"I built a home lab to gain control; my network decided chaos was far more entertaining."
Dad Help #1
Using the web app version of Plex – https://app.plex.tv my Dad was unsure on how to change the audio settings and turn subtitles on / off. Hopefully these might help someone else’s Dad too 😉
Mouseover the movie until the bottom Plex bar appears and click on the ‘Settings’
Then change any of the settings
Once finished, click the Settings button again to close the options
😀
This will force a disconnect, then a re-connect to a random server hourly. There are a few other options included. The original article can be sourced here.
Firstly open a terminal and type:
sudo crontab -e
This will open the CRON list where you can set script to run at certain intervals. In this case we want this event to happen on reboot.
Add at the bottom:
# MY CRON FILE
MAILTO=""
@reboot expressvpn connect
Now save the file by pressing [ctrl] + [X], then [Y], then [enter].
Now reboot your system.
sudo reboot
Once again in the terminal, type:
expressvpn status
This will tell you which server you are connected too. To make this switch locations automatically, type this in the terminal:
sudo nano /usr/sbin/smartexpressvpn.sh
Now paste this into the blank file:
expressvpn disconnect
expressvpn refresh
# Chose any of the below
# This will make you hop all over the world
VPN=$(expressvpn list all | tail -n +4 | awk '{ print $1 }' | shuf -n 1)
# This will make you hop around using recommended connections
# VPN=$(expressvpn list all | grep ‘\Y$’ | tail -n +4 | awk '{ print $1 }' | shuf -n 1)
# Use a custom list to connect to servers in the vicinity.
# VPN=$(cat /mnt/scripts/conf/expressvpn_EU_list.txt | tail -n +4 | awk '{ print $1 }' | shuf -n 1)
expressvpn connect $VPN
Save the file by pressing [ctrl] + [X], then [Y], then [enter].
Now we need to make this bash script file executable and we do that by running the following commands from terminal:
sudo chmod +x /usr/sbin/smartexpressvpn.sh
If you want to test the script, type this in the command line:
/usr/sbin/smartexpressvpn.sh
Check where you are connected by typing:
expressvpn status
This should have changed!
Now to make this run every hour of every day automagically!
sudo crontab -e
Modify the contents to:
# MY CRON FILE
MAILTO=""
@reboot expressvpn connect
0 */1 * * * /usr/sbin/smartexpressvpn.sh
Save the file by pressing [ctrl] + [X], then [Y], then [enter].
You’re done!
Every hour on the hour your expressvpn should change locations.
Thanks to Ubuntu 101 for the guide and the commenters for cleaning up the code.
😀
Recently was given a T300RS Thustmaster Wheel, kept [alt] + [tab] ‘ing out of the game to configure the options. When re-joining my game I could not exit out of the menu screen.
After a little hunting on the internet I found you can flick to windowed mode, then fullscreen and this solves the issue.
Or if you prefer a shortcut:
[alt] + [enter]Do this twice, and your game should flick to windowed mode then back to fullscreen.
😀
I’m currently running WordPress on a Virtual Linux Machine (Debian 11) using Nginx as my web server engine.
Being new to the world of blogging I noticed my URL’s end with https://richay.com.au/?page_id=2
Where an easier URL to remember would be much better. This feature is offered in the admin panel of WordPress in Settings -> Permalinks
Where I chose to have my post name as my link.
This immediately gave 404 errors on all except my homepage of https://richay.com.au/
To remedy this and have my links working again, I had to edit my Nginx default settings:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
Replacing the part of the code:
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
With:
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
All links started working instantly and my page does not show the miserable 404 error.
My blog page is now https://richay.com.au/blog/
🙂
SSH failed to connect my Kali through guacamole. Reading up, I found this article from 3rd May 2022 on reddit.
“Knowing very little about any of this, but it seems like Guacamole only supports ssh-dss and ssh-rsa, and both have been disabled in Ubuntu.
-UniqueCSX
DSS was removed 8 years ago and it seems from my quick google that RSA has been deprecated, so hopefully Guacamole updates sometime soon.
In the meantime a workaround is adding “HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa” to the end of /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the Ubuntu machine and restart sshd. Note: I don’t have an understanding of the security implications of this, so use at your own risk”
This involves editing sshd_config
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Then adding
HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
[ctrl] + [x] to exit, [y] to overwrite, [enter] to confirm
Use at your own risk, hopefully by the time you read this the roundabout way wont be needed.
😀
Common Nextcloud first run error. Usually appears after changing the /data location.
In my case, it was when I setup Nextcloud to use my Windows NAS.
The easiest solution is to edit the config.php file on your install server (change the path to reflect your install location).
A) For regular installation:
sudo nano /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php
B) For Docker
sudo docker exec -it nextcloud /bin/bashnano /config/www/nextcloud/config/config.php
In here we can add the line
'check_data_directory_permissions' => false,[ctrl] + [x], then [y] to save, then [enter] to write and close.
This will skip the permission check and allow use of the mounted storage.
Much easier way than dealing with permissions and messing with fstab.
😀
One major hurdle I had when starting off was being able to use my NAS (Network Attached Storage) with my Linux VM’s (Virtual Machines).
Debian 11 is my flavour of choice, with cifs-utils being installed as a prerequisite.
Linux needs to mount the shares on bootup to achieve maximum uptime and autonomy. I achieved in editing the fstab file.
sudo nano /etc/fstab
This allows me to edit the Linux system’s filesystem table.
Scrolling down to the bottom, I added these lines, replacing everything in the brackets with my configuration.
//[URL]/[sharename] /media/[mountpoint] cifs vers=3.0,credentials=/home/[username]/.sharelogin,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,uid=[username],gid=[username],nofail 0 0
To not have my share login info so easily accessible, I placed them in them in a file called ‘credentials’ located in the /home/[username] directory with permissions -rw------- and it is owned by my user.
sudo nano /home/[username]/.sharelogin
The layout of this file:
username=[username]
password=[password]
domain=[domain]
I currently only use username and password for my shares so remove the domain altogether from the file.
😀