Installed a TLS/SSL certificate for this site from LetsEncrypt.org using acme.sh and DNS API for proving the domain ownership.
I have written a blog post about Installing a LetsEncrypt.org wildcard certificate on Linux using acme.sh and a DNS Api. I recently updated the instructions on how to use acme.sh if you need to install API keys for many different registrants.
Installing a LetsEncrypt.org wildcard certificate on Linux using acme.sh and a DNS Api
Migration procedure for moving various free social media from a GNU/Linux to another GNU/Linux system and end results
This is the record for what went well and what didn’t go well in the process of migrating the *.consumium.org sites (except https://c.consumium.org, that’s in Espoo)
This migration was completed on 2016-06-09. I would like to extend a warm you to https://TransIP.eu for showing compassion in my predicament and offering to credit me some of the costs incurred by requiring 2 servers for a period of a time.
<spam>Their operation is really top-notch and I have never had outages with them that I would not have been responsible. Ever since I started hosting free social media with them in July 2013 the service has been outstanding and their control panel does include ability to take snapshots of system disks and a VNC just in case someone is not comfortable working with cli. The first time I saw the VNC in the control panel and it started to show the Debian GNU/Linux white-on-black bootup in my browser I was impressed.. Then it moved to run level 6 and I was naturally like “Whoa! It can do that!”. TransIP.eu is maybe not the most inexpensive hosting guys out there at the moment but I tell you their service level and its consistency are worth all the extra money. SSD system disks are spaceous and very fast and just as soon as http://maidsafe.net/ starts I’ll be purchasing at least one 10€ unit of 2,000GB big storage (which can be grown to 400,000GB, slightly under 400TB). Scp’ing between 2 servers in the same data center in Netherlands I was able to clock 101 Mbit/s speed. That is almost a gigabit / second, normal HDD couldn’t handle that.</spam>
Migration of diaspora* to a new server
The original raison d’être for the old server called Debian7. The name is not very well chosen and misleading since the machine was dist-upgraded to Debian8 stable without hick-ups. Diaspora* was originally installed in July 2013 which at the time took couple of days
Migration of GNU social to a new server
– GNU social is a handy microblogging service.This instance was installed in 2016. Should pose no problems. MySQL was replaced with MariaDB during installation of this with no problems. Update: GNU social migration was the first one to be done. Grabbed the database (which contains the confs) and the ‘avatar’ and ‘files’ directories. Shut down. Put those in place and restart web server and GNU social was up with apparently all the old information from the previous box.
Interesting point about Hubzilla and Friendica
Friendica and Hubzilla leverage the same instructional capital and best-practice which leads to that their installation instructions have many portions in common.
Migration of Hubzilla to a new server
This will probably not have the old database restored because when I originally installed this I didn’t realize the point is to have many many channels but just one login. Of course it might be possible to restore the database but manipulate it so that the Consum(er)ium relevant channels would be under the same user
Migration of Friendica to a new server
https://friendica.consumium.org (how to install Friendica free social media)
the freesome of least steep learning curve for the people who want to free themselves of Facebook every now and then.
Friendica migration did not require copying over more than just the database as Friendica saves the uploaded files in the database and not flat file system.
Dealing with outgoing and incoming email
Getting email arrangements to work in a safe and reasonable way is by no means as easy as one may think at start. diaspora* email was configured to use SMTP over a TLS encrypted hop over to https://gandi.net‘s SMTP server. Took a while to figure out but I am guessing this will make the email look better to spam filters as the “origin” is under the same domain as the machines given in the MX records in DNS to be the Mail eXchange servers for consumium.org
‘sudo aptitude install sendmail’ installs sendmail, an MTA this is apparently all that is needed for PHP’s mail()-function to work.
The migration plan (and how it went)
(Note: to lazily get all the dependencies and hope there wasn’t old junk you could follow this post http://juboblo.gr/index.php/2015/12/02/original-howto-migrate-gnulinux-to-bigger-disk-with-clean-install-and-grab-all-apt-gettable-software-settings-and-files/)
Migration of system settings
Repeat following steps for each service
MAID == Massive Array of Internet Disks
SAFE == Secure Access for Everyone
In ze Internets people have been watching this endeavour by the brave Scots very very carefully and keenly for a few years. If all goes well MaidSafe.net will make the current Internet the “Legacy Internet” rapidly by providing a shared digital commons wealth unseen before. https://forum.safenetwork.io is the community forum where you can catch the gist of how excited people are about MaidSafe Network and it’s significance to the future of population of Planet Earth.
Technically this endeavour is very bold and ambitious. The key people have donated all their patents, papers and code to the nonprofit MaidSafe Foundation though there is also a MaidSafe Ltd registered in Scotland to enable professional staff for the ongoing development and deployment effort. Funds were raised by selling off 10% of the ceiling of SafeCoin (cryptocash) amount (4-gigacoins) to an enthusiastic crowd. So you get the gist that these are highly creative individuals pushing the envelope onto the future.
Last week http://maidsafe.net/ published it’s first downloadables that allow people to discover the MaidSafe test network. Word of caution: The test network is wiped occasionally when required by devops.
MaidSafe Launcher 0.3.0 – This is for connecting to the network – The login consists of three things: a pin, a keyword and a password. I don’t fully know what is the purpose of the “keyword” and the test network is getting reset whenever necessary for development and the credentials stop working because the secret identity that allows you to access your public identity no longer is there in the testnet.
Now start the MaidSafe App and it asks the Launcher to ask you for privileges.
MaidSafe Demo App 0.0.1 that enables
…
TODO: Install the DNS hacks and try those out and report here
Nice article on #free #copyleft #opensource #tools for #system #monitoring https://opensource.com/life/16/2/open-source-tools-system-monitoring – #top, #atop, #htop and my favourite atm #glances
Original HowTo by http://juboblo.gr #installingfreesome
Replacing MySQL with MariaDB
Following these instructions https://askubuntu.com/questions/531455/how-to-drop-in-replace-mysql-with-mariadb (written for Ubuntu14.04) blindly would have made a mess of this but they still outline what you want to do. Since they wanted to remove the ruby specific stuff which I wanted to stay to retain diaspora* pod working.
So I shut down diaspora* processes the usual waya and MySQL with ‘mysqladmin -uroot -p stop’
The instructions say to
sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-commonbut I used instead
sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql-server mysql-clientWhich left the ruby stuff in place which is a good idea since afaik MariaDB is binary compatible with MySQL add-on stuff
followed by
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get install mariadb-serverAnd MariaDB was up and running which I checked by ‘mysql -uroot -p’ so the downtime for the pod was only like 5 minutes for this step.
Installing the dependencies for GNUsocial
‘sudo aptitude install php5-curl php5-gd php5-gmp php5-intl php5-json php5-mysqlnd’
Installing optimizations / accelerators for GNUsocial
I went with this ‘ sudo aptitude install php5-xcache exif’
I’m not sure if php5-xcache (an opcode cache system) is what the official installation instructions refer to as ‘opcache’. At least /etc/php5/mods-available/ is showing a opcache.ini so I’m guess it was that.
Downloading GNUsocial code
‘sudo mkdir /var/www/gnusocial’
‘sudo chgrp www-data /var/www/gnusocial/’
‘sudo chmod g+w /var/www/gnusocial/’
‘sudo git clone https://git.gnu.io/gnu/gnu-social.git gnusocial/’
and you are done
Creating the database
From shell run
mysqladmin -u "root" -p create social
GRANT ALL on social.*
TO 'social'@'localhost'
IDENTIFIED BY 'agoodpassword';The command above is to be executed in the MariaDB client (start it with ‘mysql -uroot -p social’)
Get an SSL cert and key for your GNU social instance
I have not yet tried out https://letsencrypt.org/ but have heard good things about it and you cannot really beat the price of 0€. A few companies I am clientele of are supporting it financially. Mainly https://gandi.net – a very nice registrar. Good even if not the cheapest around. High sortiment of domain names and rock solid tek with the latest copyleft solutions.
Configure Apache/Nginx with the help of the example .conf files in the directory you cloned the social software into.
You can test the configuration file makes sense by
‘sudo nginx -t’
Remember to reload after editing.
‘sudo service nginx reload’
Finishing up
Once you have configured you httpd there is still one thing to do before proceeding to https://social.example.com/install.php
For some reason the installation guide did not mention that the default settings in the httpd.conf.example file expects unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; to just be there.
install with
‘sudo aptitude php5-fpm’
This was how I got GNU social to work in the same box as the diaspora* pod.
#HowTo #ByJuho – How to install clean GNU/Linukka aka. GNU/Linux onto bigger laptop 2.5″ HDD and all your apt-get’table applications and document and configuration files from an older smaller disk to bigger?
#needsudo not gonna work without sudo rights
#need $20 USB-to-SATA casing and a screwdriver
#alternative similar effect producing method is to use the casing and use dd to move partitions around and Gparted to resize them.
# what it doesn’t do? It doesn’t move password file so this will no work for a system then one user. It does not move /root-directory contents in case there is something there and it does not move any server software set-up except for the apt-gettable software.
# Run in the old GNU/Linukka to get complete list of # ‘apt-get install’ed packages onto packages.list
‘dpkg –get-selections > packages.list’
# Move this packages.list file (no need to compress it. it is few tens of kilobytes long) to the
# Now you could try
‘sudo dpkg –set-selections < packages.list’
straight ahead but for me it complained about not finding obviously existing packages such as ‘apache2’ so I consulted the dpkg man page
# So first run
‘ sudo apt-get install dselect’
# and run
‘sudo dselect update’
# and you will get the latest fullest catalogue of apt-gettable software from the repositories
# Now you are ready to set dpkg (Debian PacKaGe management) selections from the file
‘sudo dpkg –set-selections < packages.list’
# now install all packages that were set in the previous command from packages.list. This is obviously going to take a some time but you’re almost there.
‘sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade’
# You can now use your favourite method of recovering your files stored in /home are restored
#I didn’t just mount the old /home partition. Instead I put it into a USB-to-SATA casing and used that to connect the HDD into the freshly installed system and copied them over.
# Alternatives are using a 3rd (removable) HDD to move the files or upload to server or cloud and download to new system.
# recursively copying all directories from the old /home partition
‘sudo cp /media/username/UUIDgoeshere /home -R’
System monitoring and control software for [K]ubuntu / copyleft
Resource Monitor is a KDE5 Plasma Plasmoid Widget companion to the System Monitor. Install instructions in Muon Discoverer. One dependancy must be installed. It sits in your panel and reports CPU load and frequency, RAM and swap usage with tiny letters and numbers and graphics. Here seen in 2x high panel height
Psensor 
is a copyleft program, specifically GPL licensed installable from the ubuntu repositories with ‘sudo apt install psensor’
Cpufrequtils (ThinkWiki entry for cpufrequtils)are installable from the Ubuntu repositories by typing ‘sudo apt install cpufrequtils’ and contains 2 commands:
Thinkpad Fan Control is a fan RPM control software written in C for the Thinkpad series of laptops. Apparently the normal controller has a ceiling at 4,500RPM but according to the internets the fan can be instructed to go 5,500RPM raising the noise pitch and volume slightly.
System monitoring software for Windows
Core Temp is a freeware Windows program and reports real time temp sensor data ( prlly algorithmically smoothed but much more stable ) and real time CPU frequency multiplier and frequency reading.
CPU-Z by CPUID is another good free-of-charge 
Windows program that will give you lot of information about your system also including the frequency multiplier used at each time
Synopsis of the original problem
Had a machine with a weird temperature problem here… It’s a 2011 Lenovo ThinkPad X201 with a 1st generation i5 known as Arrandale. CPU temperature control, maybe voltage control, maybe amp control is not working correctly in #Kubuntu. (UPDATE: Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and newer intel systems should use the Intel P-State governor. Installation instructions for [K]ubunu here)
Temperature seems to be mostly dependent on the frequency of the CPU with some correation to load. Reported CPU fan rotation speed is 4,000-4,500 RPM and does not adequately respond to the heat situation.
(UPDATE: Directing high pressure pressurised air into the cooling elements while machine unpowered seems to have remedied the problem.)
#GNU/#Linukka heat shutdowns causing system being unusable. Before anyone starts about the GNU/Linukka treating the system and therefore the user more badly then a Microsoft Windows I must say that air conducts have not been cleaned and silicon heat paste has not been changed to fresh, new. I gonna get supplies to do that when I run into shop.
In Kubuntu15.10 GNU/Linukka burns the chip at ~ 90C ~ 2.0-2.5Ghz operating speed causing emergency shutdown because of temperature because the readings viewed in Psensor may flux 15-20C somewhat interdependent of CPU load. Windows 7 keeps the CPU ~ 1.5-2.0GHz quite independent from the load and the temps are in the acceptable ~ 70C zone with only 2-4C variance in the readings reported by CoreTemp.
#Solution:
* Bought a pressure air can and blasted the visible from exterior heat sink