Originally published at www.ikriv.com. Please leave any comments there.

My “permanent” SSL certificates are expiring soon, so I decided to switch to letsecnrypt. The easiest way to obtain their certificate is allegedly to use Certbot.

There is a nice docker image for Certbot, but even the authors caution against using it, unless you really know ( Read more... )

Originally published at www.ikriv.com. Please leave any comments there.

I needed an IRC client for Windows, and mIRC came up in searches as #1 recommended. It said something about “registration” during the installation, but I ignored assuming that registration is optional, which it usually is. Not with mIRC though. It turns out “registration” is not ( Read more... )

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When a host directory is mounted into a docker container, how are file permissions handled?

Docker copies files permissions from the host to the container verbatim, inluding numeric user ids. E.g. if the owner of a file in the host file system is user 42, then the owner of the ( Read more... )

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I have a MacBook Pro now, courtesy of my new employer, but it only has four USB-C ports and nothing else, so none of my existing hardware could connect to it.

I bought a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse, a no-name USB-C to HDMI cable to connect my HP monitor, and a Logitech wireless ( Read more... )

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I am using a MacBook for work now. Got a stuck installer, trying to restart the computer.

Messages (not exact quotes).

The system: cannot restart, please exit installer [Cancel], [Try again].

Installer: Installer is busy, cannot close window. [OK]

Check and mate.

Fortunately, ( Read more... )

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Found first hiccup: LiveJournal cross-post plugin did not work on the new site. The error was somewhat misleading: something like ‘message from www.livejournal.com: malformed, unable to parse’. In fact it was the local PHP code that was unable to parse the response from ( Read more... )

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I have moved my blog to DigitalOcean platform: they provide a decent virtual server for $5/month, with static IP address to boot. It’s all highly scientific now: I have moved everything to Docker, and I have a script that installs the blog on a new machine within minutes. BTW, ( Read more... )

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I am moving my web site to docker, and I need to be able to send emails using a GMail account. GMail is limited to 500 emails a day, but that’s more than enough for my modest operations at this stage.
No separate container for email

In a “docker spirit” I tried to create a ( Read more... )

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A docker containing not running anything particular in the foreground will exit immediately after start.

Specifying /bin/sh as the startup command does not help. Some Internet sources suggest tail -f /dev/null, and it works, but such container cannot be stopped gracefully. The ( Read more... )

Originally published at www.ikriv.com. Please leave any comments there.

During my trip abroad, I tried to use my credit card to make an online purchase, but the payment did not go through, it required a verification code sent to me via SMS. I was unable to receive the SMS, because it was sent to my US cell number, but my phone was switched to a ( Read more... )