Got it. Been working on this one for a while, I've seen it in glimpses over the years, but it just fell into place. Infinity is the backside of zero. Just like a quarter has a heads and a tails, this thing I've been calling "the origin" for a long time has a heads and a tails. This idea is […]
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Fix VirtualBox icon app name in Gnome Favorites/Activities menu on Linux
(I sometimes craft my headlines to be search-engine-friendly, which is why they sometimes look odd in person). If you have multiple VirtualBox images running in Ubuntu or similar Debian-based flavors of Linux, you know it can be frustrating to switch between the different images using the favorites […]
Install Ubuntu Server .deb package without starting service using dpkg --unpack
On Debian flavors like Ubuntu, apt and dpkg default to starting a service as soon as it is installed. This is almost always a good idea, but I ran into the strange problem that the service was misconfigured. Starting it was not a good thing. Stopping and re-configuring it after it started was not […]
Use Network Manager to handle 'device not managed' or 'unmanaged' issue in Ubuntu for SecurityOnion at Digital Ocean
An out-of-the-box install of Ubuntu 18.04.5 at Digital Ocean will not work for a SecurityOnion installation, because of the way cloud-init is managing the network. Security Onion prefers NetworkManager to manage the network. Cloud-init is required by Digital Ocean for deployment of a custom image. […]
Use fdisk and parted to resize a 100Gb custom image of Ubuntu for Digital Ocean to prepare for a 320Gb SecurityOnion install
Digital Ocean cannot deploy a Custom Image larger than 100Gb. Security Onion requires 200Gb to install. To workaround the Digital Ocean limitation, create a 100Gb custom image of Ubuntu, configured with only three partitions: /boot, /, and /tmp. (Leaving out /nsm and swap requirements for the […]
Install and whitelabel Grafana with a custom grafana_icon.svg and a few other minor changes
Grafana is an amazing application, one of the most active open source projects in the world, and they are firmly committed to the Free Software / Open Source way of doing things. You should know up front that the following information enables a feature (whitelabel) which is part of the Enterprise […]
How to configure Ubuntu via /etc/network/interfaces using ifupdown managed by Network Manager for Security Onion
That headline is a mouthful, so let's break it down: How to configure Ubuntu via /etc/network/interfaces using ifupdown managed by Network Manager for Security Onion In more simple terms I would prefer this headline: "How to configure Ubuntu with ifupdown for Security Onion," but it turns […]
Placing Apache reverse proxy in front of Security Onion
Security Onion prefers to think that it's talking to the world, not a proxy. But you can do it. It took me awhile to get this working because I was also trying to get Apache Basic Authentication working. Alas, Security Onion is so complex that I was only able to get Authentication working smoothly […]
Important insight into Power and how it operates outside of Logic
Years ago I was impressed by the power of Law to transform me. I was impressed because I was sincerely changing my nature and behaviors due to the way I had encountered Law and Order (the justice side of it), and wanted to ensure that I did not encounter Law in that way before. I began a long series […]
What to do when qemu-guest-agent on CentOS does not work after installing with yum
After installing qemu-guest-agent with yum, which was easy enough with sudo yum install qemu-guest-agent I did not see IP information in the proxmox host, so I knew it was not yet working. I tried several things, none of them worked. First I tried looking at the status. Got an error indicating the […]
Kill a Proxmox VM that won't quit with a one-liner using the pve node's command prompt
I was using the handy information at Proxmox can’t stop VM – How we fix it! (bobcares.com) for a while. They have a two-line approach which does the job, but displays the (very) long command line for starting a proxmox VM on the screen while doing so. To me, facing a wall of text while searching for […]