Author: dk

Upgrading Ubuntu Server LTS 16.04 to 18.04 (aka GDM and x11vnc)

Posted on by dk

So, the time has come to upgrade my Ubuntu Server LTS 16.04 to the latest LTS 18.04…

It’s a straight-forwards upgrade, easy-peasy, right?

The Triumph Defeat of Hope Over Reality

Compared to what Linux used to be in the recent past, the upgrade via the stock 16.04 UI went fairly smooth…

I already knew that I had to do the standard ZFS pool upgrade:

sudo zpool upgrade <poolname>

But after the whole upgrade was done, I tried to VNC into the machine again after it rebooted… and failed.

2018/12/25 Update:

I suddenly noted that my Unifi Controller was no longer working… I later discovered that it was due to the Ubuntu LTS upgrade… Another day, another battle…

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When Firefox Does A Microsoft… (aka Forcing Firefox To Listen To YOUR Settings And NOT Update…)

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So, Firefox decided to drop support for “old technology” plugins… Since I could not find web-extension updates for some of my required plugins or they are not ready yet (e.g. Tab Mix Plus, now called Tab Mix – Links)…

Easy-peasy: install ESR 52.9.0, then disable auto-updates… Done!

Not quite… I booted my PC this morning only to find Firefox, flicking a big middle finger to all its advanced users, had ignored my settings to not auto update – and proceeded to update itself to ESR 60.2…

Obviously, this got me royally pissed as I had to waste time rolling back and setting it up as I originally chose (i.e. no updates); and so I wasted some time to track down and neuter their update capabilities once and for all.

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My PC Is Suffering From Insomnia…

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Quite a while back, my Windows 10 PC installed malware updates mandated by Microsoft, and it subsequently failed to resume from S3 sleep, for reasons which I did not have the time to investigate. I skirted the issue by disabling S3 sleep in BIOS, leaving only S1 sleep states available, which still worked…

About a week or two back, I started realising that my computer would not go to sleep at all…

I needed to find the root cause and cure its insomnia; something was preventing Windows from going to sleep…

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Microsoft: All You Beta Testers Belong To Us… (or “The Case of The Useless Drive”)…

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With the shift to a more “app-like”, “force an update down your throat whether you like it or not” attitude from Microsoft, they have also seemingly shifted their testing stance and shafting their customers, taking from Xiaomi’s playbook: You are now our beta tester.

You Have a New (largely useless) Drive!

One of my family members have been complaining that an “E” drive suddenly appeared out of the blue. Navigating to it using Windows Explorer or via the command prompt shows it as empty, but, Windows Explorer shows the drive as “nearly full” (red bar), and Windows 10 continuously complains that the “E” drive is “full”…

Nothing in the Disk Management Microsoft Management Console “applet” could allow me to remove the drive letter, showing the partition type as an “OEM Parititon” – one of two that Microsoft littered on the already-small SSD like so many rabbit droppings (two other partitions are by the laptop manufacturer).

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Securing pfSense SSH2…

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So, as exposing the HTTPS administration page of pfSense to the big, bad, Internet is a big “no no”, the only proper way should be to set up SSH2 and allow port forwarding.

Now, there are already articles out there telling you that using username+passwords to secure SSH2 is not the way to go… Using certificates is. However, I wanted more… I wanted both… Why is it that pfSense will only allow one or the other when sshd already allows enforcement of both?

So, once again, rolling up my sleeves, I dived into the murky waters of the pfSense shell…

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Software Firewall…

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The Problem

I have been using an Asus RT-AC68U, followed by an RT-AC87U, running Merlin’s firmware with customised firewall scripts for the longest time. However, both units had a persistent issue with some (not all) sites being inaccessible, total resets and re-configuration from scratch regardless.

Having confirmed it was an issue with the router(s) and not the firmware nor firewall rules nor server-side blocks, and not being able to find a solution, I decided to just utilise a software firewall. One that I knew well and trusted was/is pfSense.

The Other Problem

At the very same time, I finally discovered that the boot failures of my server was actually due to the PSU (read other Amazon reviews citing similar fan-spin-up-then-dies failures). Having not had time to look at the frequently (and randomly rebooting server), I finally purchased whatever SFX module that was in stock at the local “IT complex” – another Silverstone SST-SX600-G unit… Crossing my fingers that the PSU was the culprit…

2018/06/04 Update: Nope, false hope again… Server is still rebooting rather “randomly” despite using a brand new Corsair SF600…

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Server Upgrade

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Ever since the idea of setting up my own reliable server had me thinking “I need ECC”…

So, over the period of some 6 months, I finally bit the bullet (not to mention the credit card) and purchased an Asrock C236WSI, Intel Xeon E3-1225v6 and 2x Kingston ValueRAM ECC DDR4 2400MHz 16GB UDIMMs… Culminating in final receipt of all the items in July 2017 (I purchased the two sticks of RAM within a day of each other, but Amazon shipped the wrong item for the second stick… twice).

So yes, this post is long overdue… And basically explains the long gap between the last post mid-2017 till now – I have been fighting with this new server hardware and the original draft was first drawn up in September 2017 (refer to date in the URL/permalink).

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Ubuntu and UPS…

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No, I am not talking about the delivery kind…

With an existing PROLiNK 902S 2000VA online UPS providing clean power to my (aging) desktop, I thought it time to finally get a proper UPS for my NAS instead of the old, line-interactive PROLiNK PRO1200SVU that already had to have its dying battery replaced once.

Fortunately, I managed to get a PROLiNK 903S 3000VA unit.

Like the 902S and my desktop, the 903S has its USB cable plugged directly into a/the computer, in the hope of using the provided ViewPower software to monitor the UPS and cleanly and safely shutdown the host should power interruptions occur.

Unfortunately, installation was not at all simple, particularly not since the user manual has no mention of installing the software on Linux (even if the software is “compatible” with Linux, being Java-based).

Googling did not help much, with most/all the returned pages referencing the use of NUTS instead of the intended/provided ViewPower, not to mention needing to “hack” your own “configuration file”, with no guarantee that the runtime calculations are correct.

After much fumbling around, searching and testing, I managed to get it to work…

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Windows Refusing to “Open With” Using Notepad++ Portable…

Posted on by dk

So, fed-up with an outdated, “sanctified” version of Notepad++ “published” by the IT team at my workplace on my work laptop, I uninstalled the published version, grabbed a copy of the portable version (choose the appropriate .zip or .7z package) and proceeded to live happily ever after…

Well… Not quite… Whenever I attempted to use Windows Explorer’s “Open with…” context menu option, attempting to select the Notepad++ portable’s executable would not have any result – the dialogue would just continue to sit there…

After some soul Google searching, I stumbled across the solution.

The registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\notepad++.exe\shell\open\command was still pointing at the uninstalled, (now) non-existent executable. Pointing it to the correct location made Notepad++ show up immediately as one of the selectable applications.