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

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Archive for the ‘Scripting’ Category

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I consider stealing the user’s time because of a bad UX design among the Dark Patterns

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/22

I an with [Wayback] Craig Buckler to consider Dark Patterns being wider than the strict sense.

For me anything that costs a user extra time or makes accessibility harder is a Dark Pattern.

So I agree with the issues he explains at [Wayback] The Web’s Most Annoying Dark Patterns – SitePoint

Does the web delight or displease you? Craig lists his least favourite UI and marketing dark patterns. Have you developed on the dark side?

Paste is enabled, but does not function

Paste is enabled, but does not function

A while ago, I got into one myself. Let me explain.

Having had RSI, I’m dependent on keeping my hands and arms in good shape. This means minimising the use of pointing devices and also trying to minimise typing.

In addition, I have heavily segmented my use of email addresses (among others for cutting down SPAM). Basically any point of contact gets a new email address.

This means I realy on tooling like password managers and email address generators. It means copying and pasting information.

So I bumped into a web-site that disallowed pasting the (unique and long!) email address into the email verification field.

[Archive.is] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers on Twitter: “The @olvg #mijnOLVG site is now on my Dark Patterns list as they make #accessibility harder by blocking pasting into the email address verification field. Blocking the paste-blocker. CC some people advocating mijnolvg.nl @MauricevdBosch @ronklitsie63 @kyntha”

Despite the popup menu, paste didn’t work. Chrome autofill did, but didn’t have the information for this particular (new and unique) email address yet, so could not be used yet.

Disabling the paste block

It is relatively easy to disable a paste block. In this case, I was using chrome, but this can be done with any browser. Some browsers even have optional extensions that can do this for you.

In the case of Chrome, when right clicking, there is an “Inspect” option

Inspect is enabled and actually works.

Inspect is enabled and actually works.

It inspects the current element, which on this site looks like this:

The element does not contain event handlers. But the code hooks them behind our backs.

The element does not contain event handlers. But the code hooks them behind our backs.

On the “Event Listeners” tab on the right, you can see there are two JavaScript methods hooked to the paste handler:

The paste handlers. The first is OK, the second blocks paste.

The paste handlers. The first is OK, the second blocks paste.

The first one is OK, though I did not really look into what the proxy does.

Second paste event handler: remove this one.

First paste event handler: keep this one.

First paste event handler: keep this one.

The second is not OK, as it effectively prevents the event from being handled any further at all by calling preventDefault

Second paste event handler: remove this one.

Second paste event handler: remove this one.

By clicking on the second Remove button above, the paste blocker is gone and you can paste again.

–jeroen

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Posted in Chrome, Chrome, Dark Pattern, Development, Google, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, User Experience (ux), Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

I always forget how simple it is to show the definition of bash function or alias (via: Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/17

I always facepalm myself after looking up this: [Wayback] Can bash show a function’s definition? – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback] Benjamin Bannier!):

…

Use type. If foobar is e.g. defined in your ~/.profile:

$ type foobar
foobar is a function
foobar {
    echo "I'm foobar"
}

…

type will also expand aliases, which is a nice bonus :) – [Wayback] Esdras Lopez

–jeroen

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

Archive.is is more like a thread unroll service than an archival service

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/14

An interesting take a while ago on [Wayback] Archive.is blog — People often compare various features of…

People often compare various features of archive.is to those of archive.org being mistaken by name similarity (and recently added “save a page” function to archive.org).

This project is different in at least two respects:

  1. We have no goal to save the entire Internet. Only manually submitted pages which may be deleted/altered soon. We are about 100x smaller than archive.org in the storage space (700TB vs. 70PB) and expenses (X,000 $/mo vs. X00,000 $/mo).
  2. The pages are not saved in their network form. Archive.today launches real browsers (not even headless) and tries to load lazy images, unroll folded content, login into accounts if prompted with login form, remove “subscribe our maillist” modals, … So archive.today is not suitable for making notarized or digitally signed snapshots.

It would be more correct to compare it with other thread unrollers.

The RSS feed of blog.archive.today is at blog.archive.today/rss

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Posted in archive.is / archive.today, Bookmarklet, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Internet, InternetArchive, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

Chrome debugging tip: disabling framework/library code (from Minko Gechev on Twitter)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/03

Cool tip: [Archive.is] Minko Gechev on Twitter: “Tooling tip: When debugging, you can prevent stepping into framework/library code by using blackboxing. In @ChromeDevTools: ‣ Open the script you don’t want to enter ‣ Right click → Blackbox ‣ Pain free debugging ✨… “

–jeroen

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Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Scripting, Software Development, TypeScript | Leave a Comment »

Google Open Source Insights (hopefully by now more than just npm/golang/maven)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/02

Interesting project at [Wayback] Open Source Insights

Open Source Insights is an experimental project by Google.

Hopefully by now it is supporting more than just npm/golang/maven and by the time it sunsets, other projects take over.

The introduction was some 9 months ago: [Wayback] Introducing the Open Source Insights Project | Google Open Source Blog

Via:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Go (golang), JavaScript/ECMAScript, Node.js, Power User, Scripting, Security, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

cd-to-file.bat for when you have a full filename that is too long to truncate by hand

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/31

Small cd-to-file.bat tip:

pushd %~dp1

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

ESXi: on the console/ssh, when a moved VM pauses during power-on: show which VMs have messages waiting, then answer them

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/27

First the script that display messages for all virtual machines, vim-cmd-display-messages-for-all-VMs.sh:

#!/bin/sh
vmids=`vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms | sed -n -E -e "s/^([[:digit:]]+)\s+((\S.+\S)?)\s+(\[\S+\])\s+(.+\.vmx)\s+(\S+)\s+(vmx-[[:digit:]]+)\s*?((\S.+)?)$/\1/p"`
for vmid in ${vmids} ; do
    powerState=`vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate ${vmid} | sed '1d'`
    name=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} | sed -n -E -e '/\(vim.vm.ConfigInfo\) \{/,/files = \(vim.vm.FileInfo\) \{/ s/^ +name = "(.*)",.*?/\1/p'`
    vmPathName=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} | sed -n -E -e '/files = \(vim.vm.FileInfo\) \{/,/tools = \(vim.vm.ToolsConfigInfo\) \{/ s/^ +vmPathName = "(.*)",.*?/\1/p'`
    echo "Messages for VM with id ${vmid} which has power state ${powerState} (name = ${name}; vmPathName = ${vmPathName})."
    vim-cmd vmsvc/message ${vmid}
done
exit 0

It is very similar to vim-cmd-reload-all-VM-vmx-configurations.sh from Source: ESXi: reloading all virtual machines from their (potentially) vmx files.

Messages I know either equal “No message” or are about “This virtual machine may have been moved or copied.“

If there is no available message, then you always get the stock message No message., so this is something you can use as a check in scripts.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

ESXi: storing an ISO 8601 time-stamped backup tarball locally

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/25

In Determining the ESXi installation type (2014558) | VMware KB, I also showed how to backup the configuration and download it.

Sometimes you want an ISO 8601 time-stamped local tarball just in case you want to revert to it at a later stage.

First a small recap on how to get the tarball, download location and temporary location in the first place (it will be automatically deleted from the temporary location):

# vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/sync_config
# vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/backup_config
Bundle can be downloaded at : http://*/downloads/52aa233b-5db4-2298-5e1b-f510b2cd149f/configBundle-ESXi-X10SRH-CF.tgz
# find /scratch/downloads/ -name *.tgz
/scratch/downloads/52aa233b-5db4-2298-5e1b-f510b2cd149f/configBundle-ESXi-X10SRH-CF.tgz

Goal is to get the download filename and save it to a different folder and embed the ISO 8601 timestamp in the filename.

Like many scripts, sed and regular expressions come to the rescue once more, just like in ESXi ash/dash/busybox shell getting current timestamp in UTC ISO8601 format without colons or dashes (which we will need anyway because of the ISO 8601 time stamp, and a bit of fiddling at regex101.com/r/NyrzKF

# SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME=$(vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/backup_config | sed -n -E -e "s/^(Bundle can be downloaded at : http://*)(/downloads/[[:xdigit:]]{8}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{12}/configBundle-.+?)(.tgz)$//scratch23/p")
# echo "SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME: '${SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME}'"
SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME: '/scratch/downloads/5271677d-97db-30dc-673d-b99e61bed251/configBundle-ESXi-X10SRH-CF.tgz'
# date --utc -I'seconds' --reference "${SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME}"
2021-05-09T17:44:42UTC

Note:

  • In the sed regular, expression, [[:xdigit:]]{8}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{12} matches a GUID.
  • In the date command, the --reference parameter must be last.
  • If you get the error below, then you ran too many backup_config commands in succession:
    (vim.fault.TooManyWrites) {
   faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null, 
   faultMessage = 
   msg = "Received SOAP response fault from []: syncConfiguration
fault.TooManyWrites.summary"
}

    You can see this in the hostd.log, which on my system is in /scratch/log/hostd.log where it says I can retry in 2031 seconds (slightly more than half an hour):

    2021-05-09T19:34:13.420Z verbose hostd[A703B70] [Originator@6876 sub=PropertyProvider opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab3] RecordOp ASSIGN: latestEvent, ha-eventmgr. Applied change to temp map.
2021-05-09T19:34:13.420Z info hostd[A703B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.ha-eventmgr opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab3] Event 196 : User root@127.0.0.1 logged in as VMware-client/6.5.0
2021-05-09T19:34:13.420Z verbose hostd[A703B70] [Originator@6876 sub=PropertyProvider opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab3] RecordOp ADD: sessionList["52f6d64e-0a35-c1d7-de97-624d234bc2a7"], ha-sessionmgr. Applied change to temp map.
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z info hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.TaskManager opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] Task Created : haTask--vim.host.FirmwareSystem.syncConfiguration-114207804
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z verbose hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=PropertyProvider opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] RecordOp ADD: recentTask["haTask--vim.host.FirmwareSystem.syncConfiguration-114207804"], ha-taskmgr. Applied change to temp map.
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z verbose hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=PropertyProvider opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] RecordOp ASSIGN: info, haTask--vim.host.FirmwareSystem.syncConfiguration-114207804. Applied change to temp map.
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z error hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Hostsvc.FirmwareSystem opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] Failed to sync configuration. Too many writes. Next sync possible in 2031 sec.
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z info hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] AdapterServer caught exception: vim.fault.TooManyWrites
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z info hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.TaskManager opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] Task Completed : haTask--vim.host.FirmwareSystem.syncConfiguration-114207804 Status error
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z verbose hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=PropertyProvider opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] RecordOp ASSIGN: info, haTask--vim.host.FirmwareSystem.syncConfiguration-114207804. Applied change to temp map.
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z info hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] Activation [N5Vmomi10ActivationE:0x0987e6e0] : Invoke done [syncConfiguration] on [vim.host.FirmwareSystem:ha-firmwareSystem]
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z info hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] Throw vim.fault.TooManyWrites
2021-05-09T19:34:13.423Z info hostd[9AC1B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Solo.Vmomi opID=vim-cmd-27-2ab5 user=root] Result:
--> (vim.fault.TooManyWrites) {
-->    faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
-->    faultMessage = 
-->    msg = ""
--> }

Not few people have bumped into this, the only other I could find through [Wayback] “vim.fault.TooManyWrites” “syncConfiguration” – Google Search is [Archive.is] mal wieder purple Screen – VMware-Forum.

Figuring out the various parts of the SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME: '/scratch/downloads/5271677d-97db-30dc-673d-b99e61bed251/configBundle-ESXi-X10SRH-CF.tgz' is like at regex101.com/r/J4yU72, regex101.com/r/uID9xs and regex101.com/r/o8a4Am:

CONFIG_BUNDLE_DIRECTORY_NAME=$(echo "${SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME}" | sed -n -E -e "s/(\/scratch\/downloads\/[[:xdigit:]]{8}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{12}\/)(configBundle-.+?)(.tgz)$/\1/p")
CONFIG_BUNDLE_FILE_NAME=$(     echo "${SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME}" | sed -n -E -e "s/(\/scratch\/downloads\/[[:xdigit:]]{8}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{12}\/)(configBundle-.+?)(.tgz)$/\2/p")
CONFIG_BUNDLE_DOT_EXTENSION=$( echo "${SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME}" | sed -n -E -e "s/(\/scratch\/downloads\/[[:xdigit:]]{8}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{4}-[[:xdigit:]]{12}\/)(configBundle-.+?)(.tgz)$/\3/p")
echo "CONFIG_BUNDLE_DIRECTORY_NAME: '${CONFIG_BUNDLE_DIRECTORY_NAME}'"
echo "CONFIG_BUNDLE_FILE_NAME:      '${CONFIG_BUNDLE_FILE_NAME}'"
echo "CONFIG_BUNDLE_DOT_EXTENSION:  '${CONFIG_BUNDLE_DOT_EXTENSION}'"

Output is like this:

SCRATCH_CONFIG_BUNDLE_NAME:   '/scratch/downloads/528f9f5a-0123-f022-2b4d-a5c2e595c51a/configBundle-ESXi-X10SRH-CF.tgz'
CONFIG_BUNDLE_DIRECTORY_NAME: '/scratch/downloads/528f9f5a-0123-f022-2b4d-a5c2e595c51a/'
CONFIG_BUNDLE_FILE_NAME:      'configBundle-ESXi-X10SRH-CF'
CONFIG_BUNDLE_DOT_EXTENSION:  '.tgz'

Full backup-config-to-ESXi_configuration_backup-directory.sh script:

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

ESXi: getting and setting the host name, domain and fqdn

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/19

A few links and notes:

  1. [Wayback] Changing the hostname of an ESX or ESXi host (1010821)

    Run these commands to change the hostname in ESXi 5.x, ESXi 6.x,ESXi 7.x, using the command line:

    • esxcli system hostname set –host=hostname
    • esxcli system hostname set –fqdn=fqdn
  2. [Wayback] ESX Host appears as localhost.localdomain in VMware Infrastructure/vSphere client (2009720)

    Cause

    The name resolution parameters were not properly configured during the installation of the ESX host.
  3. [Wayback] Domain repoint for embedded vCenter Server fails with error: “domain_consolidator Failed to set machine id” (71020)

    This issue is caused by a mismatch between the FQDN that was configured as the PNID during the vCenter Server deployment and the hostname that is currently configured.

I had a mismatch happen because of the second entry: a host configured in a different domain than it was deployed to.

Here are the commands to list and change the hosts name, domain and fqdn:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

ESXi: persistent files you can edit to apply settings during boot

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/18

Since ESXi boots from RAM, most files in /etc are not persisted after modification.

The files that are persisted, are only persisted once every hour by auto-backup.sh, so better run auto-backup.sh by hand if you want to reboot after changing them.

The auto-backup.sh script is ran every hour at 1 minute past the hour as per below crontab.

Default ESXi crontab in /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root:

#min hour day mon dow command
1    1    *   *   *   /sbin/tmpwatch.py
1    *    *   *   *   /sbin/auto-backup.sh
0    *    *   *   *   /usr/lib/vmware/vmksummary/log-heartbeat.py
*/5  *    *   *   *   /bin/hostd-probe.sh ++group=host/vim/vmvisor/hostd-probe/stats/sh
00   1    *   *   *   localcli storage core device purge

Schedules deciphered via [Wayback] Crontab.guru – The cron schedule expression editor:

  • [Wayback] Every day at 01:01: “This module removes stale temporary files” 
    1    1    *   *   *   /sbin/tmpwatch.py
  • [Wayback] Every hour at *:01: saves backup to /bootbank/state.tgz. 
    1    *    *   *   *   /sbin/auto-backup.sh
  • [Wayback] Every hour at *:00 logs heartbeat messages to /var/log/vmksummary.log like 2021-02-23T19:00:02Z heartbeat: up 577d2h37m16s, 9 VMs; [[2802426 vmx 4194304kB] [6176344 vmx 4194304kB] [68997 vmx 8388608kB]] [[2802426 vmx 0%max] [6176344 vmx 0%max] [68997 vmx 0%max]] 
    0    *    *   *   *   /usr/lib/vmware/vmksummary/log-heartbeat.py
  • [Wayback] Every 5th minute logs to /var/log/hostd-probe.log. 
    */5  *    *   *   *   /bin/hostd-probe.sh ++group=host/vim/vmvisor/hostd-probe/stats/sh
  • [Wayback] Every day at 01:00: Removes storage devices which have not been seen in some time interval. 
    00   1    *   *   *   localcli storage core device purge

Note that localcli commands are the same as esxcli; for esxcli, a running hostd is required; localcli can run without hostd. See:

–jeroen

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

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