https://www.vandorp.biz/2020-05-21T15:00:00+02:002020-05-21T15:00:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2020-05-21:/2020/05/navigating-your-way-between-linux-distros//

<p>Assuming you are running Linux, you probably have a favorite or most-familiar Linux distribution; I suspect your first one. In my case, this would be the Debian distro and it's <a href="https://www.debian.org/derivatives/">derivatives</a>, such as Ubuntu or the Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint or Pop!_OS. In an ideal world, you …</p>

2020-01-08T18:00:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2020-01-08:/2020/01/millennials-and-always-giving-100-percent//

<p>2019 is the year in which <a href="https://nos.nl/artikel/2315084-boomer-gekozen-als-van-dale-woord-van-het-jaar-2019.html">'Boomer' has been selected as Van Dale Word of the Year</a>. For those who missed it, a 'Boomer' is <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=boomer">a person from the baby boomer generation or anyone older than the person using the word</a> and the word grew wildly popular thanks to the …</p>

2018-10-19T10:00:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2018-10-19:/2018/10/masterless-puppet-exported-resources//

<p>Puppet has come a long way since it's initial release in 2005, however, it has usually followed client-server architecture, together with its nemesis <a href="https://www.chef.io/">Chef</a> (which later on released chef-solo for running masterless). A lot of the more recent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_configuration_management_software">configuration management tools</a> such as <a href="https://www.ansible.com/">Ansible</a> and <a href="https://www.saltstack.com/">Salt</a> dropped this client-server architecture …</p>

2018-04-06T09:00:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2018-04-06:/2018/04/configuration-management-in-the-era-of-containers//

<p>Triggered by multiple independent events, including (but not limited to) <a href="http://www.xkyle.com/the-evolution-of-distributed-systems-management/">an opinionated blogpost describing The Evolution of Distributed Systems Management</a> that got quite some readers from <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/">Hacker News</a>, <a href="http://www.devopsweekly.com/">the Devops Weekly newsletter</a> and probably created a bit of a stir in the <a href="https://twitter.com/ripienaar/status/970260021719248896">Configuration Management community</a> and things that I noticed …</p>

2017-10-31T07:00:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2017-10-31:/2017/10/debugging-cloudfoundry//

<p>At <a href="https://www.mendix.com/cloud-native-and-multi-cloud-deployment/">Mendix</a> we use <a href="https://www.cloudfoundry.org/">Cloud Foundry</a> quite extensively. So I get to debug some apps in Cloud Foundry from time to time, and I have been keeping this post as a draft for ages. However, since it could also be useful for other people to have this overview, I will …</p>

2017-08-15T11:30:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2017-08-15:/2017/08/debian-installer-adventures//

<h3>Installing Debian on a Btrfs subvolume with LVM on LUKS</h3> <p>My colleague <a href="https://pommi.nethuis.nl/">Pim</a> recently did a great write-up on how to do a <a href="https://pommi.nethuis.nl/safe-in-place-upgrade-to-a-slim-debian-stretch-running-i3/">safe in-place upgrade to a slim Debian stretch running i3</a> using <a href="https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.html.en">debootstrap</a> (a tool which will install a Debian base system into a subdirectory of another, already …</p>

2017-08-04T07:00:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2017-08-04:/2017/08/vbulletin-425-vb-unserialize-performance-hit//

<p><a href="https://trends.builtwith.com/cms/vBulletin">Quite a few</a> of the biggest forums on the internet use vBulletin to build their communities. Their reasons may vary, but one of the reasons why they might want to do so is because the self-hosted version vBulletin 4 came with free forum support for life and ticket support via …</p>

2017-02-08T20:00:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2017-02-08:/2017/02/nixos-linux-vs-coreos-container-linux//

<p>The writing of this blogpost has been on my personal TODO list for a while, but here it finally is. I spent some of my spare time in 2016 tinkering with different Linux distributions, not just because I still strongly believe that <a href="https://www.vandorp.biz/2017/02/using-odin-in-virtualbox-on-linux/">2017 is The Year of the Linux Desktop …</a></p>

2017-02-02T19:00:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2017-02-02:/2017/02/using-odin-in-virtualbox-on-linux//

<p>A while ago I wrote that <a href="https://www.vandorp.biz/2017/01/2017-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop/">2017 is The Year of the Linux Desktop</a>, but there is one thing that has always bothered me and that is that I need to fallback to my Windows machine to flash a new ROM on my lovely Samsung (Android) phone. Of course there …</p>

2017-02-02T18:30:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2017-02-02:/2017/02/running-virtualbox-in-headless-mode-with-rdp//

<p>A <a href="https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-57608">quite annoying bug</a> while using the VirtualBox 5.1.x release, apparently <a href="https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/2497">caused by Qt5</a>, has forced people that use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager">Tiling Window Managers</a> <a href="http://i3wm.org/">like me</a> to look at alternative ways to keep on using VirtualBox until a fix has been released. Luckily, VirtualBox has a <a href="https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html">quite excellent Headless Mode …</a></p>

2017-01-23T07:30:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2017-01-23:/2017/01/2017-the-year-of-the-linux-desktop//

<p>It has already been predicted many times, but I personally believe that 2017 <strong>is</strong> going to be the Year of the Linux Desktop. Let me explain why:</p> <p>Late October 2016, <a href="http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2016/10/apple-unveils-groundbreaking-new-macbook-pro.html">Apple unveiled its groundbreaking new MacBook Pro</a>. Besides some expected hardware refreshments like a newer CPU and a blazingly fast …</p>

2016-11-24T08:00:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2016-11-24:/2016/11/extending-the-functionality-of-zabbix-agents-with-your-own-checks//

<p>About a month ago, I started playing around with <a href="http://www.zabbix.com/">Zabbix</a> to improve my monitoring needs. While setting up Zabbix on Debian/Ubuntu itself is <a href="https://www.unixmen.com/how-to-install-zabbix-on-debian8-and-ubuntu-16/">pretty straightforward when using apache2</a>, and also <a href="https://randomstuffintech.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/zabbix-under-debian-jessie-with-nginx/">doable when preferring nginx</a>, the documentation regarding plugins and custom checks felt missing and <a href="https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/3.2/manual/config/items/userparameters/extending_agent">a bit cumbersome</a> to me …</p>

2016-04-30T16:00:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2016-04-30:/2016/04/nixos-installation-on-multi-boot-system-with-grub-from-arch-installation//

<p>A while ago, I started playing around with <a href="https://www.archlinux.org/">Arch Linux</a> on a spare computer. After following the (excellent) <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/beginners'_guide">Beginners' guide</a> I ended up with a rather nice <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#LVM_on_LUKS">LVM on LUKS</a> setup. This spare computer has one physical (SSD) disk (<code>/dev/sda</code>), which is divided in <code>/dev/sda1</code> (which is <code>/boot …</code></p>

2015-07-11T14:28:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2015-07-11:/2015/07/online-nl-adsl-2-plus-settings-configuration//

<p>For my home internet connection, I am a customer of <a href="http://online.nl">Online.nl</a> for their very affordable <em>Supersnel Internet 30 Mb/s</em> package. With this subscription, you will also receive their default modem, the <em>Huawei HG655d home gateway</em> which gets all it's settings pushed via the provider. However, after not even …</p>

2014-02-06T19:15:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2014-02-06:/2014/02/how-to-reach-an-unreachable-remote-server-by-using-a-man-in-the-middle-server//

<p>Yesterday, I needed to solve a pretty interesting problem. I had to move a few TB's of data from server A to server B in different countries and datacenters. Server A had a pretty decent connection, Server B had an awesome fast connection, but the connection between each other was …</p>

2013-12-20T18:16:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2013-12-20:/2013/12/recent-database-tricks-learned//

<p>Lately I've been busy working with databases for my spare time projects. I imported a huge dump of data into the db via CSV import, but forgot to add an Unique Id Column (Primary Key). Not willing to do the whole import job again, I searched for a solution online …</p>

2012-06-13T13:47:00+02:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2012-06-13:/2012/06/how-to-fix-ubuntu-12-04-lts-bugs//

<p>While installing a new server on my work this week, I found 2 most irritating (and non-professional) bugs in the LTS release (latest version) Ubuntu 12.04 (server).</p> <h4><strong>“Signal out of range” when starting grub after server installation</strong></h4> <p><em>Fix:</em> Boot from the live cd and open a terminal. Assuming your …</p>

2012-01-04T10:20:00+01:00Danieltag:www.vandorp.biz,2012-01-04:/2012/01/installing-a-lightweight-lxdevnc-desktop-environment-on-your-ubuntudebian-vps//

<p>Found some great instructions for putting a lightweight desktop environment on your (Lowend) VPS or server.<br> Uses no more then like 40mb RAM tops, but can be tweaked to only 10-20mb I think.</p> <div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="c1"># Make sure Debian is the latest and greatest</span> apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get dist-upgrade <span class="c1"># Install X, LXDE …</span></pre></div>