Gab & Huw's wedding

Youtube Video

This is a discussion I have with all clients that task us with this responsibility.

We never ask for permission during the agreed upon window of time. For most of my clients that is anytime after the last person went home. Typically 6 P.M. in their timezone.

Anything outside of that is coordinated. But it is not "asking permission" it is coordination. Because if we want to reboot in the middle of the day, there is a reason for it.

Starting from a standard install of CentOS 7 Minimal r1511.

Update CentOS

yum -y update

Install EPEL and firewalld

yum -y install epel-release firewalld

Start the firewall and enable it to start at boot

systemctl start firewalld
systemctl enable firewalld

While we are at it, allow port 4567 (default port for NodeBB) through the firewall

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=4567/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

Install a couple packages to make life easier

yum -y install nano wget

Install the packages required for NodeBB

yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum -y install git ImageMagick npm

Add the Mongo repo

cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb-org-3.2.repo <<EOF
[mongodb-org-3.2]
name=MongoDB Repository
baseurl=https://repo.mongodb.org/yum/redhat/\$releasever/mongodb-org/3.2/x86_64/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-3.2.asc
EOF

Install Mongo

yum install -y mongodb-org policycoreutils-python

Tell SELinux to not stop mongo on its default port as well as NodeBB

semanage port -a -t mongod_port_t -p tcp 27017
semanage port -m -t http_port_t -p tcp 4567

Mongo will have a warning about this setting when launched and suggests you set it to 32000. So do so before we do anything else.

cat >> /etc/security/limits.d/20-nproc.conf <<EOF
mongod soft nproc 32000
EOF

Start and enable mongod to start on boot.

systemctl start mongod
systemctl enable mongod

Start Mongo

mongo

Create/Switch to the new database you want to use for NodeBB

use nodebb

Create a user for the database

db.createUser( { user: "nodebb", pwd: "somebiglongpassword", roles: [ "readWrite" ] } )

Exit mongo

exit

Edit the mongo config

nano /etc/init.d/mongod

Add --auth to the options line

OPTIONS=" --auth -f $CONFIGFILE"

Reload systemd and restart Mongo

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart mongod

Run the nvm install script for the current version noted at https://github.com/creationix/nvm/releases
As of the creation of this guide, that version is v0.32.1

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.32.1/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bash_profile

List the available versions to be installed, and install the most recent
As of the creation of this guide that is v7.2.0

nvm list-remote
nvm install v7.2.0

Change to the directory you want to have the nodebb folder in

cd /opt

Checkout nodebb from github.

git clone -b v1.x.x https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB nodebb

Change into the nodebb directory just created

cd nodebb

Install nodejs

npm install

Start NodeBB with the setup flag.

./nodebb setup

Fill in the fields appropriately for your instance. I already have a Nginx Proxy setup in front of this instance and a FQDN setup. So I populate the URL with that.

30/11 22:39 [56143] - info: NodeBB Setup Triggered via Command Line

Welcome to NodeBB!

This looks like a new installation, so you'll have to answer a few questions about your environment before we can proceed.
Press enter to accept the default setting (shown in brackets).
URL used to access this NodeBB (http://localhost:4567) https://community.yourdomain.com
Please enter a NodeBB secret (1234abcd-ef56-7890-a1b1-1234abcd2a1a) 
Which database to use (mongo) 

30/11 22:40 [56143] - info: Now configuring mongo database:
Host IP or address of your MongoDB instance (127.0.0.1) 
Host port of your MongoDB instance (27017) 
MongoDB username nodebb
Password of your MongoDB database somebiglongpassword
MongoDB database name (nodebb) 
Configuration Saved OK
30/11 22:40 [56143] - info: [database] Checking database indices.
30/11 22:40 [56143] - info: [database] Checking database indices done!
Populating database with default configs, if not already set...
Enabling default theme: nodebb-theme-persona
No categories found, populating instance with default categories

It then tells you to create the initial admin user account.

30/11 22:40 [56143] - warn: No administrators have been detected, running initial user setup

Administrator username someadminusername
Administrator email address [email protected]
Password 
Confirm Password 
Creating welcome post!
Enabling default plugins

Snipped a bunch of messages. Look for the complete message.

NodeBB Setup Completed. Run './nodebb start' to manually start your NodeBB server.

Start your instance

./nodebb start

Open a browser and navigate to your URL.

@black3dynamite said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Watching some DIY videos about building a home network utilizing an empty closet.

WTF is an empty closet...

Asks the guy with a wife and two female children

I have not needed to use the iDRAC console in a couple of years now, and I had not realized that I still had to have f'n java installed in order to use it. WTF....

Just opened my birthday present.

If you run the ScreenConnect iOS app use a Nginx proxy to front your web interface to ScreenConnect, you may run into this error that incorrectly states you are on version 1.X of ScreenConnect and the app only supports version 5.3 or higher.

The problem is that the app is detecting the Nginx version instead of your ScreenConnect version.

You can easily fix this by hiding it. Open your site config file and add server_tokens off; in the server or location sections of the config file.

I stuck mine in the server section.

server {
    client_max_body_size 40M;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name support.bundystl.com;
    server_tokens off;
    ssl          on;

Japan is fucking awesome

Domino’s Japan selling ‘Halloween Roulette’ pizza, which has ghost pepper sauce on one random slice

JAPAN - Finally! A pizza fit for seven of your closest friends and one you absolutely hate!

Just in time for Halloween, Japanese locations of Domino’s are serving up a scare for their very brave — or very masochistic — customers: A new “Halloween Roulette” pizza, which contains a single unmarked slice doused in sauce made from ghost peppers.

The campaign, which runs through Nov. 4, allows customers to order any pizza of their choice before selecting the free “Halloween Roulette” option, which indicates that the kitchen staff has the go-ahead to spike one slice with a small amount of the seriously hot sauce.

@ChrisL said in MSP charged with extortion:

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/02/08/msp-charged-with-extortion-after-cutting-it-services-for-non-payment/

I mean, technically the Chamber of Commerce WAS breaching the contract.

The Chamber of Commerce is in the wrong from the little article actually explained.

Is he right to shut off services?

Depends on the terms of the contract. In general, yes.

Does he come off a little vengeful?

Conjecture (maybe the wrong word). The article gives no good information on timelines.

Is EXTORTION the right crime?

Not a chance, based on the little known.

Is this too many questions?

Yes.

Power adapter lost to the years. Will have to google the right thing.

Dragon Warrior 1-4 front and center, along with Zelda 1&2.

Hell, he has a Synology. He should be able to add the spare drive he has as a standalone disk. Move the share. nuke the array and rebuild with the 4 good drive and then move the share back.

Piss the fuck off charter... You are cancelled...

@skyetel is awesome.

@Kyle said in Junior Dev destroys PROD DB on first day.:

@dafyre said in Junior Dev destroys PROD DB on first day.:

That's rough though. Why would they have a junior dev with full control credentials on a production database on day one anyhow?

Only a couple people should have full read/write access to a PROD DB. A first day Junior should only have Read Only. He only needs write access to his sandbox.

Well, that was all he thought he had.

He was following instructions.

Even if he copy/pasted the wrong thing, said instructions should not have been able to do what it did.

That said, my soon to be 13yo (in 7th grade), is currently in Freshman honor's Algebra (passing with a high C 79.72%), and will be in Geometry next year.

Predictive failure is not failure. Replace one at a time. to give the RAID card the most power to work on the individual resilver.

@roopankumar said in what programming language can I learn now ???:

@scottalanmiller need to experiment myself and thinking of what limit can I able to push myself into this. change of course too alternate techie thing

Start by automating your job with scripting in the appropriate language for your systems (powershell or bash).

Then one you understand the logic flow of scripting, you can choose to get into development and actual programming.

This provides you with the benefit of improving your knowledge and your work environment at the same time.

If you have heavy disk IO, then make sure the controllers are designed to handle that IO. This has nothing to do with not virtualizing and everything to do with not designing your system correctly to meet the needs it is supposed to serve.

A PBX will have issues just like any other server when the hardware is overloaded. Only with a PBX, your users can tell the difference more than "everything is slow" because they can hear issues.

Again though, this has nothing to do with virtualization itself. Instead it is with the implementation.

It is solid.

Having a need to install the Ubiquiti UNMS and then reinstall my Ubiquiti UniFi Controller in the last couple days, I decided to tell Ubuntu to go fly a kite.

Because Ubiquiti tests everything on Ubuntu and has packages for it, I chose Debian 9.1 for my installs.

First, go download net installation image and move it to your Hypervisor.
Currently Debian 9.1 can be found here.

Create your VM and boot to the ISO.

This guide will choose the Graphical install because it will be more familiar to those who have followed other guides for in the past.

Choose your language.

Choose your location.

Choose your keyboard.

Set the hostname.

Set the domain name as needed.

Set the root password.

Create a user account

Set the timezone.

Setup the disks. If you know what you are doing, you don't need this guide anyway, so for the rest of us, I always choose Guided - use entire disk and setup LVM.

Select which disks to use. I only have one here.

I generally choose the first option to keep it simple. If I am setting up a system that requires a lot of storage, I will generally attach a separate virtual disk later.

Tell it to write the changes to disk.

Verify what it is doing is what you think. Note, that Debian 9 uses ext4 by default. You would have to configure manually if you want XFS.

Tell it again that yes you know WTF you are doing and to write the changes to disk. Back in the days before virtualization I understand how important these screens were.

Wait for it to install the base system files.

Another legacy of pre-virtualization. Tell it no, we do not need to scan another CD

Pick a mirror location regionally close to you for best update speeds.

Add proxy information if needed.

Opt in to statistics if you want.

Choose your software. By default, Debian desktop environment, print server, and standard system utilities are selected. What a random collection of gunk.

I always unselect everything as I want a minimal install for servers.
Standard system utilities sounds nice, but why add things I don't need?

Tell it to update the boot manager. If you do this on a hypervisor that can setup UEFI, it will ask a slightly different question.

Select your vdisk.

If your hypervisor does not auto eject the install media, eject the install ISO and reboot.

Log in to your console.

Or if you want to start from a minimal Fedora 25/26 install you can simply run these three commands.

# This will install Mandatory, Default and Optional Packages:
su -c "dnf group install with-optional virtualization"
# To start the service:
su -c "systemctl start libvirtd"
# To start the service on boot:
su -c "systemctl enable libvirtd"

Source: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Getting_started_with_virtualization