After combing through the docs and several how–tos on deploying the {{Squid proxy}} server – none of which really did everything I wanted, of course – I’ve finally gotten to the format below. Installing Squid is easy-peasy – it’s in the standard package repos for the major platforms ({{CentOS}}/{{Fedora}}/{{RHEL}}, {{Ubuntu}}/{{Debian}}, etc) – so just run …
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Tag:how-to
results from running pi-hole for several weeks
I came across pi-hole recently – an ad blocker and {{DNS}} service that you can run on a {{Raspberry Pi}} in Raspian (or any {{Debian}} or {{Ubuntu}} (ie Debian-like)) system. Using pi-hole should obviate the need for running ad-blockers in your browser (so long as you’re on a network that is running DNS queries through pi-hole). …
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change your default font in windows 10
Starting from a tutorial I found recently, I want to share how to change your default font in Windows 10 – but in a shorter edition than that long one (and in, I think, a less-confusing way). Back in the Good Ole Days™, you could easily change system font preferences by right-clicking on your desktop, …
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turn on spf filtering with postfix and centos 7
After running my new server for a while, I was noticing an unusually-high level of bogus email arriving in my inbox – mail that was being spoofed to look like it was coming from myself (to myself). After a great deal of research, I learned there is a component of the {{DNS}} specification that allows …
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how did i never know about .ssh/config?
I’m sure folks have tried to explain this to me before, but it wasn’t until today that it finally clicked – using .ssh/config will save you a world of hurt when managing various systems from a {{Linux}} host (I imagine it works on other platforms, too – but I’ve only started using it on {{CentOS}}). …
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an even cleaner facebook most recent feed
Several months ago, I wrote-up a brief how-to on just showing the most recent news feed on Facebook. I added a new Chrome extension today that helps speed-up your Facebook experience – Facebook Flat. It makes your Facebook views “flat” from a design perspective (no pun intended, but the extension falls a little flat when …
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putting owncloud 8 on a subdomain instead of a subdirectory on centos 7
After moving to a new server, I wanted to finally get {{ownCloud}} up and running (over SSL, of course) on it. And I like subdomains for different services, so I wanted to put it at sub.domain.tld. This turns out to be not as straight-forward as one might otherwise hope, sadly – ownCloud expects to be …
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automated let’s encrypt ssl certificate renewal on centos 7
In my how-to for Let’s Encrypt, I gave an example script that can be called via cron (or manually) which will renew Let’s Encrypt {{SSL}} certificates under {{CentOS}} 6. If you want to do it on {{CentOS}} 7 (which is what I am now running), use the following: cd ~/letsencrypt git pull systemctl stop httpd.service …
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lock screen slideshow in windows 10
In similar fashion to what I wrote about for {{OS X}} last year, and spurred by this article from {{Microsoft}}, here is my brief guide for doing the same on {{Windows 10}}. Click your Notifications button near the clock. Now click All Settings And you’ll see this Click Personalization, then Lock Screen. Select “Slideshow” from the …
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i’m a medium plogger now*
(*Though most people would call me an {{XXXL}} blogger.) Following in the steps of Dave Winer, I am now plogging (sorta) on Medium. And, like Mr Winer, I’m doing it via IFTTT (though not via {{RSS}}, I’m doing it via the {{WordPress}} channel). If you’d like to do the same, use this IFTTT recipe.
let’s encrypt centos 6 – truly free ssl
There’s been quite a bit of excitement surrounding Let’s Encrypt recently – a truly 100% free {{SSL}} issuer. Last week I helped a friend of mine get his first Let’s Encrypt certificate generated and configured for his website. One of the things I found incredibly frustrating is that Let’s Encrypt does not have a package …
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show only most recent facebook news feed
(Note: I did this in Chrome – it’ll be a little different in other browsers) I have several complaints about the book of the face – not least of which is that it likes to reset your News Feed from “Most Recent” (aka most useful) to “Top Stories” (aka whatever Facebook wants you to see). …
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system-wide proxying with os x (yosemite)
Perhaps you’re at a coffee shop, and want to ensure your communication is secure. Or maybe you are out of the country, and need access to something like annualcreditreport.com. What’s a body to do? If you have a Mac, set up a system-wide proxy setting for a new Location, of course! This is a very …
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owncloud vs pydio – more diy cloud storage
Last week I wrote a how-to on using Pydio as a front-end to a MooseFS distributed data storage cluster. The big complaint I had while writing that was that I wanted to use ownCloud, but it doesn’t Just Work™ on {{CentOS}} 6*. After finishing the tutorial, I decided to do some more digging – because …
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create your own clustered cloud storage system with moosefs and pydio
This started-off as a how-to on installing ownCloud. But their own installation procedures don’t work for the 8.0x release and {{CentOS}} 6. Most of you know I’ve been interested in distributed / cloud storage for quite some time. And that I find MooseFS to be fascinating. As of 2.0, MooseFS comes in two flavors – the …
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ifttt & box drive my desktop backgrounds … with a little cron happiness
I love that {{OS X}} lets me change my background on a schedule (I use every 30 minutes now). But I don’t like having to find pictures to populate my desktop menagerie with. Enter completely SFW backgrounds via RSS feeds! Using IFTTT, I watch for new items from a variety of daily photo feeds, and …
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merging centos iso images
Thanks to @Anon on Unix.SE for the pointer on how to do this. And to @Andy‘s comment on @mmckinst‘s answer for the warning about additional packages you may need. As my three readers know, I run a {{CentOS}} mirror. One of the idiosyncrasies of CentOS, like its upstream {{RHEL}}, is that DVD ISOs aren’t always just one image – …
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a sample cfengine promise bundle – delete “large” files
body common control { bundlesequence => { “file_remover” }; } bundle agent file_remover { vars: “bigfile” int => “1g”; files: “/home” delete => tidy, file_select => files_too_big, depth_search => recurse(“inf”); reports: “Deleted files over $(bigfile) in size from /home”; } body depth_search recurse(d) { depth => “$(d)”; } body delete tidy { dirlinks => “delete”; …
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setting-up etherpad in centos 6
To add to my tutorial collection, here’s how to setup EtherPad on CentOS 6 (x64). As in the IRC tutorial, I used a Digital Ocean VM for this 🙂 What is EtherPad? It’s an open-source collaborative text editor that works like Google Docs – ie, all editors/viewers can see changes from everyone else in realtime. …
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automatically extract email attachments with common linux tools
I had need to automatically process emails to a specific address to pull attachments out, and this is how I did it: $ yum install mpack $ cat extract-attach.sh #!/bin/bash rm -rf ~/attachtmp mkdir ~/attachtmp mv ~/Maildir/new/* ~/attachtmp cd ~ munpack ~/attachtmp/* rm -rf ~/attachtmp $ crontab -l */5 * * * * ~/extract-attach.sh Why, …
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setting up an unreal irc server on centos 6
Ever want to run an IRC server? I recently set one up at irc.datente.com using a Digital Ocean VM running CentOS 6.5 x64. Here’s what I did, if you want to replicate the process for yourself (full documentation available from Unreal’s website): acquire CentOS 6.5 x64 server (as I mentioned, I used Digital Ocean) `yum …
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designing a Bible study
When I browse the shelves at Family Christian, Lifeway, or even Barnes & Noble, I see various and sundry Bible studies by all kinds of authors: for the ladies, {{Kay Arthur}}, {{Beth Moore}}, & {{Priscilla Shirer}}; for the gents (or coed), there’s {{John MacArthur}}, {{David Platt}}, {{Dr David Jeremiah}}, and many many more. What I’ve …
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community building is hard
Establishing and building a community around a common interest is hard. After exhausting your network of friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc – the only way of getting new folks into the community is to aggressively campaign and advertise to them. Let’s say you’re a technical user group (like a couple of the ones I’m a part …
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updates to connexions modules
Starting this week, and continuing over the next several weeks, there will be several updates and expansions coming to my published Connexions Collection (original publishing comments), “Debugging and Supporting Software Systems“. I would love to collect feedback and be able to incorporate any suggestions for improvement that you may have. Please feel free to either …
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How to Study the Bible
In follow-up to my last post about {{George Guthrie}}’s book {{Read the Bible for Life}}, I wanted to give some more thoughts on how to study the Bible in practical ways. Let the Bible speak for itself “The Word of God is living and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). Given that this is true, …
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