James - Neurotechnics

James

Resize/Maximize the default Logical Volume in Ubuntu

Resize/Maximize the default Logical Volume in Ubuntu

You may have noticed that when installing Ubuntu form a USB disk, that it created a default mount point on your disk that is only about 20% of the full capacity of the disk. Perhaps 100 or 200GB of your 1TB disk. Using the command lsblk you might see your

Binding port 53 to Pi-hole in docker

Binding port 53 to Pi-hole in docker

When deploying pi-hole via docker on your Linux or Mac machine, there's a high probability that port 53 is already being used to resolve DNS requests via your local machine to an upstream server, and as such you can not bind your docker container to port 53 on the host.

My go-to command line Linux tools for WSL

My go-to command line Linux tools for WSL

I've started using WSL pretty regularly now that our development process has gone cross-platform by default. I still love developing on Windows, and even though my entire tool-chain is available on a Mac, I prefer the customisation of both hardware and software that comes with the PC platform. That being

Obtaining your public IP Address from the command line

Obtaining your public IP Address from the command line

Most command line users, even the newbies, will have see the use of ipconfig for reading details of network interfeaces and their respective configuration. However, the configuration of most devices only applies to the connection to the internal network. If you need to know the IP Address of your external

Configure GPG to sign Git commits (in Windows)

Configure GPG to sign Git commits (in Windows)

Configuring GPG to sign Git commits isn't trivial, especially if you need integration with an IDE such as VSCode or SourceTree. Fortunately there's a straight forward set of steps you can take. Install required software You can skip any steps you've already completed, but in general you'll need to install

Gracefully terminate a threaded C# console application on CRTL+C

Gracefully terminate a threaded C# console application on CRTL+C

So, most console applications seemingly terminate instantly when they receive a CTRL+C, but occasionally you may notice that some have a termination message, or take an unusually long time to terminate. This is probably due to the application winding itself up cleanly without corrupting anything that was in-progress. This

How to restore NuGet packages from the console when Visual Studio refuses

How to restore NuGet packages from the console when Visual Studio refuses

On occasion, and especially if I switch branches in git, my Visual Studio projects will load without any of the dependencies they rely on (generally in the packages folder*). Telling Visual Studio to restore all packages in various ways (including a full re-build) always seems to fail... Visual Studio's package

Ad-Reveal for Chrome and Firefox

Ad-Reveal for Chrome and Firefox

The new Ad Reveal browser extension for Chrome and Firefox has been officially released. You can find it now on the add-on stores for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ad-reveal/ and chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ad-reveal/jlbfnlnkmapanbohikbcnlpgpjdpnndc [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ad-reveal/

Solved: Cannot connect to an SMB2 network share form Windows Server 2019

Solved: Cannot connect to an SMB2 network share form Windows Server 2019

Guest access in SMB2 will be disabled by default in Windows Server 2019. According to microsoft (see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4046019/guest-access-in-smb2-disabled-by-default-in-windows-10-and-windows-ser ) > In Windows 10, version 1709, Windows 10, version 1903, Windows Server, version 1709, Windows Server, version 1903, and Windows Server 2019, the SMB2 client no

How to fix: The symbolic link cannot be followed because its type is disabled

How to fix: The symbolic link cannot be followed because its type is disabled

Occasionally, when copying folders from remote servers, or when accessing a symbolic link directly on a file server, you may see the following error: The symbolic link cannot be followed because its type is disabled This is because by default remote to remote symbolic links are disabled. You can enable

Linux: Failed to start Raise network interfaces

Linux: Failed to start Raise network interfaces

We use a lot of virtualization technology in our stack, particularly during development. It just makes life easier. However, there are times when problems arise purely from the fact we're testing the latest tech. Most recently, we upgraded all of our VM's to the latest Linux (Some are Debian, some

git commit accidents - how to undo one

git commit accidents - how to undo one

So you've just pushed your local branch to a remote branch, but then realized that one of the commits should not be there, or that there was some unacceptable typo in it. No problem, you can fix it. But you should do it rather fast before anyone fetches the bad

Automatic NTLM Authentication in your browser

Automatic NTLM Authentication in your browser

If you're in an authenticated network environment, an intranet or other workplace environment where you need to authenticate using NTLM, you've probably been frustrated by the situation where you need to enter your windows credentials a dozen or more times a day, even though you're already logged into the network

Windows Fall Creators Update (1709) and the IIS Error 503

Windows Fall Creators Update (1709) and the IIS Error 503

We finally began the process of updating our Windows 10 desktops to version 1709 (Fall Creators Update) today, and what happened... all of our in-developement websites stopped working. Pretty much every application pool crashed as soon as we accessed each site for the first time, showing a 503: Service Unavailable

Quickly generate large test files in Windows

Quickly generate large test files in Windows

Often as a developer, for testing disk performance, or perhaps your internet or network connection speed, you need to generate a large file of a specific size. Windows includes a utility that allows you to quickly generate a file of any size instantly.

Rescue a QNAP NAS "Unmounted" RAID Volume

Rescue a QNAP NAS "Unmounted" RAID Volume

We recently suffered a strange issue with one of our NAS devices - a QNAP 8-bay NAS. The device itself has two RAID-5 volumes of four disks each. After a power outage that went beyond the time of UPS' ability to keep things running, the unit shut down. To our

Enable remote SSH access to Ubuntu Server

Enable remote SSH access to Ubuntu Server

So, you've just installed your new Ubuntu Server [https://www.ubuntu.com/] and you're thinking, so now I can go back to my desk, and access my new server remotely.... how exactly... Ubuntu Server is generally installed as a headless operating system. In other words you get command line access

Configure MongoDB (and a client) for SSL/TLS

Configure MongoDB (and a client) for SSL/TLS

MongoDB supports encrypted data transport (communication between your application and the database engine) but requires some configuration on both the client and the server in order to set things up correctly. Below, I'll be discussing generating your own SSL certificate and configuring the server to load this certificate on startup,

VPN Review - NordVPN vs Hide.me

VPN Review - NordVPN vs Hide.me

I've been trialling several public VPN services these last few months to see which one can handle the kind of speeds and traffic required from Australia. The two favourites I've settled on (so far) are NordVPN [https://go.nordvpn.net/SHDT] and Hide.me [https://goo.gl/9nvNbO]. A couple

Terminal Services in Windows 8.1 and 10

Terminal Services in Windows 8.1 and 10

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Responsible Software Design: Clean up after yourself

Responsible Software Design: Clean up after yourself

Today, for what ever reason caused it to pop into my head, I decided I should delete some temp files from my system as I try to do on a regular basis. It turned out it has been quite a while since I had done this - more than 4

Windows up-time

Windows up-time

Ok, so you want to know how long it's been since your windows workstation or server was last (re)booted. There are several options. The first few are built right into windows, the others are some helpful external tools you can install yourself. Task Manager The simplest way to find

SSL CA Bundles for cURL and PHP

SSL CA Bundles for cURL and PHP

If you've ever tried connecting to a remove service or server using SSL from your server side cURL or PHP script running on a Windows Server, you may very well have encountered the condition that SSL certificate of the remote server cannot be verified. The problem occurs when you are

Data security - how hard can it be?

Data security - how hard can it be?

There have been quite a few high-profile [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Madison_data_breach] web, corporate [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_hack] and government [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/government-data-breach_n_7514620.html] security breaches in recent months and years, and no one

Reset the Net

Reset the net is really just about spreading knowledge and tools to help the general public protect themselves a little better on-line. See more at https://www.resetthenet.org/ Why June 5? June 5 is the one-year anniversary of the first documents leaked by Edward Snowden. While the EFF has