Welcome to Melroy’s Blog. Here I share articles about IT, DevOps, software engineering, security, GNU/Linux, technology, AI, (embedded) hardware and anything else computer related.
Recent Posts
Server Hardening
Introduction Security of a system is often overlooked or not considered important enough. Some might think not about the possible consequences, which might result in a hacked or compromised server. Maybe sensitive data gets stolen or encrypted with major consequences.
A collection of tools, techniques and best pratices can help to reduce such vulnerabilities. This process is called system hardening.
We have seen quote a lot of hacks and data breaches over the past years across different big companies, including but not limited to: PayPal, LastPast, T-Mobile, MailChimp, Netflix, Dropbox, OpenSea, Twitter…
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Starship Prompt
I would like to share a nice ‘secret’. I want to introduce you to the Starship prompt! This is a getting started guide for Starship. I’m using Starship every day.
Starship Prompt, not to be confused with the Starship from SpaceX 😆, is a cross-shell prompt written in Rust. The prompt works in any common shell you may already use under GNU/Linux, like Bash.
In fact, Starship prompt works under any shell under any operating system.
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GitLab: Pull from remote repo
GitLab is an awesome product. I’m using GitLab Community Edition (FOSS) at home on a daily basis.
However, I needed a specific feature in GitLab called Pull from a remote repository which is officially a premium feature only. Too bad this feature is not free, but I have a solution.
This sync feature allows you to keep for example your forked repository in sync with a remote upstream repository.
Arguments against Bitcoin
Introduction I hear a lot of people talking bad about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. As if crypto is bad for humanity. In 2014 I already wrote a blog article about Bitcoin; Bitcoin and Litecoin (Dutch).
I want to discuss several arguments against Bitcoin and misconceptions people are telling me regarding crypto. Specifically against Bitcoin.
Did you know:
If you bought Bitcoin in 2014, you could get 1 whole BTC for around €500 ($580).
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New server: Install & configuration of services (Part III)
Welcome back, this will be the 3rd part of new server series. In the previous parts I assembled the server and prepared the machine with Ubuntu Server. I configured the basics things like; networking, RAID setup, E-Mail and more. In case you missed that: read Part I and Part II.
Today, we will finish the job with installing and configuring all the services we love so much. Again, I included a Table of Contents for convenience reasons, since it quite a long article.
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New server: Setup Linux (Part II)
Happy new year everyone! 😎 Let’s install Ubuntu Server 20.04 as part of the blog series. And continue with setting-up the software part of the server. If you missed Part I, read that first.
New Server: Buy & Assemble (Part I)
My current server is 15 years old, and time for an upgrade! Finally! After all, adding additional memory is not good enough and we hitting the limits of the old hardware. We will replace the whole server from the ground-up.
GPT-3 – We are doomed
I would like to talk about artificial intelligence (AI), GPT-3 to be specific. Has been a while since I posted an article, but I noticed an urge to write about GPT-3 🙂. Without further ado, let’s get into what GPT-3 is. And why this is such an important topic to discuss.
Bests electric cars for your money
Currently, I’m also searching for an electric car. Of course when you are buying a car for yourself, you are judging your bare minimal requirements. Like what is the minimum range (for electric cars), the type of car or what is your budget you want to spend on a car.
Aside from all those factors, those cars were hitting the marked and I couldn’t choose any more. The cars have huge differences in both range and starting price.
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Air quality meter
Current co-location Lately, I moved buildings for my work towards a building which is very close by Eindhoven Airport. Only 430 meters to be precise.
The air-planes and kerosene smell triggered me about the health risks, and air quality inside the building as well as at home. The fact is that we have more and more cars/trucks within the residential areas (too bad still running on fossil fuel). Meaning our health is at risk, and apparently nobody cares.
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Get the most out of your network
Lately I moved to my new home. My idea was to setup a good stable and high performance LAN network within my home. This project sounds pretty easy at first, but it was harder than I initially suspected it to be.
In this article I talk about my goals for this project. The list of materials to get you started and creating your own network. I will talk about some useful unix tools for network analysis. How-to setup your own NFS (Network File System) server. Last but not least, I will give some Linux network tweaking advise and share my future plans.
Upgrading GitLab server
I got a running GitLab server on my Debian Jessie server. GitLab Community Edition is an open-source git repository manager, but also supports code reviews, wiki’s, issue tracking and much more! GitLab is very similar to Github in a way, however you have full control of the server. You are running your own git server.
Normally Github will do all the system administration, upgrades and such for you. They make sure your code is safe and saved no matter what.
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