Linux

Yes, linux on a stick, otherwise know as a usb drive. I’m not talking about a live usb version of Linux. I am talking about actually install Linux on a usb drive. I was curious over the weekend, how cool would it be to install Linux on a usb drive and be able to use any computer to boot up and use my own same operating system each time with persistent data. Meaning that I can update, install and change whatever I want and be able to have the versatility of using whatever computer that may be around.

I had read a couple of articles regarding this and decided to give it a try. I used Virtualbox to create a virtual machine. During the creation, I did not create the virtual hard drive portion. Under the USB section, I made sure to choose USB 3.0 and with the USB drive plugged in, I added it to that section. In the network section, I kept the network option to NAT and everything else I setup according to what I would normally do. Those don’t technically matter because when you boot up, the OS will use the system resources directly. One other thing that I had to select was to use EFI. With that option selected, you get the option to boot up with systemd and not grub. That did make a difference.

I use Arch for this. One thing I found out is that you want to use the latest installer. I would say that no matter which Linux version you use, to use the latest installer to make sure you get the latest mirrors and such. I have tried this on one of the laptops at home and it worked beeeaauuttiifffuullyyyy! It was awesome. When I was done and shutdown the laptop, removed the USB drive and started the laptop up, it booted right into windblows again. So with this method, you have a portable OS that you can take anywhere and use on any computer.

I did try using this on my work computer, but they have that locked down so you can’t get to the boot menu. I may try it again at some point just in case I picked the wrong option, but regardless, I have a couple more laptops at home that I can test it on in the mean time.

This was a fun experiment and I have to say that the results were Linux running blazing fast, even over a USB port. My next option would be to run it over USB C and I imagine the OS would be even faster.

So I was curious about being certified in Linux and found this website. https://www.lpi.org/ - The learning materials are free and so far from what I can see, they have done a good job. You have to pay for the test and it looks like the testing is through Pearson Vue. I am one of those that believes you shouldn’t have to have certifications or degrees to get a job, especially if you have the experience and know how to do the job.

It never hurts to have them and if you are interested in a Linux Certifications, this may be a good place to start. What are all of your thoughts regarding this website and these types of certifications?

So I am posting here because I have come to the decision that I am going to run my VPS using Arch. Why am I doing this you ask? Well there is the old just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I have been doing a bunch of research and have found that anytime you want to upgrade to the new version of whatever server you are using, Debian, Ubuntu, or whatever other flavor, you have to install a fresh new server because if you don’t, well then you will end up doing that anyway. It takes a lot of time and if you want to upgrade or run some of the latest software you can run into some issues with that.

I am currently using Debian with Virtualmin and everntually, maybe years, will have to upgrade my server to the next version. I have been researching Arch and due to it using a rolling release to keep it updated, I potentially would never have to reinstall it when a new version comes out.

Some downfalls to Arch is that virtualmin doesn’t work on it. Webmin will work on it, but in my development environment where I am testing and setting things up using Arch, it actually isn’t that hard to get things setup. Once you get everything initially setup then the part that can be time consuming is setting up a new website on your server. Although, once you do that a few times, it goes pretty quick. Now this is not setting up the email server and such, but that is for another time. I would just set that up to just send emails from the webpages and not worry about receiving at this time.

So for instance, a new version of phpmyadmin came out and when I did a system upgrade, it upgrade my phpadmin to the latest version. Now my plan is to have one or two virtual servers running on my machine and performing those updates on them before running the updates on the production server. There won’t be a graphical interface, it will all be command line.

That is my newly crazy fresh idea that probably isn’t so fresh. I know a lot of people advise against this and that using Debian or one of the others is more stable, but I do kinda like the idea of being the most up to date with patches and the like.

What do you all think? Do you think this is too crazy and I should stick with Debian and Virtualmin or go for it and see how it goes? Not trying to create a distribution war, but just looking to what people really think and if this is something that any of you would actually try.

Hello Mark,

I’m using and configuring my domain with CloudFlare/virtualmin and would like to be able to use virtualmin and postfix so that applications on my server (like vaultwarden for example) can send emails securely via selhosted SMTP.

Being a little lost in this jungle, could you do a detailed tutorial with screen for :

DNS/Cloudflare configuration (SPF, MX, DKIM, DMARC) Activate email on a virtualmin domain with postfix Configure email postfix on virtualmin and postfix Configure firewall for emailing (virtualkmin) Testing

Thank a lot in advance.

DownPW

Hello mark

It’s strange this evening I no longer had SSL access to my dev environment

I had a zeroSSL CA certificate that was still valid until the end of the month.
I rebooted the machine as well.

So I checked my DNS, Cloudflare, domain name, nginx service, all is OK.
I regenerated a certificate on zero SSL but I got an error saying there is a problem with the certificate (invalid certificate)

9166b7c8-1471-4246-b43b-13790a664197-image.png

Your connection is not private
Malicious individuals may be trying to steal your personal information from the nodebbdev.xxxxxx.fr site (passwords, messages or credit card numbers, for example). Learn more
NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

fbbc49fc-9887-4c41-ac28-9eede0a83bd6-image.png

I can Bypass the message but that’s not the goal

From time to time, here or there, we see subjects flourish on an abnormally limited speed in FTP.
To overcome this kind of slowdown, simply activate the TCP BBR protocol

Without going into details, this protocol makes it possible to make better use of the bandwidth available during the exchange of TCP packets. Created by Google, you can find more information here.

Integrated into the Linux Kernel since version 4.9, all you have to do to activate it is to edit the kernel parameters (/etc/sysctl.conf) and add :

net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = bbr net.core.default_qdisc = fq

A TCP command acting in both IPv4 and v6,

save and load with :

sudo sysctl -p

And we go from a restricted FTP speed
crazy 🙂

If you are under Proxmox or ESXi, this must be done both on the host and in the VM/CT.

May i lost my database if i m continue update mango db?

Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Calculating upgrade... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libfwupdplugin1 libxmlb1 Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them. Try Ubuntu Pro beta with a free personal subscription on up to 5 machines. Learn more at https://ubuntu.com/pro The following NEW packages will be installed: libxmlb2 The following packages have been kept back: mongodb-org mongodb-org-database mongodb-org-mongos mongodb-org-server mongodb-org-shell mongodb-org-tools The following packages will be upgraded: cloud-init fwupd grub-efi-amd64 grub-efi-amd64-bin grub-efi-amd64-signed libfwupd2 libfwupdplugin5 sosreport tzdata 9 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 6 not upgraded. Need to get 5,139 kB of archives. After this operation, 402 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

what is docker is it a kind of bucket in an ocean (server)?
it is live vm-ware … emulator?

is using a docker a good habbit? as we see discourse runs on a docker what the complications of using docker are?

Hello @all @phenomlab

NodeBB haven’t got a great chat plugin or native chat system.
Global chat plugin is very good but he haven’t got moderation tools and it’s a problem.

For my test, I research a good IRC server for Debian 11 to install on my VM.
I would like to have Moderation Tools and a GUI for the Configuration (Moderation ,channels etc…)

For the Client, I have install The Lounge on the VM, it’s a server client IRC wirth GUI, he is very great 😉

There may be better than IRC servers/clients, but the IRC server/The lounge combo has the advantage of being quite simple without necessarily having user databases.
Afterwards, if we have a app or system that can interface with the NodeBB user database, that would be great. (IRC server too)

Thanks my friends

hello sir, i have installed Virtualmin on a new digital ocean droplet as far i know everything is working fine but i could not point server to my subdomain

here are my CF settings

e6afb3d1-84bc-4d82-a989-0c9a045320e4-image.png

i am not sure what i am missing. i have sent my Virtualmin DNS records over PM please tell me how to configure them correctly

Hi, i see plesk is more easy to handle the server and i would like to go with plesk but will have have full ssh control over server? I can install redies right?

I agree both will have their own advantages and disadvantages but most likely i will only run flarum in this droplet and I will be needing light speed cache, somone has developed a extension for flarum

Hello how can I enable root login in debian 11? “PermitRootLogin yes” doesn’t seem to work anymore

Hello and thank you in advance for your help.
I am running a Digital Ocean Droplet with Ubuntu Server 20.04. I have Virtualmin, Webmin and the package for that setup. I have the same setup for a dev platform that I test before making update live on the production server. I am also using pm2 to run my node applications with a proxy website under the domain in virtualmin pointing to http://127.0.0.1:PORT.

I am having trouble on where to put environment variables.

I have tried this location and the variables just don’t work. In my node app I am using process.env.VARIABLE.
97e71179-231d-4315-8efe-06a8a749d069-image.png

I have also put variables in /etc/environment and have created a sh file with the variables in /etc/profile.d folder.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong or if I need to be adding these variables in a totally different spot. I have done hours of research on the internet. The current solution that I have somewhat working is putting the variables in both /etc/environment and /etc/profile.d/myvariables.sh.

In /etc/environment I am using the following format:

VARIABLE_NAME=whatiwantthevaluetobe

In the myvariables.sh I am using the format below:

export VARIABLE_NAME=whatiwantthevauletobe

I am lost and need some help getting back on the path and the proper way to make this work. Let me know if you need any other info and thanks again for the help.

Hello guys, i’m back!
to learn how to manage a droplet, i’ve buyed a new server at digitalocean and migrated (under construction) my old justoverclock website to a ghost cms (that is so difficult to configure for me).

the website works (but is half english and half italian for now, idk how to translate).

and now i’m about to install flarum but i have “experience problem”. first of all i’ve installed mysql (i think is ok).

and i want to install php my admin because i know how to use it. but i can’t install apache, it doesnt work following the various resource on internet…i’m really frustrated and stucked.

is my very FIRST experience with droplet so be gentle if i made stupid questions.

Unable to ping ip or host in linux
I get this error
ping: sendmsg: Operation not permitted
I tried all the solutions listed on google none of them worked for me can anyone help me ping work in my ubuntu?

with the help of Mark i have a flarum instance on forum.justoverclock.it.
i’ve noticed that i can’t post if blomstra realtime is installed.

following the guide i’ve installed supervisor…but i can’t get it to work…i need to add something else?

Hi,

When I run “sudo systemctl restart apache2”

It says: Job for apache2.service failed because the control process exited with error code.

after I run “sudo journalctl -xe”

It returns with a lot message, which are all the same, as following: I wonder is my server get attack by the following IP, “31.130.184.78”? 🙂

I believe that I haven’t made any settings for my virtualmin server. Can anyone please tell me what are the basic settings to protect my server.

Sep 19 18:13:35 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097168]: warning: unknown[31.130.184.78]: SASL LOGIN authentication failed: generic failure Sep 19 18:13:35 domain.org postfix/sm~~strikethrough text~~tpd[1097168]: disconnect from unknown[31.130.184.78] ehlo=1 auth=0/1 rset=1 quit=1 commands=3/4 Sep 19 18:13:37 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: connect from unknown[31.130.184.78] Sep 19 18:13:38 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directo> Sep 19 18:13:38 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: warning: unknown[31.130.184.78]: SASL LOGIN authentication failed: generic failure Sep 19 18:13:38 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: disconnect from unknown[31.130.184.78] ehlo=1 auth=0/1 rset=1 quit=1 commands=3/4 Sep 19 18:13:39 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097168]: connect from unknown[31.130.184.78] Sep 19 18:13:40 domain.org sshd[1097503]: Connection reset by 218.92.0.201 port 11963 [preauth] Sep 19 18:13:41 domain.org sudo[1097507]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): Couldn't open /etc/securetty: No such file or directory Sep 19 18:13:41 domain.org sshd[1097505]: Invalid user dock from 183.162.79.39 port 58916 Sep 19 18:13:41 domain.org sshd[1097505]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): check pass; user unknown Sep 19 18:13:41 domain.org sshd[1097505]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=183.162.79.39 Sep 19 18:13:41 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097168]: warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directo> Sep 19 18:13:41 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097168]: warning: unknown[31.130.184.78]: SASL LOGIN authentication failed: generic failure Sep 19 18:13:42 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097168]: disconnect from unknown[31.130.184.78] ehlo=1 auth=0/1 rset=1 quit=1 commands=3/4 Sep 19 18:13:43 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: connect from unknown[31.130.184.78] Sep 19 18:13:43 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directo> Sep 19 18:13:43 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: warning: unknown[31.130.184.78]: SASL LOGIN authentication failed: generic failure Sep 19 18:13:43 domain.org postfix/smtpd[1097238]: disconnect from unknown[31.130.184.78] ehlo=1 auth=0/1 rset=1 quit=1 commands=3/4 Sep 19 18:13:43 domain.org sshd[1097505]: Failed password for invalid user dock from 183.162.79.39 port 58916 ssh2 Sep 19 18:13:44 domain.org sudo[1097507]: pam_unix(sudo:auth): Couldn't open /etc/securetty: No such file or directory Sep 19 18:13:44 domain.org sudo[1097507]: user : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/user ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/journalctl -xe Sep 19 18:13:44 domain.org sudo[1097507]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by user(uid=0)

I was wondering if anyone could come up with a list of advantages and disadvantages of swapping from Windows to Ubuntu?