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A (nearly) free custom domain for ngrok
ngrok

A (nearly) free custom domain for ngrok

Introductionngrok and similar tools are great for providing public access to local services, often for development purposes. I primarily use it for exposing an API being developed locally so that a webhook callback

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
4 min read
Creating a complete guest network
mikrotik

Creating a complete guest network

Creating a physically isolated guest network using iptables and 802.11q VLANs.

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
14 min read
Hub Clone Tool
git

Hub Clone Tool

IntroductionI work with a large number of repositories, mostly on GitHub, some are my own but most are for work, and the volume only grows since we complete a lot of projects each

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
3 min read
Making changes on a read-only Raspberry Pi

Making changes on a read-only Raspberry Pi

Introduction The ability to boot a Raspberry Pi from a read-only file system can be advantageous for a variety of reasons and I've previously written a number of posts that look at use

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
5 min read
MySQL Workbench, Ubuntu 20.04 and App Armor
mysql

MySQL Workbench, Ubuntu 20.04 and App Armor

Recently when installing MySQL workbench on a clean Ubuntu 20.04 install I've run into the following error when connecting locally using a stored password: "An AppArmor policy prevents this sender from sending

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
RGB LED Electric Drums
arduino

RGB LED Electric Drums

IntroductionThis is another just-for-fun project which was completed a couple of years ago. I have a number of instruments that I play for the pleasure of it, having had an electronic drum kit

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
10 min read
Mini Guide: DHCP Controlled Hostname on Raspbian
Raspberry Pi

Mini Guide: DHCP Controlled Hostname on Raspbian

DHCP Controlled Hostname on Raspbian Note: This note was originally in the Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 3 from an Ubuntu Server post. In theory the configuration should be as simple as stated

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: DHCP Reservations
Raspberry Pi

Mini Guide: DHCP Reservations

DHCP Reservations Note: This note was originally in the Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 3 from an Ubuntu Server post. To make life easier DHCP Address reservations can be added in the main

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: NFS Debugging
Mini Guides

Mini Guide: NFS Debugging

NFS Debugging Note: This note was originally in the Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 3 from an Ubuntu Server post. Initially when trying to understand whether the Pi was booting from the network

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Controlling Screen Blanking
Mini Guides

Mini Guide: Controlling Screen Blanking

Controlling Screen Blanking Note: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi 2/3: Chromium in Kiosk mode post. The screen can be turned off using the following command: xset -display :0.0

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Pi User and Management User(s)
Mini Guides

Mini Guide: Pi User and Management User(s)

Pi User and Management User(s) Note: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi 2/3: Chromium in Kiosk mode post. Auto-login to the GUI works regardless of the pi user's password.

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Raspberry Pi Memory Split
Mini Guides

Mini Guide: Raspberry Pi Memory Split

Memory Split Note: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi 2/3: Chromium in Kiosk mode post. The memory available to the GPU can be configured by: sudo raspi-config Option 7 (Advanced)

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Raspberry Pi Overscan and HDMI Modes
Mini Guides

Mini Guide: Raspberry Pi Overscan and HDMI Modes

Overscan and HDMI Modes Note: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi 2/3: Chromium in Kiosk mode post. In some cases the image may not fill the screen. The overscan setting

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Raspberry Pi Serial Console
Raspberry Pi

Mini Guide: Raspberry Pi Serial Console

Serial consoleNote: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi, overlayfs read-write root, read-only NFS base post. It's quite easy to listen on the serial console as you don't have to worry about

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Easier Script Debugging
Raspberry Pi

Mini Guide: Easier Script Debugging

DebuggingNote: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi, overlayfs read-write root, read-only NFS base post. In trying to get the various options out there working I found a number of debugging strategies

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Read only Raspberry Pi (without NFS)
Read Only

Mini Guide: Read only Raspberry Pi (without NFS)

Without NFSNote: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi, overlayfs read-write root, read-only NFS base post. This setup described in the article above also works without the NFS setup. As we plan

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Mini Guide: Watching the file-system on  Linux
Raspberry Pi

Mini Guide: Watching the file-system on Linux

Watching the file-systemNote: This note was originally in the Raspberry Pi, overlayfs read-write root, read-only NFS base post. NFS logging appeared to be quite opaque to me, so it proved useful to be

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
1 min read
Linux Configuration Management at Home with SaltStack
linux

Linux Configuration Management at Home with SaltStack

IntroductionIt's not uncommon to need to re-install a computer, in the days when I used Windows more it seemed a good way to re-gain performance, as well as eradicate any viruses or other

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
3 min read
Easy AWS Lambda function deployment with Apex

Easy AWS Lambda function deployment with Apex

Introduction Recently I have been spending a lot of time playing with AWS Lambda functions for various tasks like (small) ad-hoc data imports, billing alerts and building Amazon Alexa Skills. For simple tinkering

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
5 min read
Gigabyte Aero W15 Keyboard and Linux (Ubuntu)

Gigabyte Aero W15 Keyboard and Linux (Ubuntu)

Introduction TL;DR - Here is the GitHub link: https://github.com/paul-ridgway/aero-keyboard, which documents the protocol and has a few utility scripts and examples. For the first time in a long

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
12 min read
Raspberry Pi, overlayfs read-write root, read-only NFS base

Raspberry Pi, overlayfs read-write root, read-only NFS base

Introduction My recent projects and write-ups (linked below) have involved Network (PXE) Booting a Pi and loading the root file-system from NFS. It works well but any files operations are quite slow, and

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
4 min read
Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 2

Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 2

Introduction While going forward it would be ideal to only use Rasberry Pi 3s for Network Booting (or generally) I have a number of Pi 2s left. Being able to re-use these in

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
6 min read
Raspberry Pi 2/3: Chromium in Kiosk mode
Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi 2/3: Chromium in Kiosk mode

Introduction At work we have a number of screens around the office used for monitoring. To keep the costs down, solution versatile and setup simple the plan was always to use a Raspberry

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
7 min read
Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 3 from an Ubuntu Server
Network

Network Booting a Raspberry Pi 3 from an Ubuntu Server

Introduction I often use Raspberry Pis as Chromium Kiosk Clients to monitor our systems and infrastructure, and to reduce the overheads I also Network Boot them for this and a few other uses

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
20 min read
Fixing: uninitialized constant OpenSSL::Digest::DSS on Mac OS Sierra

Fixing: uninitialized constant OpenSSL::Digest::DSS on Mac OS Sierra

I recently installed Ruby (via RVM) on a Mac I use for work, and upon trying to run rails (after the usual bundle install) I got the following error: There was an error

  • Paul Ridgway
    Paul Ridgway
2 min read
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