After many years .. Probably the end …

After many years having a blog .. seeing the Internet change .. its about to say: this is probably the end of this website with my blogs.

I will close my hosted server at the end of this year and data I like is being moved (with issues) to a home server. Almost going back to the time I started with blogging.

Features and experiments I used in the years will be de-activated.

so long and thanks for all the fish

19 jaar webloggen ..

19 jaar webloggen.

Het is de laatste tijd erg rustig maar goed het digitale leven ziet er na zoveel jaar totaal anders uit.

19 jaar een weblog. Wat begon met het bloggen over een SMS wedstrijdje wat ik won (als je goed zoekt is zelfs die info hier nog wel te vinden .. ) En  deze blog is uiteindelijk een digitaal historisch site geworden waarin bijna alle blogs nog aanwezig zijn. (hier en daar vroegen mensen om een blog weg te halen omdat er bijv. een foto gebruikt werd wat niet mocht) ..

Grappig .. nog even en we zijn 20 jaar onderweg ..

update dd 16/10/2023 .. eigenlijk ben ik gewoon oude meuk van de weblog vergeten. Ik blog al sinds 2000 .. ;) dus 23 jaar ..

Fixing Proxmox boot ending in grub prompt with ZFS disks

I have removed my outdated how-to as it was not functional for my proxmox version (6.4x) during a planned reboot on 5-7-2021 .. I am lucky I did not had a power outtage earlier as that would have given me more troubles ..

Proxmox has made a great tool: proxmox boot tool .. and following the guidelines in the link below gave me a working proxmox in only minutes (it took some hours before I had a USB thumbdrive working (one defect one) ..

But there is a great how to here

Important parts

Repairing a System Stuck in the GRUB Rescue Shell

If you end up with a system stuck in the grub rescue> shell, the following steps should make it bootable again:

  1. Boot using a Proxmox VE version 6.4 or newer ISO
  2. Select Install Proxmox VE (Debug Mode)
  3. Exit the first debug shell by typing Ctrl + D or exit
  4. The second debug shell contains all the necessary binaries for the following steps
  5. Import the root pool (usually named rpool) with an alternative mountpoint of /mnt:
    zpool import -f -R /mnt rpool
  6. Find the partition to use for proxmox-boot-tool, following the instructions from Finding potential ESPs
  7. Bind-mount all virtual filesystems needed for running proxmox-boot-tool:
    mount -o rbind /proc /mnt/proc
    mount -o rbind /sys /mnt/sys
    mount -o rbind /dev /mnt/dev
    mount -o rbind /run /mnt/run
  8. change root into /mnt
    chroot /mnt /bin/bash
  9. Format and initialize the partitions in the chroot – see Switching to proxmox-boot-tool
  10. Exit the chroot-shell (Ctrl + D or exit) and reset the system (for example by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL)
  11. Note: The next boot can end up in an initramfs shell, due to the hostid mismatch (from importing the pool in the installer).
    If this is the case, simply import it again with using the force -f flag:
    # zpool import -f rpool

This first part gives you the start to fix grub again

Find the partitions:

lsblk -o +FSTYPE

(in my situation) with the vfat > 512MB

format it again

# proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/sda2
# proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/sdb2

NB. I used the –forced option as there is data on the vfat

the init part

# proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/sda2
# proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/sdb2

and if needed (what was the case in my situation)

# proxmox-boot-tool clean

Reboot and I was up and running again with my node in my cluster ..

The next GUIDE to install NGINX-PROXY-MANAGER and not having bad gateway database issues

Before reading: the main reason why this nginx-proxy-manager was not running in my environment was the fact that I was running my Linux version as LXC under Proxmox and not as a VM under proxmox. After failing a 2nd time with exact the same config files what was working I noticed that I was using LXC and that the Proton VM was actually a VM, by changing it to a normal Debian VM I was able to get a working version fast again.

This is also probably the reason that Portainer was not able to start the database as well. So in the end: using a VM ..

 

I was reading:
another website that was telling me how to install nginx-proxy-manager. But I failed. I kept getting ‘ bad gateway’ and if you read the github posts about this issue you will not understand why all is failing.

So yes, I did install proton VM, a sucking virtual machine under my proxmox as it was used by the guy from that other website. As docker is available I had to start it during boot. Those guidelines were described fine. But installing my own mysql or mariadb was failing time after time. Especially as mariadb or mysql was not having a root password. So I failed. Buy why?

So in the end (lucky I had a snapshot, so that I could go back when messing some things really bad up. I restarted the machine and thought about what I read on another website: nginx-proxy-manager is ‘now’  providing a mysql instance itself. AHA .. so if that is true than I have to forget all info about previous own installed docker stuff with databases. So i removed those failures from the system.

I checked the website of nginx-proxy-manager and thought: let start over ..

In the end to make this story short

I made sure the server pointed to “host”: “127.0.0.1”, in the config.json

make sure there is a config.json
place this config.json where you use the ‘docker-compose up -d’
I did it in /home/nginx-proxy-manager/

And probably here is the catch as the default example is telling

 # Make sure this config.json file exists as per instructions above:
      - ./config.json:/app/config/production.json

the /app/config/production.json is a location where you did not put your own config.json. So this part is totally wrong. So the config.json with your database settings can never be found, so you get issues, but the ‘ make sure this config.json exisist as per instructions above ‘ gave me no clue, cause what is stated above?

So I tried what I did before in the docker-compose.yml I changed the location of my config.json to

-./config.json:/home/nging-proxy-manager/config.json

now I restarted the docker container again but I made an error the container was started with docker-compose up without the -d (DAEMON) … so I got output in my screen and suddenly I saw that there was a connection to the database but my password was not accepted.

I made sure I shut down the docker container again, removed the contents from the directories and restarted it again .. YEAAAHHH .. finally .. it was working

In short, 2 things to notice

config.json: change  the host part to: “host”: “127.0.0.1”,
in the docker-compose.yml pinpoint the config.json to the actual location on your HDD wher you put it.

Now start with ie. docker-compose up -d

have fun

Moving VMWARE VM to Proxmox: The steps to follow

first download the OVFtool from VMARE and make sure you put the ‘bundle’  file on your Proxmox host. I used: VMware-ovftool-4.4.0-15722219-lin.x86_64.bundle

Make sure  sure the prerequisites of ovftool are present on the proxmox host
apt install libncursesw5

This file could be needed (I saw somewhere that someone had an error missing this dependency), so I installed it.

than make sure the VMWARE-ovftool can be executed so chmod it to ie. 755

install it with ./VMWARE-ovftool-xxxx
after the installation is finished it will tell you that it has been installed correctly

Than follow the following steps:

  1. ovftool vi:root@[vmware-machine]/[name-of-vm] .
    This will download the VM onto your Proxmox host
  2. qm importovf 200 [name-of-vm].ovf local-zfs
    this will convert your VM to Proxmox and put it on (in my case) local-zfs
    when ready you need to add a network card to the hardware in Proxmox, as this is not transferred from VMWARE
  3. Add the vmxnet3 driver for network in Proxmox
    boot the machine and login.

check the ensXX where XX can be different from VMWARE, so change it (easy to be seen with the command ‘ ip address ‘

change it to the correct new number in the file: /etc/networking/interface
shutdown machine again and reboot

VM is being converted from VMWARE to Proxmox

NB. I used Proxmox 6.2-10 with their ISO on a HP Gen8 MicroServer (Community Edition)

Message to self: VMware root disabled on webui en shell

pam_tally2 --user root

In my example the there were 25 failed root login attempts:

1 Login Failures Latest failure From
2 root 25 01/02/20 10:56:59 unknown

The clear the the password lockout use the following command:

1 pam_tally2 --user root --reset

ALT-F1 brings you to the shell if it is enabled (it not also, but no username/pwd can be given

ALT-F2 brings you back

no space left on device VMWARE

Upgrade goes wrong

esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190802001-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

gives no space left on device

with error:

[Errno 28] No space left on device
vibs = VMware_locker_tools-light_10.3.10.12406962-14141615
Please refer to the log file for more details.
[root@ezsetupsystemb05ada87ad44:~] cd /tmp
[root@ezsetupsystemb05ada87ad44:/tmp] wget http://No space left on device
wget: bad address ‘No’
[root@ezsetupsystemb05ada87ad44:/tmp] wget http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vib20/tools-light/VMware_locker_tools-light_10.3.10.12406962-14141615.vib
Connecting to hostupdate.vmware.com (92.123.124.29:80)

After this again

esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190802001-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

and now it is ok

De anderhalve meter: Corona

Mijn weblog zou niet mijn weblog zijn als ik in al de jaren dat ik deze weblog heb niet iets zou schrijven wat een stuk historie is, wordt en blijft.

In dit stukje vraag ik mezelf iets af: in hoeverre is de anderhalve meter afstand nu zinvol, minder zinvol of onzinnig?

Met andere halve meter afstand is de kans dat je besmet raakt minder (wordt gesteld). Want de kans dat je direct besmet wordt door iemand met een virus (ik schrijf met opzet: een virus) is minder omdat je afstand houdt. Echter: er bestaat een kans dat iemand buiten loopt, niest, een windvlaag de nies meeneemt en uiteindelijk via de lucht bij je terecht komt.

Nu zit je in een TV studio, je zit anderhalve meter van elkaar. je praat normaal, je doet normaal echter nu ben je klaar met je praatje en je moet jezelf verplaatsen. Op dat moment gaat iemand anders op je plek zitten. je loopt zelf door de ‘lucht’ van de ander en gaat zitten

Is dit dan geen schijnveiligheid? Natuurlijk begrijp ik dat als er afstand is de kans verminderd, maar stel: je loopt in de winkel je loopt langs iemand schouder aan schouder omdat een winkelwagentje in de weg zit je raakt elkaar aan en loopt door. 5 minuten later proest iemand in de winkel en jij loopt 5 seconden later daar waar deze persoon heeft lopen te proesten, wat is dan de veiligheid?

Wat is de kans bij het eerste en wat is de kans bij de tweede?