Category: computer

Server is Mythubuntu 14.04 with Ampache, Apache, WordPress, Postfix and Dovecot email, mythtv, and Owncloud software. This is a post on how to run a script on your server using Webmin. When I first start up my server, I have a LUKS encrypted hard drive (backup) that has to be mounted. I written a script to automate this task. The private key to unlock this disk is stored in my encrypted home folder, so I must login first to open my encrypted home folder and then unlock the backup drive. The script to run is shown below and is called “mount backup disk on startup” and is run from the webmin server.

The next image shows how to configure the command to run. This command must be run as root.

There is very little document on the custom commands for webmin.

I have installed software for converting text to speech in Ubuntu-gnome 15.04 linux. I did this to install voice menus for the rockbox firmare/software on my sansa clip+ audio player.

Installing the software

sudo apt-get install gespeaker

sudo apt-get install mbrola

Install mbrola english-us voices

sudo apt-get install mbrola-us*

voices are installed at /usr/share/mbrola

espeak data folder: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/espeak-data

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/espeak-data /usr/share/espeak-data

see data folder reference https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gespeaker/+bug/919577

espeak -v mb-en1 “Hello world, process, I am an Aggie”

mbrola: FATAL ERROR : cannot find file /usr/share/mbrola/voices/en1

sudo ln -s /usr/share/mbrola /usr/share/mbrola/voices

espeak -s 140 -v mb-us2 “process, I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’”

     or

espeak -s 140 -v us-mbrola-2 “process, I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’”

espeak -s 140 -v english-us ‘process, I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’

List installed english voices

espeak –voices=en

Documentation Location

/usr/share/doc

Additional information for improving espeak sound

http://www.freelists.org/post/nvda/Improving-the-sound-of-eSpeak

 

 

This is post is how to run a program from the terminal in the background so that it will continue to run even when the terminal window is closed. I use the nohup command to accomplish this. I have a server that I log into with ssh. I run a rysnc backup command to that copies data to a usb3, 2 GB external hard drive.  This can take several hours to complete. Sometimes I need to close my ssh session, for example to reboot my client computer, yet I don’t want the backup to stop. I am running linux, Ubuntu Gnome 15.04 and all commands are run from the terminal.

Example of no hup command

nohup nice -n20 bkup.offsite.cc.com.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &

I will break down what is happening.

nohup – prevents the commands following from stopping if the terminal window is closed

nice -n20 – runs the program bkup.offsite.cc.com.py at a lower priority for cpu resources to prevent other programs on the computer from slowing down

bkup.offsite.cc.com.py – the python backup program to execute

> /dev/null 2>&1 – This does not show error messages and output, nohup normally writes standard output to a file nohup.txt. When my output was written to nohup.txt, the file size was 1.2 GB!

& – puts the command in the background so that you can use the terminal for other tasks

To see the status of your running application run the following command:

jobs

Output will be:

[1]+  Running   nohup nice -n20 bkup.offsite.cc.com.py &

A good reference for working with jobs: http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_lts0100.php

Reference: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/32574/when-do-you-need-nohup-if-youre-already-forking-using?lq=1

Iphone IOS

Click on this link, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/owncloud/id543672169?ls=1&mt=8, to open the owncloud client in the App Store. Download and instructions are here https://owncloud.com/products/mobileapps/.

Mac Laptop or Desktop running OSX Yosemite

Click on the following link to install the software https://owncloud.com/download#desktop-clients.

Download and instructions here https://owncloud.com/products/desktop-clients/. “Simply copy a file into the directory and the ownCloud desktop client does the rest. Make a change to the files on one computer, it will flow across the others using these desktop sync clients. Always have your latest files with you wherever you are.”

 

I have been getting multiple spam attempts on my wordpress blog in the comments section of my blog. These comments have not made it publicly to my blog because I have personally approve each users first comment before they can post a comment. All spam so far seems to come from automated attacks, and the attacks are daily by the same IP address. I have finally decided to do something about this.

I followed this post, http://www.wpoptimus.com/912/ban-ip-addresses-login-wordpress-dashboard/, and installed the plugins WP-Ban, and Login Security Solution.

wp-ban

Anti-spam

Anti-spam has worked great and requires the least effort. wp-ban works but requires you to manually block ips or domain names. I recommend starting with Anti-spam and only add wp-ban if needed. Anti-spam prevents bots (computer programs) from writing comments on your site. I have never had a real human leave a comment on my site. My site is configured that I have to manually approve the first comment by a person before it becomes visible on my site. Now that I have Anti-spam, my comments page is not filled up with spammers anymore. I like Anti-spam so much that I am giving them a donation.

Preventing Login Attacks

I have also added the login-security-solution plugin to block brute force login attacks. Its description is: “Security against brute force attacks by tracking IP, name, password; requiring very strong passwords. Idle timeout. Maintenance mode lockdown.”

I have installed Roundcube email on my server. I now can access my email server with a web browser. If you run your own email server, you should look at Roundcube as another way to access your email. The majority of my email reading uses Evolution, however this allows me to access my email at work or from other people’s computers. I found Roundcube to be easy to install and use. Thanks Roundcube!  http://roundcube.net/

I am now using AutoMySQLBackup version 3.0 to backup my MySQL databases.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/

I highly recommend this software. It is easy to use and configure. It will create Daily, Weekly and Monthly backups of one or more of your MySQL databases from one or more of your MySQL servers.

Other Features include:
– Email notification of backups
– Backup Compression and Encryption
– Configurable backup rotation
– Incremental database backups

I had added a ppa to run a newer version of mythtv and mysql-server than the current supported software. This led to software update failures due to failed dependencies. I am running mythubuntu 14.04 and this post will show how to change the dependency requirement of a software package so that it will install. This method will use a bash script to save some time. The script uses the nano text editor to change the file. Terminal commands will look like this sentence.

• Download the script “nano.debcontrol.sh”
  • Putting this file in a location that is in your path will make it easier to run
    • see http://askubuntu.com/questions/540344/add-custom-script-to-path
  • Download link
    • nano.debcontrol.sh
  • you will need to make the file executable
    • sudo chmod 770 nano.debcontrol.sh
  • This script is a modification of Loevborg’s script from post http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=636724
• Change to the directory you want to download the package to
  • cd ~/Downloads/mythtv-27
• Download the mythtv package to modify
  • sudo apt-get download mythtv
• List contents of directory to see file name of the downloaded file
  • ls -l
    • mythtv_2%3a0.27.4+fixes.20150423.8f14d3d-0ubuntu0mythbuntu3_all.deb
      -rw-r–r– 1 root root  77K Apr 25 08:09
• Modify mythtv package
  • nano.debcontrol.sh mythtv_2%3a0.27.4+fixes.20150423.8f14d3d-0ubuntu0mythbuntu3_all.deb
    • Change the following line
      • Depends: mysql-server
      • Change to this
        • Depends: mysql-server | mysql-server-5.6
      • This allows the package to use mysql-server or mysql-server-5.6
    • Save file
      • ctrl + o in nano
• View new modified mythtv file
  • ls -l
    • mythtv_2%3a0.27.4+fixes.20150423.8f14d3d-0ubuntu0mythbuntu3_all.modfied.deb
• View package contents and order of files (important)
  • less mythtv_2%3a0.27.4+fixes.20150423.8f14d3d-0ubuntu0mythbuntu3_all.modfied.deb
• Install modified mythtv file
  • sudo dpkg -i mythtv_2%3a0.27.4+fixes.20150423.8f14d3d-0ubuntu0mythbuntu3_all.modfied.deb
• Done

This article contains information on how I added a favicon to my WordPress Adminstration Page. This was for WordPress 4.1.1 hosted on my Ubuntu 14.04 server. I wanted a favicon because I currently have 18 pinned tabs in firefox and I rely on the favicon image to identify the wordpress tab. The general solution is to add a custom function to identify when you are in the administration menu. This function is added to your current theme in the file functions.php. Commands from the terminal will look like this sentence.

• Change to the theme directory
  • cd /var/www/cc.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/twentyfifteen-child
• Edit functions.php
  • nano functions.php

// The followin code adds a favicon to the wp-admin site
// from http://clarknikdelpowell.com/blog/how-to-use-favicons-on-the-wordpress-admin-login-pages
// First, create a function that includes the path to your favicon
function add_favicon() {
$favicon_url = get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . ‘/admin-favicon.ico’;
echo ‘<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”‘ . $favicon_url . ‘” />’;

References:

http://clarknikdelpowell.com/blog/how-to-use-favicons-on-the-wordpress-admin-login-pages

My article on creating a favicon and a list of references are located at https://blog.chadchenault.com/2015/01/10/create-a-multiple-resolution-favicon-ico-file-with-a-linux-bash-script/.