Fedora Server on Minix NEO Z64W

The Minix NEO Z64-W is intended to run Windows, but, since it has an Intel chipset, it runs Linux Server pretty well. Until a few days ago, I had a stable version of Ubuntu Server 20 LTS running there. A failed attempt to upgrade to Ubuntu LTS 22 brings me here.

Moving from Android to iPhone

After several years on Android, I moved recently to iPhone. Here are my takes on the process

Android history: Galaxy 2, Galaxy 4, Galaxy 6, Pocofone, Pixel 4 XL Moving to: iPhone 14 Max

Calling AWS Lambda functions from LINQPad

• Open LINQPad
• Add reference to JSON.NET
• Use this C# statement to call a Lambda function in AWS:

 var lambdaUrl = "https://<base>.amazonaws.com/default/<api>";

var message = "some message";
var data = new { message };
var payloadJson = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(data);

var client = new HttpClient();
var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Post, lambdaUrl);
request.Content = new StringContent(payloadJson, Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
var response = await client.SendAsync(request);

Console.WriteLine(await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());

In order to create/configure the lambda function, follow these steps:

• Login to AWS
• Search for Lambda
• Create new function
  • Select existing permission lambda_execution
• Go to Configuration
  • Create New trigger of type API Gateway
  • Set Security to None

Grep - Powershell style

Use this powershell command to find text in files, grep style:

 gci -r | sls 'some text'

or

 Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Select-String 'some text'

Fix apt upgrade error when connecting to fr.archive.ubuntu.com

Recently, when trying to upgrade my tiny Ubuntu Server, got this error:

Failed to fetch http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal-updates/InRelease  Cannot initiate the connection to fr.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (2001:bc8:1600:4:63f:72ff:feaf:a2de). - connect (101: Network is unreachable)

I thought that the issue was related to IPv6, so I disabled it:

nano /etc/sysctl.conf1

Add:

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1

Run sysctl -p

Confirm cat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6 It should return 1 (disabled)

This didn’t help (also got error with IPv4)

W: Failed to fetch http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/InRelease  Could not connect to fr.archive.ubuntu.com:80 (51.158.154.169), connection timed out

So, after doing a ping to fr.archive.ubuntu.com and confirming it’s down, just replaced it with us.archive.ubuntu.com:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Finally packages upgrade is running

apt-get update
apt upgrade

Installing qBitTorrent on Ubuntu Server

qBittorrent-nox includes only the Web UI http://localhost:8080

Installation instructions

sudo:

• add-apt-repository ppa:qbittorrent-team/qbittorrent-stable
• apt install qbittorrent-nox
• adduser --system --group qbittorrent-nox
• sudo adduser your-username qbittorrent-nox
• sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/qbittorrent-nox.service

[Unit]
Description=qBittorrent Command Line Client
After=network.target

[Service]
#Do not change to "simple"
Type=forking
User=qbittorrent-nox
Group=qbittorrent-nox
UMask=007
ExecStart=/usr/bin/qbittorrent-nox -d --webui-port=8080
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Service operations

• sudo systemctl start qbittorrent-nox
• sudo systemctl daemon-reload
• sudo systemctl enable qbittorrent-nox
• systemctl status qbittorrent-nox

Accessing it after install

• 192.168.0.102:8080
• Username is admin. Default password is adminadmin.

A few things missing

1. You need to install the search plugins that matched your needs and are legal in your country Open the Search Tab, and click on Search Plugins
2. If you customized the Downloads folder, it does not persist when saved from the UI Open the config file /home/qbittorrent-nox/.config/qBittorrent/qBittorrent.conf and save it the [Preferences] section ` Downloads\SavePath=/media/torrents/ `
3. Restart the service for the changes to take place systemctl restart qbittorrent-nox

Reference

Overall instructions for installing qBitTorrent on Ubuntu Server can be followed from this [link] (https://www.linuxbabe.com/ubuntu/install-qbittorrent-ubuntu-18-04-desktop-server)

How this site was created

Publishing a site using an SSG from GitHub Actions

After using Wordpress for several years (on-off), I decided to move to SSG (Static Site Generator) I come to love markdown, and the ability to write my posts from VS Code directly.

So, here I will just give a high level overwiew of what takes to create a simple site using SSG.

How To Extract a Certificate From a HTTPS Call

Export a Server Certificate Using .NET Core

Sometimes you want to programmatically extract / export the server certificates in a HTTPS call.
Well, it’s pretty simple. See below a C# working example for .NET Core

Home Server with Ubuntu and a Streaming Device

Installing Ubuntu and Tranmission in a Minix Neo Z64-W

Got a Minix Neo Z64-W from a friend, it comes with Windows, and runs pretty sluggish My old XtreamerTV device managed to burn two internal 2.5” hard drives (this is another story) So, project at hand:

• Install Ubuntu Server on the Minix Neo Z64-W
• Configure a few critical services:
  • SSH
  • Samba (to access content in the local network, upnp is better, but VLC cannot get subtitles using upnp)
  • duf (just because)
• Mount external USB disk, and make sure it’s mounted after restart
• Install Transmission

Powershell: Delete all local branches except master

Assuming your local git repo is on master, you can delete all local branches except master using this one-line powershell script:

git branch | foreach { $_.split( "`n" ) } | foreach { if ($_ -ne '* master' ) { git branch -D $_.replace(' ', '') } }