John's Vademecum - public:computers

Bookmarks

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 21:51:59 +0000

←Computers

Bookmarks

Exported Bookmark file

Bookmarks

bookmarks_22_02_2024.html

bookmarks_09_03_2024.html

bookmarks_06_03_2025.html

— John Pumford-Green 02/03/24 20:27

Further Information

html

DBUS & Automount

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 08:40:39 +0000

←Computers

DBUS & Automount

Running X from startx and making automount work

Background

I don't use a DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT on Linux - I boot to a console and start X11 via the startx command.

This runs commands from ~/.xinitrc

xrdb -load ~/.Xdefaults
setxkbmap -layout gb
xset s noblank
xset s noexpose
xset -dpms
 
~/bin/background.sh &
 
dwmblocks &
 
xfce4-power-manager &
 
pasystray &
 
nm-applet &
 
exec dwm

My window manager is DWM and I don't want/need all the extra stuff of a desktop environment

I would however like to be able to automount external USB drives rather than what I do currently

sudo dmesg #find drive device
sudo mount /dev/xxxx /mnt

then copy files as necessary between /mnt/xxxxx and the machine's filesystem

Afterwards….

cd
sudo sync
sudo umount /mnt

Graphical File Manager

I installed Thunar along with gvfs and all the additional stuff I thought I needed (gvfs-backends* etc).

But Thunar complained that it appears you don't have gvfs or similar…

I briefly tried installing the MATE Desktop environment - and then spent a long time forcing it to use DWM as window manager, and turning off as much as I could

uninstalled caja
uninstalled mate-panel
edited via dconf-editor to make dwm start as window manager….

Then Thunar was happy with gvfs and would automount a USB drive (or more importantly my Swiss Micros calculator's USB drive).

But I wasn't happy with this as a solution - too messy and too much crap going on - messing up the appearance of GTK-aware apps like claws-mail and GNUCASH

I wanted to get back to simply running DWM etc. without all the rest

DBUS

It appears the issue is that with my method of starting X via ~/.xinitrc I fail to correctly start DBUS. This needs to be started correctly in the setting up of an X-session

The answer isn't to add an invocation of DBUS into my ~/.xinitrc as I first thought.

The answer is to let X11 start via the SYSTEM xinitrc which only happens as long as I don't have my own ~/.xinitrc

Starting X this way which will then run various other things, including DBUS, as the XSession is spun-up via startx

Then the process is finished by running my file ~/.xsession - which is actually just my ~/.xinitrc file renamed to ~/.xsession.

I found this at https://momi.ca/posts/2021-10-11-startxdebian/ which describes my own situation perfectly, and the solution works perfectly.

I can still boot into a console session, and use startx to switch to DWM - and automount works for Thunar

Further Information

dbus, startx, thunar, automount

Updated : 16/02/26 08:40 GMT

Dokuwiki & Encryption

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:21:21 +0000

Dokuwiki & Encryption

I'm now using the encrypted passwords plugin to encrypt sensitive information on dokuwiki pages. This plugin has the advantage that the encryption used can be decrypted outside of Dokuwiki (e.g. if I can only get hold of the raw text file from a backup) via openssl.

An example of off-line decryption - I copied the encrypted text from a dokuwiki page and pasted it into the echo command below. At the openssl password prompt I entered the password used to encrypt and out popped the clear text this is an encryption test

gm4slv@gm4slv:~$ echo 'U2FsdGVkX1/oih+ShQJ/EcEaeOk4JVl4IU2FI1d35A/jAsfy/2nwGbcLEEgABjQf' | openssl base64 -d |openssl aes-256-cbc -d -pbkdf2
enter aes-256-cbc decryption password:
this is an encryption test

The plugin is documented here:

https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:encryptedpasswords

(UPDATE — John Pumford-Green 30/05/22 16:48 )

I found the encrypted passwords plugin didn't work on the sandbox wiki installation. The only difference I can see is that the sandbox uses PHP7.4 rather than PHP7.3 on the production webserver.

I've installed the dokucrypt2 plugin https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:dokucrypt2 on both machines and it works on both.

I'll have to de-crypt the original encrypted pages and re-encrypt them using the dokucrypt2 plugin if I want to access them on the sandbox machine, but that's not too difficult to do, there's not much encrypted information (yet).

(UPDATE — John Pumford-Green 30/05/22 19:43 )

I solved the issue with the sandbox server - it needs to be enabled for HTTPS (SSL) for this plugin to work.

I installed a self-signed certificate and set up SSL for the shack's webserver as detailed here: Sandbox Server and the original plugin works. Which is good, because I preferred it to the dokucrypt2 plugin.

Page Updated: 29/01/26 15:21 GMT

dokuwiki, ssl

DokuWiki Tweaks

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:25:52 +0000

←Computers

DokuWiki Tweaks

Vector / Monobook tweaks

I like the Vector and Monobook templates, very similar feel to Wikipedia

Logout errors with later versions of Dokuwiki

After upgrading Dokuwiki to Igor it became impossible to log out due to a warning

Security Token did not match. Possible CSRF attack.

I initially ignored it but then downgraded back to Hogfather as there seemed to be no fix - other than to use a different template.

I recently upgraded to the latest Dokuwiki (Jack Jackrum), and upgraded all plugins and templates where possible. However the problem with logout with Vector and Monobook re-appeared.

I found there was a fix described on the forum:

https://forum.dokuwiki.org/d/20248-security-token-did-not-match-possible-csrf-attack-cannot-log-out

and the cure is to edit the appropriate line in main.php for each template, as the author seems not to be maintaining these templates any more, at least not the official ones accessed via Dokuwiki's Template/Extension installer. The github repository shows that the fix has been applied to Vector, and a pull request submitted to fix Monobook, the fixes haven't appeared in the official versions.

The does work, though…

For Vector edit /var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/tpl/vector/main.php to add , 'sectok' ⇒ getSecurityToken() in the array statement after “do” ⇒ “logout”

 echo  "      <li id=\"pt-logout\"><a href=\"".wl(cleanID(getId()), array("do" => "logout", 'sectok' => getSecurityToken()))."\" rel=\"nofollow\">".hsc($lang["btn_logout"])."</a></li>\n"; //language comes from DokuWiki core

and the same for Monobook

 echo  "          <li id=\"pt-logout\"><a href=\"".wl(cleanID(getId()), array("do" => "logout", 'sectok' => getSecurityToken()))."\" rel=\"nofollow\">".hsc($lang["btn_logout"])."</a></li>\n"; //language comes from DokuWiki core

Monospace font

I found the style applied to monospace text was a little underwhelming.

I found the place to change it:

/var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/tpl/{vector|monobook}/user/screen.css

add the the following and adjust as needed:

div#content .dokuwiki code {
  font-size: 100%;
  padding-left: 5px;
  padding-right: 5px;
  background-color: #eee;
  color: #00f;
  direction: ltr;
  text-align: left;
}

Footer Buttons

Remove the default footer buttons by editing {vector|monobook}/user/buttons.php and adding

For Monobook, change to

$_monobook_btns = array();

//delete all (defaults)
$_vector_btns = array();

this suppresses the inclusion of footer buttons from vector/conf/buttons.php

Add just the Dokuwiki and Vector/Monobook Buttons

Edit {vector|monobook}/user/buttons.php

Swap monobook for vector as appropriate

<?php
 
//check if we are running within the DokuWiki environment
if (!defined("DOKU_INC")){
    die();
}
//delete all (defaults)
$_vector_btns = array();  
 
//note: The buttons will be rendered in the order they were defined. Means:
//      first button will be rendered first, last button will be rendered at
//      last.
//DokuWiki button
$_vector_btns["dw"]["img"]      = DOKU_TPL."static/img/button-dw.png";
$_vector_btns["dw"]["href"]     = "https://www.dokuwiki.org/";
$_vector_btns["dw"]["width"]    = 80;
$_vector_btns["dw"]["height"]   = 15;
$_vector_btns["dw"]["title"]    = "DokuWiki";
$_vector_btns["dw"]["nofollow"] = !(cleanID(getID()) === "start");
 
//"vector for DokuWiki" button
$_vector_btns["vecfdw"]["img"]      = DOKU_TPL."static/img/button-vector.png";
$_vector_btns["vecfdw"]["href"]     = "https://www.dokuwiki.org/template:vector";
$_vector_btns["vecfdw"]["width"]    = 80;
$_vector_btns["vecfdw"]["height"]   = 15;
$_vector_btns["vecfdw"]["title"]    = $lang["vector_mdtemplatefordw"];
$_vector_btns["vecfdw"]["nofollow"] = !(cleanID(getID()) === "start");

Symbol Chooser font size

The drop-down picker for choosing a symbol to insert in the text being edited is very small in Monobook as standard.

It's controlled by the pickerbutton class and is set at 80% in the standard monobook css.

It's adjusted thus (to 1.2em) and some extra margin added around the symbols:

button.pickerbutton {

padding: 0px;
margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px;
border: 0;
background-color: transparent;
font-size: 1.2em;
cursor: pointer;

}

Put this in user/screen.css with all the other tweaks.

Mobile Scaling

The layout on a phone isn't too good, and can't be zoomed/scaled.

I found this thread:

https://forum.dokuwiki.org/d/12469-vector-template-doesn-t-display-correctly-on-mobile-devices/6

and applied the comment-out of the line :

//echo "<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1\" />";

in main.php and mediamanager.php

the page now scales/zooms okay to make it useable on a phone.

Monobook user/screen.css

/* Give sidebar more space.
 
   Default widths:
   - 12.2em as left spacer for the content area. This example is using 14.2em
     instead.
   - 11.6em as sidebar width. This example is using 13.6em instead.
   - 10.9em as width for the search input field. This example is using 12.9em
     instead.
   - 150px as left spacer for the Ajax searchbox. This example is using 180px.
*/
/* move content container more to the right */
#content {
  margin: 2.8em 0 0 14.2em;
}
#column-content {
  margin: 0 0 .6em -14.2em;
}
#column-content #content {
  margin-left: 14.2em !important; /* adjustment for  IE (7) */
}
/* redefine sidebar width + tab bar position */
.portlet {
  width: 13.6em;
}
#p-cactions {
  left: 13.6em; /* tab bar */
}
/* search input field */
#qsearch__in {
  width: 11.5em;
}
/* ajax "matching pagename" searchbox */
#qsearch__out {
  left: 180px
}
 
div.dokuwiki #dw__toc {
  margin: 1.2em 0 0 2em;
  float: right;
  width: 200px; 
  font-size: 100%;
  clear: both;
  background-color: __background__;
} 
 
div#content .dokuwiki code {
  font-size: 1.1em;
  padding-left: 5px;
  padding-right: 5px;
  background-color: #eee;
  color: #22f;
  border-radius: 4px;
  direction: ltr;
  text-align: left;
  white-space: pre;
}
 
div#content .dokuwiki pre {
        border-radius: 5px;
	background-color: #faffff !important;
}
 
button.pickerbutton {
  padding: 0px;
  margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px;
  border: 0;
  background-color: transparent;
  font-size: 1.2em;
  cursor: pointer;
}
.pBody {
	font-size: 1.1em;
	padding-bottom: 1em;
}
 
#bodyContent {
	font-size: 1.1em;
}
 
kbd.__keyboard {
  color: #0000ff;
  background-color: #defede !important;
  text-align: center;
  border-left: 1px solid #cfcfcf;
  border-top: 1px solid #cfcfcf;
  border-right: 3px solid #666666;
  border-bottom: 3px solid #666666;
  -moz-border-radius: 4px 4px 4px 4px;
  border-radius: 6px 6px 6px 6px !important;
  padding-left: 3px;
  padding-top: 0px;
  padding-right: 3px;
  padding-bottom: 0px;
  margin-left: 2px;
  margin-right: 2px;
  vertical-align: top;
  font-family: sans-serif;
  white-space: nowrap;
  font-size: 1.1em !important;
}
 
div.qq-upload-button {
 border: 1px solid __border__;
}

Dokuwiki Template CSS

Standard settings for font sizes etc. for different elements is here:

/var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/tpl/dokuwiki/css/design.less

add any modified tweaks to the CSS to a userstyle.css i.e. /var/www/html/dokuwiki/conf/userstyle.css

font-size etc

pre {
        border-radius: 10px;
        background-color: #fcffff
}
 
 
code {
    color: #c72522;
    font-size: 1.1em;
    padding: 0.1em 0.3em;
    border-radius: 0px;
    }
 
 
.dokuwiki .aside {
    font-size: 90%;
    }
 
 
body {
    font-size: 90%;
 
}
.dokuwiki div.breadcrumbs {
    font-size: 90%;
    }

Dokuwiki Template Tagline

<p style="font-size:12px;background-color:#a5e4fa;">Try to learn <b><i>something</i></b> about everything, and <b><i>everything</i></b> about something <br> <i> -Thomas Huxley “Darwin's bulldog” (1824-1895)</i></p>

Dokuwiki Timezone

I noticed the timestamps on file creation/modification were in UTC
I'd rather have “local time” so I don't have to think too hard
The answer is here → https://www.dokuwiki.org/tips:timezone
I used the first option, after successfully testing the second (editing php.ini)
I created conf/local.protected.php with

<?php
date_default_timezone_set("Europe/London");

I did sudo chown www-data:www-data local.protected.php too, just to be sure
All looks good - pages created/modified while in summer time show the time in BST and pages modified in winter time show the time in GMT

Add DW2PDF

To allow export of pages from Wiki → PDF format install plugin dw2pdf
to enable functionality it was necessary to install php-mbstring package on the VPS
1. ```
sudo apt-get install php-mbstring
```
```
sudo service apache2 restart
```

UPDATE

— John Pumford-Green 26/04/23 10:04

removed dw2pdf plugin, it is largely unused and adds pointless bloat.

Increase maximum file size upload for Media Manager

edit php.ini
1. ```
sudo vi /etc/php/XX/apache2/php.ini
```
2. change upload_max_filesize = 2M to upload_max_filesize = 20M
3. change post_max_size = 2M to post_max_size = 20M
4. ```
sudo service apache2 restart
```

Allow any file-type upload

From https://forum.dokuwiki.org/d/3318-allow-upload-of-any-filetype/5

Edit /var/www/html/www/dokuwiki/inc/media.php and comment out :

    // because a temp file was created already
    //if (!preg_match('/\.(' . $regex . ')$/i', $fn)) {
    //    return [$lang['uploadwrong'], -1];
    //}

jpg upload error - XML

Media manage red warnings when uploading jpg image files

Error: Call to undefined function xml_parser_create()

New VPS was missing the php-xml package.

sudo apt install php-xml
sudo service apache2 restart

https://forum.dokuwiki.org/d/21045-error-call-to-undefined-function-xml-parser-create

Acronyms & Abbreviations

I find the underlining and “explanation” of some abbreviations/acronyms by dokuwiki, when rendering a page, to be annoying.

such as DNS and ACL

The process is described HERE

To disable this I simply copied the default conf/acronyms.conf to a local version conf/acronyms.local.conf and then edited the local version to remove all the explanations.

# Acronyms.

ACL
AFAICS
AFAIK
AFAIR
API
ASAP
ASCII
BTW
CMS
CSS
DNS
EOF
EOL
EOM
EOT
FAQ
FTP
FOSS
FLOSS
FUD
FYI
GB
GHz
GPL
GUI
HTML
IANAL
IE
IIRC
IMHO
IMO
IOW
IRC
IRL
KISS
LAN
LGPL
LOL
MathML
MB
MHz
MSIE
OMG
OS
OSS
OTOH
PITA
RFC
ROTFL
RTFM
spec
TIA
TL;DR
TOC
URI
URL
W3C
WTF?
WYSIWYG
YMMV

This supresses the annoyance.

— John Pumford-Green 30/04/23 13:49

Add folded plugin

make a clickable hide/reveal section with

++++ visible text | hidden text blah blah ++++

e.g.

There is a table here...

Col1	Col2	Col3
one	two	three

def func():
    print "hello world"

Increase TAGCLOUD font size

edit /var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/plugins/cloud/style.less

increase size factor

/* Size factor. */
@sF: 1.2;

force re-fresh of browser to show new font size.

Keyboard Plugin

tweak the size, border and colour

example keys

Ctrl+C

Tweaks

/var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/plugins/keyboard/all.css

kbd.__keyboard {
  color: #0000ff;
  background-color: #defede !important;
  text-align: center;
  border-left: 1px solid #cfcfcf;
  border-top: 1px solid #cfcfcf;
  border-right: 3px solid #666666;
  border-bottom: 3px solid #666666;
  -moz-border-radius: 4px 4px 4px 4px;
  padding-left: 3px;
  padding-top: 0px;
  padding-right: 3px;
  padding-bottom: 0px;
  margin-left: 2px;
  margin-right: 2px;
  vertical-align: top;
  font-family: sans-serif;
  white-space: nowrap;
  font-size: 1.2em;
 
}

Dokuwiki Template monospace font

the colour of the mono font is the same as general text and doesn't stand out as well as in other templates.
edit /var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/tpl/dokuwiki/css/basic.less with a hex code for a better colour
- but see below for a better place to do the configuraiton

code {
    color: #c72522;
    font-size: 1.1em;
    padding: 0.1em 0.3em;
    border-radius: 0;
    }

To prevent upgrades overwriting these changes - add them to /var/www/html/dokuwiki/conf/userstyle.css
pre relates to the blocks of <code> ////// </code>
code relates to monospaced text

pre {
        border-radius: 10px;
         background-color: #fcffff
 
}
 
code {
    color: #c72522;
    font-size: 1.1em;
    padding: 0.1em 0.3em;
    border-radius: 0px;
    }

Remove Dokuwiki template footer buttons

edit /var/www/html/dokuwiki/lib/tpl/dokuwiki/tpl_footer.php

comment out (  ) the license stanza and/or the <div> that contains the “buttons”

<?php
/**
 * Template footer, included in the main and detail files
 */
 
// must be run from within DokuWiki
if (!defined('DOKU_INC')) die();
?>
 
<!-- ********** FOOTER ********** -->
 
 
 
<div id="dokuwiki__footer"><div class="pad">
 
<!--    <?php tpl_license(''); // license text ?> -->
 
<!--    
<div class="buttons">
        <?php
            tpl_license('button', true, false, false); // license button, no wrapper
            $target = ($conf['target']['extern']) ? 'target="'.$conf['target']['extern'].'"' : '';
        ?>
        <a href="https://www.dokuwiki.org/donate" title="Donate" <?php echo $target?>><img
            src="<?php echo tpl_basedir(); ?>images/button-donate.gif" width="80" height="15" alt="Donate" /></a>
        <a href="https://php.net" title="Powered by PHP" <?php echo $target?>><img
            src="<?php echo tpl_basedir(); ?>images/button-php.gif" width="80" height="15" alt="Powered by PHP" /></a>
        <a href="//validator.w3.org/check/referer" title="Valid HTML5" <?php echo $target?>><img
            src="<?php echo tpl_basedir(); ?>images/button-html5.png" width="80" height="15" alt="Valid HTML5" /></a>
        <a href="//jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer?profile=css3" title="Valid CSS" <?php echo $target?>><img
            src="<?php echo tpl_basedir(); ?>images/button-css.png" width="80" height="15" alt="Valid CSS" /></a>
        <a href="https://dokuwiki.org/" title="Driven by DokuWiki" <?php echo $target?>><img
            src="<?php echo tpl_basedir(); ?>images/button-dw.png" width="80" height="15"
            alt="Driven by DokuWiki" /></a>
    </div>
-->
 
 
</div></div><!-- /footer -->
 
 
<?php
tpl_includeFile('footer.html');

Bootstrap3 ThemeByNamespace

To force specific bootstrap/bootswatch themes dependant on the namespace

enable ThemeByNamespace option
create a file in <dokuwiki>/conf called bootstrap3.themes.conf
chown www-data:www-data bootstrap3.themes.conf
add the required theme/namespace mapping:

# Namespace  Bootswatch Theme
start                   bootswatch/darkly
public                  bootswatch/darkly
public:calculator       bootswatch/slate
public:journal          bootswatch/journal
private                 bootswatch/flatly
playground              bootswatch/united
private:wire2waves      bootswatch/paper
blog                    bootswatch/yeti

it seems necessary to disable showThemeSwitcher and to select a default theme to be used outside of any listed in the conf file

Alternative

Using the loadskin plugin

it's possible to switch to the default dokuwiki template when on a mobile device and the vector template when on a computer.

The loadskin plugin seems to lead to problems switching between monobook and vector - the navigation sidebar seems to disappear on one or the other. Not sure where the problem is.

Note Plugin

Various Coloured notes:

<note>
This is my note ! Remember it!!
</note>

<note important>
Warning ! You're about to lose your mind ;-)
</note>

<note tip>
The clues are in the images.
</note>

<note warning>
Beware of the cat when you open the door !!
</note>


++++Note in a Folded section|
<note warning>
Ça fonctionne seulement avec le //div// pas le //span//.
</note>
++++

This is my note ! Remember it!!

Warning ! You're about to lose your mind

The clues are in the images.

Beware of the cat when you open the door !!

Note in a Folded section

Monobook Tweaks

PDF Export Tab

The dw2pdf plugin provides a button on many templates to trigger export to PDF but not on monobook. It's possible to add a tab to the top of the page, beside the edit etc. tabs, to do the the pdf export function.

add the following code to to monobook/user/tabs.php

//PDF plugin: export tab
if (file_exists(DOKU_PLUGIN."dw2pdf/action.php") &&
    !plugin_isdisabled("dw2pdf")){
    $_monobook_tabs["tab-export-pdf"]["text"] = "pdf export";
    $_monobook_tabs["tab-export-pdf"]["href"] = wl(getID(), array("do" => "export_pdf"), false, "&");
}

Vector Interwiki Icons

The icon shown on interwiki links almost always appears as a small “lock” rather than the correct icon

commenting out the .link-https section in /vector/static/3rd/vector/main-ltr.css stops this :

div#content a.external,
div#content a[href ^="gopher://"] {
        background: url(static/3rd/vector/external-link-ltr-icon.png) center right no-repeat;
        padding: 0 13px 0 0;
}
 
/*
div#content a[href ^="https://"],
.link-https {
        background: url(static/3rd/vector/lock-icon.png) center right no-repeat;
        padding: 0 13px 0 0;
}
*/
 
div#content a[href ^="mailto:"],
.link-mailto {
        background: url(static/3rd/vector/mail-icon.png) center right no-repeat;
        padding: 0 13px 0 0;
}

Page Updated: 17/02/26 16:25 GMT

dokuwiki

Dokuwiki Upgrade problem

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 18:25:33 +0000

Dokuwiki Upgrade problem

— John Pumford-Green 30/06/22 11:30

I recently upgraded to the latest version of Dokuwiki after seeing a banner informing me that a new Release Candidate (Igor v52.1) was available.

Initially it all seemed to go well, with no problems noticed. I also upgraded my “sandbox” version.

I've recently switched to using the Vector template, to mimic the look/feel of Wikipedia and mediawiki, after using the default template and also Bootstrap3. Only then did I find a problem with the upgraded Dokuwiki.

I couldn't logout!

When I tried to logout there was a warning banner

Security Token did not match. Possible CSRF attack

. The same happened on the sandbox server too!

Changing active template to any other - Dokuwiki, ~~Monobook~~, Bootstrap3 - and there was no problem with logging in and out. Only while using Vector (and Monobook) was there an issue.

I downgraded back to Release 2020-07-29 “Hogfather” and the problem went away!

So…. there seems to be an incompatibility with the current version of the Vector & Monobook templates and the new version of Dokuwiki itself.

Until it's resolved I'll stay on Release 2020-07-29 “Hogfather” and keep using Vector or Monobook

To suppress the upgrade available banner ~~I've edited ./doku.php to bump the version to 52.1~~ I've set the configuration option “updatecheck” to 0 on the main site, and left it as normal on the sandbox site.

UPDATE

It's been fixed….. see Logout errors with later versions of Dokuwiki

dokuwiki

Code & Command Snippets

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:41:04 +0000

←Computers

Code & Command Snippets

Windows WiFi Disconnect

Windows will disconnect a WIFI connection when it discovers there's no WAN internet - presumably Windows thinks ALL networks are connected to the Internet and this prevents using WIFI for an isolated LAN, and also throws you off the WLAN whenever the ADSL connection fails, even when you're busy using only internal LAN sessions.

THIS IS WRONG BEHAVIOUR.

I found a solution, and typically it's a REGEDIT task:

From : https://superuser.com/questions/1650052/how-to-keep-windows-10-connected-to-wifi-without-internet

Add a Registry DWORD “NoActiveProbe” value “1” at Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\NetworkConnectivityStatusIndicator

Job Done. You stay on your LAN even when the interwebs is down.

Chrome redirects

To remove a “permanent redirect” - e.g. from an http to an https URL - I found the answer here:

https://www.neilwithdata.com/chrome-redirect-forget

Open the Chrome Developer Tools (F12)
Go to the Network tab and make sure Disable cache is ticked
Reload (or navigate to) the page you no longer want to be redirected while keeping the dev tools open.

— John Pumford-Green 27/04/23 06:12

Vim Pasting

I recently had problems pasting text into Vim by the traditional RIGHT click method. Vim would enter Insert(VISUAL) mode instead.

One solution when using Putty is to use its own mechanism :

SHIFT+INS

I prefer to use RIGHT click, as it's more natural so I found the solution is to add

set mouse-=a

to ~/.vimrc

This solves the problem, and I don't need to use nano when editing text files on my remote server via SSH using Putty.

Raspberry Pi Stuff

find Raspberry Pi Model : cat /sys/firmware/devicetree/base/model
mount a raspberry pi image

gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ sudo losetup -Pf igate.img
gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ lsblk
NAME      MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0       7:0    0   4.3G  0 loop
├─loop0p1 259:0    0   256M  0 part
└─loop0p2 259:1    0     4G  0 part
sda         8:0    0 298.1G  0 disk
├─sda1      8:1    0 235.1G  0 part /
├─sda2      8:2    0     1K  0 part
├─sda3      8:3    0  50.9G  0 part
└─sda5      8:5    0  12.1G  0 part [SWAP]
sr0        11:0    1  1024M  0 rom
gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ sudo mount /dev/loop0p2 /mnt

remove mounted image

gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ sudo umount /mnt
gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ sudo losetup -D

Git

Basic Workflow

do all changes to code
git add . to add changed files to staging
git commit -m “commit message” to do the commit
git push to push new commits to github

Windows Host File

Start → Windows Accessories → Notepad → <right click> … more…Run as Administrator
edit C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts (set All files rather than txt to be able to see the hosts file in the file chooser)
Save

Auto SSH Tunnels

Used on remote installations to create persistent SSH reverse tunnels.

An example

svxlink hotspot

Page Info

Page created Thu May 26 14:00:21 2022 by John Pumford-Green

Page last updated: 30/12/25 12:41 GMT

linux, pi

Dokuwiki Interwiki Links

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:20:41 +0000

←Computers

Dokuwiki Interwiki Links

A list of the shortcuts for interwiki linking

1. Shortcuts

the standard shortcuts

var/www/html/dokuwiki/conf/interwiki.conf

wp        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{NAME}
doku      https://www.dokuwiki.org/
rfc       https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc
man       http://man.cx/

Some of these don't actually function correctly and may be changed at some time, to more useful versions

1.1 Use

Most commonly used is the Wikipedia shortcut

[[wp>dokuwiki]]

Gives the interwiki link to Wikipedia's page about DokuWiki:

dokuwiki

and Dokuwiki itself

[[doku> | Dokuwiki's own wiki]]

Dokuwiki's own wiki

— John Pumford-Green 05/07/22 11:06

Further Information

dokuwiki

Monobook template wikis

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:23:06 +0000

←Computers

Monobook template wikis

A list of wikis I've found that use the monobook (occasionally vector)template

I'm a fan of the vintage style of monobook and vector wikis
here are some I've found, listed here for easy reference
they often include interesting techniques & plugins etc. or are a just glimpse into the past

https://tjgrant.com/wiki/projects:monobook_for_dokuwiki

http://www.can-wiki.info/doku.php?id=start

https://support.rbg.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/wiki//en/start

https://www.dam.brown.edu/dpd/doku.php/start

https://badgrads.berkeley.edu/

https://wiki.alienbase.nl/ Vector

https://docs.slackware.com/ Vector

http://www.trirand.com/jqgridwiki/doku.php?id=start

http://wiki.synchro.net/wiki:index

https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~jhoe/doku/

http://dispim.org/start

https://murmann-group.stanford.edu/doku.php?id=main_page

https://math.chapman.edu/~jipsen/structures/doku.php?id=start

http://bkchem.zirael.org/wiki/start

http://wordspace.collocations.de/doku.php/start

https://www.astron.nl/wsrt/wiki/doku.php?id=start

https://www.pmstieber.com/mstieber/doku.php?id=start

https://www.dpeddi.com/about

https://punbb.informer.com/wiki/start

https://wikihost.nscl.msu.edu/gretina/doku.php/start

http://computer-chess.org/doku.php

Dead Links (or no longer Monobook/Vector)

~~https://wiki.sahanafoundation.org/start~~

~~http://www.dpi.inpe.br/terralib5-design/doku.php?id=wiki:designimplementation~~

~~http://topas.dur.ac.uk/topaswiki/doku.php?id=topas~~

~~http://wiki.greenstone.org/doku.php?id=index~~

~~https://wiki.urspringer.de/~~

~~https://services.byu.edu/sw/~~

~~http://troop-394.org/wiki/doku.php/start?do=recent~~

~~http://www.cptcif.com/pfe/wiki/doku.php~~

~~http://www.ub.edu/persp/metaphysics/doku.php?id=start~~

~~http://pacs.ece.ohio-state.edu/doku.php~~

~~http://www.chemical-engineering.at/doku.php~~

Last Modified : 28/01/26 18:23 GMT

monobook, dokuwiki

Pinouts

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 20:33:46 +0000

←Computers

Pinouts

Ethernet RJ45 B

The normal straight cable is a 568B

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
O/W	O	G/W	B	B/W	G	Bn/W	Bn

Ethernet X-over A-B

for use without a switch/hub and where the device cannot do automatic cross-over itself.

Raspberry Pi GPIO

PyBoard

Page Info

Page created Thu May 26 10:39:13 2022 by John Pumford-Green

Page last updated: 04/04/24 21:33 BST

network

Pure Blog

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 07:32:20 +0000

←Computers

Pure Blog

I've installed Pure Blog

After trying the Blog Plugin in dokuwiki and Chyrp-Lite PHP/SQLite blogging platform I switched to Pure Blog.

It's just what I need, and nothing extra to make it big and bloated.

Installation & Configuration

See https://g4slv.info/installing-pure-blog for some info.

Webfonts used

CSS

.tag-cloud a {
   margin: 0 0.5rem;
   line-height: 2rem;
 
}
 
.archive li {
  line-height: 1.5rem;
  font-size: 1.1rem;
  list-style-type: none;
}
 
body {
  font-size: 1rem;
  line-height: 1.25rem;
}
 
main {
  max-width: 50rem;
}
 
article {
  margin-bottom: 0;
}
 
p.post-archive-view {
  font-size : 1.1rem;
  line-height: 1.1rem;
}
main h1 {
  font-size: 2.8rem;
}
 
header, footer{
  font-family: "atkinson_next", sans-serif;
  font-size: 1.1rem;
}
 
footer {
  margin-top: 3rem;
}
 
main h1, main h2, main h3, main h4, main h5, main h6 {
  margin-left: -1rem;
  font-family: "atkinson_next", sans-serif;
}
 
.tag-list {
    border-top: 1px solid var(--border-color);
    padding-top: 2rem;
}
 
.post-nav {
  margin-top : 0;
  margin-bottom: 3rem;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_next';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleNext-Regular.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: normal;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: normal;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_next';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleNext-Bold.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: bold;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: normal;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_next';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleNext-RegularItalic.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: normal;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: italic;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_next';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleNext-BoldItalic.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: bold;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: italic;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_mono';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleMono-Regular.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: normal;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: normal;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_mono';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleMono-RegularItalic.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: normal;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: italic;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_mono';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleMono-Bold.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: bold;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: normal;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'atkinson_mono';
  src: url('/content/fonts/AtkinsonHyperlegibleMono-BoldItalic.woff2') format('woff2');
       font-weight: bold;
       font-display: swap;
       font-style: italic;
}
 
:root {
  --font-stack: "atkinson_mono", system-ui, monospace;
}
 
pre {
  font-family: "atkinson_mono", monospace;
}
 
code {
  font-family: "atkinson_mono", monospace;
}

Addons

Kev sent me 2 PHP scripts to provide a Tag-Cloud and a full site Archive page.

I tweaked them a bit, and here are my current versions.

tag-cloud.php

<?php
 
 
 
declare(strict_types=1);
 
 
 
$pageTitle = 'Tag Cloud';
 
$metaDescription = 'All tags, sized by how often they appear.';
 
 
 
$tagIndex = load_tag_index();
 
$tagCounts = [];
 
if ($tagIndex) {
 
    foreach ($tagIndex as $slug => $slugs) {
 
        $tagCounts[$slug] = count($slugs);
 
    }
 
}
 
 
 
// Collect original display names from posts (slugs alone lose capitalisation/spaces)
 
$originalNames = [];
 
foreach (get_all_posts(false) as $post) {
 
    foreach (($post['tags'] ?? []) as $tag) {
 
        $slug = normalize_tag($tag);
 
        if (!isset($originalNames[$slug])) {
 
            $originalNames[$slug] = $tag;
 
        }
 
    }
 
}
 
 
 
// Sort alphabetically by display name
 
uksort($tagCounts, function (string $a, string $b) use ($originalNames): int {
 
    return strcasecmp($originalNames[$a] ?? $a, $originalNames[$b] ?? $b);
 
});
 
 
 
$maxCount = $tagCounts ? max($tagCounts) : 1;
 
$minCount = $tagCounts ? min($tagCounts) : 1;
 
$range    = $maxCount > $minCount ? $maxCount - $minCount : 1;
 
 
 
require PUREBLOG_BASE_PATH . '/includes/header.php';
 
render_masthead_layout($config, ['page' => null]);
 
?>
 
<main>
 
    <h1>Tag Cloud</h1>
 
 
 
    <?php if (empty($tagCounts)): ?>
 
        <p>No tags found.</p>
 
    <?php else: ?>
 
        <p class="tag-cloud">
 
            <?php foreach ($tagCounts as $slug => $count):
 
                $name     = $originalNames[$slug] ?? $slug;
 
                $ratio    = ($count - $minCount) / $range;
 
                $fontSize = round(0.85 + $ratio * 1.4, 2);
 
                $postWord = $count === 1 ? 'post' : 'posts';
 
                echo '<a href="/tag/' . e(rawurlencode($slug)) . '"'
 
                   . ' style="font-size: ' . $fontSize . 'em"'
 
                   . ' title="' . e((string) $count) . ' ' . $postWord . '">'
 
                   . e($name) .  '(' .  e((string) $count) . ')' .  '</a>' . '&emsp;&emsp;';
 
            endforeach; ?>
 
        </p>
 
    <?php endif; ?>
 
</main>
 
<?php render_footer_layout($config, ['page' => null]); ?>
 
</body>
 
</html>

archive.php

<?php
declare(strict_types=1);
 
$allPosts = get_all_posts(false);
$postsByYear = [];
 
foreach ($allPosts as $entry) {
    $year = !empty($entry['date']) ? date('Y', strtotime((string) $entry['date'])) : 'Unknown';
    $postsByYear[$year][] = $entry;
}
 
krsort($postsByYear, SORT_NATURAL);
 
$pageTitle = 'Archive';
$metaDescription = 'Browse all published posts by year.';
?>
<?php require PUREBLOG_BASE_PATH . '/includes/header.php'; ?>
<?php render_masthead_layout($config); ?>
<main class=archive>
    <article>
        <h1>Archive</h1>
        <p><?= e((string) count($allPosts)) ?> published posts.</p>
 
        <?php if (!$allPosts): ?>
            <p>No published posts yet.</p>
        <?php else: ?>
            <?php foreach ($postsByYear as $year => $yearPosts): ?>
                <h3><?= e((string) $year) ?> (<?= e((string) count($yearPosts)) ?>)</h3>
                <ul>
                    <?php foreach ($yearPosts as $postItem): ?>
                        <li>
                            <?php if (!empty($postItem['date'])): ?>
                              <!--  <small> -->
                                    <time datetime="<?= e((string) $postItem['date']) ?>">
                                        <?= e(date('D Y-m-d H:i', strtotime((string) $postItem['date']))) ?>
                                    </time>
			   <!--     </small> -->
				&emsp;
                            <?php endif; ?>
                            <a href="/<?= e((string) ($postItem['slug'] ?? '')) ?>">
                                <?= e((string) ($postItem['title'] ?? 'Untitled')) ?>
                            </a>
                        </li>
                    <?php endforeach; ?>
                </ul>
            <?php endforeach; ?>
        <?php endif; ?>
    </article>
</main>
<?php render_footer_layout($config); ?>
</body>
</html>

Further Information

pure, blog

Page created : 02/03/26 08:50 GMT

Page updated : 03/03/26 07:32 GMT

Python2

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 09:55:07 +0000

←Computers

Python2

Debian Bullseye forcing move to Python3

How to install pip2 and then any required python2 modules, and continue to use Python2 code I've already written, and don't want/need to re-write to python3.

1. Python-is-python2

sudo apt-get install python-is-python2

2. pip2

from https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-python-pip-pip3-on-debian-11-bullseye

sudo apt install curl -y
 
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/pip/2.7/get-pip.py --output get-pip.py
 
sudo python2 get-pip.py

Then it's possible to install python2 modules via pip2

gm4slv@shack:~$ sudo pip2 install numpy
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 reached the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. 
Please upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 is no longer maintained. 
pip 21.0 will drop support for Python 2.7 in January 2021.
More details about Python 2 support in pip can be found at https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/development/release-process/#python-2-support 
pip 21.0 will remove support for this functionality.
Collecting numpy
  Downloading numpy-1.16.6-cp27-cp27mu-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (17.0 MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 17.0 MB 196 kB/s
Installing collected packages: numpy
Successfully installed numpy-1.16.6

— John Pumford-Green 12/07/22 19:20

Further Information

R Pi Image files

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 09:55:07 +0000

←Computers

R Pi Image files

Various tips and tricks for working with Raspberry Pi Disk Images

Taking an image

remove SD card from Pi
insert into PC
unmount the image partitions if they get auto-mounted

take the image using dd

sudo dd if=/dev/mmblahblah of=name_of_image.img bs=4M

wait….. and wait….
this can now be either
1. saved as it is (possibly a big file)
2. compressed with gzip
```
gzip name_of_image.img
```
an alternative is to make sure the image is as small as it needs to be, appropriate to the space actually needed by the installed OS.

Using ''losetup'' to work with the image file

The image can be used as a loop device and then mounted as a normal disk to allow access to the files etc.

To access the image as a loop device you let losetup find the partitions automatically and convert them to to loop partitions loop0p1 (the /boot partition) and loop0p2 the root partition. You can then mount whichever one you need.

gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ sudo losetup -Pf igate.img
gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ lsblk
NAME      MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0       7:0    0   4.3G  0 loop
├─loop0p1 259:0    0   256M  0 part
└─loop0p2 259:1    0     4G  0 part
sda         8:0    0 298.1G  0 disk
├─sda1      8:1    0 235.1G  0 part /
├─sda2      8:2    0     1K  0 part
├─sda3      8:3    0  50.9G  0 part
└─sda5      8:5    0  12.1G  0 part [SWAP]
sr0        11:0    1  1024M  0 rom
gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ sudo mount /dev/loop0p2 /mnt
gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ cd /mnt
gm4slv@laptop:/mnt $ ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  lost+found  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  share  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var
gm4slv@laptop:/mnt $ cd etc/
gm4slv@laptop:/mnt/etc $ cat hostname
igate
gm4slv@laptop:/mnt/etc $

This allows you to change files (one example is to set a fixed IP address in /etc/dhcpcd.conf) as required.

Shrinking the image

If the OS had been expanded after install to fill the whole SD Card space there is now a lot of pointless wasted space in the image that

takes up disk space to store
makes copying to a new SD card slow
makes it impossible to copy to a smaller card

The image can be shrunk to a more appropriate size.

The gist of it is here

unmount the loop device:
```
sudo umount /mnt
```
use gparted (need to be at a machine with a graphical session) to shrink the partition to a more suitable size, leaving some room for safety
dispose of the loop device
```
sudo losetup -d loop0
```
The *.img file is still the same size, but the partitions within the file are smaller, the rest of the space needs to be stripped from the *.img file with truncate
Use fdisk to inspect the image file to see where the partitions start and end

gm4slv@laptop:~/piimg $ sudo fdisk -l igate.img
Disk igate.img: 4.25 GiB, 4563402752 bytes, 8912896 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x38ea48c4
 
Device     Boot  Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
igate.img1        8192  532479  524288  256M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
igate.img2      532480 8912895 8380416    4G 83 Linux

The second partition ends at block 8912895 so you shrink the filesystem to this point (plus one). This requires the calculation of the actual number of bytes, based on the block size of 512 bytes.
Either calculate it yourself, or put the calculation in the command:
- ```
 sudo truncate --size=$[(8912895+1)*512] name_of_image.img
```

Voila, a smaller image on file which uses just enough space for the already known to be working OS

Page Updated: 30/12/25 09:55 GMT

linux, pi

Laptop Backup via rsync

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:22:08 +0000

←Computers

Laptop Backup via rsync

A simple way to keep a backup of my laptop Home directory

Backup hosts

where to put the backups for safe keeping

A NAS box on my home LAN : nas1
An old Lenovo Laptop acting as a LAN file server : laptop
My cloud VPS server : g4slv.info

Rsync Script

To automate the backup to any of the three backup hosts above I've got a script, obviously.

The script checks which hosts are currently online and reachable and backs up the same data to each of them. This check means any of the hosts can be turned off but the script won't simply hang waiting for connection timeout before trying the next hosts.

To reduce the traffic, and to limit backing up needless data (i.e. don't just backup the whole of $HOME) I have an exclude file that lists files and directories that should be ignored.

The backups are saved in a remote Directory called “devuan” - the laptop being backed up is running Devuan linux and has the hostname devuan

I also backup a mirror of the wiki to the local NAS and Laptop hosts (as long as I remember to pull a backup/mirror down from the wiki server first). There's no point in backing this up to the remote VPS - since that's the machine where the wiki lives in the first place!

Exclude

/fetch
/fetch.png
/.fehbg
.lesshst
.viminfo
*mutt*
aur/
muttheadercache
muttmessagecache/
*.img
*.iso
.cache/
.claws-mail/
.cups/
.dbus/
.fonts/
.mozilla/
.librewolf/
Kate/
.config/chromium/*
.config/pulse/*
.config/xfce4*
.config/libreoffice
.local/bin/*
.local/share/*
.zoom/*
Pictures/*
Downloads/*
Nextcloud/
yadd_full*
eSIM*
bin/dokuwiki/*

Rsync Script

#!/bin/bash
#
 
# The NAS1 destination is a share called  Backups
# which is accessed via "daemon rsync" at nas1::Backups
# rather than a directory in /home/g4slv
# this allows passwordless rsync. Necessary since the ssh
# server @ nas1 is too old to accept identity keys from
# modern ssh clients - so normal rsync-over-ssh would require
# a password.
#
# Using a "module" overcomes this, and allows for automatic
# backups.
#
 
 
EXCLUDEFROM=~/exclude
SOURCE=/home/g4slv/
 
DEST=devuan
WIKI=wiki
#CLOUD=217.154.53.244
CLOUD=g4slv.info
 
# Test if the destinations are reachable
NAS=` ping -c 1 -w 1 192.168.21.5 | grep received | awk '{print $4}'`
LAPTOP=` ping -c 1 -w 1 192.168.21.101 | grep received | awk '{print $4}'`
INFO=` ping -c 1 -w 1 $CLOUD | grep received | awk '{print $4}'`
 
if [ $NAS == 1 ]
then
	rsync -av --delete /var/www/html/ 192.168.21.5::Backups/$WIKI
	rsync -av  --exclude-from=$EXCLUDEFROM $SOURCE 192.168.21.5::Backups/$DEST
else
	echo "NAS1 not found"
fi
 
if [ $LAPTOP == 1 ]
then
	rsync -av --delete /var/www/html/ 192.168.21.101:backups/$WIKI
	rsync -av --exclude-from=$EXCLUDEFROM $SOURCE 192.168.21.101:backups/$DEST
else
	echo "Laptop not found"
fi
 
if [ $INFO == 1 ]
then
rsync -av -e 'ssh -p xxxx' --exclude-from=$EXCLUDEFROM $SOURCE $CLOUD:backups/$DEST
else
	echo "Server INFO not found"
fi

Dokuwiki Mirror/Backup

I have a script to pull a copy of the dokuwiki files from the VPS and put them in /var/www/html/* on my laptop. The laptop runs apache2 and can server the wiki itself. This mirror can be backed up through the above script to the other backup hosts nas1 and laptop

#!/bin/bash
 
rsync -av -e "ssh -p xxxx" --progress  xxxx@g4slv.info:/var/www/html/dokuwiki/ dokuwiki/
 
sudo rsync -av dokuwiki/ /var/www/html/dokuwiki/
 
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/dokuwiki

— John Pumford-Green 29/01/26 13:48 GMT

Further Information

computer, backup

SSL Install on VPS

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 09:55:07 +0000

←Computers

SSL Install on VPS

I decided to bite the bullet and obtain an SSL certificate and install it on this VPS, and configure Apache2 to use HTTPS instead of plain HTTP.

I used Fasthost again to obtain the SSL certificate, and some of their instructions were a little dodgy regarding the steps to install it and get Apache to work with SSL. I managed in the end though.

gm4slv.org.uk now has a SSL certificate and connections to port 80 HTTP will be automatically redirected to port 443 HTTPS.

The steps with Apache (ignoring the process of obtaining the certificates):

There are 3 certificate files:

*.key is generated on the VPS itself with

openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout gm4slv.org.uk.key -out gm4slv.org.uk.csr

the signed *.crt file obtained from the signing authority via FastHost (it's the gm4slv.org.uk.csr key signed by the authority's key)
the “intermediate” file obtained from the signing authority via FastHost (this is the “chain of authority” file?)

Once the keys are to hand:

copy the 3 certificate files to a directory on the VPS. I used /usr/local/ssl/
tell Apache where to find the keys:
- add to default-ssl.conf virtual host site file
  - SSLCertificateFile /usr/local/ssl/signed.crt
  - SSLCertificateKeyFile /usr/local/ssl/gm4slv.org.uk.key
  - SSLCertificateChainFile /usr/local/ssl/ca.pem
add ssl mod to Apache:
```
 a2enmod ssl 
```
make symbolic link in sites-enabled pointing to sites-available/default-ssl.conf
restart apache
open VPS firewall port 443 in FastHost control panel
browse to https://gm4slv.org.uk

set up redirect of plain HTTP to SSL HTTPS by adding to 000-default.conf

    ServerName gm4slv.org.uk
    ServerAlias www.gm4slv.org.uk
    Redirect permanent / https://gm4slv.org.uk/

restart apache

Job Done

ssl, apache, vps

Computers

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:10:13 +0000

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Computers

This is a place to collect together projects, hints & tips and memory aids to do with Computing and Networking.

Page Updated : 29/01/26 16:10 GMT

computers

Tmux tips and tricks

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 20:37:08 +0000

←Computers

Tmux tips and tricks

prefix key

From https://gist.github.com/JikkuJose/7509315

Change “prefix” key to the backtick ` add to ~/.tmux.conf

unbind C-b
set-option -g prefix `
bind ` send-prefix

the last line means typing two backticks in succession will pass the second one to the application - so can still enter ` into app. running in the tmux window.

terminal colours

Colours in tmux… need TERM “xterm-256color”…

add to ~/.bashrc:

export TERM=xterm-256color

also to ~/.tmux.conf

set -g default-terminal "xterm-256color"

start programs in tmux

Something like this:

start_direwolf.sh

#!/bin/bash
 
session="Igate"
 
tmux start-server
 
tmux new-session -d -s $session
 
tmux rename-window "direwolf"
 
tmux selectp -t 0
tmux send-keys "direwolf -t 1 -T "%c" -c /home/gm4slv/direwolf.conf" C-m

linux, tmux

VPS Notes

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 13:18:54 +0000

←Computers

VPS Notes

GM4SLV.ORG.UK VPS : New VPS created 6^th March 2025

To separate my personal wiki site from yaddnet.org server
Wiki backed-up and moved from yaddnet.org to new gm4slv.org.uk VPS
SSL Certificate replaced to enable HTTPS

New VPS : March 2025

New VPS 1 obtained at Fasthosts

Type:Virtual Machine
Size:vps 1 2 60
Cpu:1 vCore
RAM:2 GB
Disk:60 GB NVMe SSD

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
Release:        24.04
Codename:       noble

Installed PHP and Apache2

gm4slv@gm4slv:~ $ php --version
PHP 8.3.6 (cli) (built: Dec  2 2024 12:36:18) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.3.6, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v8.3.6, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

configured SSL per previous method SSL Install on VPS
changed SSH port from default 22 to a new port, changed VPS firewall to suit new SSH port
Ubunto OS brought up to date: sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Dokuwiki Security

previous installations used .htaccess to prevent web access to data/conf/lib/bin etc. directories
this time I decided not to use .htaccess but to follow the alternative instructions in https://www.dokuwiki.org/security to use LocationMatch

LocationMatch method

Apache is told which directories (data, conf, bin, inc, vendor) to make private. The downside is that this configuration might need altering if new directories are added during dokuwiki upgrades.

add to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

<LocationMatch "/(data|conf|bin|inc|vendor)/">
    Order allow,deny
    Deny from all
    Satisfy All
</LocationMatch>

sudo service apache2 restart

.htaccess method

the secured directories in dokuwiki have suitable .htaccess files already. Apache needs to betold to allow them to alter behaviour

AllowOverride All

add to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

         <Directory /var/www/html>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

sudo service apache2 restart

SSH Security

Configured sshd to disallow password-logins and only accept public-key authentication
- be careful to check the files in /etc/ssh/sshd_conf.d for hidden config options!
uploaded public keys from
- Puttygen for putty on laptop
- ConnectBot app on phone
saved both in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
now only logins with a valid public key will succeed.
- In the event of a loss of the public keys it's still possible to gain access via Fasthosts account dashboard
  - → then reconfigure sshd to accept password logins again until new keys can be uploaded.

06/04/25 : Renew SSL certificate

Same procedure as before
- Download “Certificate” → signed.crt
- Download “Intermediate Certificate” → ca.pem
- Upload via WinSCP to VPS
- Copy old /usr/local/ssl/signed.crt → signed.crt.old
- Copy old /usr/local/ssl/ca.pem → ca.pem.old
- Copy new files into /usr/local/ssl
- Restart Apache
There were 2 “Intermediate Certificate” for download from Fast Hosts…
- I used the one named 7D5B5126B476BA11DB74160BBC530DA7.cer
- This is the same as the one used when I renewed YaddNet.org SSL YaDDNet : VPS SSL Renewal
- It seems that the intermediate certificate is not unique to the domain being secured, it's a certificate that verifies the identity of the authenticator of the domain's SSL certificate.

UPDATE ON TWO INTERMEDIATE CERTIFICATES 05/07/25

I've discovered that the 2 Intermediate Certificates are necessary to complete the chain of authority.

What should be done is to join them together into one ca.pem file (and in the correct order…. )

[root@wiki:/home/g4slv/ssl]# cat 397A66CC2756362E0DAA87CA6EABE3B1.cer 00D27FBBC1DE359E5216AD6149586099C4.cer > ca.pem
 
[root@wiki:/home/g4slv/ssl]# cp ca.pem /usr/local/ssl
 
[root@wiki:/home/g4slv/ssl]# systemctl restart apache2

Check correct SSL operation at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html

Old information below is for historical information

GM4SLV.ORG.UK VPS : CANCELLED AND DELETED 9^th October 2024

Wiki functionality easily provided by yaddnet.org VPS
wiki pages & data transferred to yaddnet.org
Fasthosts deleted VPS following telephone confirmation
- deletion/cancellation not possible via Control Panel
- telephone call-back needed to confirm

OS      : Debian 10 (Buster)
RAM     : 0.5GB
Network : 400MB 
SSD     : 10GB

IP Address : 213.171.209.127
Hostname   : gm4slv.org.uk
Open Ports : ssh, http, https

Domain Name  : gm4slv.org.uk
Renewal date : 3/4/2024

Access via FastHosts

browse to https://admin.fasthosts.co.uk/Servers/VPS/1116040162 and login with credentials

Installing SSL for HTTPS

Create Certificates

First : obtain SSL Certificates

Configure APACHE

Second : configure Apache to use HTTPS

copy self generated gm4slv.org.uk.key from the “openssl” command to /usr/local/ssl/
copy the *crt for the newly obtained signed *.crt file renamed as signed.crt to /usr/local/ssl
copy the “intermediate” file to /usr/local/ssl/ (renamed as ca.pem)
edit apache config… looks like /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf
- SSLCertificateFile /usr/local/ssl/signed.crt
- SSLCertificateKeyFile /usr/local/ssl/gm4slv.org.uk.key
- SSLCertificateChainFile /usr/local/ssl/ca.pem
make symlink sites-enabled/default-ssl.conf pointing to sites-available/default-ssl.conf
a2enmod ssl
restart apache2
will it be listening on port 443? yes
open firewall port 443 on Fasthost control panel
Can I reach it with https://gm4slv.org.uk? yes
Can I still reach it with http://gm4slv.org.uk? yes
force redirect of plain HTTP: to HTTPS:
add to 000-default.conf:

        ServerName gm4slv.org.uk
        ServerAlias www.gm4slv.org.uk
        Redirect permanent / https://gm4slv.org.uk/

taken from https://linuxize.com/post/redirect-http-to-https-in-apache/
restart apache2
verify SSL access ok - yes
verify non-SSL is redirected to SSL - yes

Confirm proper security

Browse to https://gm4slv.org.uk

20/04/23 Renew SSL Certificate

new Signed and CA (intermediate) certificates obtained and installed in /usr/local/ssl

Hardware Upgrade 20/4/23

Original configuration VPS XS : 500MB RAM and 10GB SSD @ £1 per month (plus VAT)
Upgrade to VPS S : 1GB RAM and 20GB SSD @ £3 per month (plus VAT)
VPS rebooted for upgrade
RAM seems to have increased to 1GB but reported 'df -h' still shows 7.5GB total for / and 1.9GB for Swap. This is only 10GB.
Perhaps more time is needed for VM to catch up and expand the Virtual Hard Drive?
Gotcha…. the Virtual Drive was increased to 20GB, but not the partition or the filesystem… the only way to get a full 20GB was to “rebuild” the VPS….
took a backup of the dokuwiki files (rsync mirrored them to shack PC). Hit “Rebuild” and built a new VPS. Applied for replacement SSL keys (had to make a new CSR/KEY first)…
Used rsync to send back the dokuwiki files (from the shack PC mirror)
set up Apache2 to use the new SSL certificates…
VPS is now rebuilt and all wiki files restored & Apache2 uses HTTPS.

Debian Upgrade 15/2/24

Upgraded from Buster (10) → Bullseye (11)
Upgraded Dokuwiki (this needed PHP7.4 from Buster, which is why the Debian upgrade was necessary) to the newest version (Release 2024-02-06a “Kaos”)
Upgraded from Bullseye (11) → Bookwork (12) - might as well get to STABLE

Debian Upgrade 16/2/24

Upgraded to Trixie (testing)

gm4slv@gm4slv:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid
Release:        n/a
Codename:       trixie

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
 
 
#deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
#deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
 
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

Dokuwiki still working correctly with latest versions of Apache and PHP

gm4slv@gm4slv:~$ php --version
PHP 8.2.12 (cli) (built: Jan  8 2024 06:21:20) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.2.12, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v8.2.12, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

2024 gm4slv.org.uk domain renewed

03/04/24 Domain Name auto-renewed for 2 years until April 2026
04/04/24 SSL Certificate auto-renewed for 1 year until May 2025

04/04/24 : Install Renewed SSL Certificate

SSL Certificates Auto Renewed by Fasthosts
download new certificates from Fasthosts control panel:
- New “Certificate” downloaded and renamed “signed.crt”
- New “Intermediate Certificate” downloaded and renamed “ca.pem”
copied both → VPS $HOME dir via SCP
On VPS →
- copied current /usr/local/ssl/ca.pem → ca_old.pem
- copied current /usr/local/ssl/signed.crt → signed_old.crt
- copied new ca.pem from $HOME to /usr/local/ssl/ca.pem
- copied new signed.crt from $HOME to /usr/local/ssl/signed.crt
- restarted apache sudo service apache2 restart
check new valid certificate now in use in web browser
- Validity Issued on & Expires on dates now show new certificate is in use

Page Updated : 30/12/25 09:55 GMT

vps, linux, ssl