Brew Autoupdate

Run the following command to letbrew update itself automatically:

brew install pinentry-mac
brew autoupdate start 43200 --upgrade --cleanup --immediate --sudo

Measuring Ubuntu boot performance

Measuring boot performance in Ubunu is fairly simple. Systemd provides a tool for that.

The overall boot time for kernel and userspace is given by:

systemd-analyze

How much time each boot services takes in descending order is displayed as follows:

systemd-analyze blame

The critical chain for the default target is shown my this:

systemd-analyze critical-chain 

Those time can also be graphed as svg:

systemd-analyze plot > boot_analysis.svg

Ubuntu: clone installed packages to a new system

apt-clone:

On the source system, do the following:

apt-get install apt-clone
apt-clone clone 

Copy \<systemname>.apt-clone.tar.gz to the new machine and run:

apt-get install apt-clone
apt-clone restore .apt-clone.tar.gz

dselect:

source system:

dpkg --get-selections > ~/Package.list

target system:

apt-get update
apt-get install dselect
dselect update
dpkg --set-selections < ~/Package.list
apt-get dselect-upgrade -y

Ubuntu: configure general proxy usage

In order to let an Ubuntu system access the net via a proxy, edit two files and you're done.

/etc/environment:

http_proxy="http://:/"
https_proxy="http://:/"
ftp_proxy="http://:/"
no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,::1

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/90_proxy.conf:

Acquire {
  HTTP::proxy "http://:";
  HTTPS::proxy "http://:";
}

Update ’19: Get snmpd to log more silently

This is an update to the article from 2009 regarding quieting down snmpd - this time in recent Ubuntu LTS 18.04. The issue at hand is the intense chattyness of snmpd to syslog.

Due to the complete shift to systemd, files in /etc/default are becoming disregarded. Therefore customisations have to be made to /etc/systemd/system. Two steps are neccessary:

Create a symlink for snmpd in /etc/systemd:

ln -s /lib/systemd/system/snmpd.service /etc/systemd/system

Edit that file and change:

ExecStart=/usr/sbin/snmpd -Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u Debian-snmp -g Debian-snmp -I -smux,mteTrigger,mteTriggerConf -f

to

ExecStart=/usr/sbin/snmpd -LS4d -Lf /dev/null -u Debian-snmp -g Debian-snmp -I -smux,mteTrigger,mteTriggerConf -f

Then run

systemctl daemon-reload && service snmpd restart

Now snmpd should be calmed down.

Ubuntu: enable MIBs in snmp tools

Lately I ran into some issues using snmp tools, e.g.:

snmpwalk -v2c -c public ${host} test

I received errors like:

Unknown Object Identifier (Sub-id not found: (top) -> test)

This is because MIBs are not installed in Ubuntu by default. To install them use the follwing line:

apt-get install snmp-mibs-downloader

Also comment line 4 of /etc/snmp/snmp.conf so it shows:

# mibs:

Hope that helps someone.

OS X: disable Mission Control on top edge

In El Capitan Apple introduced a feature which opens Mission Cotrol as soon as you drag a window to the top edge of the screen. That is annoying at least to me. Therefore here is a possible fix:

Disable:

defaults write com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -bool TRUE && killall Dock

Enable:

defaults delete com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled && killall Dock

Resize KVM guest’s raw volumes

After running virtual machines in KVM for some time, it might come in handy to be able to resize a KVM guest's raw volumes. In order to do so you first have to shutdown your VM for a while:

virsh destroy <guestname>

In order to add an additional 2 gig to your respective machine, you do the following:</guestname>

qemu-img resize <diskname>.img +2G

Now restart the machine:</diskname>

virsh start <guestname>

Then use fdisk inside the guest to make use of the new space:

fdisk /dev/vda

There, you delete the respective partition and immediately recreate it - with more space. Now restart the machine in order to let the kernel make note of the changes:

reboot

After a final resize you're able to make use of the sweet new space:

resize2fs /dev/vda1

Voila!

Cleanup Docker Containers

In order to cleanup docker containers from time to time just fire the following:

docker system prune -a 

Adding bootstrap to Synology DSM

In package center > settings:

  • add https://www.cphub.net/ to package sources
  • Allow installation of packages published by Synology Inc. and trusted publishers

Install in this order:

  1. Perl in Developer Tools
  2. Easy Bootstrap Installer in Community (choose entware as optware doesn’t have any recent updates)
  3. iPKGui in Community

Packages will be installed to /opt.

Command-line tool is opkg.

opkg list-installed
opkg list *gcc*

Source /opt/etc/profile at the end of the ~/.profile file for each user that needs
to use packages installed by ipkg.