The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category

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When some virtual machines cannot run VMware Tools: Graceful shutdown of an ESXi 5.1 host and guest VMs (free edition) using the shell/command line/scripting (UPS friendly)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/12

An interesting set of scripts from [Wayback/Archive.is] No Joke IT: Graceful shutdown of an ESXi 5.1 host and guest VMs (free edition) using the shell/command line/scripting (UPS friendly).

If all ESXi virtual machines support running of VMware Tools, then the solution is a plain /sbin/shutdown.sh && /sbin/poweroff (see [Wayback/Archive.is] No Joke IT: Shut down ESXi 5.1 guest VMs and the host (free edition) via SSH – the easy way!).

Code is in the repository at [Wayback/Archive.is] sixdimensionalarray/esxidown: A shell script to shutdown VMware ESXi host servers, with these two main files:

Note: the No Joke IT web-site has vanished, so only the [Wayback] and [Archive.is] links of it still work. The github code was still there at the time of writing.

Via: [Wayback] Solved: Read only Files – VMware Technology Network VMTN

Related: Some notes on replacing parts of a text file with template text using sed on a Busybox system.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, Development, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Prevent link rot before the public condemns you

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/05

I’ve written about link rot quite a few times (it even has a category on my blog).

Preventing it is important, as it improves user experience.

For most users this is an unconscious thing when it works and becomes consciously annoying when it fails.

Some user groups are vocal enough to force you to fix link rot after the fact, causing brand reputation damage.

One good example was last year: [Wayback] Users condemn Microsoft for removing KB IDs from some bug documentation | Computerworld.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Bookmarklet, Development, Internet, link rot, Power User, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development, Windows, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

Mumen Rusto: “Ceci n’est pas une Captcha.… “

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/04/01

Every site should present this as a captcha today.

Via [WayBack] Mumen Rusto on Twitter: “Ceci n’est pas une Captcha.… “

The captcha is by [WayBack] Senior Oops Engineer on Twitter: “Captcha: select all squares that contain a pipe Magritte: 😓”.

He posted it about 2 years ago as [WayBack] Senior Oops Engineer on Twitter: “oh fuck oh no… “.

–jeroen

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Posted in Apri1st, Development, Fun, Hosting, Power User, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Bookmarklet to force WordPress classic-editor

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/29

A while ago, WordPress.com heavily started to de-emphasise the Classic Editor in order to boost the Gutenberg editor which is bloaty (in both browser DOM usage (heavily slowing down editing) and content (lots of meta tags that are added to blog source) and is missing essential features (especially nesting of blocks often breaks things).

With 7000+ blog posts in the Classic Editor format (a few in still supported markdown format: that experiment failed horribly!) that still require editing  (especially because of link rot)

So here is the Bookmarklet code to switch back an editing URL that you can use for as long as the Classic Editor is there:

javascript:location.href=document.location.href+'&classic-editor';

Yup, it is that simple: it appends &classic-editor to the URL.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Bookmarklet, Classic editor, Development, Gutenberg editor, Internet, link rot, Power User, Software Development, Web Browsers, Web Development, WordPress, WWW - the World Wide Web of information | Leave a Comment »

WordPress undocumented Classic-Editor shortcut “Shift-Ctrl-F” that goes full screen

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/28

Suddenly, a while ago, because of a stuck modifier key I suddenly had the WordPress classic editor running in full screen without any indication to go back, nor an opportunity to save the content.

It wasn’t the usual “Shift-Alt-W” [Wayback] Distraction Free Writing – Make WordPress Support (which still allows you to hover over the sidebars to make them visible, and has a visual indication of the mode).

After lot’s of trying, I figured out the toggle “Shift-Ctrl-F” toggles between normal and full screen mode. It seems unavailable in the new editor, so that might be a reason ([Wayback] Keyboard Shortcuts | WordPress.org)

The shortcut is odd too, as in most tooling “Ctrl-F” modifications like “Shift-Ctrl-F” have something to do with find or replace operations.

It was quite tough finding any reference to this shortcut, as my initial search revealed none: [Wayback] “WordPress” “Shift-Ctrl-F” full screen – Google Search.

Later I reversed the modifiers in [Wayback] “WordPress” “Ctrl-Shift-F” full screen – Google Search and found [Wayback] How to disable non-system hotkeys on Windows – gHacks Tech News

Simple Disable Key is a free software program for Microsoft Windows devices that enables you to block non-system hotkeys.

…

Not all hotkeys are useful however. When I work on a WordPress site for instance, I sometimes press the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-F by accident. This switches the editor to full screen view which I never use.

First time I invoked the full screen editor I had to look up the shortcut as I could not reproduce it.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Development, WordPress, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

Chocolatey 1.0.0 got released last week (chocolatey/choco · GitHub)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/24

Last week finally there was the stable [Wayback/Archive] Release version 1.0.0 · chocolatey/choco · GitHub.

So I fixed the Wikipedia page

It was a few days after the 11th birthday “Celebration”: [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software Blog | This One Goes To 11! Celebrating 11 Years Of Chocolatey. Not a really festive post, though it does have a really nice overview of 11 years of Chocolatey history and clearly showing the momentum of it has been a few years behind us.

The thing is: hardly anybody noticed the celebration nor the 1.0.0 release. Being at various 0.* versions for like a decade makes people not follow sudden version bumps closely. I only noticed when updating a bunch of testing VMs of which one had a problem, so I inspected the logs and saw the 1.0.0 version.

So these recent tweets did not gain much attention:

Anyway: the release notes indicate a few things scheduled for 2.0.0. Given the sudden 0.12.0 -> 1.0.0 bump, I have no clue far (or near!) in the future that will be.

It is kind of both a saddening and relieved feeling: like for instance Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange (both in the same age cohort as Chocolatey), Chocolatey is just there and mostly works.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Batch-Files, C#, Chocolatey, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Some of my wp-admin links, as WordPress.com is hiding access to classic-editor and wp-admin links more and more

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/18

For my link list as WordPress.com is actively hiding them:

Notes

You can see the old versus new infrastructure by comparing these branches:

WordPress.com does not have the “Classic Editor” plugin, but just gradually discourages use of the old infrastructure which is far more feature rich, thereby screwing old users.

Some of these features from the old infrastructure that are gone (despite the pretentious name of the Gutenberg editor):

  • Posts/Pages/Tags/Categories/Comments overviews are paginated, can be filtered and have bulk-actions
  • Classic-Editor has lots of useful keyboard shortcuts and allows for nested quotes

For reference, WordPress – Wikipedia: Gutenberg versus classic-editor:

WordPress 5.0 “Bebo”[edit]

The December 2018 release of WordPress 5.0, “Bebo”, is named in homage to the pioneering Cuban jazz musician Bebo Valdés.[90]

It included a new default editor “Gutenberg” – a block-based editor; it allows users to modify their displayed content in a much more user friendly way than prior iterations. Blocks are abstract units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a web page.[91] Past content that was created on WordPress pages is listed under what is referred to as a Classic Block.[92] Prior to Gutenberg, there were several block-based editors available as WordPress plugins, e.g. Elementor, and following the release of Gutenberg Elementor was compared to existing plugins.[93][94]

Classic Editor plugin[edit]

The Classic Editor Plugin was created as a result of User preferences and helped website developers maintain past plugins only compatible with WordPress 4.9.8, giving plugin developers time to get their plugins updated & compatible with the 5.0 release. Having the Classic Editor plugin installed restores the “classic” editing experience that WordPress has had up until the WordPress 5.0 release.[95] The Classic Editor Plugin will be supported at least until 2022.[96]

The Classic Editor plugin is active on over 5,000,000 installations of WordPress.[97]

–jeroen

Posted in Classic editor, Development, Gutenberg editor, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Development, WordPress, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

Some notes on replacing parts of a text file with template text using sed on a Busybox system

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/17

Note before you think about putting stuff in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh: that script will not be executed when UEFI booting.

In a very lightweight Busybox system, I wanted to modify some configuration files automatically using fragments stored in template files.

The system has diff, but no patch.

The basic idea is to use sed to insert the template files into certain spots of the configuration file when certain marker texts are not present. So I want the opposite of [Wayback] Hey Stephen Wood: Try patch instead of sed in shell scripts.

Basically the idea is a poor-man’s patch, described in Too bad: ESXi busybox has diff, but not patch « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.

Some links that might help me with this:

One alternative would have been to use ed (which is part of the normal Busybox), but ESXi Busybox omits ed like it omits patch.

Too bad that sed commands are too different from ed commands, as I could have used diff -e on another system based on ideas here:

I might give it one more go, as vi is sort of derived from ed via ex (see vi: Creation – Wikipedia), which means that vi “colon mode” (officially command mode: [Wayback] Vim documentation: cmdline) is very similar to ed.

Another alternative would be awk, but I have done so little work with it awk, that I’m hesitating to use a new tool. Some links:

And finally, ash could be used:

The kind of modifications I am after

Below are a few links with examples of the kind of modifications I want to make. Most patch just /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh, but some others introduce other changes as well.

Note that especially with networking settings, local.sh commands might not have any effect (for instance when having slow DHCP or other network issues), see for instance [Wayback/Archive.is] I’m running ESXi 5.5 and my persistent route in local.sh is not taking effect after boot. : vmware.

There is a very convoluted way around using local.sh by using the VIB authoring tool as described in [Wayback] How to create persistent firewall rules on ESXi. It requires lowering the software acceptance level to Community Supported (esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported), which gives you a hard time installing ESXi updates.

I got that VIB idea from [Wayback] Solved: Re: Persistent firewall rule – VMware Technology Network VMTN, as:

The local.sh file gets overwritten often with upgrades so it would mean another step during the process.

From the same thread comes [Wayback] Solved: Re: Persistent firewall rule – VMware Technology Network VMTN

set the sticky bit on your separate xml-file – then it will be backed up and persist through reboot: chmod +t

run backup manually before the first reboot: /sbin/auto-backup.sh  because backup runs only once per hour

Within vSphere, one could use [Wayback] Configure ESXi Hosts with Host Profiles, but a standalone ESXi box is not part of vSphere, so that won’t work.

ESXi 7 and up

ESXi 7 makes the above harder as for instance user root cannot change file rights any more, so eventually I might revert to a VM that auto-boots when ESXi comes up, then patches the right files in place over PowerCLI (read-only) or SSH.

Need to give this some thought later:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, Awk, BusyBox, Development, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, PowerCLI, Scripting, sed, sed script, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Last year, a classic Mojibake was introduced when Waterschap Amstel, Gooi en Vecht redesigned their IT systems

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/16

Last year, Waterschap Amstel, Gooi en Vecht sent me a paper letter notifying the yearly water bill was going to be late as they were redesigning their IT systems.

Their letter introduced a classic Mojibake that had not been present in all their older paper letter communication.

  • Street name on a letter via the old IT systems is "Pyreneeën":

    Pyreneeën goed geprint.

  • Street name on a letter via the new IT systems is "Pyreneeën":

    Pyreneeën geprint met Mojibake vervormingen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Encoding, ftfy, Mojibake, Python, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8 | Leave a Comment »

Jilles posted a small script to show offline/online status based on ping

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/16

Jilles posted a small script to show offline/online status based on ping in [Archive.is] Jilles on Twitter: “#!/bin/bash HOST={1ST HOP HERE} while true;do p=$(ping -c1 $HOST) if [ $? -ne 0 ];then s=offline else s=online\ fi echo $(date +%F\ %T) $s – $(echo $p | sed -e ‘s/^PING.*— 1/1/g’) sleep 10 done”

#!/bin/bash
HOST={1ST HOP HERE}
while true;do
  p=$(ping -c1 $HOST)
  if [ $? -ne 0 ];then
    s=offline
  else
    s=online\ 
  fi
  echo $(date +%F\ %T) $s - $(echo $p | sed -e 's/^PING.*--- 1/1/g')
  sleep 10
done

The reason was that his ISP had connection problems for the block of homes where Jilles lives.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, grep, Power User, Scripting, sed, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

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