floss

Upgrading OpenWrt on a TL-WR710N

Story is that I have several TP-Link WR710N access points in use, flashed with OpenWrt. The preinstalled (factory) OS is a bit too limiting, resource-intensive and cannot be checked for flaws (or be modified for that matter). Whilst reading the OpenWrt website, I saw they merged with the LEDE project and they are merging their efforts. Hooray for this/these amazing project(s). Since my installations are a bit stale (and they still work like a charm), it was time to do updates.

I love Free Software Day 2018

Today isn't just Valentines day, but also I love Free Software Day! I've been using (and contributing) Free Software for years now and don't want anything else. Even when I've given non-Free Software another chance, every time I was glad when I returned to Free Software. A big thank you goes out to all developers, sysadmins, network guru's, translators, bugsquashers and all other contributors. A small selection of tools/libraries/projects/organizations I'm thankful for this year: debian, ubuntu, terminator, mate, vi(m), firefox, thunderbird, postgresql, apache, kvm, libvirt, bash, openssh, nextcloud, workrave, audacious, vlc, mtp (Media Transfer Protocol), ext2/ext3/ext4/btrfs, mdadm, postfix, the linux kernel, fosdem, fsfe, eff, bitsoffreedom, ccc and kodi.

Local OsmAnd and Geo URL's

Earlier this year I went on a long holiday to Japan and China. I have an Android phone and am a very big fan of OpenStreetMap. So I used OsmAnd (which uses OpenStreetMap data) to navigate through those countries. I made a spreadsheet with LibreOffice, which included a few links to certain location which are hard to find or do not have an address. Then I exported that .ods to a .

WireGuard has been added to my laptop cover

Ever since the talk about WireGuard at FOSDEM last year, I have been keeping an eye on the project. They opening line explains the project perfectly: WireGuard is an extremely simple yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography. It aims to be faster, simpler, leaner, and more useful than IPSec, while avoiding the massive headache. It intends to be considerably more performant than OpenVPN. WireGuard is designed as a general purpose VPN for running on embedded interfaces and super computers alike, fit for many different circumstances.

FOSDEM 2018 announced

Today the dates for FOSDEM 2018 got announced. Next years edition will take place on 3 and 4 February 2018. Stay tuned for more news in the following months.

Got K-lined on Freenode

This morning I woke up to my irssi client not being connected anymore to the Freenode IRC servers. irssi clearly states why, I got k-lined while I was sleeping! Also several query (private message) windows are open, so I was at least at the receiving end of spam. My first thoughts go out to my irssi server, is it compromised and am I sending out spam? After a few minutes of searching, I notice nothing out of the ordinary.

Switched from Hugo to Nikola

Earlier this week I resurrect my blog with Hugo. After setting up the site and blogging a bit, I wondered how my RSS feeds looked, since that is the de-facto standard for subscribing to websites. Unfortunately I could not easily find and enable the RSS feeds, and it looks like RSS is part of templating instead of being built-in. Somehow this was the final (of several) papercuts and I was fed up with Hugo.

IPv6 Unique Local Address

Since IPv6 is happening, we should be prepared. During the deployment of a new accesspoint I was in need of a Unique Local Address. IPv6 Unique Local Addresses basically are comparable to the IPv4 private address ranges. Some sites refer to Unique-Local-IPv6.com, but that is offline nowadays. Others refer to kame.net generator, which is open source and still available yay. But wait, there must be an offline method for this right?

Hugo - First steps

You might have noticed, but I am re-starting to blog. Currently I am experimenting with Hugo for this. The last time around my blog was based on Wordpress and before that I also used PyBlosxom. It is quite funny that I am moving back to a static site generator again. Back in the day my main reason for it was optimal resource usage. Then I went for user friendlyness and now I want a fast and secure system again.

ZNC github tarball - Do not use it

Today I tried to compile ZNC 1.6.5 from source (.tar.gz) which I got from their releases on Github. Without checking their installation instruction first, I dove right in. After a quick ./autogen.sh I was happily underway and after quick configure I turned to make and it surprised me with the following gem: Packing man page znc.1.gz... Packing man page znc-buildmod.1.gz... It looks like git submodules are not initialized. Run: git submodule update --init --recursive Makefile:167: recipe for target 'third_party/Csocket/Csocket.