Mostly a personal reminder about this cool way to share files on an XBackBone instance, like sharer
Download the .txt attachment.
Edit the example TXT, add your token to
"TOKEN HERE" and your domain to "DOMAIN.HERE".
Rename it to .json extension.
Download the app.
Open it and click the dots on the upper right.
Select "Import / Export".
Select import from file, and select the JSON file.
I've had my hands full in the last few weeks.. let's see what's new for @wpn
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)
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.
Have done some tinkering with this blog's and xmpp-it homepage's #sqlite DBs: if you're interested, follow here
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
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 😀
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!
It's officially pimped!!
Can't believe the time I spent fixing "homarr" progressive layout, almost breaking at each smallest change.
New @wpn's home is running "glance" and the whole site is just 1 .yml file, plus some custom CSS rules and assets (images). Took me ~2 evenings to set it up and it's looking quite good, in my opinion. It's light (actually it's dark-only 😀 ), fast, fully featured.
Unfortunately, you always have to touch it first hand to understand the wrong choices and remedy them; better late than never though!
Hello,
this is going to be a little how-to configure aerc (a console mail client) in your @wpn shell - applies to other shells / mail servers as well, but it will be tailored for @wpn users.
aerc configuration is interactive as soon as you start it for the first time, but it will store your mail password in clear text inside ~/.config/aerc/accounts.conf file. We want instead to use the standard Unix password manager, pass, to encrypt it.
First you need a GPG key, which will be used to encrypt imap/smtp passwords. There are 2 ways:
Let's start:
$ gpg-connect-agent /bye # initializes the gpg-agent
If you see the following lines (you should), everything is good.
gpg-connect-agent: no running gpg-agent - starting '/usr/bin/gpg-agent'
gpg-connect-agent: waiting for the agent to come up ... (5s)
gpg-connect-agent: connection to agent established
GOTO 1) to import an existing key
GOTO 2) to create a new key
GOTO 3) when 1) or 2) are done
$ gpg --import roughnecks_SECRET.asc # import the key named, in this case, "roughnecks_SECRET.asc"
$ gpg --list-secret-keys # verify that your key is there and copy its ID (needed later)
$ gpg --edit-key [key-ID] # see previous step. You have to manage key's trust
type: "trust" # without the quotes
type: "5" # for ultimate trust
type: "save" # to save and exit
Now you can delete your file key, since it's not needed anymore
$ shred -u roughnecks_SECRET.asc # securely delete key file
$ gpg --full-generate-key
Specify parameters for your key (default are ok); for key expiration date I would recommend from 1 to 2 years, so you'll have to type respectively "1y" or "2y", but feel free to choose by yourself. Next, enter your information: name, email and comment (optional). Last step is to create a passphrase and then the system will generate the keys. List them when done and copy the ID (for later use):
$ gpg --list-keys # list your newly created keys
$ pass init [your-gpg-ID] # the one you copied earlier in any of the steps, 1) or 2)
$ pass insert email/woodpeckersnest.eu/imap # don't modify anything, enter your email password
$ pass insert email/woodpeckersnest.eu/smtp # same as above, don't modify anything, enter your email password
We're going to create aerc's account configuration file now, bear with me.
This is a sample config, for you to edit:
[@wpn]
source = imaps://username@woodpeckersnest.eu
source-cred-cmd = pass show email/woodpeckersnest.eu/imap
outgoing = smtps://username@woodpeckersnest.eu
outgoing-cred-cmd = pass show email/woodpeckersnest.eu/smtp
default = INBOX
from = username <username@woodpeckersnest.eu>
copy-to = Sent
You can personalize [@wpn] with anything you like inside the square brackets (it's your aerc profile's name)
You MUST change every "username" occurrence with your actual email localpart (the part the comes before the @ symbol in your email address, actually the username you registered at @wpn); the first "username" occurrence in the "from" line can be your real name or whatever you want to show to your correspondents, for your contact name, e.g. from = Simone <roughnecks@woodpeckersnest.eu>.
Copy the config you just edited and..
$ mkdir ~/.config/aerc # create a directory for aerc
$ nano ~/.config/aerc/accounts.conf # paste the snippet you copied above to this file, save and exit
$ chmod 600 ~/.config/aerc/accounts.conf # set correct permissions for your accounts file
Now you can finally launch "aerc" and type your GPG passphrase:
$ aerc
It's been a few days now that I'm experiencing downtimes at night, early mornings.
When I wake up, connect to the VPS and attach to tmux, I am welcomed by these messages in console:
Message from syslogd@pandora at Nov 3 05:37:13 ...
kernel:[1586232.350737] Dazed and confused, but trying to continue
Message from syslogd@pandora at Nov 3 05:37:24 ...
kernel:[1586235.049143] Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason
30 on CPU 1.
Message from syslogd@pandora at Nov 3 05:37:24 ...
kernel:[1586235.049145] Dazed and confused, but trying to continue
Message from syslogd@pandora at Nov 3 05:37:55 ...
kernel:[1586273.642163] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#2 stuck
for 27s! [dockerd:526408]
Message from syslogd@pandora at Nov 3 05:38:00 ...
kernel:[1586278.545172] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck
for 24s! [systemd-journal:257]
Message from syslogd@pandora at Nov 3 05:38:02 ...
kernel:[1586281.187611] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#3 stuck
for 35s! [lua5.4:1702]
There's no need to say that when this happens, the server is completely frozen and doesn't respond to anything.
I already contacted support, but they didn't investigate at all, I believe. They manually restarted my VPS once and did some pings and connection tests (VNC, SSH) afterwards.. "everything is working fine!"
This last Saturday I was up when it happened, so I did a mtr from my PC to the VPS's IP and logged it, then I sent another email with the output to support.. Still waiting for them to reply, I guess tomorrow (Monday).
Friends like lorenzo and shai are having difficulties too, with the same provider, so I'm not imagining things.
Well, that's all I got to say, will keep you posted if any news.
Last evening, at around 22:00 CET, Contabo migrated my VPS from old Hub at Nuremberg to the newly built "Hub Europe".
They rebooted it and everything came back up as usual.. I wasn't at home when it happened, didn't even notice anything until I connected and found no tmux session running. Even my phone which was connected to wireguard, quietly continued working and sending notifications 😎
Meanwhile, my friends and I watched "The Creator" on Disney+
Can't really say I do recommend it, but for some casual evening/entertainment, it wasn't half bad.
I've been rethinking about the publication license of these blog posts.
Changes I made:
At the moment there are still other public and all-rights-reserved posts.. Most of the public ones are from me, while some are from friends who told me to publish them with such license.
The all-rights-reserved ones are mostly from content I grabbed over the net and published here, where I wasn't able to contact the original authors (so credits are to themselves) and some others are e.g. posts with pictures I took myself.
So.. From now on, all these types of licenses will co-exist and each post will be tagged with the correct/relative one (hopefully).
Disclaimer: If not specified, you can assume it's "CC BY-NC-SA" by Simone "roughnecks" Canaletti
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.
I was running 2 separate apps for shell/XMPP account registration at @wpn, so far..
This night I made some changes to the original code (provided by Schimon) and I got just one app with account choice - meaning that you must choose what account type you want in the form. Shell accounts are for friends only, as it's always been.
As a consequence of that, I shut down the old address for XMPP account onboarding and left only the main one, which is:
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..
amfora for wpn's shell users and also gtl, a tinylog reader, always for the shell.gtl itself, refreshed and published every 5 minutes: can't miss a thing!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.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.