DVTM
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...
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
The point of this article is to document I workaround that I came up with to handle a HDMI KVM switch. What happens is that if my Linux PC is turned on while the KVM switch ...
Alpine Boot switcher
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
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
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://<your url>/proxy.pac ...
Definiton of maturity
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 ...