Almost here

I was hacked about a month ago by a former “friend” that used to post to this site. It took awhile to get things back together again, but we’re back in some rudimentary form.

Thanks for your patience while I sort this out. Enough victory for one day. Stay safe. Wash your hands. Brush your teeth.

Note, this assumes that you are already familiar with using dd.

I was wondering if you could do a dd image copy through ssh and a network. The answer is: YES! It is a pain in the posterior to have to physically connect backup media to the computer. No mas!

I had some syntax errors when I first tried it, but thanks to Joe S., we got it working. Here is the goodness that makes it work:


dd if=/dev/zero count=128 | od -c | (ssh [hostname] dd of=testfile)


dd is a utility that converts and copies a file. It it used to backup a partition to an image file. (iso)

I use it to take a snapshot backup of an installed working Linux System for backup purposes. This copies the entire partition (physical copy) though a network connection.

Let’s breakdown the goodness.

/dev/zero writes as many null characters as needed.

count=128 tells how many input blocks should be written. In our case, 128.

You would replace the /dev/zero with the name of the partition to be backed up. /dev/zero is used in this example for testing purposes.

od was not a command that I was familiar with. od takes the file and converts it to octal output. Do not use the od command. This was for the purposes of testing.

The ssh command takes the octal output as supplied by the od command, (note it is getting input from stdin), and directs the output to a file.

Note that this example presumes you have certificate based authentication on the target output host.

The example output looks like:

I will be off for several months due to an impending surgery.

I have the opposite problem of Numlock always off. Numlock is turned on (engages) when the screensaver is first activated.

The option is indeed turned off in the lightdm greeter.

nwayno@bart:/usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d$ cat 50-xubuntu-numlock.conf
[Seat:*]
greeter-setup-script=xubuntu-numlockx off

That status shows numlock status as off.

nwayno@bart:~$ numlockx status
Numlock is off
nwayno@bart:~$ 

In addition I added

sleep 20 && numlockx off

to the autostart file….

I have now run out of options. I have no idea why ubuntu 18.04 has a penchant for turning on numlock. It’s annoying. I don’t know if I accidentily hit caps lock or scroll lock. It’s mega annoying. But the light still is lit.

Aye!

Wayno

What a learning curve.

If you will notice, pkill-9.com is now secured via secure sockets layer. Thanks to namecheap.com. It was $9/year for an ssl certificate through name cheap, vs $75 through godaddy. Interesting learning process.

Thanks for your Patience!

Wayno

I am trying to get SSL certification done, via 3rd party. I am using namecheap.com.

Doing 3rd party registration requires a lot more effort on my part (this is all brand new to me), but $9 year with namecheap vs $75 for godaddy — that was a no brainer.

Wayno

Ouch. Does anyone else have footshooting problems today? So you accidentally clicked on the “Do not show again.” Doh!

We’ve all done that. This is an easy way to reset the notifications and popups, courtesy of the folks at the Linux Mint Forum. This is more of an internal note to myself, because I do this a few times a year, and have to schlep around till I find how to fix it again.

Using your favourite editor, create, reset_netmgr_notify.sh

Here is the easy shell script:


#!/bin/bash
#
# reset notifications for network manager to get all notification popups
#
# W. Guerrini 02/13/2018
# V1.0
#
# from: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=89627
#
#

gsettings set org.gnome.nm-applet disable-connected-notifications false
gsettings set org.gnome.nm-applet disable-disconnected-notifications false
gsettings set org.gnome.nm-applet disable-vpn-notifications false


to run the script


sh reset_netmgr_notify.sh


Easy. And this way I won’t have to schlep for it again.

Boy. Did this take a lot of schlepping to figure out. I use xubuntu/xfce because the extra keystrokes/mouse clicks required with gnome 3, puts undue stress on my repetitive stress injury. And the interface is dead simple.

Normally changing the default application in Linux is pretty easy.

For example (Thanks Joe):

And that is what you would normally see. But xubuntu uses the xfce interface.

And well, this is what you get:

Notice anything different? (other than the fact the font is too small). The details icon, does not exist! So how do you change the default program for an application? Preferred applications won’t let you change the default media player for example.

With much schlepping. I found the answer. Ta da!

Note anything with an octothorpe (#) is a comment and does NOT need to be coded. This changes the default applications GLOBALLY (for ALL users).


cd /usr/share/applications/ # change the working directory
sudo cp defaults.list defaults.list.bkp # make a backup copy first
sudo nano defaults.list


and you will see:

[Default Applications]
application/csv=libreoffice-calc.desktop
application/excel=libreoffice-calc.desktop
application/msexcel=libreoffice-calc.desktop
application/msword=libreoffice-writer.desktop
application/ogg=rhythmbox.desktop
application/oxps=evince.desktop
application/pdf=evince.desktop

and more good stuff! That is the easiest way to change the default program in xfce. No it’s not impossible (but I was beginning to think it just might be), it just requires a bit more effort.

To make the change just for the user (LOCALLY) you would be changing

.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

Wayno

ThioJoe’s explanation of Net Neutrality is the best I have found.

The future of the Internet as we know it is at stake. It’s time to write to your representatives, and ask them to enact a law prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission from dismantling Net Neutrality.

Wayno

WoW. This was messier then it needs to be, but this does work. I have tried it with xubuntu and ubuntu mate successfully. As you know, the password area is grayed out.

I use PureVpn as a Virtual Private Network provider. But this works with any provider. This is a ppp (point-to-point) connection, which is different then /dev/tun. Tun rides over the top of a ppp connection.

1. The first step is to edit the configuration file. This will be found in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections

My file looks like this:

[connection]

id=NameofConnection

uuid=YourUuid
type=vpn
autoconnect=false
permissions=
secondaries=

[vpn]

gateway=GatewayName

require-mppe=yes

user=Userid
refuse-chap=yes
refuse-eap=yes
refuse-pap=yes
password-flags=0

service-type=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp

[vpn-secrets]
password=YourPassword

[ipv4]
dns-search=
method=auto

[ipv6]
addr-gen-mode=stable-privacy
dns-search=
method=auto

Let’s try to break down what we changed. All the items I changed are bold like this. So I changed the connection name, gateway name or ip address, and userid.

Next you need to make sure that refuse-chap, refuse-eap, refuse-pap are all set to yes.

Normally the password-flags is set to 2. We need to set it to 0. This is important, so it does NOT reprompt.

Now add the section vpn-secrets with your password. Setting the flag to 0, and adding this section will save the password.

2. If not installed, install openvpn and the network-manager-openvpn.


sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn.

3. Now the tricky part. (see the problem above).

first let’s go the the directory and make a backup copy of org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy.


cd /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/
sudo cp org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy.save # make a backup copy of the file first
sudo -H gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy


As it says in the article change the line the read:

<action id="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.settings.modify.own">
.
.
.
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>

so that it says:

<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>

4. Finally restart the Network Manager:

For us old guys:


sudo service network-manager restart


or


sudo systemctl restart network-manager


A lot of people have asked for a sample .bashrc script. This is nothing fancy. It exits if the script is not executed interactively, turns on the colour prompts, sources .bash_aliases, adds /usr/sbin so some commands are executable (for debian mostly)


#!/bin/bash

unset color_prompt force_color_prompt