My thoughts on the pang-wang Archive

💭 Tyblog | systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success

2025-07-11T11:00:54Z

Here’s my thought on Tyblog | systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success

I found this post on systemd this morning, and although I’ve been a Linux user for around 6 years now, there’s some levels of it that are pretty foreign to me. One of the things I never got was the drama around systemd - but that’s because I wasn’t around in the beforefore times, I don’t use cron THAT MUCH, and I’ve only had to setup a few systemd unit files - not enough to generate a real opinion on it. But lately I’m looking into more automation at home - and some stuff is fun to put into an overkill of a platform for a homelab, like temporal, but some stuff should probably be run in more hardened ways (backups for example) - so getting a little download this morning on systemd from a clearly seasoned Linux user is a nice addition to my hot cup of coffee.

Note

This is one of [[ my-thoughts ]]. I picked this up from Waylon Walker(https://thoughts.waylonwalker.com). It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online. Learn more about the process Thoughts

💭 Self-Hosting A Cluster On Old Phones | Hackaday

2025-07-06T11:30:17Z

Here’s my thought on Self-Hosting A Cluster On Old Phones | Hackaday

Came across a blog and article on using a mobile OS to self-host a cluster on old phones… I happen to keep several old android phones lying around and although I’m not presently super interested in figuring out an android/arm based homelab, I am excited for the next coming years when I’m sure it’ll only get easier, phones will only be more powerful, and perhaps we’ll be running full blown CV pipeline in k8s clusters running on Pixel devices!

Note

💭 Linux Explained: What is The Linux Kernel? - YouTube

2025-06-07T11:28:18Z

Here’s my thought on Linux Explained: What is The Linux Kernel? - YouTube

I’m getting sucked into the Linux is a kernel not an operating system crowd because tonight I realized I couldn’t describe what a kernel is so I YouTubeda few things and before you know it you joined a decades old war before finishing loading the dishwasher

Note

I was wrecked by a weird combo of » and -e

2025-04-23T08:44:59Z

TL;DR #

If state matters then check it in the beginning or handle it on a failure… Let me explain

I ran into some trouble recently almost losing some encrypted data… Now this would be the second time I’ve had that happen, so I’m going to write a little bit about it now that I figured it out

The Stage #

Here’s the scenario - I use ansible-vault to keep some sensitive data in a few public repos, and I keep the keys I use in Bitwarden Secrets Manager.

I use just as a command runner and have common just encrypt and just decrypt recipes throughout many justfiles. It might look something like this


get-vault-key:
    bws secret get $HOMELAB_BOT_VAULT_KEY_ID  | jq -r '.value'

encrypt:
    #!/bin/bash
    set +e
    just get-vault-key > key
    ansible-vault encrypt ./secret-file --vault-password-file key
    ansible-vault encrypt ./secret-file2 --vault-password-file key
    rm key

decrypt:
    #!/bin/bash
    set +e
    just get-vault-key > key
    ansible-vault decrypt ./secret-file --vault-password-file key
    ansible-vault decrypt ./secret-file2 --vault-password-file key
    rm key

Spoiler #

Above is a good example of the 2 recipes, but prior to this morning they looked like this


get-vault-key:
    bws secret get $HOMELAB_BOT_VAULT_KEY_ID  | jq -r '.value'

# BAD EXAMPLES! DO NOT DO THIS

encrypt:
    set -e
    just get-vault-key >> key
    ansible-vault encrypt ./secret-file --vault-password-file key
    ansible-vault encrypt ./secret-file2 --vault-password-file key
    rm key

decrypt:
    set -e
    just get-vault-key >> key
    ansible-vault decrypt ./secret-file --vault-password-file key
    ansible-vault decrypt ./secret-file2 --vault-password-file key
    rm key

Problem #

So here’s the story - in real life I started using distrobox when I ran into this and I thought it was an issue with different versions of ansible installed in distrobox and on my desktop. After a few more odd deployment workflows I think I’ve determined that the real problem is that >> appends to a file (see the issue yet?), but if my recipes fail (say I try to encrypt an already encrypted file) then the command exits but what’s left on my disk? key is still there… and the next time I go to run a command I’ll echo the real key to the key file again and if I called encrypt when the first or more files in the list were decrypted then they’ll be encrypted not with my key, but with my key repeated as many times as I ran a command with just get-vault-key >> key before ever removing the key file!


nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ cat secret-file
Danger, Will Robinson

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ just encrypt
bws secret get $HOMELAB_BOT_VAULT_KEY_ID  | jq -r '.value'
Encryption successful

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ cat secret-file
$ANSIBLE_VAULT;1.1;AES256
39616332393662346639633030633766666336323939346138633238626239363733316431333737
6463663763366434376437303335643431663431326135300a636261663636336139323033316232
37666439383131393631333332353731633661396431633834326432363936613331623135666565
6364363039663933620a326563323931643632323031396664646363613636613562366166386439
63653661653037393538356461323239396630643338393231306163343964623866

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ just decrypt
bws secret get $HOMELAB_BOT_VAULT_KEY_ID  | jq -r '.value'
Decryption successful

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ cat secret-file
Danger, Will Robinson

So as you can see, I have secret-file here, and I can encrypt and decrypt just fine. But if I have that >> in the recipe, add a second file, and a failure in a command - well then I’ll start getting confused…

Follow along with the workflow of adding a file that I’ll need encrypted

Only secret-file is in the just recipe here - I add secret-file2 after

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ just decrypt
bws secret get $HOMELAB_BOT_VAULT_KEY_ID  | jq -r '.value'
ERROR! input is not vault encrypted data. /var/home/nic/projects/personal/pype.dev/secret-file is not a vault encrypted file for /var/home/nic/projects/personal/pype.dev/secret-file
error: Recipe `decrypt` failed with exit code 1

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×8 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
✗ echo "Good - secret-file is already decrypted! So lets add another file"
Good - secret-file is already decrypted! So lets add another file

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ echo "Foo Bar Bam Baz" > secret-file2                                    

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×8 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ echo "Added secret-file2 to my Just recipes"
Added secret-file2 to my Just recipes

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×8 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ just encrypt
bws secret get $HOMELAB_BOT_VAULT_KEY_ID  | jq -r '.value'
Encryption successful
Encryption successful

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×7 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
❯ just decrypt
bws secret get $HOMELAB_BOT_VAULT_KEY_ID  | jq -r '.value'
ERROR! Decryption failed (no vault secrets were found that could decrypt) on /var/home/nic/projects/personal/pype.dev/secret-file for /var/home/nic/projects/personal/pype.dev/secret-file
error: Recipe `decrypt` failed with exit code 1

nic in pype.dev   main   ×2  ×3  ×8 via   v3.11.10(pype-dev)   (dev) 󰒄 
✗ echo "Oh no!"

So what happened?

Recall that my recipes originally had set -e at the top and used >> to cat my secret to a file key. Well, when the fir| decryption recipe failed the key file was left behind. Then when I went to encrypt both of my files the recipe got the key again and made a keyfile like this:

secretKey
secretKey

The encryption recipe encrypted the files with this key, removed the key file, and then the next decryption recipe failed because when it got the key and made the file it looked like

secretKey

So the solution in the end is to remake the key file every time (> instead of >>), or check if it exists, or handle the error when the recipe fails, or just keep going (set +e)

Fin #

And that’s how I lost some secrets in my homelab once, and how I almost lost a second time if I hadn’t noticed the key file in my file tree

SMB with ZFS on Ubuntu

2025-02-20T09:18:35Z

sudo apt-get install -y samba \ then set sharesmb=on \ chown the user \ smbpasswd -a \ then mount with user/password from other machine

Jellyfin container updates for HWE + AMD

2024-12-14T11:27:15Z

I use LSIO Jelyfin container for the easy addon they provide for AMD GPUs but I couldn’t get trickplay to work with HWE…

There was almost NOTHING on the internet about the error, and all the threads were about BSD systems…

Thankfully someone posted on the formum here but the only answer was to literally upgrade stuff in the container…

Someday maybe I’ll build off of LSIO to add this, but until then I shell’d in and homelab’d the hell out of it

THIS IS INSIDE THE CONTAINER - I use Portianer to make it easy


apt update && apt install -y curl gpg

mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings

curl -fsSL https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/rocm.gpg.key | gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/rocm.gpg

cat <<EOF | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rocm.sources

Types: deb

URIs: https://repo.radeon.com/rocm/apt/latest

Suites: ubuntu

Components: main

Architectures: amd64

Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/rocm.gpg

EOF

apt update && apt install -y rocm-opencl-runtime

rsync like a pro

2024-12-11T10:52:23Z

I am moving a hefty amount of data to a new ZFS pool due to some corruption and I want to avoid using zfs send/recv for this just to make sure I don’t propagate any corrupted data to my new pool.

I’ve used rsync for simple things before but I needed this to be a little smarter and I wanted to see simple progress without flooding my terminal with a billion filenames.

TLDR #

TLDR: rsync -aHAX --chmod=Da+s --info=progress2 --inplace --exclude='encrypted/docker/frigate-media' /tank/ /harbor/

Explanation #

-aHAX: Preserves attributes (archive mode, hard links, ACLs, extended attributes). –chmod=Da+s: Ensures the setgid bit is applied to directories. –info=progress2: Provides detailed progress information, including overall data transfer stats. –inplace: Writes directly to the destination file, avoiding temporary files (useful for large files). –exclude=‘encrypted/docker/frigate-media’: Excludes the specified path (relative to the /tank root). /tank/ /harbor/: Ensures the contents of /tank are copied directly into /harbor.

D and uninterruptable sleep

2024-12-11T10:48:10Z

Htop #

I recently have been having significant home server issues, and that’s not the point of this - today I learned what D state is when looking at htop.

Apparently this means “uninterruptable sleep” and it’s a dev’s nightmare…

Context #

The issue I was having was that some zfs rollback commands were hung - for hours… I wasn’t sure what was going on, rollbacks should be instant but I figured it was just an artifact of these issues.

Turns out I still don’t know what locked the disks up but I learned why <C>-c did nothing… the more you know

hostnamectl to easily change hostname

2024-12-06T07:25:59Z

hostnamectl is apparently a linux utility for easily changing your hostname in a variety of ways


❯ hostnamectl --help
hostnamectl [OPTIONS...] COMMAND ...

Query or change system hostname.

Commands:
  status                 Show current hostname settings
  hostname [NAME]        Get/set system hostname
  icon-name [NAME]       Get/set icon name for host
  chassis [NAME]         Get/set chassis type for host
  deployment [NAME]      Get/set deployment environment for host
  location [NAME]        Get/set location for host

Options:
  -h --help              Show this help
     --version           Show package version
     --no-ask-password   Do not prompt for password
  -H --host=[USER@]HOST  Operate on remote host
  -M --machine=CONTAINER Operate on local container
     --transient         Only set transient hostname
     --static            Only set static hostname
     --pretty            Only set pretty hostname
     --json=pretty|short|off
                         Generate JSON output

See the hostnamectl(1) man page for details.

I learned there’s transient and static hostnames, so that’s cool…

The thing I needed was hostnamectl --static hostname babyblue-aurora

pretty sweet tool

DNS Broke After Reboot - Ubuntu 22.04

2024-11-22T08:08:40Z

I rebooted by server and DNS broke randomly. I have no idea if it was from a kernel update or what but that’s the issue with Ubuntu I guess…

After much toil and none of the other options working for me (sorry to not have those documented here) this is what got me the vic from this SO Post

sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/ sudo $EDITOR /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/dns_servers.conf

Most folks probably are good with google (8.8.8.8) and cloudflare (1.1.1.1)

[Resolve]
DNS=8.8.8.8 1.1.1.1

But I decided to use tailscale

[Resolve]
DNS=100.100.100.100

Then restart systemd-resolved

sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved

Restart KDE Plasma

2024-11-08T15:53:52Z

Plasma shits the bed a little too often on Fedora for me right now but I finally have a quick fix…


sudo killall plasmashell

kstart plasmashell

docker-remote-add

2024-09-17T06:19:00Z

Add from url??

ADD http://example.com/cars.csv /tmp/cars.csv

Unpack automatically!? (.tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, .bz2, .tbz2, .txz, .zip)

ADD myapp.tar.gz /opt/myapp/

Docker copy and chown

2024-09-17T06:18:09Z

COPY –chown=myuser:mygroup source-file target-file

Interesting IPs between Jellyfin clients and server depending on tailscale and server address

2024-07-12T06:24:57Z

When connecting from my phone to jellyfin I’m seeing some interesting patterns.

Scenarios #

Tailscale IP of phone is listed as local network to jellyfin #

Wifi: off Tailscale: on Use exit node: on LAN access: on Jellyfin: LAN IP

Jellyfin sees 192.168.1.1, my router address

Wifi: off tailscale: on Use exit node: on LAN access: on Jellyfin: Tailscale magic DNS

Jellyfin sees the docker bridge network

Q: This might be because of traefik somehow

Wifi: off tailsacale: on Use exit node: on LAN access: off Jellyfin: LAN IP

Jellyfin sees the 192.168.1.1

Q: Why did this work even work?

Wifi: off tailsacale: on Use exit node: on LAN access: off Jellyfin: Tailscale magic DNS

Jellyfin sees the docker bridge network

Wifi: off tailsacale: on Use exit node: off LAN access: off Jellyfin: LAN IP

Jellyfin sees the 192.168.1.1

Q: Why did this work?

Wifi: off tailsacale: on Use exit node: off LAN access: off Jellyfin: Tailscale magic DNS

Jellyfin sees the docker bridge network

Wifi: on tailsacale: of Use exit node: off LAN access: off Jellyfin: LAN IP (via pihole DNS)

Jellyfin sees the IP of my phone

Upgrading your kernel can F you up… whoops

2024-06-26T10:21:59Z

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/update-error-with-coral-tpu-drivers.136888/#post-608975 I lost TPU for frigate, this saved me ass

DHCP Restart to Save Ubuntu 22.04 Server Networking

2023-12-31T20:26:50Z

I moved a computer to a remote location for an off-site backup but when it was powered on it wouldn’t show up on any networks. A solution that got me back in was a friend restarting the dhcp client for me:

sudo dhclient -r -v <interface> && sudo dhclient -v <interface>

Refresh Nextcloud Groupfolders after messing around on the filesystem

2023-09-23T12:45:06Z

Exec in as www-data and run ./occ groupfolders:scan folder_id -v (the -v to see what it’s doing)

Convert Word Doc to PDF with Headless Libreoffice

2023-03-09T06:48:38Z

I’ve been using paperless-ngx to manage all my documents, but every once in a while I’ll get a .docx file to deal with…

Turns out Libreoffice has a headless mode a pdf converter built-in!

libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf /path/to/file.docx --outdir /path/to/output/directory

Note that --outdir is in fact a directory, not the path to a file

i3-Like keyboard mapping in Pop_OS

2023-01-12T05:51:25Z

I was introduced to tiling window managers through i3, which I use heavily on one of my machines. I have switched to Pop_OS! at home though, which has a tiling window mode but the keybindings are not what I’m used to for i3. I wanted to at least navigate workspaces how I’m used to doing (cause I set workspace 3 for communication apps, 1 for my terminal, etc…)

Here’s how I set keybindings for:

<Super> + <number> sends me to that numbered workspace
<Shift> + <Super> + <number> moves the window I’m focused on to workspace number

#!/bin/bash
gsettings set org.gnome.mutter dynamic-workspaces false 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences num-workspaces 8 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-1 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-2 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-3 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-4 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-5 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-6 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-7 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-8 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.keybindings switch-to-application-9 [] 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-1 "['<Super>1']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-2 "['<Super>2']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-3 "['<Super>3']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-4 "['<Super>4']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-5 "['<Super>5']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-6 "['<Super>6']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-7 "['<Super>7']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-8 "['<Super>8']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-9 "['<Super>9']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-10 "['<Super>0']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-1 "['<Super><Shift>1']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-2 "['<Super><Shift>2']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-3 "['<Super><Shift>3']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-4 "['<Super><Shift>4']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-5 "['<Super><Shift>5']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-6 "['<Super><Shift>6']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-7 "['<Super><Shift>7']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-8 "['<Super><Shift>8']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-9 "['<Super><Shift>9']" 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings move-to-workspace-10 "['<Super><Shift>0']"

Use non-standard named ssh keys with github

2023-01-03T08:34:50Z

I was getting (publickey denied) when trying to push to GH using ssh. When I tested the connection I saw that a bunch of keys in ``~/.ssh/ were being attempted

✗ ssh git@github.com -vv

...

debug1: Will attempt key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_rsa 
debug1: Will attempt key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_ecdsa 
debug1: Will attempt key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_ecdsa_sk 
debug1: Will attempt key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_ed25519 
debug1: Will attempt key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_ed25519_sk 
debug1: Will attempt key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_xmss 
debug1: Will attempt key: /home/nic/.ssh/id_dsa 

...

debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).

None of those were the key I setup with GH. So I added an entry into ~/.ssh/config:

Host
github.com
User git
Port 22
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/my_custom_github_key
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

Reminder about ssh-copy-id for SSH and Ansible

2022-12-28T13:33:07Z

ssh-copy-id -i my.key.pub <hostname probably from tailscale> this makes sure I can run ansible from my desktop against VMs on my server easily if they have tailscale for the hostname - otherwise use the IP

Nextcloud Docker Upgrade Error

2022-12-28T09:39:27Z

https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/nextcloud-docker-upgrade-error

Adding docker daemon.json broke docker

2022-12-21T10:02:25Z

in /lib/systemd/system/docker.service there is an ExecStart command that got placed there when I setup Docker with Ansible - it threw the -H flag which told the daemon what hosts to setup. But I added the “hosts” key in my daemon.json and it broke - so removing the -H flag from the systemd unit fixed it

suda.vim for sudo access to files

2022-12-21T09:45:34Z

I regularly need to edit system config files - take /etc/sanoid/sanoid.conf as an example… I’ll want to play with something but if I don’t start Neovim as root then I get in trouble making edits I can’t save! So suda.vim gives me :SudaWrite which let’s me write that buffer with sudo privileges even though I’m Neovim is running with my login user!

Pipe to a pager to preserve console output in SSH session

2022-12-18T15:04:02Z

I’m playing with my ansible playbook in a remote tmux session, and I’m no wiz so I don’t know the ins and outs, but I can’t scroll up to get any console log output that’s not already visible on my screen. So I’m starting to end my commands with | less so I can page through the console output!

ansible-playbook plays.yml -v --tags mytag | less

Description of my proposed vimconf 2022 talk

2022-11-12T19:39:19Z

Switching to Vim opened a whole new world to me for interacting with a computer and for getting things done. Before I adopted Vim I used GUIs for everything because I thought that’s how it had to be done… Notes in OneNote, code using a GUI editor, different notes in TiddlyWiki, slides for work in PowerPoint, slides for church using Logos, etc… Adopting Vim allowed me to disconnect a specific tool from the problem that tool is solving - because usually I just need to write text (notes, code, slides, etc.). Now, very nearly everything I do is from a text-based and git-based workflow… I put all my notes on basically anything just in my blog, which is all markdown and deployed to GH with Markata on every push (living dangerously pushing to main) - and that’s all done easily from Vim with nice syntax highlighting, fast response, integrated git-plugins, etc.. I keep project-specific task lists just in markdown files and I have Vim/tmux shortcuts to quickly add todos for any project (todo list is done with markata todoui) and I can get there fast because my Vim workflow dovetails with Tmux nicely. Also I can pull that list up right from the terminal, which I’m already in because Vim…. Vim also pushed me into the cli more - because Vim is so easily extended with cli tools and I’m already in the terminal… The builtin functionality also made things make more sense - no more right-click, find “refactor all” or “rename symbol” (for some stupid reason)… Vim find-replace is so intuitive and if I need it extended then I learned what sed was because of Vim. Moving quickly in Vim also enables me to do my job incredibly fast because I hop into several projects a day in a coaching role - if I was bound by GUIs I’d be waiting forever for startup, would lose which GUI instance was which project, etc… Being in the terminal also made Tmux a trivial choice - now I have 90 tmux sessions, all named appropriately, ready for me to jump back to and all while keeping the majority of RAM still free for Chrome. Vim as my IDE also forced me to learn way more about Python (I’m a python developer primarily), how LSP works, how to configure a development environment, etc… things I took for granted in my GUI workflows, or never knew, or worse - thought I knew but deeply misunderstood. Now that I understand them better, I can coach my peers more effectively even if they are still in a GUI-based ecosystem.

Basically, (Neo)Vim actually did change my life and I’m really thankful for it (maybe that should be the title?)

Make a series of directories fast!

2022-11-10T15:27:50Z

mkdir s{1..10} will make directories s1, s2, … s10 in one command!

Don’t forget to load XMP!

2022-10-09T07:17:43Z

Bought some DDR4-3600 speed RAM but only seeing 2666? Load up the BIOS, find DRAM config or something similar, and make sure to load the XMP profile to get that advertised RAM speed!

My PassMark Scores

2022-10-08T18:43:29Z

Babyblue v2

Ryzen 5700x + 32 GB 3200 CL16 RAM

Venus

Ryzen 3200G + 16GB 3600 CL16 RAM

Hogwarts

Dual Xeon X5650 @2.67GHz | 90 GB 1883 DDR3 ECC RAM

Server 2 ... Change the name

Ryzen 5700G + 128GB 3200 CL18 RAM

Server 2 with XMP enabled and undervolted from 1.35 to 1.2

Ryzen 5700G + 128GB 3200 CL18 RAM

Undervolted to 1.2V (from 1.35) XMP enabled

Suddenly SSH requires a password

2022-10-07T11:14:37Z

ssh -v -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa nic@hogwarts

THen we can look at print outs

cat /var/log/auth.log also showed me that I had too wide permissions on files in ~/.ssh -> probably changed from an rsync job

Check Your BIOS Version On Ubuntu

2022-10-02T18:21:58Z

sudo dmidecode -s bios-version

Append string to list of files with xarg

2022-09-21T11:26:02Z

❯ find . -name “requirements.in” -print0 | xargs -0 sh -c ‘for arg in “$@”; do echo “awscli” »"$arg"; done’

Check your SMART status with smartctl

2022-08-29T06:30:27Z

https://www.simplified.guide/linux/disk-health-check

Install

For ubuntu/debian based distros (which is what I primarly use presently)

sudo apt update -y && sudo apt install smartmontools -y

List hard drives

lsblk | grep disk is one way or sudo lshw -c disk is another

smartctl

Use a device’s logical name such as dev/sda, not a partition of the disk

sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sda

dotfiles   home   ×3  ×2  ×2 via   v3.10.6(dotfiles)  took 11s
❯ sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sda
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.15.0-48-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 2 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Fri Sep 23 05:59:39 2022 CDT
Use smartctl -X to abort test.

check status

sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda


dotfiles   home   ×3  ×2  ×2 via   v3.10.6(dotfiles)
❯ sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda
smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.15.0-48-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

Mounting exFAT USB in Linux

2022-07-31T07:38:43Z

Steps

sudo fdisk -l

then look for the device and partition

get the Type column

mount

Example #


dumbledore in /media  NO PYTHON VENV SET 
❯ sudo fdisk -l

...

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdk1  *        2048 60371951 60369904 28.8G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdk2       60371952 60437487    65536   32M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)


dumbledore in /media  NO PYTHON VENV SET 
❯ sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sdk1 /media/ventoy-usb -o uid=1000                       
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sdk1': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sdk1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

dumbledore in /media  NO PYTHON VENV SET 
✗ sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sdk1 /media/ventoy-usb -o uid=1000

Setup KVM to boot from local PXE server

2022-07-06T12:30:50Z

Assuming you have a PXE server running you only need small edits to the virt-manager config

kvm-network-interface-via-nat-ubuntu-20

2022-06-25T07:20:41Z

I have started using VMs more and more in my development workflow and it’s impossible to work in a VM without an internet connection for me most of the time. Setting up the KVM networking is kind of confusing to me and I’ve done it two different ways. Here is how I set it up on my home desktop using NAT.

Credit

First thing’s first: credit to this post

Commands

There was a default network already made by virt-manager but my VM couldn’t connect over it at all…

These commands got me up and running without even turning the VM off

I went full on sudo -i for this just to make it easier - be careful

Dump an existint network config #

# as root

virsh net-dumpxml default > br1.xml

vim br1.xml

Edit it #

I was unsure what the ip range should be so I just stuck with the original blog. The default network had the CIDR block defined as 192.168.122.0/24 which is different from my home network so I guess it’s fine?

<network>
  <name>br1</name>
  <forward mode='nat'>
    <nat>
      <port start='1024' end='65535'/>
    </nat>
  </forward>
  <bridge name='br1' stp='on' delay='0'/>
  <ip address='192.168.10.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
    <dhcp>
      <range start='192.168.10.10' end='192.168.10.100'/>
    </dhcp>
  </ip>
</network>

Define a network #

virsh net-define br1.xml
virsh net-autostart br1

Then to check…

virsh net-list --all

 Name      State    Autostart   Persistent
--------------------------------------------
 br1       active   yes         yes
 default   active   yes         yes

UUID #

virsh net-uuid br1

Magic #

virsh attach-interface --domain <NAME OF VM> --type bridge --source br1 --model virtio --config --live

My VM, ubuntu20.04 was running and immediately connected to the newly attached device!

Credit again

Visit the original post for more details - this serves more as as a quicker set of notes for future me

cheat on your man

2022-06-23T09:35:31Z

man can be a pain to read… and there’s lots of alternatives out there and one I’ve just started playing with is cheat

man man will give you this plus a billion more lines of docs, which is useful when you need it…

MAN(1)                                                                                                                       Manual pager utils                                                                                                                      MAN(1)

NAME
       man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals

SYNOPSIS
       man  [-C  file]  [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-m system[,...]] [-M path] [-S list] [-e extension] [-i|-I] [--regex|--wildcard] [--names-only] [-a] [-u] [--no-subpages] [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [--no-hyphenation]
       [--no-justification] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]] [-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z] [[section] page[.section] ...] ...
       man -k [apropos options] regexp ...
       man -K [-w|-W] [-S list] [-i|-I] [--regex] [section] term ...
       man -f [whatis options] page ...
       man -l [-C file] [-d] [-D] [--warnings[=warnings]] [-R encoding] [-L locale] [-P pager] [-r prompt] [-7] [-E encoding] [-p string] [-t] [-T[device]] [-H[browser]] [-X[dpi]] [-Z] file ...
       man -w|-W [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
       man -c [-C file] [-d] [-D] page ...
       man [-?V]

DESCRIPTION
       man is the system's manual pager.  Each page argument given to man is normally the name of a program, utility or function.  The manual page associated with each of these arguments is then found and displayed.  A section, if provided, will direct  man  to  look
       only  in  that  section of the manual.  The default action is to search in all of the available sections following a pre-defined order ("1 n l 8 3 2 3posix 3pm 3perl 3am 5 4 9 6 7" by default, unless overridden by the SECTION directive in /etc/manpath.config),
       and to show only the first page found, even if page exists in several sections.

       The table below shows the section numbers of the manual followed by the types of pages they contain.

       1   Executable programs or shell commands
       2   System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
       3   Library calls (functions within program libraries)
       4   Special files (usually found in /dev)
       5   File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd
       6   Games
       7   Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7)
       8   System administration commands (usually only for root)
       9   Kernel routines [Non standard]

       A manual page consists of several sections.

       Conventional section names include NAME, SYNOPSIS, CONFIGURATION, DESCRIPTION, OPTIONS, EXIT STATUS, RETURN VALUE, ERRORS, ENVIRONMENT, FILES, VERSIONS, CONFORMING TO, NOTES, BUGS, EXAMPLE, AUTHORS, and SEE ALSO.

       The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used as a guide in other sections.

       bold text          type exactly as shown.
       italic text        replace with appropriate argument.
       [-abc]             any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
       -a|-b              options delimited by | cannot be used together.
       argument ...       argument is repeatable.
       [expression] ...   entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.

       Exact rendering may vary depending on the output device.  For instance, man will usually not be able to render italics when running in a terminal, and will typically use underlined or coloured text instead.

       The command or function illustration is a pattern that should match all possible invocations.  In some cases it is advisable to illustrate several exclusive invocations as is shown in the SYNOPSIS section of this manual page.

EXAMPLES
       man ls
           Display the manual page for the item (program) ls.

       man man.7
           Display the manual page for macro package man from section 7.

But what if you don’t? #

cheat man

# To convert a man page to pdf:
man -t bash | ps2pdf - bash.pdf

# To view the ascii chart:
man 7 ascii

You get tiny examples to remind you of what you probably are trying to do!

Reset SSH key passphrase

2022-06-13T06:55:32Z

I got into a pickle where I encrypted the ssh keys I use for my SSH connections on LAN, but then I couldn’t run my ansible playbook on my server! ssh-keygen -p and leave the new passphrase blank saved my day (although password protected key files are safer!)

TL;DR - just reset it to nothing

ssh-keygen -p will let you reset the passphrase on your ssh keys (good for you! yay security!)

But I needed to remove the passphrase to quickly deploy an ansible playbook 🤓

Samba on Ubuntu 22 needs “inherit permissions” set

2022-05-31T06:30:42Z

see samba config on hogwarts

Filtering emails with core utils

2022-05-30T06:09:27Z

email1@me.com
somebody_else@gmail.com

#! /bin/bash
# pick multiple emails from list and combine into comma seperated array
emails=`cat .../emails | fzf -m | sed 's/^\|$/"/g'|paste -sd,` 

echo $emails

Reindex Nextcloud After Adding Data via CLI

2022-05-29T15:34:33Z

My Nextcloud woes

I wrote here about setting up www-data as the owner of any directories you want nextcloud to manage. However, I regularly struggle wtih permissions issues on my NAS because of the external storage app anyways so I’ve decided to just put our photos in the spot Nextcloud would otherwise put them, and use this as healthy pressure on our family to organize our photos and put the ones we care about with the rest of our family media.

Migration

Because I had a ton of photos on the NAS anyways that I wanted moved over to Nextcloud I just rsync’d the photos directory on my NAS to the user’s photos directory in nextcloud but they weren’t showing up in the web UI!

The Fix?

As www-data I needed to php /var/www/nextcloud/occ files:scan --all inside my nextcloud docker container AFTER moving a bunch of photos off my “NAS” into the folder mounted to the nextcloud container as its data folder! Before I did this they weren’t showing up in the web UI/

Add space to your LVM on Ubuntu

2022-05-26T21:33:55Z

I ran out of space on the SSD in my server when doing some file transfers but only 100GB was used of a 256 GB SSD?

LVM

When installing Ubuntu live server the default option for how to partition the disk (in my experience) has been to setup an LVM group that defaults to less than the available space. Most recently I put Ubuntu server on a 256 GB SSD but the main partition was formatted as an LVM group with 100GB of storage… I didn’t think anything of this even though I’m mostly used to EXT4.

I think the reason for LVMs is performance, but in hindsight, I don’t really care much about the performance differences, I really just want all my storage that’s fast enough

Extending the LVM

A moment of googling brought me to Ubuntu’s wiki and I learned that I can expand my LVM to the space I need…

sudo lvdisplay and sudo pvdisplay show detailed views of the logical volumes and physical volumes respectively.

Take a look at those and find the volume you need to extend. For me I found this:

  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv
  LV Name                ubuntu-lv
  VG Name                ubuntu-vg
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Status              available
  ...

There’s more that you’ll see but this is what’s relevant - I need to extend the ubuntu-lv logical volume in the ubuntu-vg volume group.

sudo lvextend -L +50g ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv gives me 50 more GB of storage which should be enough for at least tonight 🤓

RTFM

Configure bridge network on Ubuntu 22.04 with Netplan

2022-05-22T14:55:28Z

See 02-….yaml in ansible-nas

Netplan change from Focal to Jammy

2022-05-22T13:23:17Z

I am revamping my home server and bumped myself early up to Jammy Jellyfish… however to my peril I reused my netplan config and after hitting my server with the ‘ol netplan apply I lost connection… DNS still seemed to kinda work externally, but internally nothing was up…

Turns out Netplan got a little change in how to express the gateway key in the netplan config!

Old Ubuntu 20.04 way

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp0s4:
      addresses: [192.168.1.{Static IP}/24]
      gateway4: 192.168.1.1  # <-- This changes!
      nameservers:
        addresses: [192.168.1.1, 1.1.1.1]

New jammin way for Jammy Jellyfish (at least that worked for me)

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp0s4:
      addresses: [192.168.1.{Static IP}/24]
      routes:
        - to: default
          via: 192.168.1.1 
      nameservers:
        addresses: [192.168.1.1, 1.1.1.1]

Deleting files on remote storage from Ubuntu might not do what you think

2022-05-19T05:51:50Z

From my daily driver Ubuntu machine I often open nautilus, dolphin, etc. and delete a file here or there on my NAS… turns out Ubuntu sends thse file to .Trash-100 ON THE NAS so I’m effectively just moving that file and not freeing up any space…

Remove ZFS Dataset Specific Snapshots

2022-05-19T05:49:16Z

I started my homelab journey being super naive about ZFS and how to manage the filesystem… that bit me in the butt when transfering a ton of files out of folders and into datasets because ZFS is copy on write so I was essentially duplicating my storage until I got a hair smarter about removing files after they’re moved (rsync –remove-source-file ftw). But I had a ton of snapshots of child datasets with a ton of data that I just never will need, so I learned zfs list -H -o name -t snapshot tank/dataset1/dataset2 will list just the snapshots for dataset2 and if you pipe that into xargs -n1 zfs destroy then you have a way to clear out some snapshots you don’t need!

File-Length

2022-04-04T00:00:00Z

I have a specific need for counting the number of lines in a file quickly. At work we use S3 for data storage during our Kedro pipeline development, and in the development process we may end up orphaning several datasets. In order to keep our workspace clean I have a short utility that compares the datasets in a Kedro DataCatalog with the files in the relevant S3 location.

To get that list I run an internal tool like this:

kedro our-liter | grep s3 >> orphaned_datasets.txt

This simply parses our internal linter for the lines releated to my s3 linter utility and pipes those lines to a file.

To get a quick idea of how out of wack a pipeline is I could open the text file in vim, git it with the G and see what line number I’m on but I’m way too lazy for that…

AWK #

awk 'END {print NR}' orphaned_datasets.txt gives me the number of lines and I can alias this to whatever feels appropriate in my zshrc!

built-ins for the win!

Polybar-01

2022-04-01T00:00:00Z

polybar is an awesome and super customizable status bar for your desktop environment.

I use it with i3-gaps on Ubuntu for work and it makes my day just that much better to have a clean and elegant bar with the things in it that I care about.

The GitHub has all the instructions you’d need to install and get started with an example.

I want to make some notes about how I use polybar and customize it.

Organization #

First of all, I recently moved my polybar config out of one config file into a modular structure that keeps my config files small and easiser to edit.

You can find my config here

The apps or services you put into polybar are called modules. I have moved all of my modules into their own config files and I source them with one centralized include-modules.ini config.

This separation also makes it easier for me to keep my home and work polybars as in sync as possible without duplicating a ton of config!

./polybar
├── colors.ini
├── config.ini
├── fonts.ini
├── home-modules.ini
├── include-modules.ini
├── launch.sh
├── modules
│   ├── aws.ini
│   ├── battery.ini
│   ├── bluetooth.ini
│   ├── cisco.ini
│   ├── cpu.ini
│   ├── date.ini
│   ├── eth.ini
│   ├── eth_work.ini
│   ├── i3.ini
│   ├── memory.ini
│   ├── nm-editor.ini
│   ├── powermenu.ini
│   ├── pulseaudio-control.ini
│   ├── pulseaudio.ini
│   ├── rofi.ini
│   ├── vpn.ini
│   └── wlan.ini
└── work-modules.ini

1 directory, 24 files

To break this down there are several configs to see:

colors.ini is what you’d expect - a set of defined colors like foreground, underline, etc.
config.ini is the general polybar config file where bars are defined. Currently in mine there is a work and home bar defined with the modules sourced in from the explicit config files.
fonts.ini is like colors.ini -> you put fonts here. I recommend using a font patched with NerdFont so you get fancy icons! (I use JetBrains Mono)
include-modules.ini is where I list out all the config files in modules/ so I can basically source just the include-modules.ini without explicitly sourcing every module’s config in every polybar defintion.
launch.sh is a simple shell script to launch the polybar! You’ll see mine takes multiple monitors into consideration which I manage via environment variables setup in my .zshenv file that is different for my work and home setups.
Finally there are home-modules.ini and work-modules.ini which is where, for each of my bars, I define which modules I want!

Config #

My config.ini file has 2 bar definitions in it - here’s my home one:

include-file = $DOTFILES/polybar/include-modules.ini

[bar/home]
monitor = ${env:MONITOR:}
width = 100%
height = 25
radius = 8.0
fixed-center = true
bottom = false

background = ${colors.background}
foreground = ${colors.foreground}

include-file = $DOTFILES/polybar/fonts.ini
include-file = $DOTFILES/polybar/home-modules.ini

It should be easy to follow - I bring in the include-modules, set a few colors for the bar like background and foreground which are sourced by the colors.ini, and finally bring in my fonts and home modules via their config files!

It’s super easy to then change one or two things in the appropriate places rather than combing through one massive config. This also makes it easy for me to seperate my work and home setups.

Modules #

There are several builtin modules, like wlan which gives your wifi status right there in polybar.

You can also make custom ones. A big-time custom one for me is an indicator of whether or not I have an active AWS token for working with the aws cli.

This is defined in modules/aws.ini and it looks like this:

[module/aws]
interval = 5.0
type = custom/script
exec = has_aws_token
click-left = $HOME/.local/bin/auto_get_aws_token
click-right = rm -rf ~/.aws/credentials

Every 5 seconds my has_aws_token script is ran. That script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
source auto_proxy
aws sts get-caller-identity &> /dev/null && echo "%{T5}%{F#00ff00}  %{F-}%{T-}"  ||( echo "%{T5}%{F#ff0000} %{F-}%{T-}" )

See how the script echos out a colored icon to indicate the status of my token -> that icon is displayed in the polybar so I have real-time (5 second latency) status of whether or not I can do things in my AWS environment.

In the module I also configured actions for click-left and click-right which are as straight forward as could be.

My issues with i3 #

There’s a few things to be considerate of if you use i3 such as needing a workaround for a centered bar that is not the full width of the monitor. Polybar can look really nice by not taking up the full width of the bar which you can configure in config.ini with these options:

width = 90%
offset-x = 5%  # set to (100 - width) / 2

However due to an issue with polybar and i3 you need to also set override-redirect = true. BUT then you’ll notice that the bar overlaps your i3 windows… ARGH! what do we do?

Quick work around is to set gaps top in your i3 config if you use i3-gaps… if not? well, idk… use gaps… lol

However this introduces another issue - which is then full screen windows will have polybar sitting on top of them…

This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but for me it’s worth it to just have the bar go 100% width.

FIN #

There’s a tiny intro to polybar and how I organize my config files so things are easy to edit and manage! Feel free to grab mine and try it out!

Starship

2022-03-25T00:00:00Z

If you spend time in the terminal then you’ll want it to look somewhat pleasing to the eye. I used to ssh into servers with no customization, use vi to edit a file or two, then get back to my regularly scheduled programming in VS C**e…

One of the first steps for me loving my terminal was a beautiful prompt…

Prompt #

The default sh/bash/zsh prompts are… to put it lightly… garbage… I can’t speak for other shells like fish simply because I do not use them but let me justify my trash talk.

Here’s the default sh prompt…

Then switching to zsh you get something marginally better (plus tab completion!)

But this still is super gross… there’s nothing to indicate file types and no status information readily available (ie. git status etc.)

Oh-My-Zsh! #

Now there are several ways to make your prmompt nicer depending on your shell (terminal emulator plays a role too). Now I use zsh and there’s a great tool out there oh-my-zsh that brings a crazy amount of customization to the terminal experience.

I do not use oh-my-zsh for theming though and that’s simply because of my other choices - I use kitty themes since I understood the implementation better. Kitty themes though - do not give me a nice prompt.

The default prompt you get with oh-my-zsh themes isn’t bad though (and you can pick from several default themes)…

Notice that you get some nice coloring and some default git status stuff, mainly the branch you are on. There’s plugins to show you more and that’s all well and good, but again it’s not my choice…

If I don’t use this then what’s my goto?

Starship #

starship is a cross-shell prompt with nice default and super easy customizaton!

To get started click that link and follow the “Getting Started” button - it’s incredibly fast to get up and running with sane defaults.

The default starship config is plenty nice but I got a little tired of emojis in my prompt and wanted to switch to icons instead…

To get started with your own customizaton you add a starship.toml file to ~/.config My starship config is found here.

Note you need a font installed patched with nerdfonts - I use JetBrains Mono

Now I have a beautiful prompt with relevant information that’s a dream to look at!

I have configured my starship to show me relevant git status options (stashes, untracked files, etc etc.) I also have starship show me if I’m in a git repo, what branch I’m on, if I’m in a python project and if so what virtual environment is active. I do some work in AWS at work and so I have starship show me if my aws cli is configured to the right region for whichever project I’m in!

There’s a billion more options and after a few minutes of play it becomes really easy and intuitive to customize colors, icons, etc.

Tree

2022-03-06T00:00:00Z

I wanted a quick way to generate an index.html for a directory of html files that grows by 1 or 2 files a week. I don’t know any html (the files are exports from my tiddlywiki)…

tree is just the answer.

Say I have a file structure like this:

./html-files
├── file1.html
└── file2.html

To generate a barebones simple index.html we can use tree as follows:

tree ./html-files -H "." -L 1 -P "*.html"

and get the following:


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
 <meta name="Author" content="Made by 'tree'">
 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="$Version: $ tree v1.8.0 (c) 1996 - 2018 by Steve Baker, Thomas Moore, Francesc Rocher, Florian Sesser, Kyosuke Tokoro $">
 <title>Directory Tree</title>
 <style type="text/css">
  <!--
  BODY { font-family : ariel, monospace, sans-serif; }
  P { font-weight: normal; font-family : ariel, monospace, sans-serif; color: black; background-color: transparent;}
  B { font-weight: normal; color: black; background-color: transparent;}
  A:visited { font-weight : normal; text-decoration : none; background-color : transparent; margin : 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding : 0px 0px 0px 0px; display: inline; }
  A:link    { font-weight : normal; text-decoration : none; margin : 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding : 0px 0px 0px 0px; display: inline; }
  A:hover   { color : #000000; font-weight : normal; text-decoration : underline; background-color : yellow; margin : 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding : 0px 0px 0px 0px; display: inline; }
  A:active  { color : #000000; font-weight: normal; background-color : transparent; margin : 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding : 0px 0px 0px 0px; display: inline; }
  .VERSION { font-size: small; font-family : arial, sans-serif; }
  .NORM  { color: black;  background-color: transparent;}
  .FIFO  { color: purple; background-color: transparent;}
  .CHAR  { color: yellow; background-color: transparent;}
  .DIR   { color: blue;   background-color: transparent;}
  .BLOCK { color: yellow; background-color: transparent;}
  .LINK  { color: aqua;   background-color: transparent;}
  .SOCK  { color: fuchsia;background-color: transparent;}
  .EXEC  { color: green;  background-color: transparent;}
  -->
 </style>
</head>
<body>
        <h1>Directory Tree</h1><p>
        <a href=".">.</a><br>
        ├── <a href="./file1.html">file1.html</a><br>
        └── <a href="./file2.html">file2.html</a><br>
        <br><br>
        </p>
        <p>

0 directories, 2 files
        <br><br>
        </p>
        <hr>
        <p class="VERSION">
                 tree v1.8.0 © 1996 - 2018 by Steve Baker and Thomas Moore <br>
                 HTML output hacked and copyleft © 1998 by Francesc Rocher <br>
                 JSON output hacked and copyleft © 2014 by Florian Sesser <br>
                 Charsets / OS/2 support © 2001 by Kyosuke Tokoro
        </p>
</body>
</html>

which looks like this when you serve it up with python -m http.server

Stow

2022-03-04T00:00:00Z

Stow is a great tool for managing dotfiles. My usage looks like cloning my dotfiles to my home directory, setting some environment variables via a script, then stowing relevant packages and boom my config is good to go…

cd ~
git clone <my dotfiles repo>
cd dotfiles
# env variable stuff ignored here
stow zsh  # This will symlink my .zshrc file which is in ~/dotfiles/zsh to ~/.zshrc

By default stow will stow packages up one directory from the root directory. In this example the root directory is ~/dotfiles and the package is zsh. So the files in the zsh package will symlinked into ~/.

stow makes it easy to share dotfiles across machines, or safely experiment with config changes while always being protected by git since your dotfiles are in a git repo! …They are in a git repo… right?

Stow-Target

2022-03-04T00:00:00Z

Check out stow for a brief introduction to stow

What if I want to stow a package somewhere else? Boom, that’s where -t comes in…

Maybe I don’t like having my dotfiles repo at $HOME and instead I want it in ~/git or ~/personal just to stay organized… Well then I could have the same workflow except the stow command looks like this:

stow zsh -t ~/
#or
stow zsh -t $HOME

Ubuntu-Static-Ip

2022-03-03T00:00:00Z

Sometimes I need to manually set a static IP of a Linux machine. I generally run the latest version of Ubuntu server in my VMs at home.

In Ubuntu 20 I’m able to change up /etc/netplan/<something>.yml

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp0s4:
      addresses: [192.168.1.{Static IP}/24]
      gateway4: 192.168.1.1
      nameservers:
        addresses: [192.168.1.1, 1.1.1.1]

gateway4 is your router address nameservers is a list of desired DNS servers for that machine to use. I usually use my router which is configured to use my pi-hole as my primary DNS, then set 1.1.1.1 (CloudFlare) as a backup

Hit it with the sudo netplan apply and you should be good to go!