An average guy's IT (mis)adventures

I've had my hands full in the last few weeks.. let's see what's new for @wpn

1. First of all, I removed some #DNS records (and related services), namely:

laltrowiki (our (me and old friends) wiki didn't really fit with @wpn - I'm keeping it for myself)

trilium (note-taking app which I kept on @wpn, but was only personal.. Now it's hosted at home)

grocy (pantry/shopping aid app, same as trilium above)

2. Have upgraded plugins for roundcube #webmail and FreshRSS, #RSS reader. Main services are always up-to-date, while these were some additions due from time to time.

3. Have done some tinkering with this blog's and xmpp-it homepage's #sqlite DBs: if you're interested, follow here

4. Have installed and then removed 2 #gemini to #html #proxies, because I believe the one I've been (and still am) using so far, is the best one. I also tweaked its stylesheet a bit. The two proxies I tried are september and kineto, while the one currently in use is loxy

5. I have first upgraded uptime-kuma to V2 Beta but then backed it up and moved to gatus, which lacks some features but it's also lightweight and straightforward. During the process we lost webhooks live notifications (about services status) for XMPP chatroom, so I have also installed ntfy server and related Android app, but, obviously, I'm currently the only one to see those. If any of @wpn users is interested, I can share info about the "topic", server's "address:port" and such. For the time being everything is in plain and without authentication.. Don't think that @wpn's services status notifications are so "sensible" info to require encryption, so I didn't even bother 😀

6. It's "6" already.. wow!

transmission-daemon was replaced by good-old rtorrent and that also got a web-ui, which only myself can access so far.

All of the aforementioned changes and fixes were mainly meant to reduce the load on the machine, in order to provide a better experience for everyone. Things still look complicated though, because even if there was a significant decrease in RAM usage, CPU, on the other side, seems almost worsened - and I still can't explain that, apart from thinking contabo maybe doing oversubscription of resources on their host.

Last 2 things, then I'll shut-up! 😁

• Some of the users' home directories (only the ones which belongs to me or are system-related users account) are now backed-up via rsnapshot to my #homelab. I intend to write an how-to on that topic, further ahead in time, because I'm still testing/figuring it out.

• The onboarding tool has got a new checkbox for (legal) age verification.

That's it. Feel free to tale a "tour" if you're new or haven't had the chance yet: https://woodpeckersnest.space/

See you soon!

I am most productive at night, when there is finally silence - apart from background music. The last couple hours of this Wednesday brought some nice additions to the @wpn support MUC:

• chat is not XMPP only anymore, but it got bridged to Matrix, via "matterbridge".
• a bot is now sending "BOFH excuses" to the chat, once a day.

XMPP MUC can be reached from: https://invite.woodpeckersnest.space/#status@chat.woodpeckersnest.space?join

Matrix room can be reached from: https://matrix.to/#/#wpn:matrix.org

Bridged chat means that everything being written in any of those rooms, gets relayed to the other by bots: there are in fact 2 bots connected to the 2 rooms, one is an XMPP bot and the other is a Matrix one, operated by "matterbridge", as I said earlier.

About "BOFH excuses", they are some fortune cookies from the relative Linux package, which are all about "Bastard Operators From Hell" excuses.. They are some short funny sentences about IT which an imaginary Operator (sysop, sysadmin, you name it) could say as excuse to justify issues.

Example?

BOFH excuse #266:
All of the packets are empty.

I have the same script running on gemini, at gemini://woodpeckersnest.space/cgi-bin/bofh

Basically it's some python spaghetti which runs the fortune command, does some formatting to the resulting text and sends it over gemini, or in the case of @wpn chat, over webhook to one other bot, which then posts its content to XMPP. It's more complicated to explain than do it 😀

P.S. @wpn support MUC is not publicly listed, so even if I'm posting links which may be used to join it, it should be treated as limited to @wpn users only.

gemlog

Yet another small update about gemini.

You can now browse gemini://woodpeckersnest.space even from regular HTTP, here: https://gemini.woodpeckersnest.space/

I've applied some fixes (like) to HTML and CSS (the latter is pretty much the same used by the @wpn onboarding page, but obviously customized). As for accessibility, I think it should work well for desktop and also mobile browsers; CGIs work as well.

The proxy I used is Loxy. I also already opened an issue on their repo for a problem with query strings, still waiting for someone to reply. Apart from that, everything checks out.

gemlog

Hello,

just a brief update on gemini here at @wpn.

I switched TLD from ".eu" to ".space": seemed more appropriate for gemini.

gemini://woodpeckersnest.space/

gemlog

I'm always a bit busy when it comes to pandora (the VPS running WPN: woodpeckersnest.space/eu). I like experimenting new things, fixing/improving existing things.. I cannot stay still 😀

After migrating the homepage to homarr - which took really no time for the initial setup, but a lot of work afterward to fix layouts for mobile devices and non-full-hd screens for desktop PCs - I started messing up with a brand new toy: gemini!!

Not even a week since I installed molly-brown, the actual gemini server, to today, I can count lots of improvements..

• Installed terminal gemini browser client amfora for wpn's shell users and also gtl, a tinylog reader, always for the shell.
• Configured a local tinylog which groups together all wpn's capsuleer tinylogs, so it's easy to follow all of the local server users in one single place; the log is generated by gtl itself, refreshed and published every 5 minutes: can't miss a thing!
• Initially configured gemlog mentions starting from a script by @bacardi55, who is the author of many gemini-related things, like the before mentioned gtl software. When I realized it lacked multi-capsules support, I started modifying it and came up with some spaghetti code, which is working surprisingly well and it was deployed earlier today.

gemini@wpn

Onboarding on WPN didn't go as well as I thought, but at least the first user (hey, Mario, I'm looking at you! :) registered and, I believe, everything is working fine for them! On this topic, the onboarding page was migrated from PHP and Email to Python and XMPP, thanks to my friend Schimon! He also kept the UI pretty much intact, so I think most people who looked at it before and after, wouldn't even notice the changes under the hood.

https://hello.woodpeckersnest.space/

Something else I've been doing was setting up: https://invite.woodpeckersnest.space/

which is a landing page to allow people to join an XMPP MUC or add an XMPP contact from a web interface, which will also guide them in choosing a client for their platform. It's rather simple but very useful at the same time.

The chatmail server was upgraded (more or less) at the beginning of August and running smoothly so far; it got some cool new improvements like automatic account deletion after #amount of days from last login and lots of fixes. Total number of registered accounts, so far, is 117.

https://chatmail.woodpeckersnest.space/

Services which I dismissed include:

• Jitsi Meet (wasn't really using it and it was wasting quite a lot of resources just to be running)
• Isso comments service, which powered the old homepage contact section and also a shaarli instance, which is still running but it's more a private thing, rather than a public one.

One more proposition: from now on, I will be publishing these (B)log posts in both protocols, HTTP here as you're reading and gemini on roughnecks' gemlog. I will be probably publishing less often than usual though, at least in this format, and send more status updates through the tinylog on WPN, the microlog at Station and my fediverse account.

In the next days I will be monitoring how everything goes and relax a bit, if I manage.. Today I didn't feel so good after a few stressful days, too much computing and too less sleep hours - it's 01:40 AM right now, so yeah, tomorrow will be another of “those” days, I guess.

gemlog

I'm glad to announce the start of a new gemini server here at WPN, only for shell users:

gemini://woodpeckersnest.eu/

Gemini is an application-layer internet communication protocol for accessing remote documents, similar to HTTP and Gopher. It comes with a special document format, commonly referred to as "gemtext", which allows linking to other documents. Started by a pseudonymous person known as Solderpunk, the protocol is being finalized collaboratively and as of October 2022, has not been submitted to the IETF organization for standardization.

You need a "gemini" client to be able to open that link, the same way you need a browser to open this blog post; I can recommend Lagrange: choose your flavor ^^

The server is powered by molly-brown, author "solderpunk". Thanks