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 ‘Power User’ Category

Some useful commands for Proxmox high IO troubleshooting

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/13

After trying to move an operating system from one disk to another, Proxmox stalled the console and ended up in a really high I/O delay.

These commands helped me finding out what was wrong:

apt-get install iotop
iotop
ps -aux | grep usbbackup
ps -aux | grep rsync
zpool status
lvscan
qm list
qm unlock ###
qm stop ###

Somehow Proxmox was thinking the VM ### was still in use, but on Linux level it wasn’t:

# lvscan
ACTIVE '/dev/pve/swap' [8.00 GiB] inherit
ACTIVE '/dev/pve/root' [27.75 GiB] inherit
ACTIVE '/dev/pve/data' [62.04 GiB] inherit
ACTIVE '/dev/pve/vm-###-disk-1' [40.00 GiB] inherita

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, Power User, Proxmox, Virtualization | Leave a Comment »

Nikon AF modules reference table

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/12

For my link archive: [WayBackNikon AF modules reference table

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Using a Mac for prepping the SD-card for an ODROID-C1+

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/12

Some notes based on The woods and trees of OpenSuSE on single-board computers – image abbreviations – and getting it installed using OS X « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.

I needed to get Ubuntu on an ODROID-C1+ (as it looks like nobody is maintaining a current OpenSuSE for it).

Installing the ODROID-C1+ image using OS X

Download image

Download either of these (note that “minimal” is different from “mate minimal”; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOYWx_YToh8) from de.eu.odroid.in/ubuntu_16.04lts:

Put image on SD card

I installed on a 8 gigabyte SD card that revealed itself as /dev/disk1 using this diskutil command (via osx – List all devices connected, lsblk for Mac OS X – Ask Different [WayBack])

diskutil list

So this wrote the image to SD card in a sudo su - prompt:

targetDevice="disk1"
unxz --keep ubuntu-16.04-minimal-odroid-c1-20160817.img.xz; \
diskutil umount "/dev/${targetDevice}s1"; \
dd bs=1m of="/dev/r${targetDevice}" if=ubuntu-16.04-minimal-odroid-c1-20160817.img; \
sync; \
diskutil list; \
diskutil eject "/dev/${targetDevice}"

Boot and first time steps on Odroid

Use the default user and password that [WayBackODROID Forum • View topic – Ubuntu Minimal User / Password mentions:

odroid login: root
Password: odroid

From there, create a new user and add it to the sudo group (I used visudo to check the correct group for sudoers) :

adduser jeroenp
addgroup jeroenp sudo

And then hook it up to the network and get the IP address:

ifconfig

Now you can ssh into the odroid with user jeroenp and the password assigned to it. You can also perform a sudo su - to get to root level.

ssh and configure a few things

First of all, install etckeeper as it’s a life saver:

apt-get install etckeeper

This will install some other packages, but that’s OK; it will end suggesting you to enter email address, name and perform an initial commit:

Initialized empty Git repository in /etc/.git/

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
  git config --global user.name "Your Name"

to set your account's default identity.
Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'root@odroid.(none)')
etckeeper commit failed; run it by hand

Do that:

cd /etc
git config --global user.email "example@example.org"
git config --global user.name "Example User"
git commit -m "initial commit"

Now perform these steps:

  1. Change the root password
  2. Disable etckeeper daily autocommits
  3. Change the hostname
  4. Update/Upgrade/Distribution-upgrade
  5. Fix the cursor in console mode

Change root password:

# sudo su -
# passwd
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

Disable etckeeper daily autocommits involves one line in /etc/etckeeper/etckeeper.conf:

-#AVOID_DAILY_AUTOCOMMITS=1
+AVOID_DAILY_AUTOCOMMITS=1

Change the hostname; assuming your new host name is newHostName.

  1. edit /etc/hosts and replace the old hostname with newHostName
  2. Perform these commands:
    hostnamectl set-hostname newHostName
    exec bash
    hostname -f

Both the command prompt and the hostname output should show newHostName.

Update/Upgrade:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Fix the cursor in console mode:

Somehow the Odroid C1+ does not support a blinking hardware text cursor.

 

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, etckeeper, Hardware Development, Linux, Odroid, openSuSE, Power User, Raspberry Pi, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed, Ubuntu | Leave a Comment »

On my research list: migrate from OpenSuSE SuSEfirewall2 to firewalld

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/11

The [WayBack] github.com/openSUSE/susefirewall2-to-firewalld is on my research list as right before going on holiday, upgrading broke my firewall configuration (:

Tumbleweed sometimes means living on the bleeding edge (which forces you to learn new things faster), so I knew things like this could be coming.

Related:

From the IRC chat at #opensuse-factory:

[5:25pm] <wiert> Something odd happened today: on an x64 system, I did zypper dist-upgrade, and now apache2 ports 80 and 443 are not reachable from the outside any more (only on localhost)
[5:25pm] <wiert> sysconf_addword /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 FW_CONFIGURATIONS_EXT apache2
[5:25pm] <wiert> "apache2" already present
[5:26pm] <wiert> same fore apache2-ssl
[5:27pm] <wiert> sshd on the same line works fine. Apache runs.
[5:30pm] <wiert> What could I have broken? I went from 20180129 to 20180209
[5:30pm] Son_Goku joined the chat room.
[5:31pm] <wiert> Ah, I see that /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2.d/services/apache2 and /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2.d/services/apache2-ssl got deleted. Why?
[5:32pm] <simonizor> AFAIK, it was replaced by firewalld
[5:33pm] <simonizor> Both use iptables as a backend, so functionality should be relatively the same
[5:34pm] <wiert> Any URLs for migration tips?
[5:35pm] <wiert> For now I’ve done sysconf_addword /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 FW_SERVICES_EXT_TCP 80
[5:35pm] <wiert> and sysconf_addword /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 FW_SERVICES_EXT_TCP 443
[5:35pm] <wiert> now it “works” but I need to migrate one day.

From a different system when I applied the firewall rules after updating:

# SuSEfirewall2 
<38>Mar 12 15:40:13 SuSEfirewall2[20606]: Setting up rules from /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 ...
<38>Mar 12 15:40:13 SuSEfirewall2[20606]: using default zone 'ext' for interface eth0

iptables-batch v1.6.2: unknown protocol "submission" specified
Try `iptables-batch -h' or 'iptables-batch --help' for more information.
<35>Mar 12 15:40:17 SuSEfirewall2[20606]: Error: iptables-batch failed, re-running using iptables
iptables v1.6.2: unknown protocol "submission" specified
Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.
ip6tables-batch v1.6.2: unknown protocol "submission" specified
Try `ip6tables-batch -h' or 'ip6tables-batch --help' for more information.
<35>Mar 12 15:40:17 SuSEfirewall2[20606]: Error: ip6tables-batch failed, re-running using ip6tables
ip6tables v1.6.2: unknown protocol "submission" specified
Try `ip6tables -h' or 'ip6tables --help' for more information.
<38>Mar 12 15:40:18 SuSEfirewall2[20606]: Firewall rules successfully set

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, openSuSE, Power User, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed | Leave a Comment »

Nutribullet does not activate – activators jammed

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/09

Even when keeping a Nutribullet clean, the activators can jam. One day the white lids activating the spinning mechanism were just stuck.

So below are some links that helped resolving it. They come down to get some liquid between the white lids and casing to loosen any staining.

Some people use WD-40, oil, water with vinegar or oil and vinegar. We just used some fairly hot water and a blunt knife to carefully push each white lid down.

I found most of the videos before getting the right search terms and bumping into the other links. For ease of reading, the videos are at the end.

–jeroen

Videos:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

ups.com -> expensive; upstoday.com -> affordable

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/09

Reminder to self:

–jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Scott Hanselman on Witter: “Why should I care about Kubernetes, Docker, and Container Orchestration?”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/08

An important question for many people, so if you want to know more or get started: [WayBack] Scott Hanselman on Twitter: “Why should I care about Kubernetes, Docker, and Container Orchestration?” followed by:

Yes, AKS is Azure Container Services (go figure!).

Notes

  • For burning, Scott recommends [WayBack] Etcher: Burn images to SD cards & USB drives, safely and easily (which is now also available as experimental [WayBackEtcher CLI), I tended to use a script like below since I’m a command-line person, but since Etcher does write and verify in one run, I’m considering switching:
    1. find where the SD card is mounted on your Mac: diskutil list
    2. sudo su -
    3. execute this from the directory where you downloaded filling in targetDevice with the value from diskutil list

    targetDevice="disk9"
    imageName="2017-11-29-raspbian-stretch-lite"
    unzip -o ${imageName}.zip
    diskutil umount "/dev/${targetDevice}s1"; \
    dd bs=1m of="/dev/r${targetDevice}" if=${imageName}; \
    sync; \
    diskutil list; \
    diskutil eject "/dev/${targetDevice}"

–jeroen

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Docker, Infrastructure, Kubernetes (k8n), Power User | Leave a Comment »

Mixing x64 Outlook with x86 Delphi: never a good idea…

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/07

Via [WayBack] Hi all,I’m a bit stuck here with a “simple” task.Looks like Outlook 2016 doesn’t supports “MAPISendMail”, at least, if i trigger this, Thunderbird… – Attila Kovacs – Google+:

Basically only MAPISendMail works cross architecture and only if you fill all fields.

This edited [WayBackemail – MAPI Windows 7 64 bit – Stack Overflow answer by [WayBack] epotter is very insightful (thanks [WayBackRik van Kekem – Google+):

Calls to MAPISendMail should work without a problem.

For all other MAPI method and function calls to work in a MAPI application, the bitness (32 or 64) of the MAPI application must be the same as the bitness of the MAPI subsystem on the computer that the application is targeted to run on.

In general, a 32-bit MAPI application must not run on a 64-bit platform (64-bit Outlook on 64-bit Windows) without first being rebuilt as a 64-bit application.

For a more detailed explanation, see the MSDN page on Building MAPI Applications on 32-Bit and 64-Bit Platforms

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Delphi x64, Development, Office, Outlook, Power User, Software Development, x86 | Leave a Comment »

Odroid-C1 (and likely others): fixing the textmode cursor on the physical console

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/05

Somehow the Odroid C1+ does not support a blinking hardware text cursor. Which means that when you logon to the console in text mode, it is really hard to edit the command-line or text files a there is no visual clue where the cursor is.

It took me to find out the cause, but odroid C1 console no “hardware cursor” got me there: [Archive.isArch Linux ARM • View topic – ODROID-C1: No hardware cursor in terminal. The odd thing is that sending escape sequences like mentioned in [WayBackCursor Appearance in the Linux Console LG #137 didn’t fix the problem either. For instance, these didn’t help at all:

echo -n -e '\e[?17;14;224c'
echo -e "\e[?16;0;64c"

I tried similar ones from [WayBackVGA-softcursor.txt as well, but they failed too.

Since I usually ssh into the box, doing without a console cursor usually is no problem except when you run into network trouble and really need the console.

Fixing it took a bit longer to find out,  but refining to  “odroid C1” console no blinking cursor got this as first hit: [WayBackODROID Forum • View topic – fbcon cursor. And it came down to going to the second page of the first archived link above. So I had a kind of “duh” moment. Anyway, at [WayBackArch Linux ARM • View topic – ODROID-C1: No hardware cursor in terminal – pagee 2 is the below code which got me a nice large light-blue cursor:

infocmp >> ~/terminfo.txt
sed -i.bak -e 's/?0c/?112c/g' -e 's/?8c/?48;0;64c/g' terminfo.txt
tic terminfo.txt
tput cnorm

These are the commands used:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, Linux, Power User, Ubuntu | Leave a Comment »

Changing the network from public -> private in Windows 10 is way to convoluted (works for 8.1, 8 and 7 too)

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/05

I often wonder why do they make changing the network location more difficult in each Windows version.

Anyway: for Windows 10, the secpol.msc way still works even though by default you now need to use a command prompt or the Windows-R key-combo to start it as typing it in the “Ask me Anything” search often gets you to bing (the search is too slow to figure out it is available locally even if you’re running a machine with SSD).

So from [WayBackTop 10: Windows Firewall Netsh Commands (via: Windows Server content from Windows IT Pro), this still works in Windows 10:

a secpol.msc way that is easy:

  1. Press Win+R, then type secpol.msc
  2. Click on “Network List Manager Policies”
  3. Double-click on your network
  4. Optionally give your network another name
  5. Click on “Tab Network Location”
  6. Set “Location Type” to “Private”

Go back to Network and Sharing Center to check the result.

In Windows 10 there are half a dozen other ways: [WayBackNetwork Location – Set to Private or Public in Windows 10 – Windows 10 Tutorials

  • Option One: To Change a Network Location in Settings app
  • Option Two: To Change a Network Location in Registry Editor
  • Option Three: To Change a Network Location Local Security Policy
  • Option Four: To Change a Network Location in PowerShell
  • Option Five: To Change Network Location of Current Network Connection in PowerShell
  • Option Six: To Change Network Location of Current Network Connection using a VBS file

I like this PowerShell script too via [WayBacknetworking – How do I force Windows 10 to see a network as private? – Super User:

## Change NetWorkConnection Category to Private
#Requires -RunasAdministrator

Get-NetConnectionProfile |
  Where{ $_.NetWorkCategory -ne 'Private'} |
  ForEach {
    $_
    $_|Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetWorkCategory Private -Confirm
  }

–jeroen

 

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »