Verbally Flimzy

Ramblings, Observations and Misconceptions

Archive of posts about Linux

Configuring CouchDB 1.6.1 with LetsEncrypt free SSL certificate on Debian 8 (jessie)

Posted on February 17, 2017

Enable jessie-backports, if not already enabled on your system. As described here: echo deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list > /dev/null aptitude update Install certbot as described here: sudo aptitude install certbot -t jessie-backports Configure a web server, so certbot can communicate with the outside world. I use lighttpd.

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Filed under: Linux

Installing Docker 1.12 in Debian 9 (stretch)

Posted on October 27, 2016

Debian ships with an old version of Docker, and the official installation instructions for Docker on Debian are a bit dubious (run an entirely untrusted shell script as root! yay!), not to mention error-prone, and result in a completely non-functional Docker installation on Debian, thanks to aufs being deprecated. So these instructions should make it possible to install Docker 1.

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Filed under: debian docker Linux

Getting Anki 2.0 to work with Debian stretch

Posted on August 3, 2016

Recent updates to Debian testing (aka stretch) have rendered Anki broken, with the following error message at startup: $ anki Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/anki", line 7, in <module> import aqt File "/usr/share/anki/aqt/__init__.py", line 12, in <module> from aqt.qt import * File "/usr/share/anki/aqt/qt.py", line 22, in <module> from PyQt4.

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Filed under: Anki debian language learning Linux

Configuring CouchDB for HTTPS only

Posted on November 18, 2015

Getting CouchDB to work via HTTPS is fairly well documented. Disabling HTTP turned out to be the harder part to figure out. Enabling HTTPS The official documentation (here is actually incomplete (or more likely, simply outdated). But it’s still a pretty straight forward process. Edit your local.ini to include the following:

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Filed under: couchdb database https Linux nosql security ssl

How to install CouchDB 1.6.1 on Debian 8.2 (jessie)

Posted on November 18, 2015

First, I must give credit where it is due. These instructions are based on Matteo Mattei’s earlier article Install CouchDB 1.6.x on Debian 7 (Wheezy), but with some important changes. The commands below assume you have sudo properly configured on your system, and that you are running as a standard user.

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Filed under: compile couchdb database debian install Linux nosql Programming

Docker: Up and Running -- A book review

Posted on June 19, 2015

I was recently tasked with developing a new web service application at work. This gave me a reason to investigate Docker as a possible deployment platform, so I’ve been reading about Docker. I just finished reading my second book on the topic, the not-yet-released (but it is available for Kindle) Docker: Up and Running by Karl Matthias and Sean P.

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Filed under: book review docker Linux Programming Reviews

List of French Minimal Pairs

Posted on March 8, 2015

EDIT: If you’re just interested in the list of French Minimal pairs, you can go straight there at my new site MinimalPairs.net. _ I’m in the early stages of learning French. I recently read Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It by Gabriel Wyner, which I highly recommend to anyone trying to learn a language.

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Filed under: french language learning Languages Linux Perl

Windows 7 + TrueCrypt 7.1a and Debian wheezy + encryption dual-boot with GRUB2

Posted on April 29, 2013

Getting Windows 7 (or Windows 8 or Windows Vista) with TrueCrypt to play nicely with GRUB2 is quite a chore. Although, after 2 days of fighting, I finally found a simple solution, thanks to the README file that comes with grub2tc. Unfortunately, grub2tc didn’t actually work for me, but their docs did!

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Filed under: dual-boot encryption grub grub2 Linux truecrypt windows-7

First impressions of Linux on the Sony Vaio Z

Posted on January 31, 2012

My company just bought me a new laptop, and they let me choose which model I wanted, as long as the price didn’t get too insane. I had two main goals while shopping: Ultra-portable I do a fair amount of traveling, so I wanted something small. As the former owner of a 12" PowerBook, as well as an 11" Acer netbook, I also knew I loved the small form factor even for daily, non-travel use.

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Filed under: laptop Linux review travel

lighttpd hackage: Smart module loading

Posted on February 22, 2011

I recently upgraded from Debian 5.0 to Debian 6.0, and it went great, except that lighttpd began to complain “Cannot load plugin mod_redirect more than once”. This is because the new default lighttpd configuration shipped with Debian 6.0 includes the ‘mod_redirect’ module, which was not included by default in Debian 5.

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Filed under: debian lighttpd Linux Perl Programming