I forgot how to resize a disk on a regular computer. I have been working with EC2 instances for so long that I completely forgot! I had a 2TB hard drive that was only showing as 200gb. Thanks to vander.host I am up and running again. These were the easiest instructions to follow.

The differences are not big but they are enough differences that it takes a few more steps than EC2. I should clarify and say the old EC2 because the new way is even less steps.

With this you will be using parted, lvextend and resize2fs. Use lbsk to see how much space you have to use and ofcourse do not forget about df -h.

I’ve built a nextcloud server for a client but I have a few more tweaks to make to it.

%1 is not a valid win32 application windows 10 when printing error  0x00000c1. This error message was frustrating me for hours. The computer has an HP laptop and I was on the standard user. I tried so many things I am not 100% of the solution. Uninstalling the printer, updating windows, DISM commands, SFC SCANNOW, deleting some printer files from system32 and even running a virus scan. Nothing seemed to work.

Until early this afternoon when I finally got it fixed. It is an either/or situation. There were a few other print services that I turned on plus I deleted the printer from Windows Registry. I then installed the printer again and it then started to print.

First, the services. Print Spooler was started but the others were not. I believe there was a total of 4 on that HP but I did not screenshot it. This is from my desktop.

As you can see there are three services here with only two of them running. The PrintWorkflow_4c7db568 was not running on the laptop with the issues. I started that along with the others.

The next thing I did was to remove the printer from the registry.

Disable print spool services and then open REGEDIT as administrator. Look for the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Print\\Environments\\Windows x64\\Drivers\\Version-x

Where “X” is usually a 3 or a 4. This Kyocera printer was under Version-3. Delete the printer in there and then close the registry. I did forget to make a backup but really I should have made one.

Reinstall the printer and you should be able to print a test page. I cannot believe I found almost no useful information on the Internet. Most of the hits were very old and not even Windows 10. The two sites that mentioned the registry were here and here. I am really confident that I had never heard of those two sites before. If I am unfamiliar with the site I do not visit it right away. In this case I had no other option and as luck would have it, they had the correct information.

I had a very difficult time getting two domains to verify on Amazon SES. From what I found online it seems like nothing was going to work. What is strange is that I have several domains already verified and I use to not have any issues. Something changed in Amazon SES and I think it is the keys that you have to add to your DNS. In my case I had to remove the TXT name and only put _amazonses. My DKIM was also not verifying. After seeing what I did for the domain verification I decided to check out a domain that did verify and I found out that I have to delete the data after _.domainkey. How was I supposed to know? Google has no information about this. Amazon has no information about this. It is just frustrating and a complete waste of time.

Of the two domains that needed to be verified and along with their DKIM that would be 4 approvals. I already received 3 approvals in the first hour of waiting. The last approval is just the DKIM and I will review that again tomorrow if it does not verify before then.

My unifi-video would not start the other day. I figured it was java related and yes, it was. I had wasted a few hours trying to downgrade my java but it wasn’t happening. I was using openjdk and had recently upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to Ubuntu 20.04. I did not realize until I had fixed it that my camera had stopped recording almost a month ago.

This link goes to the answer on the Unifi Community. The instructions are easy and it works! The problem is I don’t trust Ubiquiti and am afraid the solution might be lost if they change forums again. The post by Daschundfarm was the key for me. Note – the Java download link did not work with wget. I had to download it on a different computer and then transfer it to my server. Below is the instructions.

I have Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS:

EDIT2: Note that this way you’re locking the system into an “old” version of Java, which might not be a good practice in the long run + knowing this shithole company, they’ll sooner or later make unifi-controller not be able to run on this older java version – which is going to be an issue if you run both video & controller on the same machine. Also it might happen that after every automatic java update (thinking about apt -f upgrade / dist-upgrade) you’ll have to repeat some of the steps below.

EDIT: Thanks to @Resquer here is a direct link to the download (don’t have to create an oracle account):

1, Download “jre-8u271-linux-x64.tar.gz” from [SEE ABOVE]

(Or if the above link is no worky, then https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/javase8u211-later-archive-downloads.html (you want the JRE! not the JDK, so scroll down a bit on the page for the “Java SE Runtime Environment 8u271” section))

as root (sudo su):

2, mkdir /usr/local/java (if not already exists)

3, cp “jre-8u271-linux-x64.tar.gz” /usr/local/java

4, cd /usr/local/java

5, tar zxvf jre-8u271-linux-x64.tar.gz

6, rm jre-8u271-linux-x64.tar.gz

7, update-alternatives –install “/usr/bin/java” “java” “/usr/local/java/jre1.8.0_271/bin/java” 1

8, update-alternatives –config java (select the number of the newly extracted one, it was #3 for me):

* 3      /usr/local/java/jre1.8.0_271/bin/java      1     manual mode

9, echo “JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java/jre1.8.0_271” | tee -a /etc/default/unifi

10, reboot and enjoy.

Out of the blue I started to have STUN issues with my Unifi Controller. I did wasted probably 2 hours before I figured it out. My controller is in one place and this specific site is in another location. Since I recently replaced routers and went from Sophos to OPNSense I was concerned that there was something wrong with the router. Turns out it was a coincidence.

My research on the internet was focusing on Port 3478 and that it needed to be open. When using tools like canyouseeme.org the ports was showing closed. I know it was port forwarded correctly and I know I had it open on the server. I just didn’t understand.

Fortunately, I remembered someone stating that their Controller Hostname/IP said something generic. This was in the controller itself. I thought it always said that but now I am beginning to think that some update changed that IP on me. I have had this setup for over a year and it just recently started to do this.

After making the change and putting in the correct IP the STUN notifications went away. I really hope this solves my random AP drops as well.

I was having an extremely difficult time getting my static IP WAN connection to work on OPNSense. I’m happy to report that I think I have solved the problem. I was able to get it to work last night but only after doing a factory reset.

If I am correct I think my problem was the upstream field. I was leaving it on automatic and I shouldn’t have done that. To the right of the field you can add your own upstream gateway.

What OPNSense means by upstream gateway is really your default gateway. I was under the assumption that since we have to pick the subnet mask that it based on that it would be the default gateway. For example /24 would mean a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and then I just assumed the gateway ends in one. I should not assume that.

I also though my issue was firewall rules related or there gateway section that is separate from the interface section. I never had that before and have read the instructions a few times. A lot of this stuff was automated with Sophos and now I have to manually set all this info. This section is important to show health and for load balancing/failover. Both are really important for my setup.

In order to become more comfortable with OPNSense I knew I would be having to factory reset at least one more time and then setting it all up again. This came earlier than I anticipated. That’s okay because I have learned a lot already. As I mentioned earlier I was giving myself a full year to learn this but with the EOL being moved up on my Cyberoam products I have no choice but to kick it into high gear.

The most important parts I have to figure out yet is Wireguard, a better understanding of firewall rules and load balancing/failover. I use 3 and sometimes for different WAN connections for my primary network. It is very imperative that I get this right.

There is a Xerox Workcentre 3334 here that use to print great but recently it has been giving me out of memory errors on both Word and PDF documents. These are larger files but nevertheless they should still print. Before the out of memory errors it would also take forever to print a few pages. 10 seconds or more pause between pages.

I don’t know what brought this on but it really never was a problem before. It’s a Xerox 3335 that is networked and only one computer prints to it. I tried a variety of different drivers on it and it didn’t matter. I also added the “lp” print queue to see if that would improve the speeds. PCL or PS also was useless. I also upgraded the firmware!

What seems to have worked is turning off the print spooling in the printer itself. Log into the printer and in the properties tab click on Maintenance on the left. From there you will see a “Firmware Upgrade” link.

One more thing I should mention is at first the issues were all with PDF documents. Using Chrome instead of Adobe Reader DC seems to have fixed that. Yesterday, the problem was with a 170 page Word document.

I’ll continue to monitor it and see if any other issues arise. I’ve never had to disable the print spooling on a printer before and I work with printers all the time. Thankfully the newer computers can handle the spooling much better than in years past.

I will not pay over $100 for a pair of earbuds that will eventually wear out and that I may lose. I will not pay $50 either however, I will recommend generic wireless earbuds.

There are many choices out there on both Amazon and Aliexpress. I have purchased two of these bluetooth 5.0 earbuds now. They both are water resistent, have a charging pod. They last for hours and sound really good. What they lack in compared to airpods are shorter battery times, phone calls are bit more muffled and there are some weird things that occur when trying to charge. None of these are deal breakers and none of them are work $150+ to fix. I also assume the batteries will wear out sooner but at this price I can pick up another one if need be. The brand I got myself is different than the one I got my wife but they act the same and are very similar outside the case design.

Taking a screenshot in Linux Mint is very easy to do. They have a built in program with a very simple name. It’s called Screenshot. That’s crazy!

Works like any other screenshot program. It gives you a few choices on the area and you can set a delay before it takes the screenshot.

As you can see it is super simple! I didn’t find any shortcut keys for it like one has in Windows, Mac, and Chrome. Nevertheless, I am really glad they have it built in.

I’ve begun testing OPNSense as a possible replacement for my production cyberoam/sophos routers. I purchased a QOTOM (read: aliexpress seller) router with 6 NIC ports. All the ethernet ports are Intel. This version comes with a Core i5, 8 GB of RAM and a 64 GB SSD. It also has a toggle for wifi/LTE modem. Adding a modem/sim card will be the last thing I test. It is needed but not a priority. I have found some modems that should work with it but I’ll wait to order it.

Instead of writing “reviews” of the hardware and software I will need to do blog posts of bits and pieces. I expect this process to take a few months. I need to be comfortable with both the software and hardware. Many of these devices are going to be remote. Obviously you always want rock-solid uptime but I also need to be able to troubleshoot them almost exclusively remotely.

While the software is obviously separate from the hardware I will have to write about both at the same time. This is my first time working with QOTOM hardware. If this works I will be using much lower strength hardware due to power requirements.

I have worked with many different routers including PFSense. OPNSense was a fork of PFSense but has gradually become it’s own animal. Now with PFsense changing some of their rules I wonder if OPNSense will take of.

I have several cyberoam and sophos routers in production. I am very experienced with dd-wrt and Asus-wrt (merlin). I also work with Sonicwall everyday with a variety of models. While my Cisco experience (and now Meraki) isn’t all smart hands I wouldn’t consider myself an expert.

Lastly, it pisses me off that the latest security issues with Sonicwall and Sophos could have been prevented. Sophos was doing something stupid with their logins while Sonicwall says to just stop using their SSL VPN software. How is one supposed to use the VPN then?! Such craziness.