Sysorchestra

This iPi is the new Linux iMac

If you search for the "Buy now" button, I have to disappoint you. But please keep on reading. Let me present you my last finished home project - the iPi.

phoenix-ci

Introducing Phoenix-CI as a low-cost Gitlab CI alternative to K8s

We use Gitlab as our favorite tool for all Git-related operations for years now and seeing it growing in terms of features and simplified workflows.‌‌ When we started to use

apple

Reduce Thermal Throttling on your Apple M1 Macbook Air to increase persistent load performance

Last year when Apple presented their new Apple Silicon SoC - namely the M1 - I couldn't believe how much performance the M1 would have in real world scenarios. After

Hetzner

Hetzner SX62 dedicated server with Software-RAID-5 and encrypted LVM on Debian 10

A little over 2 years ago, we introduced a new Backup server for our PostgreSQL data. Check out my post on that here. Now 2 years later, the disks got

Delayed processing in RabbitMQ with Dead Letter Exchanges

In 2014 we were in the process of migrating from our Rails monolith to a service oriented architecture (or microservices). For Rails we had utilized DelayedJob in order to schedule code to be executed at a later time and to run asynchronously from the

linux

Linux Mint 20 Upgrade on Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th Sound and Fingerprints

Linux Mint 20 has been released some days ago and now there is also the upgrade guide available for you who also have Mint 19.3 running. I don't want

RabbitMQ Cluster Migration

In 2014 we introduced RabbitMQ in our production system as a means of doing asynchronous/background processing in our system. We needed to replace a functionality that we were handling

2fa

Automate TOTP-secured SSH logins with 2sh and Bitwarden

As an additional way to protect SSH servers from potential attackers, I started to implement TOTP-based 2FA logins in the past. See this post about how I achieved this. I

linux

Network Locations with multiple VLANs on Linux Mint

If you've used the Network Locations feature on your Mac and are wondering how to set it up on Linux - you've come to the right place. Working as a

linux

Setup SublimeLinter with RVM and ZSH under Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon

In my previous posts I took you onto a journey from my old macOS environment to my new home - Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon. As with every journey, you

linux

Setup Soundcard and Microphone on Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th Gen with Linux Mint 19.3

Recently I switched my work device from my very old MacBook Pro Mid-2012 Non-Retina to a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th Gen - or X1C7 for short -

linux

Enabling U2F Hardware token in Linux

I recently switched from MacOS to Linux for my work computer and found out that using a hardware U2F USB token is not so easy as on MacOS. I'm using

dell

Online capacity expansion of a Dell Hardware RAID 1 with larger disks and a LVM

This post is about a simple topic, but finding information about it was not so easy due to the specific circumstances it includes. Here i will show you how you

Improve the battery life of your notebook running Linux OS

Running Linux on your notebook and wondering about poor battery life? In this article I'll give you some hints how to increase the lifetime of your battery. No magic here,

proxmox

Proxmox / Linux - Live-Update Network Configuration with Zero-Downtime

In this smaller post i want to show you how easy it is to do a live config update of your network without network restarts or machine reboots. I did

Calculating EAN Check Digits in Postgres with SQL

Imagine you have EAN codes in the database. The values either do not have the corresponding check digit or you want to verify that the number you have stored is correct. You do not want to load all the entries from the database first

Remove Proxmox 5.1-7.x “No Valid Subscription” message

Update #1 (2021-12-22): As pointed out on this page a method that works from 5.1 up to latest 7.x. I've tested this with 7.1-8 successfully: sed -Ezi.bak "s/(Ext.Msg.show\(\{\s+title: gettext\('No valid sub)/void\(\{ \/\/\1/g"

golang

Database anonymization in Golang using views

A couple of years ago we faced an interesting problem: We wanted to be able to recreate the state of our production system as close as possible in a separated staging system for debugging purposes and to allow testing changes with realistic data before

cron

Cronlocker - Distributing Cronjobs Across Hosts

One of the goals in operating any IT system is to make it available 100% of the time. Having the best of the best of the best hardware to ensure reliability is not good enough, because every piece of hardware is limited in the

debian

Site-to-Site IPSec VPN between Sophos UTM and Debian using StrongSwan with RSA-Pubkeys

Introduction This guide will show you, how you can establish a Site-to-Site IPSec VPN between a Sophos UTM Firewall and a Debian 9 "Stretch" based Server using StrongSwan

debian

Hetzner Root-Server with dual Hardware RAID-1 and encrypted LVM on Debian 9

Introduction This guide will explain the steps it takes to install a secure headless Hetzner Root-Server with some special pitfalls like LUKS on Hardware-RAIDs and SSH-based remote decryption at boot

sophos utm

Automating Pingdom Probes IP-Whitelisting with Probecollector

Introduction It was hard to find a good title for this blog post, so let me explain it a bit further. You may have API's or applications that are secured

debian

Add Two-Factor-Authentication to SSH on Debian Wheezy to Stretch

Introduction This guide shows you, how you can add 2FA to your OpenSSH on Debian Wheezy, Jessie and Stretch using Google Authenticator. We assume that your SSH already uses Pubkey-Authentication while PasswordAuthentication is disabled. Also this guide should also work on Debian's derivates and

Hetzner

Proxmox 5 on Hetzner Root-Server with Dual-Stack IPv4/IPv6 for Host and Guests

Introduction In an earlier blog post i wrote about a standard Debian installation with KVM, IPv4 and IPv6 for both the host and it's guests. This time we will setup Proxmox 5.x on a Hetzner Root-Server also using Debian and IPv4 and IPv6

proxmox

Migrating Proxmox LVM-Thin Volumes to another Proxmox Host

Introduction In an earlier post, i've discribed how to migrate VMWare ESXi Virtual Machines (or mostly their disks) to a new Proxmox KVM machine. This time i had to move a Proxmox VM to another Proxmox host. Both hosts using LVM-Thin Logical Volumes to