Linkdump January 2024

Photo by Element5 Digital https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-book-from-shelf-1370298/

As some links accumulated over the last weeks it's time for another Linkdump.

https://cubecoders.com/AMP: I searched for a self-hostable game server manager. Previously I used LGSM (Linux Game Server Managers) which is a framework/compilation of bash-scripts utilizing SteamCMD to download the necessary files. But for my LAN I wanted something with a nice WebUI. Just quick and easy setup of a game server. Cubecoders AMP (Application Management Panel) is exactly this. I also liked their installer as I literally had to configure nothing. (Granted, I installed it in a separate VM on my Proxmox host. So there was nothing which whom AMP could have interfered..) As I also tried Pterodactyl (https://pterodactyl.io/) but didn't even make it through the installation process as, at that point, I simply didn't want to invest so much time into getting a game server manager running.
Yes, you need to buy a license. But for just 9,50€ you get a lifetime license which allows 5 app instances (simultaneously running game servers) and 3 panel users.

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted: A list of software which is installable on a server for self-hosting. Sorted into categories.

https://github.com/awesome-foss/awesome-sysadmin: Same as above, but specifically for sysadmins.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/: A reddit thread from a game developer who wrote that Linux only counted for 5,8% of sold game copies but yet those 5,8% are responsible for 38% of all bug reports. He then elaborates a bit further. Interesting read, the comments also hold some interesting bits from other people.

https://steamdb.info/calendar/: I didn't know a "Steam Release Calendar" existed but found it useful during the christmas holidays.

https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=1035: "What exactly was the point of [ “x$var” = “xval” ]?" - When fixing shellcheck errors on some bash scripts I forked from GitHub I repeatedly encountered this idiom and grew curious why it was used "back then". This blog post explains that.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76425351/how-to-replace-ps1-variable-in-etc-skel-bashrc-or-bashrc-file-using-sed-awk: Yep, a StackOverflow question. :-) When I wrote my seed-script for my FAI images I struggeled to get the PS1 variable modified as I wanted to. No escaping method I knew worked. No workaround I came up with worked. Turns out escaping the single ticks with \x27 did the trick. As can be seen in my script: https://github.com/ChrLau/scripts/blob/master/fai-prepare-user-env.sh#L96

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/example-preseed.txt: When playing around with FAI I grew curious what the Debian way is. https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apbs03.en.html had the answer in the form of the chapter on how to create a preconfiguration file and https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch05s03.en.html#preseed-args explains how to set some parameters to avoid having a dialog pop up during package install.

https://serverless.industries/2020/05/07/debconf-unattended-package-install.html (german): Turns out, installing some packages on Debian in an unattended way is somewhat complicated. So I searched for the correct way to do it via debconf.

https://austinsnerdythings.com/2021/08/30/how-to-create-a-proxmox-ubuntu-cloud-init-image/: As I currently try to find my preferred way to set up VMs automatically there is of course cloud-init. This article explains how to build a cloud-init image yourself.

https://austinsnerdythings.com/2021/09/01/how-to-deploy-vms-in-proxmox-with-terraform/: Same blog as above. This time about how to deploy VMs in Proxmox with Terraform. Well, nowadays you might want to use OpenTOFU instead of Terraform.

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Cloud-Init_Support: Proxmox documentation about Cloud-Init.

https://github.com/cobbler/cobbler: From the project Readme: "Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments. It glues together and automates many associated Linux tasks so you do not have to hop between lots of various commands and applications when rolling out new systems, and, in some cases, changing existing ones. It can help with installation, DNS, DHCP, package updates, power management, configuration management orchestration, and much more." Still want to play around with that.

http://www.infrastructures.org/papers/bootstrap/bootstrap.html: Very interesting article about how to bootstrap an infrastructure. Which tools/parts must come first, etc.

http://download.proxmox.com/images/system/: As I discovered, Proxmox hosts some ready to use images for the most popular Linux distributions. Didn't use them, so can't saying anything about the quality but wanted to share it nonetheless.

https://lookscanned.io/: That one is funny. Take a PDF, upload it and you can modify it in such ways that it looks like it had been scanned from a sheet of paper. Maybe useful for our archaic german bureaucracy!?

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/180maoe/plex_crossed_a_line_with_your_week_in_review/: That one made me laugh too. But rather in disbelief than in a humoristic way. Plex decided to nuke it's entire user base by introducing a feature which shows your friends what shows you've watched and recommends stuff to you. And, of course, it also shows them what kind of "educational adult movie content" you've consumed. I'm just glad I never used Plex. Many users stated they are moving to Jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org/).

https://github.com/workadventure/workadventure: A virtual meeting software. You can move around with your avatar, seeing other users doing the same and either interact with them (also via voice and video) or move to designated zones which represents an open meeting channel. Nice idea!

https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/213#issuecomment-159678122: This comment finally explained to me why a horizontal split in Tmux uses the split-window -v command and a vertical split uses split-windows -h when, as I thought, it did exactly the opposite. Well yeah, if you know that the -v and -h is in reference to the Axis, then all makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the enlightenment!

https://jamielinux.com/docs/openssl-certificate-authority/certificate-revocation-lists.html: I needed to research how to create a CRL using OpenSSL. This taught me how to do it.

https://gtfobins.github.io/: "GTFOBins is a curated list of Unix binaries that can be used to bypass local security restrictions in misconfigured systems." If you need a small reminder what tool you can use to escape that chroot..

https://messwithdns.net/: A tool to "Mess with DNS". It allows you to set up DNS entries and display what happens in the background if the entry is being queried. Nice to teach people how DNS works.

https://pandoc.org/: A colleague recommended me Pandoc as it can convert between many document formats like Markdown to DokuWiki markup or even Markdown to Word. Still need to install and test it.