Linux

Service discovery is an age old problem, made ever so complicated by the copious layers of virtualisation and isolation that we use nowadays to run anything. Since humans are better at remembering names than numbers, DNS can be very effective at helping to solve this problem, and indeed a lot of projects already exist in this space. However, I have decided to create another one: DD-DNS or Docker-Dynamic DNS service, which can create and update A records at public DNS providers in real time based on docker labels. In this post I’ll explain the problem that I wanted it to solve and compare it to a few other solutions I have considered. The code, along with instructions on how to use the tool are available at https://github.com/wdullaer/dd-dns. »

VPNs are a tried and tested way to extend a private LAN to other devices, but they are hard to setup, harder to run and have a large impact on performance. Wireguard, a new VPN technology recently added to the Linux kernel, removes nearly all of these drawbacks. In this article we’ll go through how to setup a server and an Android client. »

Normally when you want to boot from a USB stick you have to format it and ‘burn’ an image onto it. It is possible to make multiboot usb sticks that allow you to boot ISO image file directly. Not all live system images, like the Ubuntu desktop images, play nice with the method outlined in that post. Here is an alternative method that will allow you to boot images like Ubuntu desktop as an ISO from a multiboot stick. »

Like a lot of techie people, I run a home server to centralize access to music, video’s, photos and other files. Because I have built my own server using a HP Proliant Microserver running Ubuntu, I need to do a bit more work myself in order to group my disks together in a redundant pool. This post will focus on how I’ve configured AUFS to expose my disks as a single volume and configured Snapraid to add redundancy and bitrot protection to the data. »

Last year docker added support for multiple logging drivers. This makes it very easy to integrate your docker containers with a centralized log management system in a transparent way. If you want to use the AWS Cloudwatch driver you will need to supply the docker daemon with access keys, which proved to be trickier than expected. Here’s how I managed to get it running. »

By default the Synaptics driver on Linux will treat the bottom right corner of your touchpad as a right click button, even if you have a macbook like trackpad or Logitech T650 touchpad. I have become used to clicking with 2 fingers for a right click, so the that zone is more annoying than useful. Here’s how to disable it. »

Support for multitouch gestures on Linux has been steadily increasing in the past years. I recently bought a Logitech T650 touchpad and all the basics worked right of the box: moving the cursor, two finger click for right click, two finger swipes for scrolling through documents. Unfortunately it wasn’t immediately obvious how I could configure anything more (like pinching gestures, or 3 finger gestures). Here’s how you can unlock its full power. »

Starting with Ubuntu 15.04, Canonical replaced their own init system Upstart with the new Linux standard Systemd. Even though this is a big change on a technical level, it was entirely transparent for all packages in the official repositories. BubbleUPnP Server, a closed source third party application, was the only application I had any issues with. I’ll show you how you can make it work with systemd. »

There are a lot of ways to configure a server with multiple disks as a redundant network attached storage device. Most rely on RAID-like systems, but there are alternatives. In this post I compare a few of those systems and explain why I chose to use AUFS combined with snapraid. »

WD Green and Red disks are physically identical, with only a firmware setting distinguishing them. The default settings on a WD Green will cause them to die prematurely when used in a file server environment. Fortunately you can change this setting very easily. Here’s how. »