Enable or Disable pi-hole from Alexa

Posted by james on 13 May 2020, 7:15 pm

The easiest way to enable or disable ad-blocking from your pi-hole using Alexa is to install fauxmo – with which you can create fake Belkin devices that are Alexa-enabled.

You then configure fauxmo with URLs like this:


# disable for 600 seconds

http:&#47;&#47;YOUR.PIHOLE.IP/admin/api.php?disable=600&amp;auth=YOUR_AUTH_CODE

# enable

http://YOUR.PIHOLE.IP/admin/api.php?enable&amp;auth=YOUR_AUTH_CODE

# get status

http://YOUR.PIHOLE.IP/admin/api.php?status&amp;auth=YOUR_AUTH_CODE

Get YOUR_AUTH_CODE from the WEBPASSWORD= line in /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf

See example conf at GitHub

Resolving local hosts on Android

Posted by james on 3 May 2020, 8:16 am

Google seem determined to break local name resolution on your home network on your Android phone, redirecting DNS lookups to their servers. Presumably this is partly to prevent solutions like pi-hole making a dent in their ad revenue and tracking.

Easiest way round this is to install DNSChanger and specify your local DNS servers – this works like a fake local VPN and your local hosts will resolve.

Nice wallpaper

Posted by james on 31 March 2020, 9:29 am

https://unsplash.com/photos/74JeU2jfnfk

Emacs: package signature check failure

Posted by james on 13 February 2020, 2:22 pm

How to fix it

To paraphrase:

set
package-check-signature
to
nil
, e.g.
M-: (setq package-check-signature nil) RET
download the package
gnu-elpa-keyring-update
and run the function with the same name, e.g.
M-x package-install RET gnu-elpa-keyring-update RET
.
Restart emacs

Limit the impact of a security intrusion with systemd security directives

Posted by james on 11 February 2020, 9:46 am

This article gives some great benefits of systemd.

Check a private key & certificate match using openssl on the commandline

Posted by james on 6 February 2020, 3:37 pm

With my script check-crt-key.sh

rcs for Centos / RHEL 8

Posted by james on 30 January 2020, 3:48 pm

rcs has been removed and isn’t even in EPEL for Centos 8.

However the source RPM for Fedora 31 builds relatively cleanly.

Download, install any dependencies & the rpm build environment &

rpmbuild --rebuild rcs-5.9.4-12.fc31.src.rpm

tdiff – compare directories

Posted by james on 30 January 2020, 11:27 am

tdiff looks very handy – more details & copr repository here

Error: Failed to synchronize cache for repo ‘AppStream’ for Centos 8

Posted by james on 28 January 2020, 4:48 pm

Are you getting this for “dnf upgrade” & are you running Centos 8.0.1905?

No repo urls can be found as the minor version has changed. You can fix this by just referencing the major version (8).

Try

cd /etc/yum.repos.d && sed -i.BAK -e 's/$releasever/8/g' *.repo

and try again. You can probably revert the .BAK files after a full dnf upgrade.

High load on Linux? Check for processes in uninterruptible state

Posted by james on 16 January 2020, 5:50 pm

ps aux | awk '$8 ~ /D/ { print $0 }'

They may be waiting on I/O.

Webscalability

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