SysAdmin – LearnByDoingIT

Tidying Up

Things I learned this week:

Windows

Open Settings > System > Storage, and then click on Apps & Features.
Under the Sort By dropdown, select Install Date.
Go through and remove anything you don’t need. If an app is unfamiliar, search for it online to see if it’s something you need or if you can safely get rid of it. You can also search for it on Should I Remove It? (though we recommend skipping the Should I Remove It? application and just searching for the software’s name on the site).

This originated from Wirecutter’s post on 7 Steps to Tidying Your Digital Life

My favorite advice is to do one step and see what happens when you move forward.

Disclaimer: I did a couple of items.

Where did the Tidy Up vector lead? I learned how to actually delete other temp files on the same Storage Settings page and that would have been enough except that led me to notice an unchecked box labeled “Downloads Folder” and I wondered, when do I ever clean that out, and so I did a pretty good chunk and it reminded me that this process is one I used to do more frequently and like writing, just escaped me and now I turn back to it :)

The IP address conflicts with the WAN IP subnet. Please enter a different IP address.

I have been trying to configure my Netgear R6400, the DHCP scope and reservations, to setup my home network with some fixed addresses for my pihole and what not. And all I have been getting for quite a long time, is that frustrating error.

Netgear previously told me to wait for a new firmware update and that was an update or two ago and it never fixed it. And a great deal of the fixes such as remove yourself from assignment as the DNS server simply didn’t work for me.

Recently I updated to V1.0.1.62_1.0.41 and when I tried to update the configuration I received this message. Again. So I decided to try three different changes from the first Google search returns. The second one, simply click the setting under Internet Setup for DNS to “Get Automatically from ISP”, let it reboot, make all your DHCP assignments and scope changes and then set it back worked absolutely great.

YMMV

Brother HL-L2380DW Printer Problems are Black and White

Why this fools me like it does is because every time I fix it I think I will remember it, and I don’t. Windows 10 will find the printer and add it and then the text is white and all the background is black. This is from all software and applications.

The fix is to download the correct software from Brother and it is a pain unless you download the entire setup and package.

Problem solved.

NOOBS for Raspberry Pi

Where did the day go? Down the rabbit hole of SysAdmin work and so, while not particularly wasted, wasn’t time well spent.

It started when I decided to upgrade my server to Fedora 30, surprisingly enough, that went smoothly, took a coffee break and a lunch hour and everything came up smelling like a rose. I was due after last summer on the cosmic break board.

While that was going on was going on I decided to post a blog entry and that was when I went down the rabbit hole. First I updated all the blogs and then turned to the article and started by heading off to download an infographic from a link I was emailed, but as it was a tracker, it was blocked by my Pi-hole. I attempted to temporarily disable the pihole and found I could not login via the web interface. Using SSH, I was able to determine I had run out of storage space…but why?

I tracked it back to using the version of software, NOOBS that came with it. Lazy and as a result the 8GB card had only 5GB of storage and it was full with the base install. I certainly could have simply deleted a few of the apps (Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha being the largest unused apps I generally pull off) but as it is a rainy day, I optimistically put off gardening to between showers, little sensing how long this was going to take to put a clean copy of Raspbian on it.

It went very slowly, I forgot why I like to pull of those apps, and that old memory card is left to a slow older standalong Pi duties like Pi-hole, the update took forever but eventually I was rewarded with a reloaded from scratch Pi-Hole with plenty of space.

Now I was ready to make a blog entry and be quick about it as the update to Fedora 30, which takes at least a coffee break and full lunch to complete was already done. Except the Pi I used for the Pi-Hole to update wasn’t starting the HDMI. Aha I thought, the old HDMI recognition issue I thought, and sure enough the /boot/config.txt file was mangled slightly with a comment that NOOBS had made changes, argh, I might as well reload this one as the rain continued and so I did. It turned out that my new Pi case with a fan and everything has simply been reluctant to let the HDMI cable go all the way in and by the time I solved that I had updates going everywhere.

So after all of that, I don’t have time to post the entry to the blog, didn’t get any gardening done, didn’t get to read a little, and I am back to where I was at the start of the day although up to date in a maintainable fashion.

I suppose it is worth it; however, I have found that my view has completely changed. I no longer think it reasonable to spend time on System Administration, life is too short.

Hmmmm.

SOLVED: tt-rss Update Deamon Not Running after Update

I solved the problem where after an update tt-rss displayed a red box “Update Deamon not Running” [regrets for not having a screen shot of that].

What I found, and I am sure it is in the documentation is that in the tt-rss/lock directory, there are two files: update_deamon.lock and update_deamon.stamp and mind had significantly different time stamps [ ls -l * ], one immediately after the update. I deleted them both and restarted my httpd.service and the deamon ran successfully after that.

I would post this on a support forum or upvote wherever I found it; however, I just took a quick look around for an error log and lock files to warm up my awareness of key issues prior to checking those. Yeah me!