This recipe is my version of providing a "large clock" face in the home assistant dashboard. Enable serving local static files: Create directory www in your config directory. Restart home assistant. ...

Home Assistant HTTP Based Authentication Backend

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This recipe is to authenticate users using a web server providing Basic HTTP authentication for it users. This is useful if you want to consolidate users/passwords in a single system. So instead of managing users on Home Assistant you can have all users managed from a central location. ...

Moving to Home Assistant

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I am busy moving away from my VeraEdge installation to a Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4. This is because it looks like the maker of the VeraEdge was bought and it is slowly being phased out. For this I am using the following parts: ...

Markdown cheat sheet

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This is intended as a quick reference and showcase. For more complete info, see John Gruber's original spec and the Github-flavored Markdown info page. Headers Source: ...

Nanowiki

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

NanoWiki is a Wiki implementation based on picowiki. I have been using SimpleNote for a number of years. It works pretty well but somehow I was looking for: Ability to include and render nice asciiart pictures Organizes articles in a folder structure. ...

X728 kit for Raspberry Pi 4

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

As part of my small project of movng my Z-Wave Hub to a Raspberry PI, I got an X728 kit. This has: UPS controller board RTC circuit ...

cuylib

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is a tiny library to implement Web server embedded editor. You can find it in github. Can be used either from haserl or directly from a shell script. Features: ...

Photoprism

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0200

photoprism is a web based photo management application. From its website: PhotoPrism® is an AI-Powered Photos App for the Decentralized Web. It makes use of the latest technologies to tag and find pictures automatically without getting in your way. You can run it at home, ...

SupervisorUI MF

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In a previous article, I updated a supervisorui project to work for me. This updated version supervisorui-redone is essentially a PHP application which is a different approach from the original supervisorui project which was more of a JavaScript application with some helper functionality implemented in PHP. As such, I figured that I could probably fix the supervisorui code base ...

Supervisorui REDONE

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Currently I am using docker containers to deploy applications. A number of those containers make use of supervisord for managing processes. While supervisord itself comes with a UI, it is unhandy for me because each container is its own supervisord instance. So I was interested in some software that would let me manage multiple supervisord instances in a single page. Turns out that there ...

voidlinux virtualization

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This recipe is for setting virtualization on a voidlinux desktop. Use this setup script to set things up on void linux. Connecting to libvirtd Note that virsh and virt-manager commands connect to different libvirtd sessions by defauult. virsh defaults to qemu:///session while virt-manager to qemu:///system. ...

A couple of useful sites for development

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Unicode Can be useful for looking up unicode code points. Particularly useful for looking up accented characters. Another interesting use is for UI graphics characters. Unicode search Another site to search for unicode characters. ...

Keyboard Mouse control

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This comes in handy when working at a colo or someplace where you don't have a mouse and then find yourself needing to use X11. Press the following key combo: Ctrl-Shift-Numlock Now you can control the mouse pointer using the number pad. The key bindings are: ...

flatpak

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Flatpak is a utility for software deployment and package management for Linux. It is advertised as offering a sandbox environment in which users can run application software in isolation from the rest of the system. Flatpak was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project and was originally called xdg-app. Snap vs Flatpak ...

My git release script

Alejandro Liu — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

I always had issues remembering how to create releases. So in order to standardise things, I wrote this script: ghrelease So whenever I am ready to release I would then just issue ...

Meta Database

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

So I was looking for a way to version control database schemas, but I never found something that worked for me. I found all these options that never seem to match what I wanted: metabase dbv ...

lnbin

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0200

This is my lnbin script. This is a program for managing symlink in a /usr/local/bin directory. It is similar to stow, lndir, cleanlinks and others. The approach used by lnbin is based on Stow, and it is to install each into its own tree, then use symbolic links to make its bin ...

Linux Icons

Alejandro Liu — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

A quick note on how to add icons to menus in a Linux desktop. Create the icon image in: /usr/share/pixmaps. png and svg (and maybe others) are supported. 24x24 seems to be a good size for menus. ...

nas ops cmd

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is my op script. This is stupidly simple script to elevate priviledges in order to manage NFS shares on my QNAP NAS. The idea is that NFS shares do squash-root so admin access is disallowed through NFS. This gives a convenient way to issue root level commands without using NFS but instead use ssh ...

Linux stuff

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Sudoers Since sudo v1.9, it is possible to use the following statements: #includedir @includedir ...

Graphviz markdown extensions

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

I have enabled several extensions to my pelican website. One that I wanted to include was graphviz. So, I searched for one and while I found a few, they somehow, did not work for me. So I wrote my own: mdx_graphviz. It is quite straight forward. You just need to create blocks: dot { ...

Pelican Test page

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

shortcodes mytags Drawings aafigure ...

DVTM

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The other day I found dvtm. Looking at it, it looks very nice. It appeals to me because I am particularly fond of text user interfaces. At the end I choose not to use it because: ...

Migration to Pelican

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Finally got fedup with github pages and its jekyll static site generator. Essentially things would break without any particular reason and there would be nearly no way to tell what went wrong. I addition, it was not easy to test changes before making them public. So I switched to pelican, essentially because it was ...

Storing secrets in git

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

So I gave into the temptation to store "secret" data into a git repository. Of course, to keep things safer, I chose to use an encryption tool. So I tested: git-crypt git-secret ...

Enable syslog with void

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

In void Linux, the default is without logging. Most cases it is OK for desktop use. If you want to enable syslog service in void, you need to install: socklog-void Also to let your user have access to the logs, use: ...

Stupid SSL tricks

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Some hints and tips foor doing SSL related things: Netcat for SSL This command lets you connect to a SSL server (a-la netcat): cat request.txt | openssl s_client -connect server:443 Creating self-signed certificates This is a single command to generate a self-signed certificate: ...

Linux Post Install tasks

Alejandro Liu — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

These tips are for void linux as that is the distro I am using nowadays. mate tricks: change background from cli dconf write /org/mate/desktop/background/picture-filename "'PATH-TO-JPEG'" ...

My tale of IPv6 blues

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

My ISP provider is KPN. They recently enabled IPv6 in my street. I was using before a IPv6 Tunnel Broker, starting with SixXS and after they went out, with Hurricane Electric. So naturally, I decided to switch to KPN's native IPv6 service. They provide a /64 prefix, which is reasonable. Would be better ...

Replacing emacs...

Alejandro Liu — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So after over 30 years of using GNU emacs I have switched to a more modern options. So I am using: Geany: For use in a Window environment (both X11 and MSWIN) micro: For command line use ...

Linux HDMI hotplug

alex — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Now in 2024 this is usually no longer needed. A more current solution is: https://github.com/phillipberndt/autorandr The point of this article is to document I workaround that I came ...

Alpine Boot switcher

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I boot from a USB boot drive using UEFI. Because of the UEFI boot, it just a matter of copying the files from the alpine ISO to a USB thumbdrive VFAT32 partition. Partition may be set to EFI (but this doesn't seem to be required). Since I would like to switch between different alpine versions, I wrote a script to let me have multiple alpine versions and ...

PulseAudio hints and tricks

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

PulseAudio is nowadays the default sound system in many Linux distributions. It lets you do a number of useful things. PulseAudio comes with a handy command line utility pacmd to do a number of things. pacmd commands ...

Getting the current proxy pac configuration

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This is done using tcl for convenience. If you do not have it installed you can download freewrap executable and rename freewrap.exe to wish.exe or freewrapTCLSH.exe to tclsh.exe. Registry Key : HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ REG_SZ AutoConfigURL = https:///proxy.pac ...

Definiton of maturity

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Maturity is: The ability to stick with a job until it’s finished. The ability to do a job without being supervised. The ability to carry money without spending it. And the ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even. ...

Using XScreenSaver Hacks with mate-screensaver

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Here we explain how to use XScreenSaver EXCELLENT screensaver hack collection with the MATE screensaver applet. Install xscreensaver and mate-screensaver On my linux distribution this creates the following directories: ...

nginx's auth_request_module howto

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This article tries to supplement the nginx documentations regarding the auth_request module and how to configure it. In my opinion, that documentation is a bit incomplete. What is the nginx's auth_request module The documentation for this module says, it implements client ...

Python Virtual Environments

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is the least you need to know to get to use a Python virtual environment. What is a Virtual Environment At its core, the main purpose of Python virtual environments is to create an isolated environment for Python projects. This means that each project can have its own dependencies, regardless of what ...

Secure erase of disc drives

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This article is about erasing disc drives securely. Specially for SSD drives, writing zeros or random data to discs is not good enough and counterproductive. One way to do secure erase (for disposal) is to begin with an encrypted disc. However, after the fact the following options are possible: ATA Secure Erase ...

Co-existing GLIBC binaries with Void-Linux MUSL edition

alex — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

I am running void-linux at home with musl as the standard C library. While most things work well, there is a number of programs that do not and must be using glibc counterparts. To enable this I followed this guide here: Live switching Void Linux from glibc to musl. To set-up: ...

Calculate system availability

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

To calculate the availability of redundant systems you can use this formula: total_avail = 1-(1 - single_avail) ^ (number_of_nodes) Nodes: ...

Ad-Hoc rsync daemons

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The other day I needed to copy a bunch of files between to servers in my home network. Because of the volume I wanted to copy the files without having to go through ssh's encryption overhead. So I figured I could use netcat for the data transport. To do that I wrote these short scripts. Remote scripts ...

Resizing Virtual Disks with virsh

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

I am currently using libvirt for managing my VMs. For virtual discs I am using LVM2 volumes. On a regular basis I need to resize these virtual discs, but not that often that I can do this from memory. This is a short procedure to do this: ls -l /dev/vgX/lvX # note down the major/minor numbers for later lvextend -L +50G /dev/vgX/lvX # adding 50GB to this volume ...

Z-Wave Associations with With Vera UI

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

I couldn't find any to the point documentation on how to do this, so I am writing this. The way I understand Z-Wave associations work is that once devices are in the same Z-Wave network, a device can directly send a command to another device without intervention of the Hub or controller. ...

Encrypting FileSystem in Void Linux

alex — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The point of this recipe is to create a encrypted file sytem so that when the disc is disposed, it does not need to be securely erased. This is particularly important for SSD devices since because of block remapping (for wear levelling) data can't be overwritten consistently. The idea is that the boot/root filesystem containing the encryption ...

Installing Void Linux

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0200

I made the switch to void linux. Except for compatibility issues around glibc, it works quite well. Most compatibility I have worked around with a combination of Flatpaks, chroots and namespaces. The highlights of void linux: ...

My Linux Keyboard Shortcuts

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

In general we try to be similar to MS-Windows shortcuts. Default bindings (in MATE) Key ...

Global Windows Keyboard Shorcuts

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Common Window Management Shortcuts Key Action ...

Third Party SimpleNote clients

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

An inventory of simplenote clients: SimpleNote clients: sncli nvpy notestack ...

Docker on Alpine Linux

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Alpine Linux Quick installation See wiki For Alpine Linux > 3.8 Un-comment community repo from /etc/apk/repositories apk add docker rc-update add docker boot ...

Alpine on OTC

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

These are just random thoughts nothing really was implemented. Alpine Linux image preparation: jq and other deps to /apks/x86_64 ...

Windows Account Lockouts

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

To prevent windows lockouts the following can be done: Delete Internet Explorer browsing history Run the following: Open Start --> Search filed--> Type in Run --> rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr --> Delete ...

Skipping grep when using AWK

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Over the years, We've seen many people use this pattern (filter-map): $ [data is generated] | grep something | awk '{print $2}' but it can be shortened to: $ [data is generated] | awk '/something/ {print $2}' You (probably) don't need grep Following this logic, you can replace a simple grep with: ...

Naming Schemes

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This web site contains list of names of different topics. This can be used for naming schemes: Naming Schemes ...

Build a VR app in 15 minutes

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

In 15 minutes, you can develop a virtual reality application and run it in a web browser, on a VR headset, or with Google Daydream. The key is A-Frame, an open source toolkit built by the Mozilla VR Team. Test It Open this link ...

Set your google account to automatically delete

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Want to share your family photos after your death, but take your search history to the grave? All that and more is possible with Google's Inactive Account Manager. How You Can Control Your Information After Death It's not nice to think about, but one day, you will die, along with the keys to your online kingdom. And these days, those online accounts ...

HTML Entities

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

(remember the ampersand at the start and the semi-colon at the end of each "tag") | Á | Á | | á | á | | À | À | | Â | Â | | à | à | ...

3 Open Source Password Managers

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Keep your data and accounts safe by using a secure open source password manager to store unique, complex passwords. Maintaining complex, unique passwords for each site and service you use is among the most common pieces of advice that security professionals provide to the public every year. Yet no matter how many times it is said, it seems like a week doesn't ...

How to encrypt linux partitions with LUKS

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

There are plenty of reasons why people would need to encrypt a partition. Whether they're rooted it in privacy, security, or confidentiality, setting up a basic encrypted partition on a Linux system is fairly easy. This is especially true when using LUKS, since its functionality is built directly into the kernel. Installing Cryptsetup ...

Open Source Alternatives to Visio

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Need to create diagrams, flowcharts, circuits, or other kinds of entity-relationship models? Microsoft Visio is without a doubt the best software for that, but that doesn't mean it's the best choice for you. Visio may be the industry standard in the corporate world, but it comes with a huge drawback: it's expensive ($299 for the standard ...

10 tips for making documentation crystal clear

alex — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

So you've some written excellent documentation. Now what? Now it's time to go back and edit it. When you first sit down to write your documentation, you want to focus on what you're trying to say instead of how you're saying it, but once that first draft is done it's time to go back and polish it up a little. One of my favorite ways to edit is to read what I've written aloud. ...

Project Requirements

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This is sometimes so true! ...

Ascii Art Tools

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Here are some resources dealling with ASCII art... AsciiToSVG - PHP code to convert ascii art into SVG. AsciiFlow - Web App implement an ascii art editor. ...

6 Cloud-Based Tools To Help You Build A Web App With Ease

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

In just a relatively short amount of time, building mobile apps has transformed from a process that included lots of knowledge in developing into something that almost anyone can do. Cloud-based tools are quickly becoming the norm for app developers, and these are some of the highest recommended tools, each one being ideal for certain developers. ...

So the server crashed

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Now we have to re-create things... ...

custom desktop ideas

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

fast boot Window Manager Snap windows to border/windows ...

Retropie

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

DVD player Bluetooth receiver ...

using cachefiles on an Linux NFS share

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

If you often mount and access a remote NFS share on your system, you will probably want to know how to improve NFS file access performance. One possibility is using file caching. In Linux, there is a caching filesystem called FS-Cache which enables file caching for network file systems such as NFS. FS-Cache is built into the Linux kernel 2.6.30 and higher. ...

VNC desktop

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

IDEA: Client connects > < server sends version string (Use 3.3 only) Client replies with actual verison string > < server sends security type; NONE Client send ClientInit (shared flag) > ...

SimpleNote/Markdown editor

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

We just load SimpleNote as a Desktop WebApp Create first a basic markdown editor styling ...

Interesting wordpress plugins

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

restrict categories access control by category site member user access mgr paid members ...

Rollback with YUM History Command

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

From 2daygeek.com Server patching is one of the important task of Linux system administrator to make the system more stable and better performance. All the vendors used to release security/vulnerabilities patches very often, the affected package must be updated in order to limit any potential security risks. Yum (Yellowdog Update Modified) is RPM Package Management utility for CentOS and Red Hat systems, Yum history command allows administrator to rollback the system to a previous state but due to some limitations, rollbacks do not work in all situations, or The yum command may simply do nothing, or it may remove packages you do not expect. I advise you to take a full system backup prior to performing any update/upgrade is always recommended, and yum history is NOT meant to replace systems backups. This will help you to restore the system to previous state at any point of time. n some cases, the hosted applications might not work properly or through some error due to recent patch updates (It could be some library incompatibility or package upgrade), what will be the solution in this case? Get in touch with App Dev team and figure it out an issue creating library' and packages then do the rollback with help of yum history command. ...

SeedBoxes

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

A seedbox is a dedicated server at a high speed datacenter with a public IP address for the downloading and seeding of bittorrent files. Persons who have access to a seedbox can download these files to their personal computers at any time and from any place that has an internet connection. References: ...

Centos Install notes

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Set-up local.repo yum installs: nfs-utils autofs @x11 @xfce ...

android development

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Android devs Install JAVA yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel Install SDK Tools: Download the sdk-tools zip from here mkdir /opt/android ...

Securing rsync on ssh

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Reference: positon.org You have 2 systems and you want to set up a secure backup with rsync + SSH of one system to the other. Very simply, you can use: backup.example.com# rsync -avz --numeric-ids --delete root@myserver.example.com:/path/ /backup/myserver/ To do the backup, you have to be root on the remote server, because some files are only root readable. Problem: you will allow backup.example.com to do anything on myserver.example.com, where just read only access on the directory is sufficient. ...

Desktop environments on Centos 7

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

These are commands to install different Desktop environments on Centos7 Gnome yum groupinstall 'GNOME Desktop' KDE yum groupinstall "KDE Plasma Workspaces" ...

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Telegram is a messenger designed to overcome the limitations of other messengers like WhatsApp or similar ones. It is different and better than other messengers on more than one level. A few of the important features that make it stand out among other messengers are: ...

Free Clipart sites

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

In 2014, Microsoft killed and buried Clipart in the digital graveyard. Clipart had outlived its usefulness as users relied more on search engines than Microsoft' somewhat limited supply through the Office suite. Today' clipart needs to be modern, colorful, and less cartoonish. An ...

Anti Roboto skills

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Losing your job to robots is no longer a sci-fi fantasy. Some estimates say, robots may take over more than five million jobs across 15 developed countries. Machines could account for more than half the workforce in places like Cambodia and Indonesia, particularly in the garment industry. While such information has led many people to seek out higher-tech ...

stop procrastinating

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

We are all guilty of procrastinating from time to time--here's always something more interesting than the work in hand. We usually think it's no big deal, since deadline is our biggest inspiration, and we do our best work when we're inspired. We may even joke about it. However, procrastination is a massive waste of time as it turns out. A survey in 2015 found that on average, a person loses over 55 days ...

manage busyness

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Former United States President Dwight Eisenhower was responsible for putting together one of the most important yet fundamentally simple to understand concepts in time management. Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle is a tool to help decipher what tasks need to be addressed more immediately than others. Anyone who uses the principle will be better able to organize and orchestrate their ...

Kivy

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Today I want to briefly write about kivy. kivy is an Python library intended for developing Mobile Apps. It is a cross-platform library that runs on Android, iOS, Linux, OS X and Windows. It is licensed under the MIT, so it is free and open source. Kivy is the main framework developed by the Kivy organisation, alongside with Python for Android, ...

Mail Archiver ideas

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

We use it for receiving junk e-mails (i.e. for those times where we need an e-mail address for sign-up to a service). E-mails are of the form: ar-XXXX@0ink.net TODO: Extend postie: ...

Fixed drive letters for removable USB sticks

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

If you use multiple USB drives, you've probably noticed that the drive letter can be different each time you plug one in. If you'd like to assign a static letter to a drive that's the same every time you plug it in, read on. Windows assigns drive letters to whatever type of drive is available. This can be annoying especially if you use backup tools or portable apps that prefer to have the same drive letter every time. ...

Portable Console

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

portable console Set scrolling region: printf "\033[1;24r" Reset scrolling region: printf "\033[r" However, it is easier/better to do: ...

Xnest

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This trick lets you run X-Windows within an X-Windows session. This is kinda like running VNC. It is useful for testing scenarios. #!/bin/sh Xnest :1 -name "Bla" -ac -geometry 800x600 & sleep 1 export DISPLAY=:1 ...

CyberWorld 2017.1

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Development travis cordova build ...

Side Load apps on Android TV

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So we bough a Philips 50PFK6540. This is a 50" TV with Ambi Ligh and Android TV. One of the things I wanted to do from the very start was to load my own APKs. This was not possible until a recent (2016) update that enabled the "Install from Unknown Sources" setting option. ...

Building Signed APKs

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Building signed APK's for Android is easy if you know what you are doing. This article goes over the preparation steps and the additional build instructions needed to created signed APKs. Preparation First you need to have a keystore. Use this command: ...

Archiving DVDs and CDs

Alejandro Liu — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Since now I have a Android TV I put away my HTPC and with that the capability to view DVDs or listen CDs directly. So I converted my entire CD and DVD library to media files and stored in my home NAS. Since we are talking hundreds of DVDs and CDs, I was using some tools. CD ripping For CD ripping, pretty much everything can be done with abcde. ...

Writing Safe Shell scripts

alex — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Writing shell scripts leaves a lot of room to make mistakes, in ways that will cause your scripts to break on certain input, or (if some input is untrusted) open up security vulnerabilities. Here are some tips on how to make your shell scripts safer. Don't The simplest step is to avoid using shell at all. Many higher-level languages are both easier to write the code in in the first place, and avoid some of the issues that shell ...

editor to replace emacs

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

At the end, I switched to geany GUI TextAdept Bluefish Editor editra ...

MariaDB Quickest Quick start

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This article outlines the bare minimum to get a MariaDB or MySQL database up and running. It covers a CentOS/RHEL and an ArchLinux installs. Make sure your system is up to date: ...

Jaxon: Call PHP classes from JavaScript using AJAX

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Jaxon is an open source PHP library for easily creating Ajax web applications. It allows into a web page to make direct Ajax calls to PHP classes that will in turn update its content, without reloading the entire page. Jaxon implements a complete set of PHP functions to define the contents and properties of the web page. Several plugins exist to extend its functionalities and provide integration with various PHP frameworks and CMS. ...

Building chroots with yum

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Building CHROOTs with Yum in a single command: yum --releasever=7 --installroot=/chroot/jail2 -y install httpd Will install httpd with all its dependancies. If you are on x86_64 and want a 32 bit chroot: setarch i386 yum --releasever=6 --installroot=/chroot/jail32 -y install httpd ...

My WordPress plugins

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

For my own purposes I have written a number of WordPress plugins. S3Copy - Makes backup copies of your pictures to an S3 Compatible server. I use sirv.com myself. It also mangles tags so files are server from the S3 bucket. wptools - A collection of WordPress related functionality. ...

vr starting points

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

vr boilerplate threejs vr chrome experimets google cardboard google cardboard ...

Hosting WordPress on OpenShift

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

So I finally moved my WordPress web sites to OpenShift. OpenShift is a cloud based Platform-as-a-Service offering from RedHat. And while there is a learning curve I would say that so far it works great. My implementation is a fully cloud based solution. Makes use of the following services: GitHub for code hosting ...

CSR ideas

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Work improvements NFR Javascript single page application JS GUI ...

game lists

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Cybernator Darius Twin Another World | Out of this World Front Mission Series Strike Gunner ...

JavaScript resources

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Typescript voxeljs ige More powerful github web pages ...

Programming 2016

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Programming 2016 GWT and GWT on Mobile and Java servlets Generate Excel http://www.gwtproject.org/overview.html ...

Managing our personal finances

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

During my last vacation I wanted to move how we manage our personal finances away from the ad-hoc spreadsheet that we had been using for the past few years. I envisioned something server side, so I wouldn't need to add software on my wife's computer. And initial quick run through of server side software did not yield anything that interested me. In general I could only find full accounting applications, which ...

Starting with 3D Printing

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

So I finally tried my hand at 3D printing. Obviously I did not buy at 3D printer. These are either quite expensive or you need to assemble them yourself, which I don't think is in my capacity level. To get started, you first need a 3D model to print. There are several 3D models available in Thingieverse, however I actually wanted to make my own model. After all, that is the whole point of 3D printing. Custom made parts/objects that can be printed as needed. To create a 3D model you need some 3D modelling software. For my very first model I opted for TinkerCAD. This is software that runs on the cloud that lets you create your own 3D models. This is particularly interesting because you don't need to install anything on your computer and it would essentially run on anything where a web browser runs. For a web based application, it is quite responsive and feature-full. You can use (like me) a facebook account to sign-in. Models can then be downloaded as an ".stl" file (the format used by 3D printers) or send directly to 3D printing service such as 3D Hubs. 3D Hubs, is an online 3D Printing service which facilitates transactions betwen 3D Printer owners (Hubs) and people who want to make 3D prints. Printer owners can join the platform to offer 3D printing services while customers can locate printer owners to get their 3D models printed nearby. ...

OpenShift notes

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

THIS IS FOR ARCHIVAL PURPOSES. THIS IS OUT-OF-DATE backup OpenShift openshift getenv(USER) from OpenShift php ssh to {user}@{app-domain} gear snapshot > file Run gear app OpenShift migration further notes ...

Windows administration from the command line

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Windows system administration is very mouse driven and to reach all tools you need to browse through Windows explorer. If you are like me and prefer to log on a limited privilege account and use Runas to perform admin tasks, you can open these consoles with the .msc file names. Here is a list of admin tools with their .msc file names. domain.msc: AD Domains and Trusts ...

Deploying Kerberos based SSO

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This article goes over how to implement Single-Sign-On on Linux. It goes over the integration around the Kerberos service and the applications, like for example FireFox. Pre-requisites ...

clipping ideas

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Divide into Work : Only visible to company and clients Personal: Public/Private areas ...

Let's Encrypt

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is a service that let's you get SSL certificates for HTTPS. These certificates are trusted by major browsers. See Let's Encrypt This is a barebones howto to get SSL certificates: git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt cd letsencrypt This contains the client software for let's encrypt. ./letsencrypt-auto certonly --manual This will start by updating and getting any needed dependencies and then jump to a wizard like configuration to get this done. Follow the prompts and pay special attention on the prompt used to validate your domain. (You need to create a couple of folders and a file with the right content). Afterwards your certificates will be in: ...

undup

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So, after a long while, I wrote a new C language program. As usual, the same things that I dislike about C programming popped up, specifically the need for low level data structures and manual memory management. I did learn some new things: ...

Markdown Javascript editors

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

VUE JS: Includes a Markdown editor example that allows edit with online preview next to it Embeddable JS Markdown editor : Has a button to preview Editors that edit in preview-like mode editor ...

Picade Todo

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

key mappings look up and label default mappings ...

Centos7/RHEL7 FirewallD -- the least you need to know

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This post is just a simple hints-tips to get something going with FirewallD without going into too much detail. Checking if you are using firewalld: firewall-cmd --state ...

Raspberry Pi Thin Client

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Thin Client project want to create a very low price thin client over Raspberry Pi board! Microsoft RDC, Citrix ICA, VMWare View, OpenNX & SPICE RPITC ...

Raspberry pi notes

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

raspberry pi shops NL based sos solutions hackerstore ...

Replacing Emacs with Atom

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

As an old UNIX guy I have been using emacs for years. So in a way, I am very comfortable with using it and most of keyboard shortcuts. But, it really is an old animal and I have been thinking that I should be moving to a more modern replacement to it for quite ...

Online IDEs

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

If you want to move to the cloud and like to code like me, this is kinda of a basic necessity. This applies in particular to Chromebook users. 5 Best online IDEs ...

Lifehacker App Guides

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

These two hyperlinks from Lifehacker are quite useful: iPhone App Guide Android App Guide ...

Upload to OpenWRT

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Base 64 decoding: coreutils-base64 #!/usr/local/bin/haserl --upload-limit=4096 --upload-dir=/tmp content-type: text/html

organizing notes

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

My Documents DOCUMENTS Project Folder old ...

Another Markdown Editor

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This one is GitHubFlavored markdown... markdown editor ...

Web Links

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Here a few web-links to interesting web apps. It covers stuff about password security and checking if web sites are down, etc etc. Down For Everyone or Just Me: If you're getting an error when visiting a certain site, it could be down or something could be wrong on your end. To see which ...

Fiddle Markdown Tool

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

For a quick and simple Markdown Preview: Fiddle ...

Code Kingdoms

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Code Kingdoms is targeted towards six- to 13-year olds and looks very much like your everyday puzzle adventure game. Choose an animal, walk around a kingdom saving animals through puzzles. The difference is most of the puzzles require kids to use code elements to solve the puzzles. At first this is through dragging-and-dropping code snippets, but as they progress, kids will be typing in code themselves. ...

Kerberos Client

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This simple mini how-to goes over the configuration of a linux system so it can use a Kerberos Realm server for authentication. Make sure you have the pam_krb5 rpm files installed. You can check this by running the rpm -qa | grep pam command and seeing whether the pam_krb5 rpm files are listed. If they aren't, you can typically download them in an update of the Linux or Unix operating system that you are running. ...

HP Envy 4504 Set-up

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

I bought a HP Envy 4504. Overall I am happy with it. This is how I configure it so I can use with Linux. This mini howto applies to ArchLinux, void linux and Centos/RedHat distributions. Installation Archlinux: cups, hplip, python2, sane ...

RPMGOT

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Software package download proxy rpmgot is a simple/lightweight software package download proxy. It was designed to run on an OpenWRT router with some USB storage. So it is fully implemented as an ash script. The basic idea has been implemented multiple times. For example refer to this article on a squid based implementation. Unlike squid, which once you include all its dependencies can use up over 1MB of space just to install it, this software has very few dependencies. The idea is for small developers running the same operating system version(s) would benefit from a local mirror of them, but they don't have so many systems that it's actually reasonable for them to run a full mirror, which would entail rsyncing a bunch of content daily, much of which may be packages would never be used. rpmgot implements a lazy mirror something that would appear to its client systems as a full mirror, but would act more as a proxy. When a client installed a particular version of a particular package for the first time, it would go fetch them from a "real" mirror, and then cache it for a long time. Subsequent requests for the same package from the "mirror" would be served from cache. ...

SSL Certificates

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So it is is a more dangerous world out there. You can start securing web sites using self signed certificates. Another option is to: Use CloudFlare. This will use a CF certificate from the CF CDN to the web site, while using a self-signed certificate between the CF CDN to your web server. Use startssl ...

Convert HTML to Markdown

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

These web sites convert to Markdown: Mardownifier: Convert the given URL to-markdown: Convert HTML snippets turndown ...

Raspberry Pi - Low cost CCTV

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

A good tutorial on creating a low cost surveillance camera using the raspberry Pi camera module and one of thos fake surveillance camera things. Instructables has a good tutorial on creating a low cost surveillance camera. Essentially makes use of a Pi, the Camera module and fitted into one of those inexpensive fake surveillance cameras. ...

Raspberry Pi as a Stratum-1 NTP Server

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is something I found: http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-NTP.html Essentially it requires pairing a Raspberry Pi with a NTPI Raspberry Pi GPS addon board ...

Incredible PBX for RasPBX

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is a link to IncrediblePBX for RasPBX. Looks like bundles to run Asterisk PBX'es on a Raspberry Pi. Neat. ...

dev notes 2014

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Replacment for Make and Autoconf: MakeMe (If you don't have root but have Android 4+ you can use the command-line program adb from the Android SDK platform tools to make backups via a desktop computer) chromebook ides ...

Resizing a Linux RAID

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

It is possible to migrate the whole array to larger drives (e.g. 250 GB to 1 TB) by replacing one by one. In the end the number of devices will be the same, the data will remain intact, and you will have more space available to you. Extending an existing RAID array In order to increase the usable size of the array, you must increase ...

Wi-Fi Sd Cards

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

My latest weekend project. Making a normal digital camera WIFI enabled. With the Transcend Wi-Fi SD Card you can convert any digital camera into a Wi-Fi enable camera. What I did here is to set it up so that it would automatically upload photos whenever I turn the camera on while at home. The nice thing about this camera is that it runs a fully functional Linux environment within the card. The manufacturer was also nice enough to give you the opportunity to customize the card by running arbitrary shell scripts from the SD card itself. My code is in github. ...

Raspberry Pi Weekend project

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So finally took the time to try out a Raspberry Pi. For this weekend project wanted to do something relatively simple. Essentially, I wanted to recreate/enhance the functionality of a TL-WR702N. The TL-WR702N Nano Router is a neat device but being closed, can not be customized to what I wanted. It can be used in the following modes: ...

DVD archiving

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is my simple procedure for backing up my DVD movies: Examine the DVD: dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -I Create a full backup: dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o ~ -M Creating an ISO: ...

Private vs. Personal

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

In Microsoft Outlook has the option to tag e-mails with a sensitivity tag. Technically this is fairly meaningless. However sometimes I like to use them. The confidential tag is quite self explanatory. I always confuse what is the difference between private and personal. So here is one possibility... Personal information are things like preferences, political association, likes and dislikes. Private information are things like bank account numbers. Stuff that you probably would like to keep secret. ...

Cleaning-up Outlook Calendar

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is a procedure I go through at the end of the year to clean-up my Outlook Calendar. Usually the Outlook Calendar gets full of junk over time. So this is something worth doing on a regular basis. Procedure for Outlook 2007 ...

Chrome Kerberos Authentication

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

To config chrome to use kerberos authentication you need to start the application the following parameter: auth-server-whitelist - Allowed FQDN - Set the FQDN of the IdP Server. Example: chrome --auth-server-whitelist="*aai-logon.domain-a.com" auth-negotiate-delegate-whitelist - For which FQDN credential delegation will be allowed. ...

Deploying Chrome Extensions

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

The following links outline how to deploy Chrome extensions in a enterprise manner: Installing Chrome Extensions Other Deployment Options Force Installing Extensions ...

My Must Have Android Apps

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is a list of my favorite Android Apps: Essentials Barcode Scanner - Play Store F-Droid Ghost Commander - F-Droid F-Droid Alternative Application Manager. Usually Open source stuff with significantly less crap ware and ads. ...

wp-cron and cron

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Normal WordPress operation has a cron like functionality that runs scheduled tasks as users visit the blog. It is possible to replace this with a standalone cron (like UNIX cron). To disable the "webcron" (i.e. trigerring tasks as URLs are visited) add to your wp-config.php the following: define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true); Then call this from cron: ...

Using wget with given IP/vhost

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is one neat trick. For vhosts you can connect with an IP yet provide the right host name with the following: wget http://1.1.1.1/ --header 'Host: www.example.com' ...

Using a NAS200 as a Print server

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Last weekend I had a small weekend project to move my All-In-One Printer/Scanner from my Xen host server to a spare NAS200 I had lying around. Since the NAS200 has a i486 compatible CPU, and I had been able to run a CentOS 5 distro before, I figure it would make a good server with low power consumption. For that I updated my NASCC firmware so that it would boot a USB key, and update my CentOS image creation script. This worked well, I was able to boot CentOS without that much effort altogether. I myself have an Epson Stylus CX5500 which unfortunately only comes with binary drivers. This was not much of a problem since the NAS200 has a i486 compatible CPU. I find this is relatively unique among different NAS models. Alas, the performance was quite disappointing. I should be used to the NAS200 underperforming. But really, this was truly sad. I did not bother to test the printing, but I did try scanning with it. Running scanimage to scan a single page was taking over 15 minutes before I hit Ctrl+C. It was an idea, but the results were so sub par. The only take-aways of this are: ...

UNIX find with dates

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

-atime/-ctime/-mtime the last time a files's access time, file status and modification time, measured in days or minutes. Time interval in options -ctime, -mtime and -atime is an integer with optional sign. n: If the integer n does not have sign this means exactly n days ago, 0 means today. +n: if it has plus sing, then it means more then n days ago, or older then n, -n: if it has the minus sign, then it means less than n days ago (-n), or younger then n. It's evident that -1 and 0 are the same and both mean today. ...

Enable local file caching for NFS share on Linux

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

In Linux, there is a caching filesystem called FS-Cache which enables file caching for network file systems such as NFS. FS-Cache is built into the Linux kernel 2.6.30 and higher. In order for FS-Cache to operate, it needs cache back-end which provides actual storage for caching. One such cache back-end is cachefiles. Therefore, once you set up cachefiles, it will automatically enable file caching for NFS shares. ...

sdf.org

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

sdf.org This one is an interesting site. The Super Dimension Fortress is a networked community of free software authors, teachers, librarians, students, researchers, hobbyists, computer enthusiasts, the aural and visually impaired. It is operated as a recognized non-profit 501(c)(7) and is supported by its members. Our mission is to provide remotely accessible computing facilities for the advancement of public education, cultural enrichment, scientific research and recreation. Members can interact electronically with each other regardless of their location using passive or interactive forums. Further purposes include the recreational exchange of information concerning the Liberal and Fine Arts. Members have UNIX shell access to games, email, usenet, chat, bboard, webspace, gopherspace, programming utilities, archivers, browsers, and more. The SDF community is made up of caring, highly skilled people who operate behind the scenes to maintain a non-commercial INTERNET. ...

Driving Continuous Integration from Git

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Testing, code coverage, style enforcement are all check-in and merge requirements that can be automated and driven from Git. If you're among the rising number of Git users out there, you're in luck: You can automate pieces of your development workflow with Git hooks. Hooks are a native Git mechanism for firing off custom scripts before or after certain operations such as commit, merge, applypatch, ...

Off site backup options

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is my working notes on doing off-site backups to the cloud. Still trying to figure out where to keep Offsite backups. These are the candidates: ...

No Comment

Alejandro Liu — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This should require no explanation... ...

Alarm Notification

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This tutorial describes how to use the alarm manager to set alarms and how to use the notification framework to display them. In short, the sequence goes like this: In an Activity AlarmManager.set is called with a PendingIntent containing a Uri. When the alarm goes off, the Uri is called triggering a BroadcastReceiver. In the BroadcastReceiver NotificationManager.notify is called with a PendingIntent. When the notification is clicked, the Activity in the PendingIntent is started. ...

DID vendors

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So I have been researching DID vendors with limited success. So far my leading candidates are: Vendor ...

Parsing JSON in Shell scripts

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This can be simple by using jq. This is a command line JSON processor. Here are a couple of examples of what can be done: $ cat json.txt { "name": "Google", ...

Yealink W52P

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Yealink W52P So I was looking to replace my analog cordless phones mainly because I wanted to have a centralized way to maintain phonebooks. Right now I have two cordless phone that I have to manually enter phonebook entries on the two handsets independently. Initially I was thinking of getting small/cheap Android tablet and load it with a SIP soft phone. Trying with a couple of tablets I had was not very successful. On one hand my network topology did not work very well, on the other hand, the integration of the SIP soft phone with the directory and the other phone functions did not work as well as I expected. So when I came across the W52P, I was initially attracted to the low price. Grandstream had a cheaper phone, but it did not have remote phonebooks. After checking the documentation of the W52P, I confirmed that it did have a remote phonebook functionality. So bought it and tried it out. As a phone itself, it is about the same as the analog phones that it was replacing. The voice quality was pretty good. ...

Grandstream GXP1400

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Grandstream GXP1400 The other day I replaced an analog phone with a Grandstream GXP1400 IP phone. I think it is a great value phone. It is one of the cheapest I could find yet supports all the features I was looking. Specifically I wanted a IP phone that could: Have a remote phone directory ...

Backing up GMail

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

The other day I found Gmvault. Gmvault is an open source Gmail backup software written in Python. This article provides a good overview on how it works (found it better than the Gmvault documentation): How to back up and restore Gmail account on Linux ...

BOX.com promotions

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is a good link to keep an eye on: box.com promotions ...

Alternative to DynDNS

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

linuxaria blog article This article has a script how to use Dynamic DNS on afraid.org. ...

assist

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Assist is my archlinux scripted installation script. https://github.com/alejandroliu/assist By default it gives you a menu driven archlinux installation with supposedly sensible defaults. It has command line hooks so that you can perform automated installs using bash scripts to customize it. ...

SSH Tricks

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

A bunch of stupid SSH tricks that can be useful somehow, somewhere... Forcing either IPv4 or IPv6 This is for the scenario that you know which specific protocol works to reach a particular host. Usually good to eliminate the delay for SSH to figure out to switch IP protocols. For IPv4: ssh -4 user@hostname.com ...

Running Windows on Linux for Free

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Microsoft is now making available Windows VM image for testing Internet Explorer for free. You can find them at: Modern IE testing Currently the following versions are available: Windows XP Professional SP3 + IE 6 or 8 Windows Vista + IE 7 Windows 7 + IE 8, 9, 10 or 11 Windows 8 + IE 11 ...

Remote VirtualBox

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

RemoteBox is a Remote VirtualBox UI. It is similar phpVirtualBox in that allows to manage VirtualBox remotely (on a potentially headless server). They differ in their requirements: RemoteBox does not require much on the server, but you need to install it on the client. phpVirtualBox only requires a browser and rdp viewer on the client, but requires a web server with PHP support on the server. ...

IPv6 testing

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

When trying to get on-to the IPv6 Internet, here are a couple of links to do diagnostics: http://www.subnetonline.com/pages/ipv6-network-tools/online-ipv6-ping.php This actually contain generic network tools. http://ds.testmyipv6.com/ Confirm if your browser is connecting through IPv6 ...

PingTool.org

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Another short and sweet. This web site provides a number of on-line tools. Useful for diagnosing problems when setting a home server. http://pingtool.org/ ...

Web Backups

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

As usual with any IT system backups are important. This does not change when using a free shared hosting provider. Because it is free, one would argue it is even more important. For my wordpress web site I used something called cli-exporter. It let's you create "Wordpress" export files from the command line so it can be run from cron. This is important because backups have to be automated. In addition to that, I copy the backup files to an off-site location. I do this by copying files using WebDAV to a storage provider. I did this by writing a simple script and using the PHP library SabreDAV which makes writing DAV clients quite easy. I myself don't mind using other people's Open Source code to do something. I was actually surprised that I was not able to find something that meet my criteria. However, thanks to the power of open source I was able to find something that fit the bill exactly. To make things more interesting, because I wanted to keep backup files as compressed Zip archives, my backup scripts did not work in one of the web hosts that I was using. They did not have the zip extensions enabled. This is surprising considering is quite standard. Luckily I was able to find a pure PHP library pclzip. ...

Mini-Howto: Setup proxy on Ubuntu

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

A quick and dirty mini-howto to setup a proxy on Ubuntu. This is meant mostly for doing quick setup of a proxy on a cloud environment. Install Squid with the following command at the Linux command prompt: ...

Using CloudFlare

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So I have signed up 0ink.net to use the CloudFlare service. CloudFlare is a reverse proxy service that is supposed to speed up and improve web server security. This is done by: globally distributed reverse proxy cache network ...

Askozia Desktop Appliance

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So last weekend finally had some time to work with a Askozia Desktop Appliance. It actually arrived much earlier but without a Power Supply. Initially I though, "this is strange; I didn't know this supported PoE". (Power Over Ethernet). It turns out it didn't and there was a shipping mistake. After contacting the vendor, they sent me the required Power Supply. Overall I think the product is quite nice. It has a very nice User Interface that is quite easy to use. Simple configurations are indeed very easy to set-up. My feeling is that, as with any GUI, it usually trades user-friendly with expressiveness. So while I could configure most of the things I wanted from the UI, it did not support my home network topology fully. Initially, I had a DMZ vs Home-LAN configuration, with the Askozia box in the DMZ. Because the separation between the DMZ and the Home-LAN was through the router, it considered all the IP phones (in the Home-LAN) on the other side of the NAT, so things did not work properly. ...

CipherUSB

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is an interesting concept. Essentially is an Encryption dongle that encrypts stuff between your PC and your USB mass storage device. Addonics Product: CipherUSB. ...

Upgrading pacman config files

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So when upgrading software packages sometimes you need to merge changes. My recipe in archlinux is as follows: Look for *.pacnew files. Retrieve the original version (from /var/cache/pacman) from the old source package. Use a 3 way merge tool between old version, current file and the pacnew file. ...

libmspack

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Recently I found this Open Source project. Apparently it recently gained support to unpack Exchange Offline Address Book files. What I don't know is after you unpack it, how would you use such a file. Intriguing but apparently falls a little bit short. Probably would need to try it out for myself to see how it works. libmspack. ...

atratus project

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

The other day I came across this project. Looks an interesting idea. It is a project that lets you run unmodified Linux binaries on Windows. It is more similar to WINE than to for example coLinux. While I conceptually I understand how it would work at a low level, I am curious how it works with dynamically link executables. This is something I would like to test out when I have time. ...

Media Tips

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is an article about different media (and more specifically) video files can be manipulated. This is just for historical purposes as now almost everything can be done using ffmpeg and the right options. libmp4v2 contains: ...

Diskless Archlinux

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

I am still to test this recipe Server Configuration First of all, we must install the following components: A DHCP server to assign IP addresses to our diskless nodes. A TFTP server to transfer the boot image (a requirement of all PXE option roms). ...

OpenWRT web

Alejandro Liu — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Some useful tidbits to use when using the OpenWRT embedded web server (uHTTPD). Embedded Lua uHTTPd supports running Lua in-process, which can speed up Lua CGI scripts. It is unclear whether LuCI supports running in this embedded interpreter. LuCI seems to work fine (if not better) with the embedded ...

Program Documentation

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So these are my ideas on how to document projects. There are three types of documentation types: User guides Targetted and end-users of the software and people who want a brief overview. Man pages Again targetted at end-users but also sysadmins. Usually to address a specific feature. ...

Git Tutorials

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Reference for Git tutorials http://linux.yyz.us/git-howto.html http://git.or.cz/course/svn.html http://spheredev.org/wiki/Git_for_the_lazy http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gittutorial.html ...

Remote Bridging

alex — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Sometimes we need to connect two or more geographically distributed ethernet networks to one broadcast domain. There can be two different office networks of some company which uses smb protocol partially based on broadcast network messages. Another example of such situation is computer cafes: a couple of computer cafes can provide to users more convinient environment forr playing multiplayer computer games without dedicated servers. Both sample networks in this article need to have one *nix server for bridging. Our networks can be connected by any possible hardware that provides IP connection between them. Connecting Two Remote Local Networks With Transparent Bridging Technique Short description In described configuration we are connecting two remote LANs to make them appearing as one network with 192.168.1.0/24 address space (however physically, presense of bridges in network configuration is not affecting IP protocol and is fully transparent for it, so you can freely select any address space). Both of the bridging servers has two network interfaces: one (as eth0 in our example) connested to the LAN, and second (eth1) is being used as transport to connect networks. When ethernet tunnel between gateways in both networks will be bringed up we will connect tunnel interfaces with appropriate LAN interfaces with bridge interfaces. Schematically this configuration can be following: ...

Network wiring notes - 8P8C / RJ45

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

What you were probably looking forT568A/B (10-BASE-T and 100-BASE-TX): With pin positions are counted from left to right with the contacts facing you (clip on the back) and pointing up (cable coming out the bottom): Color (568B) ...

Native Kerberos Authentication with SSH

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This article is about integrating OpenSSH in a kerberos environment. Allthough OpenSSH can provide passwordless logins (through Public/Private keys), it is not a true SSO set-up. This article makes use of Kerberos TGT service to implement a true SSO configuration for OpenSSH. Pre-requisites First off, you'll need to make sure that the OpenSSH server's Kerberos configuration (in /etc/krb5.conf) is correct and works, and that the server's keytab (typically /etc/krb5.keytab) contains an entry for host/fqdn@REALM (case-sensitive). I won't go into details on how this is done again; instead, I'll refer you to any one of the recent Kerberos-related articles (like this one, this one, or even this one). Just be sure that you can issue a kinit -k host/fqdn@REALM and get back a Kerberos ticket without having specify a password. (This tells you that the keytab is working as expected.) ...

My new 0ink.net site

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

So one weekend went by and managed to finish up my 0ink.net web site. So now I have: wordpress For main content. tt-rss This is my answer to Google's shutdown of the Reader service. ...

Mirroring a Gitorious repository to GitHub

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

There is nothing special with GitHub and Gitorious here. This technique would work exactly the same the other way around or with other servers. In a nutshell # Inital setup git clone --mirror git://gitorious.org/weasyprint/weasyprint.git weasyprint ...

Kerberos howtos

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Kerberos is a network authentication protocol which works on the basis of "tickets" to allow nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. (Source Kerberos_(protocol) ) Backups Create backup: ...

Emacs Cheat Sheet

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Quick reference article for how to use Emacs. Yes, it is really old skool! Cursor Motion ...

ArchLinux tips

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

A bunch of recipes useful for an ArchLinux system environment. Mostly around system administration. Custom Repos and Packages In the repo directory, put all the packages in there. repo-add ./custom.db.tar.gz ./* ...

PHP notes

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Notes on doing different things within the PHP language. Object oriented introspection property_exists(obj,prop_name) method_exists(obj,method_name) is_a(obj,'clas_name') or ($obj instanceof ClassName) ...

Git recipes

alex — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Sharing repositories Rewriting history Rolling back the last commit ...

Getting rid of DRM on e-books and videos

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Instructions on how to remove DRM from E-Books and videos. How to Remove DRM from Ebooks (and Back Up Your Library Permanently) The easiest way to strip DRM from Kindle books (and Barnes and Noble, Adobe Digital Content, etc) is with the free ebook software Calibre, DRM removal plugins, and a copy of the Kindle desktop software (PC/Mac). These directions are for Kindle, but will work with Barnes and Noble, Adobe Digital Editions, and older formats. Here's what you need to do: Download Calibre, the the plugins, and the Kindle Desktop software. Unzip the contents of the plugin directory. ...

Wordpress links

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This article describes how you creeate hyperlinks within Wordpress. There are a number of ways to do this, depending on the configuration and the types of data we are linking to. Linking Without Using Permalinks This actually works whether or not Permalinks are active. Using the numeric values found in the ID column of the Posts, Categories, and Pages Administration, you can create links as follows. Posts ...

International Phonetic Alphabet

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Phonetic Alphabet 1 2 ...

Makefiles

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Some notes on GNU Make. I always have to look-up these in the manual. Here now for my own convenience. GNU Make automatic variables: From http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Automatic-Variables.html. $@ ...

Issue Tracker

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Use DVCS as backend (GIT) Output html markdown Prefer perl/python Mostly RO so to avoid merge conflicts. ...

Cleaning up Google Calendar

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Recipe for cleaning a google calendar. Sign in to Google Calendar Click on Calendar Settings (current version has this just above the list of personal calendars, under an arrow). Click on "Delete" of the main calendar. A confirmation dialog box appears telling you that that "This deletes all events on primary Calendar". ...

Automatically adding systems to an AD domain

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

When using virtualisation it is very common to create template VMs that can be cloned from. This makes deployment much easier than having to install a new VM from scratch. Unfortunately, the cloned VMs lack any Active Directory memberships and the VMs have to be manually added to the AD domain. For automated deployment scenarios this is less than desirable. This recipe intends to solve that issue in a ...

SATA/IDE warm plug/unplug

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is for SATA and IDE interfaces that do not automatically detect added/removed devices. Scanning for newly added discs: echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/scan safely removing a disk echo 1 > /sys/block/sda/device/delete ...

Icons

Alejandro Liu — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Finding icons: iconfinder. In 2023 I am using: icons8 This allows to download icons in different formats, and also allows you to do tweaks such as: ...

On-line Web Authoring Resources

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

A collection of links for Web-Authoring. This focuses on using Web (HTML and CSS) technologies directly and not through a CMS like Wordpress. http://www.webestools.com/ Free online tools, generators, services, scripts, tutorials. ...

First steps...

alex — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

So finally took the time to re-launch the 0ink web site. This time used more off-the shelf software. So this site is just a another plain wordpress powered site. Actually I have to thank my son for introducing me to wordpress. What happened is that my son, who is only seven wanted to have his own web site. (Due to peer pressure, kids these days...) He has an Android tablet that he uses quite often. Since I knew that wordpress can be ...

We are back...

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

After a long time in Limbo we are back with 0ink.net as a live site. ...

Local Perl packages

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Determine what is the local PERL5LIB configuration: LIB=$( for d in `tr : ' ' <<<$PERL5LIB do if [ -w $d ] ; then echo $d ...

Linux Keyboard Tips

Alejandro Liu — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Miscellaneous hacks to use the keyboard under Linux. Special Characters on X11 The compose key, when pressed in sequence with other keys, produces a Unicode character. E.g., in most configurations pressing Compose e ``` produces é. Compose keys appeared on some computer keyboards decades ago, especially those produced by Sun Microsystems. However, ...

Bash Tips

alex — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Some bash one-liners: echo ${!X*} Will print all the names of variables whos name starts with X. To output the contents of a variable so it can be parsed by bash ...

Keep e-mail private

Alejandro Liu — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0100

This is a handy tip. If you don't want to give out your real email address to register for a site and don't want to go through the hassle of creating a spam email address, just point your browser to Guerrilla Mail upon loading the page you'll have an automatically assigned email ...

Git Workflows

Alejandro Liu — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Start working on a Topic Branch Keep Topic Branch current Merge a Topic Branch Start working on a HotFix Keep HotFix Branch current ...