Most of the search engine hits for “upgrade PHP on WordPress” told me to go into CPanel or a similar tool my hosting provider might offer to abstract what’s going on with the server itself. That’s not what I was looking for, because I manage my own hosts. I needed to know how to reconfigure the host itself. The OS packages to install. The conf files to tweak. The processes to restart. This was not obvious, as the magical CLI incantations required to complete the task varied depending on which Linux distro and HTTP server I was running on a given box.
Hands On
When Stretching Layer Two, Separate Your Fate
The big idea is to support the same IP address in multiple locations, but to NOT have fate-sharing, where a problem like a bridging loop and resulting broadcast storm at one site would take down the other site. That means we can’t just throw up a tagged VLAN link (trunk) between the DCs. Instead, we have to divide the L2 broadcast domain (the VLAN) into different L2 domains separated by a routed segment. This way we’ve created two failure domains that will not share fate.
Free Networking Lab Images From Arista, Cisco, nVidia (Cumulus)
Here’s my current list of no cost, minimal headache, easily obtainable networking images that work in a virtual lab environment such as EVE-NG or GNS3. My goal is to clearly document what these images are and how to obtain them, as this data is less obvious than I’d like.
Buying Used Cisco Gear From eBay For Your Lab
While most of the lab work I do is with virtualized networking gear, once in a while, I need actual hardware. For instance, to fully explore QoS, hardware is key. Many QoS commands won’t be available to you in a virtual network device. eBay offers lots of older networking gear for pennies or even fractions of a penny of what the gear was worth new. Why so cheap? Mostly, older networking gear is too slow for modern LANs and WANs. That’s a win for learners who don’t care about the speed as long as they can still use the old box to learn the fundamentals of routing and switching. There are caveats to eBay networking gear, though, not unlike buying a used car. Know what you’re getting into.
Using AppleScript To Size A Window To 16×9 On MacOS
As part of an automation workflow I’m building around Elgato Stream Deck, I needed a way to size an application window to 16×9. This would be one component of a workflow that would allow me to launch an app, size the window, position it on the screen, and hide all the other windows with the push of a Stream Deck button. The easy part was the Stream Deck configuration. The hard part was the AppleScript–I had never written one.
Synology Running Out Of Space? Empty The Recycle Bin.
While performing end-of-year clean up on lab infrastructure, I discovered my 8 disk Synology array with about 22TB of usable storage was almost out of space. Really? What had I filled all that space with? After a lot of digging around, I found that I had enabled the Recycle Bin on one or more Shared Folders, but had NOT created a Recycle Bin emptying schedule. Here’s how to fix that problem.
Connecting Python To Slack For Testing, Development, and Chat
The scripting language Python can retrieve information from or publish information to the messaging app Slack. This means you can write a program that puts info into Slack for you, or accepts your queries using Slack as the interface. Useful stuff if you spend a lot of time in Slack, as I do. And hey, chatbots!
No Sound In Exported Video – Final Cut Pro X 10.3.2
Ran into an issue today where audio was working normally in Final Cut Pro X 10.3.2, but the exported video had no sound. The video and sound was originally recorded using a Canon G7X Mark II. The fix was to delete Final Cut Pro X preferences, as detailed by Apple in their discussion forum.