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 […]
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.
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 […]
How to configure Ubuntu via /etc/network/interfaces using ifupdown managed by Network Manager for Security Onion
That headline is a mouthful, so let's break it down: How to configure Ubuntu via /etc/network/interfaces using ifupdown managed by Network Manager for Security Onion In more simple terms I would prefer this headline: "How to configure Ubuntu with ifupdown for Security Onion," but it turns […]
Placing Apache reverse proxy in front of Security Onion
Security Onion prefers to think that it's talking to the world, not a proxy. But you can do it. It took me awhile to get this working because I was also trying to get Apache Basic Authentication working. Alas, Security Onion is so complex that I was only able to get Authentication working smoothly […]
What to do when qemu-guest-agent on CentOS does not work after installing with yum
After installing qemu-guest-agent with yum, which was easy enough with sudo yum install qemu-guest-agent I did not see IP information in the proxmox host, so I knew it was not yet working. I tried several things, none of them worked. First I tried looking at the status. Got an error indicating the […]
Kill a Proxmox VM that won't quit with a one-liner using the pve node's command prompt
I was using the handy information at Proxmox can’t stop VM – How we fix it! (bobcares.com) for a while. They have a two-line approach which does the job, but displays the (very) long command line for starting a proxmox VM on the screen while doing so. To me, facing a wall of text while searching for […]
Fix Shellinabox "rhostsrsaauthentication" and "rsaauthentication" errors
ShellInABox is a tidy little app that works well, but when you configure it to connect via SSH directly instead of using its internal shell, it throws up a couple minor errors when logging in: command-line line 0: unsupported option "rhostsrsaauthentication" command-line line 0: […]
Installing ShellInABox on Debian, Ubuntu, Devuan, etc and configuring for white-on-black GUI
You can install shellinabox with your Debian-flavored package manager with a single command: sudo apt install shellinabox White text on black screen The default setting is a white screen with black text. You can right-click to switch it, but if you're like me you'll want to set it to black screen […]
Configure one-time-password (a.k.a. 2FA or MFA) in Apache using mod_authn_otp and FreeOTP
I did this on a Devuan system, which is basically Ubuntu without systemd. This not a well-known distro, so your mileage may vary, but I think it will all work as described on vanilla Ubuntu or similar Debian-based flavors. At the end of this article is a list of URLs I used while putting this all […]
Configure one-time-password (a.k.a. 2FA or MFA) in SSH using libpam-oath and FreeOTP
I did this on a Devuan system, which is basically Ubuntu without systemd. This not a well-known distro, so your mileage may vary, but I think it will all work as described on vanilla Ubuntu or similar Debian-based flavors. At the end of this article is a list of URLs I used while putting this all […]
Installing Mx Linux or Ubuntu, Debian, etc. on MacBook Air
I was oddly not able to find quick hits on this topic when I searched, so I finally just tried it, and it worked so easily I was quite surprised. As a long-time attempter-of-things-so-new-that-they-often-fail, I remember when it was a hassle to install Linux on Mac. For years it was frustrating. I […]
Accessing OPNSense Web UI running within Proxmox on the WAN interface by disabling reply-to
After I migrated from pfSense to OPNSense for my firewall embedded within a Proxmox lab, I was stumped for two days looking for this obscure setting. It was a problem right out of the box: After I got the interfaces configured and assigned static IPs for the two network interfaces, I tried and tried […]
How to set default opening folder for Nautilus file manager
There are several answers given to this question at AskUbuntu.com. What worked for me was the simplest of them, and what I did was one step simpler than what was given. So here's what works for me using PopOs 20 (which is just Ubuntu 20 with some elegant UI, drivers, and useability improvements). […]
The famous Expert comedy sketch illustrates the scapegoat mechanism in play
If you have not already seen the famous 'Expert' comedy sketch, you're in for a treat. It's had 26 million views so far, so maybe you already know it. The sketch illustrates in a very funny way how badly an expert can be treated by a team of non-experts who all depend on his expert knowledge, but […]
Nginx fails while installing iRedMail (solution)
If you get this error while running the iRedMail install script: [FAIL] Starting nginx: nginx failed! invoke-rc.d: initscript nginx, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing package nginx-full (--configure): installed nginx-full package post-installation script subprocess returned […]
Getting Sketchup running on ReactOS in VirtualBox
Yes, it can be done. You have to use the 2014 version of Sketchup, and you have to tweak the Windows Imaging Component DLLs which are not installed by the .NET 4 installer. The .NET 4 installer only installs a couple of the 4 DLLs you need, so you have to deploy the other two and install/register […]
Reads article about a rogue process
Reads article about a rogue process in Windows related to Microsoft Store. Reads enough of the article to recognize it's a component he never uses, so can be safely disabled. Opens command prompt, uses it to invoke regedit to edit registry to disable the subprocess that is most suspicious, leaving […]
Getting data into Twilio parsed variable
It took several attempts, but I eventually found out why I could not access the value of a "parsed" variable within Twilio Studio while using the HTTP Widget. Someone else may encounter this error, so here's how I resolved it. The following 3 attempts are screenshots from the log viewer […]
Compile and Install FreeSWITCH 1.8.2 onto Ubuntu 18.4.2 LTS
This closely follows the excellent and very concise instructions at another site: "FreeSWITCH 1.8.2 on Ubuntu 18.4 LTS". I found a few unexpected twists and turns before it was working, so I've put this information together to help others who encounter these or similar issues. Dependencies […]
Iota is a smart, clever actor in the open source community
In a blog post too obviously spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt regarding Iota, writer Nick Johnson declares, among other things: "Iota is a bad actor in the open source community." Here is his justification: Next, and in my mind most damningly, Sergey Ivancheglo, Iota’s cofounder, […]