Category Archives: HowTo

ProxMox server configuration

HowTo, Hypervisors, IT, Software, , , , ,

Proxmox logo

I recently had the pleasure of configuring ProxMox server on an old Intel NUC mini PC. For those that aren’t aware ProxMox is a virtualisation platform, in the same line as Hyper-V, or Nutanix, or VMWare. The only main difference is that you can get a fully functional version of ProxMox for free, yes you read that correctly, for free! It’s Linux (Ubuntu) based, so what’s not to love!

Due to the Broadcom takeover of VMWare and licensing cost hikes, a lot of large organisations are migrating over to ProxMox, which overs a fairly seamless transfer process.

As it turns out, the install of the ProxMox hypervisor or host, was slightly more involved as the graphics drivers on my particular NUC were slightly difficult. After much Googling, and hunting I was able to find the steps required. The errors that I had encountered were related to Framebuffer errors. The install was successful by using “text mode” installation and switching afterwards. A useful YouTube video was discovered to assist with the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6fRTpmmuHs

The following ProxMox forum discussion also assisted with the error – https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/generic-solution-when-install-gets-framebuffer-mode-fails.111577/

From my experience, also worth using a USB3 stick for installation.

Kudos to the Home Automation Guy who’s setup guide for ProxMox assisted me with the initial setup. It also linked through to the community scripts, where a PVE Post Install script was linked. The location has changed and is now available here: https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/scripts?id=post-pve-install&category=Proxmox+%26+Virtualization

This is quite honestly a treasure trove of scripts and you can knock your socks off with what you want to run there.

Even considering the problems I had with the initial install, the overall configuration only took 4hrs – for someone that hadn’t touched it before I would say that’s good going! Management is via web console and via terminal (SSH). It’s super quick and efficient. The hypervisor is currently running a single Linux VM hosting Lyrion Music Server, for more information on my endeavours you can visit our entertainment personal blog.

I’ll put some more points here when I recall them, but so far my experience with ProxMox has been great! Go and take a look 🙂

Time to get a Password Manager – 1Password tested!

HowTo, Software, , , , , , ,

1PasswordLogoWe’ve used 1Password for quite some time (around 5 years, if not longer) so thought a post here to talk of its merits was justified.

If you’ve not heard of a password manager before, in short it’s an application that helps you generate strong and random passwords and makes it easy for you to save them and use them for any web site or service you may use. They hold your details in an encrypted database that not even the developers have access to. If you get locked out you have lost your passwords, which is why many services offer an emergency access code that they recommend you print and keep in a safe and secure location.

Many password managers integrate well with many popular operating systems (Windows, Mac, and even Linux) and all the popular web browsers, and phones. The idea being that you can access your secure passwords wherever you are and even when you don’t have internet access.

1Password syncs with your Cloud Account using the 1Password Families subscription which allows 5 members of your family to use the service across platforms.

We all know that one person who has the same password for every account they use. When you think about it, that’s one password that a hacker needs to guess and voila, they have access to your email where they then can see all the accounts you may use and gain access to as well. Once they’re in they can probably make orders with your Amazon account, and other web shops where you have your card details saved.

Not wanting to scare you here, but the same time give you an insight of what so many people do…

You can take a trial of the service by following this link https://start.1password.com/sign-up/family?l=en

We’re in no way affiliated with 1Password and not being paid for this post. We just love the software and recommend it for your password manager too!

HOW TO: Improve the performance of your older laptop!

HowTo, , , , , , ,
laptop

Just because your laptop is a few years old doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go and buy a new one, especially not if the hardware specification is fairly reasonable. If it can still run the latest operating system, for example, and you’re not interested in playing games on it, then read on.

The quickest and easiest way to give your laptop a speed boost is by upgrading the memory (RAM). In almost all laptops, manufacurers make it very simple for you to do this yourself in a matter of minutes, using only a screwdriver to remove an access panel.

The market leader in this (and we’re not affilliated) is Crucial. If you click onto their website you can run a tool which detects which laptop you have – be it Apple or Windows based – and tell you what memory you can fit. They tend to be the cheapest most of the time too. The tool will return results telling you how much additional memory your laptop can muster. If the version of Windows is 32 bit, upgrading your laptop to more than 4GB of memory will not make any difference as the computer won’t be able to “see” the additional memory.

The next step is looking at the hard disk. The cheapest laptops and even more expensive laptops by default still have spinning hard disks. Depending on the speed at which the disk spins at, will determine how fast the read and write speeds are.

Newer technology has since surpassed traditional spinning disk drives, and prices have come down massively. This technology is what you find in your mobile phone and tablet, and what enables most devices like that to be “instant on”, and is called Solid State Disk (SSD) as there are no moving parts. A lot of the time, this is why when you go back to your traditional laptop, you find yourself waiting much longer for things to load. It is a little bit more intrusive to replace and swap out your hard disk. You need to clone, or reinstall, your Operating System and copy the files back. There are guides for this, but we recommend you contact someone to look at this for you. The price of an SSD is somewhere in the region of £80-100 but prices are falling all the time.

Feel free to contact us if you would like assistance with replacing memory or your hard disk to give life to an older computer.

Resolved: WordPress redirect issue on multi-site config

HowTo, Websites, , , , , ,

We recently resolved an issue that we couldn’t quite resolve easily so thought we’d share the solution.

Sometimes you just have to go back to basics and start from the beginning.

On one of the sites we host, WordPress is configured with multi-site. There was one domain in use for the site and another one parked, that we wanted to point to the same document root. We had the parked domain set to use the WordPress root of the existing site thinking that should just load, but instead we were greeted with a Registration error. Registration for the site was disabled anyway, but as you were hitting the blog from another domain, the blog didn’t know what to do with it.

After much head scratching and searching, and going round in circles with multi-site help documents, it wasn’t that at all.

We needed to add one line of code to our WordPress config file – “noblog”

define( 'NOBLOGREDIRECT', 'http://www.fightify.com' );

Obviously, replace with the domain of your main blog. The result of this is, that if you hit your site from www.site1.com you will no longer get a signup page error, but the front page of your www.site2.com domain.

And in case you’re also wondering, as off WordPress 4.5 you don’t need any additional plugin for multi-site domain mapping – see here

iPhone not charging? Check this quick fix.

HowTo, Mobile, , , , ,

The number of times your iPhone may not be charging due to it actually being faulty is fairly minimal, and more often than not, it’s the cable at fault and not the phone itself.

The iPhone 6 we have wasn’t charging and after checking the obvious we then hit Google. Some articles later, and we were lead to check if lint wasn’t to blame.

Sure enough, if you hit search you see the following results:

Lint Google Search

 

 

 

The essence of it is to make sure your iPhone is backed up, turn it off, and then use a normal toothpick to pick out any fluff and stuff that the Lightning port has attracted from your trouser pocket.  In our case this fixed the problem!

Better still, it cost nothing 🙂

For more info you can read the following: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/use-a-toothpick-to-clean-out-your-iphone/