Linux
Upgrading a non-LTS Ubuntu installation after EOL
If you don't upgrade a non-LTS release (eg: 21.10) to a supported version before End-Of-Life, you will be dealing with a rather awkward user experience. Here is what happens:
$ do-release-upgrade
Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading.
Yet if you atempt to install updates, that fails:
$ apt dist-upgrade -y
Err:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish Release
404 Not Found [IP: 2001:67c:1562::18 80]...
Essentially, apt cache knows about some pending updates, but the actual packages are not longer available. You can't update them, so you can't upgrade your OS.
Continue reading "Upgrading a non-LTS Ubuntu installation after EOL"
Linux
Upgrading a non-LTS Ubuntu installation after EOL»
If you don't upgrade a non-LTS release (eg: 21.10) to a supported version before End-Of-Life, you will be dealing with a rather awkward user experience. Here is what happens:
$ do-release-upgrade
Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading.
Yet if you atempt to install updates, that fails:
$ apt dist-upgrade -y
Err:5 ...
Linux
Preserving a Static Copy of Atlassian Jira (and Confluence) as a Jekyll Site»
Last month an old Jira installation I own was compromised via a recent vulnerability. This is bound to happen. Keeping a public product like that secure would require very frequent patching, which is a lot of maintenance. Fortunately, this installation is only a historical record of a popular open-source project (current development uses github issues). In other words, I can get away with ...
DevOps
Linux
Bootstrapping S3/CloudFront with LetsEncrypt»
Let's assume that you want to do the following:
Host the contents of your S3 bucket via YOUR.DOMAIN.COM
Use CloudFront
Use a LetsEncrypt cert
"What's the problem?" , you may ask. There are plenty of tutorials for this stuff. Not exactly. A CloudFront Distribution will not let you add a CNAME until you have an SSL cert, but you can't use certbot to auto-provision an SSL ...
Hardware Hacks
Adventures in Modifying a UPS for external DC power and LiFePO4 batteries»
I have an ancient APC Smart-UPS 1400 RMNET. It's a very nice UPS, but I have frequent multi-hour power outages and battery life becomes a problem. I have these issues:
Short battery runtime , especially as batteries age
Lead-acid batteries require frequent replacement and quickly lose capacity (and there are 4 of them)
UPS will not accept 110v from a cheap generator (mine is a ...
DevOps
Linux
PowerShell on Linux doesn't find modules when run through Puppet»
I'm running PowerShell on Linux for the sake of using PowerCLI . An interesting thing happens: when pwsh is run interactively, in a terminal, the following works fine when PowerCLI is already installed:
pwsh -c 'Get-InstalledModule VMware.PowerCLI'
When puppet runs it - it doesn't find the module:
Get-Package: ...
DevOps
Java
Gradle Toolchains Support - different JVMs for compile and test»
I'm testing a product that needs to be compiled with JDK 8 but tested (sometimes) on JDK 11. This is now possible to do with maven surefire (although that took some effort). With gradle, I was doing it as follows, which is terrible, even if the path comes from configuration:
// The old way: test { executable = '/some/hardcoded/path/to/java' } ...
DevOps
Linux
Puppet recipe for setting up autossh via systemd»
I've always set up autossh in /etc/rc.local , but with CentOS 8 that doesn't work well (things start too early, etc). Luckily, there is a nicer way using systemd templates. Essentially, all you have to do is create one symlink and one config file per instance of autossh.
Example:
Make a config file
/etc/autossh/mything.conf:
OPTIONS=-N -M 20000 ...
DevOps
Using puppet to set Windows Computer Description» My company's security department decided to assign Antivirus exclusion policies based on the value of the windows computer description. That means that I need to set computer descriptions ( net config server /srvcomment:"new description" ) to the same value on a whole bunch of windows machines. Doing that by hand is unappealing, and I already have puppet, so here is a simple solution: ...
Low Tech Hacks
Replacing Dishwasher Circulation Pump Bearings without buying a whole new unit»
I have a DW80j3020us/AA Samsung dishwasher. It has been producing a loud noise for some time, and the noise kept getting worse. It was a matter of time before it either seized or melted the motor. The reason I know that the problem is with the circulation pump is that the noise is only audible while it's washing (circulating), not while draining or filling. Clearly the problem could be ...
Android
Android doing Optimizing app 1 of 1 on every boot» The message appears for a good 15 minutes every time my phone boots up. I followed the usual suggestions (wipe cache partition), and that didn't help
Figuring out what app is causing this issue is the hard part. I did it with logcat (I happened to have the Android Studio installed, so logcat is a tab, and it displays the log automatically as the plugged-in phone is booting). You ...
DevOps
Disabling Windows Recycle Bin with Puppet on all versions of Windows» And when I say "All versions of Windows" I mean that I tested it on Server 2008, 2012 and 2016.
This was oddly hard to figure out, and most tutorials either apply to only one version of windows or to outdated tools. The best way to do this that I found was using Local Group Policy. Now, how to automate this? The puppet local group policy module didn't work at all when I tried it ...
DevOps
Jenkins Pipeline: parallel and waitUntil, waiting until the other branch finishes» Let's say that for the sake of speed, you are running two slow things in parallel, but you want one to wait for the other.
parallel one: { node { sh "sleep 15" } } , two: { node { //slow part: sh "sleep ...
