The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

  • My badges

  • Twitter Updates

  • My Flickr Stream

  • Pages

  • All categories

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 1,839 other subscribers

Archive for the ‘Scripting’ Category

“A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name ‘PassThru'” – likely your powershell version is too old

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/07

If you get [WayBack] “A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name ‘PassThru'” as PowerShell error, then likely the PowerShell version is too old to support -PassThru, which likely means you have are running pre-Windows 10 version.

PowerShell 3 (introduced in 2012) added the -PassThru parameter that allowed to chain multiple commands from one list pipe.

Another reason for the error might be that the command you use does not support the -PassThru parameter.

To check which commandlets support -PassThru, use the below command (the output is from a Windows 8.1 machine running PowerShell 4.0).

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Coming Back to Old Problems: How I Finally Wrote a Sudoku Solving Algorithm – DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/09/02

It is always fun to see how Sudoku solving algorithms are created and implemented. This is no exception: [WayBack] Coming Back to Old Problems: How I Finally Wrote a Sudoku Solving Algorithm – DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻

(backtracking image from Wikimedia commons)

For a visual Sudoku solver, I usually take [WayBack] Sudoku Solver by Andrew Stuart. Shows the logic behind solving Sudoku square by square which is part of [WayBack] SudokuWiki.org – Getting Started having many visual explanations on how to solve these puzzles, for instance:

It’s a kind of sudo ku, but visually and never failed me solve one.

–jeroen

Posted in Algorithms, Development, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

“fixing” ESXi “rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util2.c(106) [sender=3.1.2]”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/30

Reminder to self: create a static ESXi binary for a recent rsync release.

Quite a few people have bumped into rsync erroring out with “large” sets of files (where large can be as low as ~1000), like for instance Tj commenting on my post “ESXi 5.1 and rsync – damiendebin.net.”:

ERROR: out of memory in receive_sums [sender] │······
rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util2.c(102) [sender=3.1.1] │······
rsync: [generator] write error: Broken pipe (32) │······

I bumped into this myself as well, even when updating from rsync 3.1.0 to 3.1.2.

There are various static rsync for ESXi around. Just a few of them for completeness:

There is also 3.0.9 (via [Wayback] VMware ESXi 5.1 rsync 3.0.9 statically linked binary erstellen – bachmann-lan.de), but it has a VMFS bug ([Wayback] 8177 – Problems with big sparsed files) as per [Wayback] ESXi 5.1 and rsync – damiendebin.net.)

The good news is that it is fixed in 3.2.2 as a user-configurable setting, but since there is no ESXi build yet (see reminder above)…

Anyway: [Wayback] 12769 – error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) depending on source file system

Wayne Davison 2020-06-26 03:56:35 UTC
I fixed the allocation args to be size_t values (and improved a bunch of allocation error checking while I was at it).

I then added an option that lets you override this allocation sanity-check value. The default is still 1G per allocation, but you can now specify a much larger value (up to "--max-alloc=8192P-1").

If you want to make a larger value the default for your copies, export RSYNC_MAX_ALLOC in the environment with the size value of your choice.

Committed for release in 3.2.2.

This is what happens with 3.1.2 and 3.1.3:

time rsync -aiv --info=progress2 --progress --partial --existing --inplace /vmfs/volumes/Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/ Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/
sending incremental file list
              0   0%    0.00kB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#0, ir-chk=1000/1259)
ERROR: out of memory in flist_expand [sender]
rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util2.c(106) [sender=3.1.2]
Command exited with non-zero status 22
real    0m 0.87s
user    0m 0.10s
sys 0m 0.00s
time rsync -aiv --info=progress2 --progress --partial --ignore-existing --sparse /vmfs/volumes/Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/ Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/
sending incremental file list
              0   0%    0.00kB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#0, ir-chk=1000/1259)
ERROR: out of memory in flist_expand [sender]
rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util2.c(106) [sender=3.1.2]
Command exited with non-zero status 22
real    0m 0.28s
user    0m 0.12s
sys 0m 0.00s
Finished

I was lucky that [Wayback] “rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers” protocol version “3.1.2” – Google Search got me a result so quickly: add a --protocol-29 and you are set.

The first result (Wayback has the results reversed from what got) didn’t fix it. The second did.

  1. [Wayback] 225761 – net/rsync long path causes buffer overflow (update to 3.1.3)
  2. [Wayback/Archive.is] AIX Open Source – IBM Power Systems Community: rsync out of memory

    As a work around, I added “--protocol=29” to one of our servers that was consistently failing with “ERROR: out of memory in flist_expand [receiver]” “rsync error: error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util2.c(105) [receiver=3.1.3]” in rsync-3.1.3-2.ppc

    I read the man page and started experimenting with the protocol version until I lowered it enough to get it to work consistently.

The problem might be that running on the ESXi gives you limited memory, but then some 10k files should not use more than like half a megabyte of memory.

Sometime I will dig deeper into the protocol version differences, for now a list of files I think will be relevant for that (mainly look for protocol_version):

Some web pages mentioning the --protocol option and might give me more insight in the protocol differences:

With --protocol=29, time estimation is way off, but there are no errors:

time rsync -aiv --info=progress2 --progress --partial --existing --inplace --protocol=29 /vmfs/volumes/Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/ Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/
building file list ... 
9059 files to consider
.d..t...... isos/
         27,593   0%    0.00kB/s    0:00:06 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/9059)   

sent 212,594 bytes  received 268 bytes  20,272.57 bytes/sec
total size is 3,055,677,645,398  speedup is 14,355,204.99
real    0m 13.31s
user    0m 1.35s
sys 0m 0.00s

time /vmfs/volumes/5791a3e1-0b9368de-4965-0cc47aaa9742/local-bin/rsync -aiv --info=progress2 --progress --partial --ignore-existing --sparse --protocol=29 /vmfs/volumes/Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/ Samsung850-2TB-S3D4NX0HA01043L/
building file list ... 
9059 files to consider
>f+++++++++ isos/EN-Windows-XP-SP3-VL.iso
...
cd+++++++++ ESXi65.filesystem-root/usr/share/
216,868,164,639   7%   40.64MB/s    1:24:48 (xfr#2571, to-chk=0/9059)   

sent 216,894,938,870 bytes  received 57,858 bytes  42,582,702.80 bytes/sec
total size is 3,055,677,645,398  speedup is 14.09
real    1h 24m 58s
user    34m 5.59s
sys 0m 0.00s
Finished

Even not on ESXi, there were just a few people bumping into this, so I wonder why there are so few matches on [Wayback] “ERROR: out of memory in flist_expand [sender]” “sender=3.1” – Google Search:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash development, Development, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, rsync, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

firewalld: show interfaces with their zone details and show zones in use

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/26

A while ago openSUSE switched to firewalld as a fronte-end for iptables. Tumbleweed was first in 2018, so I wrote a reminder: On my research list: migrate from OpenSuSE SuSEfirewall2 to firewalld « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.

The core concept of firewalld is zones, which some people find hard to understand: [Archive.is/WayBack] Firewalld on Leap 15 – why is it so complicated ? : openSUSE.

Another concept is interfaces and how they bind to zones. [Wayback] Masquerading and Firewalls | Security Guide | openSUSE Leap 15.2 shows more of that.

The final concept is services that bind one or more aspects (like ports or addresses) to a service name [Wayback] Documentation – Manual Pages – firewalld.service | firewalld.

Other interesting bits of information:

Below are some examples on what I learned, especially finding details about active interfaces and the zones they are bound to.

All of them are based on:

  • the xargs shell trick (I known you can do some of them without the trick, but I try to use common patterns in my solution so I do not have to remember which boundary case fails
  • the echo -n trick to skip the newline output
  • the [WayBack] firewall-cmd options (which kind of care commands)
    • --get-active-zones:

      Print currently active zones altogether with interfaces and sources used in these zones. Active zones are zones, that have a binding to an interface or source. The output format is:

      zone1
        interfaces: interface1 interface2 ..
        sources: source1 ..
      zone2
        interfaces: interface3 ..
      zone3
        sources: source2 ..

      If there are no interfaces or sources bound to the zone, the corresponding line will be omitted.

    • --list-interfaces:

      List interfaces that are bound to zone zone as a space separated list. If zone is omitted, default zone will be used.

    • --get-zone-of-interface=<zone>:

      Print the name of the zone the interface is bound to or no zone.

    • --info-zone=<zone> (which shows far more information than the manual indicates):

      Print information about the zone zone. The output format is:

      zone
        interfaces: interface1 ..
        sources: source1 ..
        services: service1 ..
        ports: port1 ..
        protocols: protocol1 ..
        forward-ports: forward-port1 ..
        source-ports: source-port1 ..
        icmp-blocks: icmp-type1 ..
        rich rules: rich-rule1 ..

Two more notes before the examples:

  1. My first hunch was to use --list-all-zones, but that shows details of all un-used zones as well.
  2. I am not fully sure about the --list-interfaces to list *all* interfaces. I might replace this later with ls /sys/class/net (see [WayBack] linux – List only the device names of all available network interfaces – Super User).

Other useful commands

Besides lising zones and interfaces, you might be interested in services and ports:

# firewall-cmd --list-services
dhcpv6-client ssh
# firewall-cmd --list-ports

List used zones

The first only shows the zone names

# firewall-cmd --list-interfaces | xargs -I {} sh -c 'firewall-cmd --get-zone-of-interface={}'
public

The second both zones and interfaces:

# firewall-cmd --get-active-zones 
public
  interfaces: ens192

When there are no bound interfaces

OpenSuSE by default does not bind interfaces to zones; it means any interface uses the default zone. That means the --list-interfaces commands in this blog post fail.

You can check this behaviour by running this command:

# ls /sys/class/net | xargs -I {} sh -c 'echo -n "interface {} has zone " ; firewall-cmd --get-zone-of-interface={} | xargs -I [] sh -c "echo [] ; firewall-cmd --info-zone=[]"'
interface eth0 has zone no zone
interface lo has zone no zone
interface wlan0 has zone no zone

Alternatives:

  1. Finding the default zone
    # firewall-cmd --get-default-zone
    public
    
  2. Details of the default zone
    # firewall-cmd --info-zone=$(firewall-cmd --get-default-zone)
    public
      target: default
      icmp-block-inversion: no
      interfaces: 
      sources: 
      services: dhcpv6-client ssh
      ports: 
      protocols: 
      masquerade: no
      forward-ports: 
      source-ports: 
      icmp-blocks: 
      rich rules: 

You can see that here the public zone is marked default which means it binds to any interface that is not bound to a specific zone.

List used zone details

# firewall-cmd --list-interfaces | xargs -I {} sh -c 'firewall-cmd --get-zone-of-interface={} | xargs -I [] sh -c "firewall-cmd --info-zone=[]"'
public (active)
  target: default
  icmp-block-inversion: no
  interfaces: ens192
  sources: 
  services: dhcpv6-client ssh
  ports: 
  protocols: 
  masquerade: no
  forward-ports: 
  source-ports: 
  icmp-blocks: 
  rich rules: 

List interfaces and their zones:

# firewall-cmd --list-interfaces | xargs -I {} sh -c 'echo -n "interface {} has zone " ; firewall-cmd --get-zone-of-interface={}'
interface ens192 has zone public

List interfaces and their zone details:

# firewall-cmd --list-interfaces | xargs -I {} sh -c 'echo -n "interface {} has zone " ; firewall-cmd --get-zone-of-interface={} | xargs -I [] sh -c "echo [] ; firewall-cmd --info-zone=[]"'
interface ens192 has zone public
public (active)
  target: default
  icmp-block-inversion: no
  interfaces: ens192
  sources: 
  services: dhcpv6-client ssh
  ports: 
  protocols: 
  masquerade: no
  forward-ports: 
  source-ports: 
  icmp-blocks: 
  rich rules: 

Verifying if dns service is available, then allow it on public

Verify if a DNS is in the enabled services:

# firewall-cmd --list-services
dhcpv6-client ssh

Here no DNS service is enabled, so I need to figure out if any DNS service is available to be enabled.

This lists all the services that can be enabled in a zone:

# firewall-cmd --get-services

On my system, this returned the following list:

RH-Satellite-6 amanda-client amanda-k5-client amqp amqps apcupsd audit bacula bacula-client bb bgp bitcoin bitcoin-rpc bitcoin-testnet bitcoin-testnet-rpc bittorrent-lsd ceph ceph-mon cfengine cockpit condor-collector ctdb dhcp dhcpv6 dhcpv6-client distcc dns dns-over-tls docker-registry docker-swarm dropbox-lansync elasticsearch etcd-client etcd-server finger freeipa-4 freeipa-ldap freeipa-ldaps freeipa-replication freeipa-trust ftp ganglia-client ganglia-master git grafana gre http https imap imaps ipp ipp-client ipsec irc ircs iscsi-target isns jenkins kadmin kdeconnect kerberos kibana klogin kpasswd kprop kshell ldap ldaps libvirt libvirt-tls lightning-network llmnr managesieve matrix mdns memcache minidlna mongodb mosh mountd mqtt mqtt-tls ms-wbt mssql murmur mysql nfs nfs3 nmea-0183 nrpe ntp nut openvpn ovirt-imageio ovirt-storageconsole ovirt-vmconsole plex pmcd pmproxy pmwebapi pmwebapis pop3 pop3s postgresql privoxy prometheus proxy-dhcp ptp pulseaudio puppetmaster quassel radius rdp redis redis-sentinel rpc-bind rsh rsyncd rtsp salt-master samba samba-client samba-dc sane sip sips slp smtp smtp-submission smtps snmp snmptrap spideroak-lansync spotify-sync squid ssdp ssh steam-streaming svdrp svn syncthing syncthing-gui synergy syslog syslog-tls telnet tentacle tftp tftp-client tile38 tinc tor-socks transmission-client upnp-client vdsm vnc-server wbem-http wbem-https wsman wsmans xdmcp xmpp-bosh xmpp-client xmpp-local xmpp-server zabbix-agent zabbix-server

I was searching to see if dns was available, so I split the string with tr, then searced with grep:

# firewall-cmd --get-services | tr " " "\n" | grep dns
dns
dns-over-tls
mdns

To get details, use the firewall-cmd --info-service=servicename like this:

# firewall-cmd --get-services | tr " " "\n" | grep dns | xargs -I [] sh -c "firewall-cmd --info-service=[]"
dns
  ports: 53/tcp 53/udp
  protocols: 
  source-ports: 
  modules: 
  destination: 
  includes: 
dns-over-tls
  ports: 853/tcp
  protocols: 
  source-ports: 
  modules: 
  destination: 
  includes: 
mdns
  ports: 5353/udp
  protocols: 
  source-ports: 
  modules: 
  destination: ipv4:224.0.0.251 ipv6:ff02::fb
  includes: 

So for named (bind), I need the dns service to be enabled:

# firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=dns --permanent
success

Now a –list-services will not show dns as we changed the --permanent configuration, not the current configuration:

# firewall-cmd --list-services
dhcpv6-client ssh

So you need to --reload the --permanent settings:

# firewall-cmd --list-services --permanent
dhcpv6-client dns ssh
# firewall-cmd --reload
success
# firewall-cmd --list-services
dhcpv6-client dns ssh

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, iptables, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed, xargs | Leave a Comment »

linux – How can I find all hardlinked files on a filesystem? – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/25

[WayBack] linux – How can I find all hardlinked files on a filesystem? – Super User

use the following line (for sure you have to replace /PATH/FOR/SEARCH/ with whatever you want to search):

find /PATH/FOR/SEARCH/ -xdev -printf '%i\t%n\t%p\n' | fgrep -f <(find . -xdev -printf '%i\n' | sort -n | uniq -d) | sort -n

this scans the filesystem only once, shows inode, number of hardlinks and path of files with more than one hardlink and sorts them according to the inode.

if you are annoyed by error messages for folders you aren’t allowed to read, you can expand the line to this:

find /PATH/FOR/SEARCH/ -xdev -printf '%i\t%n\t%p\n' 2> /dev/null | fgrep -f <(find . -xdev -printf '%i\n' 2> /dev/null | sort -n | uniq -d) | sort -n

It uses these commands:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, fgrep, find, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | 1 Comment »

Some links on Flux outside React.js

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/24

The Flux architecture is often used in ReactJS, but there are also implementations outside that realm.

So here are some links for my archive:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, ReactJS, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

bash – Search for a previous command with the prefix I just typed – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/18

[WayBack] bash – Search for a previous command with the prefix I just typed – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange answered by [WayBack] John1024:

What you are looking for is Ctrl-R.

Type Ctrl-R and then type part of the command you want. Bash will display the first matching command. Keep typing CtrlR and bash will cycle through previous matching commands.

To search backwards in the history, type Ctrl-S instead. (If Ctrl-S doesn’t work that way for you, that likely means that you need to disable XON/XOFF flow control: to do that, run stty -ixon.)

This is documented under “Searching” in man bash.

Comment by [WayBack] HongboZhu:

Ctrl-Q to quit the frozen state, if you already hit Ctrl-S without turning off flow control first and got your terminal frozen.

A far more elaborate answer with many other tips is from [WayBack] Peter Cordes:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Winbox 3.19 can connect via MAC whereas Winbox 3.17 cannot

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/17

Not sure why, but Winbox 3.17 could not connect to out of the box blank MikroTik equipment at all.

Winbox 3.19 complains every now and than, but usually connects fine.

This was while configuring a bunch of [WayBack] MikroTik Routers and Wireless – Products: CRS305-1G-4S+IN.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Hardware, Internet, MikroTik, Network-and-equipment, Power User, RouterOS, routers, Scripting, Software Development, WinBox | Leave a Comment »

UUOC apparently is/was a thing: useless use of cat

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/16

A while ago I bumped into UUOC: [WayBack] cat (Unix): Useless use of cat – Wikipedia.

For me the post important reason to choose between cat and a redirect is realising from the above article:

  • input redirection forms allow command to perform random access on the file, whereas the cat examples do not.
  • cat written with UUOC might still be preferred for readability reasons, as reading a piped stream left-to-right might be easier to conceptualize

I ended up at UUOC through [WayBack] bash – Calling multiple commands through xargs – Stack Overflow.

Invoking multiple commands with the same xargs parameter.

The above question also led me to two better solutions for my original xargs problem.

I liked both below solutions.

The first (by [WayBack] ckhan) uses sh as subshell and substitutes the parameter with a readable name.

The second (by [WayBack] shivams) uses a function which gets way more readable code when the command-line gets longer.

[WayBack] shell – xargs : using same argument in multiple commands – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange:

  1. you’ll want to explicitly execute a subshell:
    echo 95 | xargs -n1 -I_percent -- sh -c '[ _percent -ge 95 ] && echo "No Space on disk _percent% full -- remove old backups please"'

    Note also I’m using _percent instead of {} to avoid extra quoting headaches with the shell. It’s not a shell variable; still just an xargs replacement string.

  2. An alternative way, which is more readable, is to define a separate function which contains all your other commands and then call that function with xargs in a sub-shell.Hence, for example:
    myfunc(){
      [ "$1" -ge 95 ] && echo "No Space on disk $1% full -- remove old backups please"
      echo "Another command echoing $1"
    }
    
    export -f myfunc
    
    echo 95 | xargs -n1 -I_percent -- sh -c 'myfunc "_percent"'

–jeroen

Posted in bash, Development, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

How to turn on automatic logon in Windows

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/09

[WayBack] How to turn on automatic logon in Windows

Describes how to turn on the automatic logon feature in Windows by editing the registry.

Most archivals of the above post fail with a 404-error after briefly flashing the content, but this particular one usually succeeds displaying.

It is slightly different from the one referenced in my blog post automatic logon in Windows 2003, and because of the archival issues, I have quoted most of it below.

A few observations, at least in Windows 10 and 8.1:

  • Major Windows 10 upgrades will disable the autologon: after each major upgrade, you have to re-apply the registry patches.
  • If the user has a blank password, you can remove the DefaultPassword value.
    • Empty passwords allow local logon (no network logon or remote desktop logon), no network access and no RunAs, which can actually help improve security. More on that in a later blog post
  • For a local machine logon, you do not need the DefaultDomainName value either (despite many posts insisting you need them), but you can technically set it to the computer name using reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultDomainName /t REG_SZ /d %ComputerName% /f
  • If another user logs on and off, the values keep preserved, so after a reboot, the correct user automatically logs on
  • you need a full reboot cycle for this to take effect
  • The AutoLogon tool does not allow blank passwords

I wrote a batch file enable-autologon-for-user-parameter.bat that makes it easier:

if [%1] == [] goto :help

:enable
  reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v AutoAdminLogon /t REG_SZ /d 1 /f
:setUserName
  reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultUserName /t REG_SZ /d %1 /f
:removePasswordIfItExists
  reg delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultPassword /f
if [%2] == [] goto :eof
:setPassword
  reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v DefaultPassword /t REG_SZ /d %2 /f  
  goto :eof

:help
  echo Syntax:
  echo   %0 username password

The article quote:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Microsoft Surface on Windows 7, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »