My opinions, worth every penny you paid me for them
I need to give credit to HBO for making the cancellation process painless. Thank you. What happened is that I went through all the material that I wanted to watch. With nothing in there that I wanted to watch, it didn’t make sense to renew for another year.
If there does appear some show that I really want to watch, I’ll happily sign up again, because the HBO people (web site) is easy to work with.
I’m going to try Craigthulu’s Malls by Craigthulu.
I’m also going to try Updated 100×100 City Blocks – Snapped to Grid by Hal.
Of course, I will set up belts and pipes within the block. One of the first things to manufacture and load into belts are iron gears. Here’s a starting point:
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
This is a variation on Stackable Iron Gear Wheel by bonesoul. Since I want this to hang off the main bus and feed gears back in to the bus, I reversed the input feed. It will still tile if I need it to, but this way I don’t have a huge return belt running alongside.
I’m is going to use Basic Science Lab Zone by Diekion.
I still like NRC’s Mining [Ver 1.1.30] by NRC.
Here’s an ammo maker I like:
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
Here’s a snippet of Smelter Book from by Noel Puldon
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
For science, I started using Tileable Science Production 0.17-1.0 – Early to Mid Game by Christoffer Ramqvist. Unfortunately, the green science using gears has an error, and there is a conflict with both the yellow belt factory and the yellow inserter trying to go on the same side of the belt. So here’s the updated blueprint string:
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
But of course, that necessitates green circuits. Enter Modular Green Circuits by Nilaus.
I’m a fan of Tenets of IT
Number 15 of which is “Everyone has a test environment, not everyone is lucky enough to have a separate production environment.”
Heh.
This post will be how I copied a production web site to a test environment.
Prerequisites are:
In my case, for the virtual machine server, I bought a used Lenovo Tiny PC from Amazon, loaded it up with RAM and installed Proxmox on it.
I had bought a domain name, really for my Nextcloud instance, but I can also use it for my home lab.
I have a firewall, which can get SSL certificates from the EFF project Let’s Encrypt, via the certbot / acme protocol. I went through the trouble to get a wildcard certificate, so that any box in my domain name can be SSL protected.
This was a Proxmox step, and I think I did it from a .ISO file
apt-get install vim
update-alternatives --config editor
vim ~/.bash_profile
export EDITOR=vim
[ -r $HOME/.bashrc ] && source $HOME/.bashrc
export PS1="\[\e[32m\][\[\e[m\]\[\e[31m\]\u\[\e[m\]\[\e[33m\]@\[\e[m\]\[\e[32m\]\h\[\e[m\]:\[\e[36m\]\w\[\e[m\]\[\e[32m\]]\[\e[m\]\[\e[32;47m\]\\$\[\e[m\] "
vim ~/.bashrc
Find the aliases I want and add them, uncomment them, etc. I always add:
alias ..='cd ..'
vim /etc/inputrc
Find # "\e[5~": history-search-backward and uncomment it
I should mention that in my home firewall, it is also my local DNS resolver. So inside there, I have server1.example.com mapped to the IP address Proxmox gave to my new virtual machine (Proxmox got it from my DHCP server).
hostnamectl set-hostname server1.example.com
vim /etc/hosts
In here, I added an entry for 127.0.1.1 which maps the fully qualified host and domain name to the host. So for example, 127.0.1.1 server1.example.com server1
The address 127.0.1.1 is specified because Apache will try to identify the site by name (later). Everything in the 127.x.x.x maps to the local machine, so they all go to the same place. But having it as 127.0.1.1 stops a duplication conflict with 127.0.0.1 for localhost
ssh-copy-id root@server1.example.com
Never, in production, would I be commonly logging in as root. But this is a test / play environment, and I find the process cumbersome to set up an alternative user, and then have to be constantly doing a su - (switch user) to root. Since this is in my home lab and not visible on the public Internet, this is not so much a risk. And … before I really try anything screwy, I can take a Proxmox snapshot.
Another thing I run into, is that because I can rip and replace virtual machines easily, I tend to have to delete old entries from the ./ssh/known_hosts file.
ssh-keygen -R "server1"
Essentially, I am following the instructions here at Rose Hosting
One change I make is that immediately after installing MySQL, I run the process to secure the MySQL installation:
mysql_secure_installation
Yes, I set the switch to unix_socket authentication. I have zero need for MySQL to authenticate across a network. This is overkill for a home lab, but since this is how production is going to be set, the machine in test should match it.
I still follow the instructions at Rose Hosting
The Rose Hosting instructions don’t disable the 000-default.conf web site
a2dissite 000-default.conf
Now, how to make https:// work? Well, there is already a default-ssl.conf file, so all it really needs is a certificate and key, and for Apache to use SSL. The SSL certificate files mentioned there are /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem and /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
I have exported my wild card certificate and key to my local machine, so now I upload them to those directories, and change the names in the default-ssl.conf file.
Update the ServerName setting in default-ssl.conf to server1.example.com
Update the DocumentRoot setting in default-ssl.conf to /var/www/html/wordpress
Add rewrite rules to the non-SSL site to redirect to the SSL site. In wordpress.conf add:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.well-known/acme-challenge
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
apachectl -t
If this checks out well, that’s nice, but there is still one more thing to add:
a2enmod ssl
This one threw me for a loop – all my redirects were going to 404 error pages.
It turns out that the default setting on Debian has an Apache configuration file with rewrites not allowed.
vim /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Find my way to the <Directory /var/www/> section. Change the AllowOveride setting from None to All.
The /var/www directory is of course higher up in the directory structure of what Apache is going to serve up. Because it is higher, the AllowOveride None directive overrides the lower level allow all. Whoops – for WordPress this is no bueno.
Finally, restart (not reload) Apache:
systemctl restart apache2
For this, I am following the instructions by Ferdy Korpershoek on this YouTube video
(The YouTube front page has become politicized trash, but for technical videos, it still has good stuff one can find).
Essentially, I install the All-in-One WP Migration plugin on the production web site, do an export, and then install a fixed version of the All-in-One WP Migration plugin on the test web site.
Ferdy does clean up the new / fresh web site first, by deleting and emptying the default pages and posts. I also deleted the default plugins.
After the import is done, I need to log in again, because the database was replaced, which is where my login credentials are stored. After getting logged in, I need to save Permalinks twice.
I was almost at hooray! But, I have a small security enhancement via Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) which threw a tiny wrench in the monkeyworks. Yes, in production, I’ve hidden the login URL to somewhere other than normal. So after the import, All-in-One WP Migration (100 GB version) provides a link to update the Permalinks, but because of ASE, that URL was not found. No biggie, I simply had to use the URL that was appropriate for the production web site.
And now I get to bask in the glory of messing the heck out of the test (not production!) WordPress web site. Fun times. 🙂
I think I’ll take a Proxmox snapshot first.
I actually did this several weeks ago. I like it.
What I like about it is that it is a rolling release, so for example, Firefox is version 129.0 – not stuck on an older ESR (Extended Support Release). I wanted the newer Firefox for PDF editing, including graphic file insertion.
I did have to go through all the different KDE plugins I’d installed for tiling window managers, and delete them and the hidden subdirectories they had configuration files in. KDE no longer automatically tiles nicely the way the previous KWin tiling script did; but, I have a few keystrokes assigned to tile right or left, and it is not too bad.
I have not yet figured out the correct installation order for Proton + Wine + Steam + other stuff to get Windows games to install and run on Steam. That was the last thing I’d done on OpenSUSE, and it was very nice. I’m glad I’d seen that it can work – now all I have to do is spend some time experimenting or hanging out in the Manjaro forums to get it to work.
The only thing that is a little broken is that sound sometimes just quits in Firefox. If I hit the volume mute and unmute, it comes back. That is slightly annoying; but if that is the worst thing that happens to me, I’m still a pretty lucky guy.
Automattic (I presume) added a JavaScript framework to WordPress 6.6, which increased the amount of RAM the server uses. On a small machine, the RAM increase is massive: almost doubling the amount of RAM used.
Nicely, the downgrade of WordPress to version 6.5.5 was easy enough; but, this now leaves a huge question mark for the future. At some point, either my server goes out of date and becomes vulnerable to new-found security flaws, or, I have to start shelling out an additional $84 per year for their new fanciness.
It would be nice if they put a radio button in the administration page to enable or disable the new React JSX stuff.
Dear FutureMe,
Today would be a good day to do a quarterly inventory.
Question: How is your personal life going?
Question: How is your work life going?
Question: How is your volunteer service life going?
There hasn’t really been much change this quarter in my personal life.
One event that was noteworthy was that my 86-year-old mom was in the hospital for three days, (well, four, if waiting in the emergency room waiting room counts as “in”), with a C-diff gut biome infection. Apparently, an antibiotic she was taking for an eye infection allowed Clostridioides difficile to run amok.
I’ve been a little sad and depressed about how much WordPress work I need to do. This blog needs to be moved to a new server, but I really don’t want to take all the crap along, that the various plugins have added to the database, never to leave. That is a more complicated migration than just shipping all the junk over. “Complicated” is proving disheartening to document and plan. I have another couple WordPress sites to migrate in the volunteer service life category, too.
I had a need to edit a PDF; I get to submit an application to our local Sheriff’s office to meet with people about to leave incarceration. The good news is that Firefox (my favorite browser) has PDF editing capabilities now. Alas, the PDF application form wants signature and initials. The bad news is that Firefox ESR is version 115, and adding graphics to PDFs doesn’t show up until version 119. So I need to upgrade. I tried to upgrade from OpenSuSE Leap 15.6 to OpenSuSE Tumbleweed Slowroll, but the ISO image is broken and spontaneously reboots almost immediately after booting. Now my main machine is broken, big time. I installed Debian with KDE. That worked fine, except guess what else uses Firefox ESR version 115? At least I was back up and functional, but now I need to find a rolling release with KDE. I tried PCLinuxOS. It was quite amusing to me that they call themselves The Boomer Distribution. Technically, I’m a Boomer, although when the real Boomers were off doing drugs sex and rock-and-roll at Woodstock, I was 8 years old and discovering that I liked reading / wasn’t great at sports.
Anyway, I gave up on PCLinuxOS after a week. I couldn’t get Steam to work, and the PCLinuxOS forums don’t let me just sign up: I’d have to email some guy at a Google email address my preferred User ID and password. Yeah, no – I’m out.
I have installed Manjaro. I like it pretty well. I have become a part of the Oh by the way, I use Arch club.
There are still things I want to tweak, to make using it smoother. But it does run Steam, and it does run KDE with Kröhnkite. I’m happy with this.
If $39,000 dropped into my lap today, I would retire tomorrow.
One fun thing sprung out of taking on printers and the print server. It had a problem because old printers would be deleted from the print server, but not from the client workstations that used to print to them. Some portion of 5,000+ workstations printing to 830+ printers were configured for more printers that are no longer there. I’m guessing that about 5% of the workstations are configured for printers which no longer exist. Microsoft Windows apparently just pounds on the print server, asking if the (deleted) printer is back online yet. I’d be curious if they abuse their own print server that way. They probably don’t have a print server because network printing is hard.
Anyway, I get to bring in a print server log file, parse it for missing (deleted) printers, and generate a service ticket to have the desktops group visit the user and remove the missing (deleted) printer. Of course, one user can have multiple deleted printers, and I don’t want to generate six tickets for six printers for one user. I’ve been getting to keep track of these in a Maria DB database, and doing all sorts of Perl scripting to help me with this mini-project. It has been fun.
The other aspect is that I got print server reboots to work in about a minute; where before it was problematic. If there were more dead printers than Apache threads, the server would get into a deadlock, waiting for the dead printer threads to time out – but the polling cycle was faster than all of them could time out. Oof.
I still have too many volunteer service commitments. One dropped off on May 19. The event was successful, with 178 people attending from all over northern California. Another dropped off on June 8, when the Founder’s Day Picnic was over. We were hoping to feed 300 people, but only 83 showed up. I had been flying pretty blind on this one. We came out in the black, but only barely.
This morning, I hadn’t planned on that, but….
I had a need to edit a PDF. I know that Firefox has the ability to do so; and I filled in information. But then it asked for a signature and initials – I have those in .jpeg form, but Firefox didn’t have the buttons for inserting images. Whoops: Firefox ESR version 115 doesn’t have that, because that showed up in Firefox 119.
Well, it has been a while since Tumbleweed was disappointing because of a lack of KWin tiling script support. I had downgraded from Tumbleweed to Leap 15.6. Maybe I should try Tumbleweed again.
Also, I’d been listening to the FLOSS Weekly podcast over on Hackaday, and their guest Brodie Robertson had mentioned Tumbleweed Slowroll as something new. I kind of liked the idea, so I tried a few steps.
These are list here, at the official page:
zypper ar https://download.opensuse.org/slowroll/repo/oss/ temp
zypper in openSUSE-repos-Slowroll -openSUSE-repos-Tumbleweed
rm /etc/zypp/repos.d/*.repo # or backup
zypper dup
This got me an empty screen with a blinking cursor. Yay. Not.
I downloaded the Slowroll ISO and put it on a USB stick.
I used the BIOS to choose the USB stick to boot off of, and got the “Install” option. Sure, that can be a little drastic, but I’ve done this many times before. Mostly, it is a little annoying to find that I don’t have an application installed that I’d like to use at the moment. But because my /home is physically on a different drive, I’m safe to not lose any data (reasonable precautions taken).
I go to install Slowroll, and it reboots before starting the installation. The motherboard logo briefly shows, and then I’m back at the “Install” menu item again.
I’ve got a boot loop.
Great. Just great.
Did I mention that I dearly love systemd and journalctl (not). Back in the good old days, something would append to /var/log/messages, and I’d have a chance to figure out what went wrong. But with systemd, the journal is new every boot, and although I can successfully boot to a previous read-only snapshot, there’s nothing there from an aborted installation. Nothing at all. There’s only the current boot messages (which being from a successful snapshot tell me nothing).
Okay, maybe there’s something wrong on my boot drive. Physically disconnect the /home disk drive, boot off of a gparted ISO, and delete every partition on the boot / OS drive.
Try the Slowroll ISO USB again.
I’ve still got a boot loop.
Just great.
I’ve been building some Debian machines, as servers, so I can practice WordPress migrations. I pop in that USB stick, and Debian installs fine.
I still have to wrangle bringing in my /home disk drive and mounting it as /home, but at least it will work.
And here we are, a few hours later, on Debian with KDE. Thunderbird looks pretty different.
It was a little disconcerting that KDE > System Settings > Display and Monitor > Display Configuration > Scale works on each display independently of each other. OpenSuSE applied the scale to both screens simultaneously. I can see why it could make sense that one monitor (say a 4K monitor) might have a different scale factor than another way smaller one. But it was unexpected, so disconcerting. It can be really hard for me to read the screen when the screen is at 100% scale on both large monitors.
It is mildly amusing to me that I get to do How to make Ubuntu have a nice bash shell like OpenSuSE all over again, but for my main machine this time.
So, I needed a laptop with a USB-C connector because I bought the Tilt Five Augmented Reality system. I hope they work with the publisher to finish the Settlers of Catan game. But I digress.
I needed a laptop with a USB-C connector, and I also wanted something with reasonably good hardware specs. So I went shopping at my favorite shopping site: Techbargains.com > Categories > Computers. This was a while ago.
When they mark an item as an Editor’s Choice, I have found it to be good, and a good deal. They had applied that Editor’s Choice logo to the Dell Inspiron 16 5630 laptop deal they had found, and indeed, it was pretty good. $700 for a 13th Generation Intel Core i7 that can hit 5 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe solid-state drive, and a 16″ screen.
Of course, today they have a similar machine for $520, which shows you what seven months can do with Moore’s Law. But I digress.
Anyway, I’ve been pretty happy with this laptop. It has an interesting feature, where the lid hinge has feet that stick out. When I lift the lid, the feet rotate down, and lift the body of the laptop up off the table.
Also, lifting the lid powers the device on, which is a nice touch. We used to get features like this in the early days of computing. I’m still a little sad that every computer doesn’t get powered on by hitting the space bar. Apple started that, and then some PC makers copied it. But today, I don’t know of any PCs that support it. My main home machine goes from boot to login screen in about 20 seconds. This makes it convenient to power off when I don’t need it: man, electricity bills will be bad in the future. But I’d really prefer to just hit the space bar to power on.
There is a problem with using the lid hinge to rotate feet into lifting the body up for airflow / cooling. You see, the air vents are on the underside of the laptop body. The lifting is needed because otherwise the cooling fans are sucking on a (poor) vacuum: the body, flat on the table, sits flat on the table. There’s maybe a 1/16 inch or 2 mm of space provided by the little rubber feet underneath.
I got the bright idea to hook this laptop up to my TV as an external monitor. It’s a great TV, and what could be better than running Civilization 6 on a large screen with a fast computer in my easy chair? Add in a Logitech M570 Wireless Trackball, and I’ve got a great gaming setup.
Well, I don’t want to look at both screens: so I configured Windows to keep running with the lid closed.
But closing the lid raises the little feet and cuts off the airflow. Whoops.
I’m a little sad that I need to find a way to prop up the backend of the laptop so that it doesn’t go into thermal shutdown when operating in lid-closed mode.
But other than that, I like this laptop.
A lot of this blog are my entries to help myself with some task. I like to copy / paste commands that I don’t want to memorize. If those commands help someone else trying to do the same task, that’s wonderful.
Copy / past has been a bit of a chore on WordPress, however. I’ve tried three different plugins. The first one worked for a while, but then broke. It was based on WordPress shortcodes. I don’t recall if it was WordPress that upgraded and broke the plugin, or if it was the plugin that upgraded and broke. Whatever: the shortcode stopped working.
The second plugin worked at least once, but then broke after an update of some sort. It was supposed to work either by specifying a shortcode or text formatting. I’m pretty sure the text formatting was supposed to be for “inline code”. When the plugin saw that the text was marked up that way, it added the copy-to-clipboard function. It was pretty frustrating to go back and edit some old posts and less than a month later, those posts are trashed up without providing copy-to-clipboard access.
This third plugin, Copy Code To Clipboard works well, and it is based on the /preformatted text attribute.
I don’t recall if this is the way it always was, but: it appears that this only works with whole blocks now. You can have inline code or keyboard input within a paragraph, but you cannot have /preformatted within your paragraph.
But, the /preformatted block type is just implementing the HTML tags <pre> and </pre>
So, I can edit in HTML mode and insert it that way, right?
Where WordPress has made things worse, is that now, <pre> and </pre> implement a forced <br></br> immediately before <pre> and immediately following </pre>
And it doesn’t put those codes in the HTML. It just sneaks them in there and taunts me with the extra lines before and after every piece of text I want copy-to-clipboard for.
Thanks, WordPress developers: I hate it. You’ve made the world a worse place.
And another thing ….
This showed up many months ago, shortly after Gutenberg became official: Ctrl-K for creating an anchor (link) used to be great. On another web site I maintain, we have an old kludgy events calendar plugin, and it still works great there. That events calendar plugin does not use Gutenberg.
All I want for Ctrl-K is to highlight the text to form a link, hit Ctrl-K to start the anchor creation, hit Ctrl-V to paste in the URL, and hit <Enter> to finish the anchor.
Guess what no longer works in Gutenberg? Hitting <Enter> to finish the anchor.
I am always so very overjoyed when I have to finish an operation by grabbing my mouse and finding the stupid little button to click to indicate that I want to finish creating the anchor. I’m editing an anchor: there’s really not that much more that I can do here.
Like what the heck was the <Enter> key supposed to otherwise signal?
In the current Gutenberg, it is simply a no-op. Useless. A waste of a keystroke. Until I find the stupid mouse cursor and click on the stupid little submit button, the anchor is incomplete. All editing has come to a stop, until I do some freaking mouse work.
Thanks, WordPress developers: I hate it. You’ve made the world a worse place, again.
I like Nextcloud: it is probably my favorite piece of software that I run. But man it has a ton of bugs. Their support forums are full of people reporting problems, and there is no solution.
Sometimes, the support forums do report that “Yes, this bug is listed in the Github bug tracker.”
There are more than 2,300 open bugs.
It is ridiculous. I saw a changelog that said the update would fix a bug I was seeing. I installed the update. The bug was still there. Quality control in this project is deplorable. I have another bug that I experience daily that has been open for almost two years.
What is dismaying to me is that the main developers have a Microsoft mentality: let’s add new features! No, we’re not going to work on bug fixes: debugging is boring.
In a couple of years, after I retire, I may decide to learn PHP programming. I haven’t really been fond of PHP.
Way back when, I read (well, got through the first few chapters) of a programming book that pointed out that software can be written to be mathematically provably correct. For every memory allocation, the math can add to the sum of debt. Memory should be specifically de-allocated, which subtracts from the sum of debt. When at the end of your source code, the sum is zero, you’ve handled all cases of allocating and de-allocating.
Nothing about PHP makes me think this is true for that language. Maybe I just don’t know the language well enough.
But, PHP does run a ton of super successful projects. So there must be something there which is valuable.
But yeah, I’m not going to be competent at writing PHP for years. Hopefully, someone at Nextcloud will get tasked with fixing bugs before then.