I migrated to a new blog engine, DotClear instead of OctoberCMS. This resolves the issues I kept encountering with comments being broken. People can now leave comments again, and they won't get lost in the ether. However, in fixing one issue, I've turned up another, which is that some very old URLs […]
Coding and Techy Stuff
This "Coding and Techy Stuff" category is here because peripatetically I make a living as a software engineer. This is where I put anything related to coding and technology, and sometimes just unrelated information such as you might find posted on ycombinator's always-intellectually-curious Hacker News.
A few OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) tools to quickly check your network vulnerabilities
External Network Asset Discovery and Vulnerability Scans This is a list of OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) tools which will quickly give you an awareness of your cybersecurity risk profile. I put this list together when someone said they were quoted $40,000 for security analysis, and wondered if […]
Fix Error: "Job for bitnami.service failed because the control process exited with error code."
cedar@nowhere:/opt/bitnami$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart Restarting services.. Job for bitnami.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status bitnami.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details. cedar@nowhere:/opt/bitnami$ sudo […]
Fix Error: "If it is running, make sure you are pointing to the right pid file (/var/run/gonit.pid)"
cedar@nowhere:~$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh status Cannot find any running daemon to contact. If it is running, make sure you are pointing to the right pid file (/var/run/gonit.pid) cedar@nowhere:~$ cd /opt/bitnami cedar@nowhere:/opt/bitnami$ ls apache bncert-tool bndiagnostic-tool […]
On VirtualBox HP MFP printer installer fails at 99% complete
What worked for me to resolve this issue was to ensure that USB was set to 2.0. It all worked as expected as soon as I went in to Settings for the VirtualBox and selected the following (Use USB 2.0): […]
What happens when anti-robot becomes anti-human?
On Friday, I was at work participating in a demo before an audience of a half-dozen decision makers. It's such an important demo that this was the dry-run for the demo, where we're taking notes to prepare for the Big Demo next week. I participate in demos regularly, so I'm familiar with all the […]
Premature Optimization is The Root of All Evil -- and Why This Is
Yes, I agree that Premature Optimization is the Root of All Evil, at least within the programming paradigm where this concept arises, and likely true in a much broader concept also. If you're a developer, and you think about it (just stumbled on this idea here, your search engine will give you more […]
Good old fashioned thick scroll bars in PopOS and probably also Ubuntu
It should be easier to change your scrollbar back from the ridiculous default, where it disappears into a tiny vertical slice that only reappears when you hover over the thin vertical slice (!) which is such bad UI design, it's probably intentional. Normal people have clamored for years to get rid […]
How to fix: A numeric comparison was attempted on "$(_TargetFrameworkVersionWithoutV)" that evaluates to "" instead of a number, in condition "('$(TargetFrameworkIdentifier)' != '.NETCoreApp'
This came up while trying to load a disassembled project that was then reassembled with dnSpy, but you may find it for other reasons. If you encounter this error: C:\Users\Me\source\repos\MyRecompiledProject.Web\MyRecompiledProject.Web.csproj : error : A numeric comparison was attempted on […]
Why I personally loathe working with Microsoft Windows
My computer just crashed itself, according to Microsoft policy, right while I was working on it. I'm up at 1:00 a.m. working on a project with a complex enough work environment that it takes an hour just to get the work environment fully functional. I have over two dozen tabs open in my browser, I'm […]
Gandi catchall email addresses, only 676 items this time
I was pleased to find this blog entry with a handy list of all the shortcut aliases you'd ever need for gandi's webmail approach. It also has a nice explanation of the issue, but as I will never use an email starting with a number, I was able to half the list. Here it is, 676 items, which is 26x26, […]
Chroot sftp-only SSH user into home folder safely in Ubuntu
This seemingly-useful link on askubuntu did not work as I wanted, and neither did a few other similar sites. Trying to make it easy for the end user took longer than the 5 minutes I had available, so I'm posting the correct way to do it here for future use. The key missing ingredient was provided in […]
Pterodactyl "logged out due to Outdated server" with Nukkit
You tried to connect to your own Nukkit server running on Pteradactyl. However, it failed quickly and you got this message: "logged out due to Outdated server." You look in the logs for more information, and that's all the logs show, also: "logged out due to Outdated server." So […]
Got the Black Screen within Gnome in a new FreeBSD on VirtualBox?
I found a fix for that here. I wrote about it here: Configuration for FreeBSD inside VirtualBox with Gnome3, sudo, nano, and bash, including avoiding the black screen Here's the TL;DR answer in a screenshot: […]
Configuration for FreeBSD inside VirtualBox with Gnome3, sudo, nano, and bash, including avoiding the black screen
Coming into FreeBSD anew from the Linux world. I'm happy with it as a server, no changes needed. I like the much-more-secure ambiance. But now experimenting with it as a desktop, I've already decided I like sudo, bash, and nano better than su, sh, and ee. And I want Gnome. At this point, I've […]
Fix VirtualBox icon app name in Gnome Favorites/Activities menu on Linux
(I sometimes craft my headlines to be search-engine-friendly, which is why they sometimes look odd in person). If you have multiple VirtualBox images running in Ubuntu or similar Debian-based flavors of Linux, you know it can be frustrating to switch between the different images using the favorites […]
Install Ubuntu Server .deb package without starting service using dpkg --unpack
On Debian flavors like Ubuntu, apt and dpkg default to starting a service as soon as it is installed. This is almost always a good idea, but I ran into the strange problem that the service was misconfigured. Starting it was not a good thing. Stopping and re-configuring it after it started was not […]
Use Network Manager to handle 'device not managed' or 'unmanaged' issue in Ubuntu for SecurityOnion at Digital Ocean
An out-of-the-box install of Ubuntu 18.04.5 at Digital Ocean will not work for a SecurityOnion installation, because of the way cloud-init is managing the network. Security Onion prefers NetworkManager to manage the network. Cloud-init is required by Digital Ocean for deployment of a custom image. […]
Use fdisk and parted to resize a 100Gb custom image of Ubuntu for Digital Ocean to prepare for a 320Gb SecurityOnion install
Digital Ocean cannot deploy a Custom Image larger than 100Gb. Security Onion requires 200Gb to install. To workaround the Digital Ocean limitation, create a 100Gb custom image of Ubuntu, configured with only three partitions: /boot, /, and /tmp. (Leaving out /nsm and swap requirements for the […]
Install and whitelabel Grafana with a custom grafana_icon.svg and a few other minor changes
Grafana is an amazing application, one of the most active open source projects in the world, and they are firmly committed to the Free Software / Open Source way of doing things. You should know up front that the following information enables a feature (whitelabel) which is part of the Enterprise […]