In last blog post, I talked aboutrunning AI LLM models locally. Read that first if you want to follow along.With local LLMs in place and running, I searched for ways to integrate them with VS Code. The answer isContinue extension.Set up:Go to http://127.0.0.1:3000 and login. Then setting (gear icon) -> Account tab -> API keys. Generate one if non exists.Get some models. I have tried bothdeepseek-coder-v2andqwen2.5-coderfor chatting assistance and love them. For Autocomplete, I am usingstarcoder2.Install Continue extension. I’ve made the following changes to~/.contine/config.jsonto get th ...继续阅读 (18)

I recently set upollamaon my 7-year old desktop (AMD Ryzen 7 1700 8 core, 32GB RAM) with an equally old NVidia GPU (GeForce GTX 1070 8GB VRAM). I was able to runllama3.1:8bsuccessfully via terminal CLI.I then configuredOpen Web UI, which gives me a friendly UI to work with the AI bot.Setupon Ubuntu(Should work on other Linux distro as well)Installollamacurl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | shInstall Docker if you don’t have it alreadyFind out the default location for your AI models. In my case, it is/usr/share/ollama/.I used the brute force search to find where mine is:sudo find / - ...继续阅读 (27)

I used to host my own blog reader runningTT-RSS. I’ve recently switched to Miniflux. I highly recommend it.Advantages of Miniflux over TT-RSSSimple yet elegant interface. I can read blogs directly through a browser, either on a PC or Phone.The subscription’s rss/atom feed discovery is a lot better than those of TT-RSS. In many instances, TT-RSS cannot discover the feed whereas Miniflux canOnly issue I noticed so far is that Miniflux discovers a lot feed entries. I haven’t figured out an efficient way of deciding which one(s) among the many I should subscribe.My setupI ran it ...继续阅读 (14)

In my last post, I shared my method ofswitching between differentawsaccount usingoh-my-zsh.Often times, many DevOps and cloud administrators also manage multiple Kubernetes clusters. Just like knowing whichawsprofile you are using on a terminal, it is important to know which k8s cluster context you are under. This helps to avoid costly mistakes.Additionally,kubectlis a long command to type. Many professionals use customizedaliasto shorten it.We can use the rightoh-my-zshandkube-ps1plugins to do all of the above.Assumptions:zshwithoh-my-zshframeworkinstalledkubectlinstalled.kube/configfile is p ...继续阅读 (35)

It is pretty common for a company to have multiple aws accounts. A cloud administrator may find him/her self needing to switch accounts regularly. When doing so, s/he also needs to be aware which account’s profile s/he is under. Fortunately, zsh running on MacOS, Linux, or Windows WSL can assist!Assumptions:zsh withoh-my-zsh frameworkinstalledawsplugin is enabled in~/.zshrcfile. By default,gitplugin is enabled. You need to addawsinto the line that starts withplugins=. Example:plugins=(git aws)awsCLI tool installed. Create~/.awsif you don’t already have it.Createconfigfile forawsCLI ...继续阅读 (33)

Awhile ago I set up my own git server. I’ve beenhacking happily using that and Eclipse. In my spare time, I’ve been takingUCSD’s wonderful algorithm course: Algorithmic Design and Techniques. The course provides plenty of programming challenges! I chose the paid version so my code can be evaluated against all tests in the grading server. I solved the programming challenges in 3 languages: Java, Python, and C++. It has been so much fun!Anyway, I thought it’d be nice to enable aweb front end to my own code hosted on my own server. There are a lot of choices: gitweb, gitla ...继续阅读 (34)

I’ve been thinking about setting up my own git server for a while, and finally got it up and running last week. Since I do a lot of hacking with Eclipse, I naturally want Eclipse’s EGit to work with my own git server. Here are a couple of noteworthy points:As of this writing, if you want ssh authentication with EGit, ecdsa type key is NOT going to work. rsa ssh key works. I found this out the hard way, since I’m trying to transition from rsa to ecdsa. Therefore I initially didn’t generate rsa keys on my computers. I had to run “ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096” and ...继续阅读 (37)

I tookMathematical Modelling Basicscourse during the last couple of months. It was produced byDelft University of Technology, offered for free on edX. Thanks TUDelft and edX!It is a great course introducing mathematical modeling. I like the fact in this short course, 3 important areas are covered with good practices: mathematics, computer programming, and technical writing.The math involved is modeling with system of ordinary differential equations. Both analytical and numeric solutions to said model are introduced and practiced with good exercises;The programming part is using Python to solve ...继续阅读 (37)

Asdiscussed here, I have Seagate Ultra Slim USB 3 attached to my wifi router as a NAS (Network-attached storage). It provides a good backup/sharing storage for my home network that’s accessible from all my home computing devices, which was nice.Accessing it from Windows is easy to set up, all I needed to do was to map a drive. Accessing it from Linux needs some additional work, but it turned out to be not too bad either.Initially I created an entry in /etc/fstab. It uses the cifs protocol. Some cursory research shows that cifs is old and oboselete, but I’m not sure of other ways of ...继续阅读 (37)

A couple of days ago one web site I volunteer to manage was under DDOS attack. I installed and configured fail2ban to protect us from future similar attacks. Here are some notes. The server is the RedHat/Fedora/CentOS variety, as you can tell from commands listed below. Please translate them to your distro’s corresponding commands as needed.Installation is easy:sudo yum install fail2banTo make fail2ban starts automatically after a reboot, run this:sudo systemctl enable fail2banConfiguring is relatively easy. It’s recommended that you create your own jail configuration file, using t ...继续阅读 (36)

I’m enjoying running Manjaro Arch Linux on my workstation so far. Some additional notes below.1. I had trouble getting Fcitx Chinese input working, so I used IBus instead. Here is what I installed using Manjaro’s package GUI tool: IBus Preferences and ibus-pinyin;2. IBus Pinyin works fine on this system except for Emacs. Using the system’s IME for Chinese input into Emacs is a fairly common problem. There are various hacks to get it work (mostly dealing with playing with LC_CTYPE=zh_CN.utf8), none to my liking. So I installed anEmacs package from MELPA, pyim. I put the follow ...继续阅读 (33)

I’ve been usingLinux MintCinnamon for many years. For the most part, I love it. It’s based on Ubuntu, very similar to Debian, therefore there are plenty of resources available online. But its GUI bothers me a bit occasionally. Let me give a few examples here:The Eclipse IDE’s tooltip sometimes shows up in black background, which is annoying. I think it’s related to GTK bugs;I use ownCloud. Its Linux client, when running, is supposed to have an icon in the system tray in the bottom left corner. I like that because that icon changes depending on if it’s in sync, and ...继续阅读 (36)

I have my own cloud storage server usingownCloud for many years now, and love it. It’s like DropBox, only better.However, even with that, it’s still nice to have a shared storage for my home network. So today I bought a Seatate Ultra Slim USB 3 disk from Costco, with 2TB capacity. It is attached to my router, ASUS RT-AC68U. Here are the steps for:Router set up;Mount a drive on Windows;Mount a drive on Linux;Router:1. Go to 192.168.1.1 through your browser;2. USB Application (left side);3. Media Services and Servers;4. Network Place (Samba) Share / Cloud Disk;5. Enable Share. I also ...继续阅读 (39)

Microsoft announced itsSQL Server on Linux public preview yesterday. I’m really excited to check it out. Here are some interesting things I found during my testing. I’ll write more as I play with it further.If you want to play it on Ubuntu,it needs to be 16.04 or above. I didn’t pay attention to that initially, and started installing on Ubuntu 14. Below is a typical message you would get:The following packages have unmet dependencies: mssql-server : Depends: openssl (>= 1.0.2) but 1.0.1f-1ubuntu2.21 is to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken pa ...继续阅读 (43)

Microsoft announced itsSQL Server on Linux public preview yesterday. I’m really excited to check it out. Here are some interesting things I found during my testing. I’ll write more as I play with it further.If you want to play it on Ubuntu,it needs to be 16.04 or above. I didn’t pay attention to that initially, and started installing on Ubuntu 14. Below is a typical message you would get:[code language=”text”]The following packages have unmet dependencies:mssql-server : Depends: openssl (>= 1.0.2) but 1.0.1f-1ubuntu2.21 is to be installedE: Unable to correct probl ...继续阅读 (35)

I didn’t realize that Java’s regex class, Matcher, uses m.group(0) to denote the entire pattern. I spent some time debugging it. Hence this note.As isstated in the documentation, “Capturing groups are indexed from left to right, starting at one. Group zero denotes the entire pattern, so the expression m.group(0) is equivalent to m.group().”Here is a sample code to pick out twitter user names out of a string using Java. A set is returned, therefore if a user name is mentioned more than once, it’ll only be stored once in the set. All user names are returned back in ...继续阅读 (35)

I didn’t realize that Java’s regex class, Matcher, uses m.group(0) to denote the entire pattern. I spent some time debugging it. Hence this note.As isstated in the documentation, “Capturing groups are indexed from left to right, starting at one. Group zero denotes the entire pattern, so the expression m.group(0) is equivalent to m.group().”Here is a sample code to pick out twitter user names out of a string using Java. A set is returned, therefore if a user name is mentioned more than once, it’ll only be stored once in the set. All user names are returned back in ...继续阅读 (36)

Below is a comment I made regarding Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Kaiser Kuo’s Facebook page, with very slight change.In my view, domestically, China under Xi is on the right path, unlike, say, Brazil, India, and the United States.I believe Xi’s a real believer of socialism and a real progressive. I believe his ideology and moral compass is very well aligned with that of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn than Hillary Clinton and Theresa May will ever be. His heart is in the right place. I recommend this interview highly. It was done when he was the leader in Zhejiang province in 2004 ...继续阅读 (37)

In T-SQL, you can only ALTER COLUMN one at a time. Initially I was worried about operational cost of this change, but it turned out this change is instantaneous.Mind you, I’m not suggesting you should do this without a good reason. ...继续阅读 (44)

I learned about Quincy Carroll’s debut novel,Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, through Jocelyn Eikenburg’swonderful blog. I really enjoyed it! Quincy Carroll’s levelheaded and nuanced depiction of the two main characters’ experience in China gave us a wonderful, honest perspective that was rarely offered in similar novels, memoirs, or news reports.It is not unusual for a white person to exhibit superiority complex in a developing country like China (Guillard, the old male teacher from Minnesota in the novel). Similarly, it is not unusual for a non-white p ...继续阅读 (36)

I’ve learned that SQL Server 2016 Standard and Enterprise Editions no longer provide 32-bit. But I do wonder about SQL Server 2016 Express Edition. It’s different in that it’s free, and mostly geared toward lightweight usage, people who are learning, etc. So perhaps it still offers 32-bit?After some upgrade work to one SQL Server 2008 R2 Express 32-bit, I can tell you with real experience that SQL Server 2016 Express does NOT have 64-bit either.So the latest Express edition that has 32-bit is SQL Server 2014.Like Allan Hirt, I also say good riddance. It’s time to move o ...继续阅读 (40)

I cleaned and stained my deck all by myself this summer. The sanding was done last summer, how is that for procrastination! I think I did all right, however there are still a lot of areas for improvements. Hence this note.I usedRymar Xtreme Weather Wood Sealer, 7630 Sienna. My deck needs 4 gallons. My wife ordered 2 gallons initially. I ordered the third one, then had to order one more. It would have been better to have all 4 gallons available. At the time of this writing, if you order more than 1 gallon, shipping is free;I used a deck cleaner. I sprayed it using a small hand-held squirt type ...继续阅读 (33)

A couple of months ago Outlook 2016 on my old PC (Windows 10) started misbehaving:Clicking “Attach File” to add an attachment from my PC to an email message;A window would show up. When it worked, I would be able to move the mouse down and click “Browse This PC…”. However, nowadays this window disappears so quickly that it doesn’t give me enough time to click that “Browse This PC…” item!Web search ensued. Some suggested repairing the mailbox, which I’ve done but to no avail;To get around this, open a windows Explorer window and naviga ...继续阅读 (49)

Since Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista, from SQL Server 2008 onward, SQL Serverinstallation process automatically generates per-service security identifier (SID). Whenever possible, it is recommended to grant rights to this service SID for security reasons, instead of your SQL Server’s startup account, which typically is domain user account.For example, for performance reasons, I always want to SQL Server to have the following rights:Instant File InitializationandLock Pages in Memory. The former enables instantaneous data (not log) file growth; whereas the later prevents Windows system ...继续阅读 (44)

If, like me, you bought your own cable modem and Netgear wireless router for Comcast service, the way to access your modem’s status information is different. When using the equipment provided by Comcast, in my case the Technicolor TC8305C, which is a combo of modem, router, and voice, I can easily see modem information while accessing the router page, because it is one device.To stop paying Comcast’s 10 dollar monthly equipment leasing fee, I purchased my own cable modem and router. I am currently using Netgear Nighthawk R7000. In this combo, to see the modem status information, yo ...继续阅读 (60)

I had some trouble setting up Run Configurations in Eclipse for PHP (PDT plugin). Here is my note for future reference.Machine: Ubuntu 15 64-bit, with Eclipse Mars. sudo apt-get install php5 installed apache2 for me, so no additional web server install is necessary.1. Enable userdir mod:sudo a2enmod userdir2. Your /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/userdir.conf should look like this, if not, make it so:<ifmodule mod_userdir.c> UserDir public_html UserDir disabled root <directory /home/*/public_html> AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes ...继续阅读 (57)

I’ve been hacking Linux for years, and today is the first time that I came across anacron. So one lives and learns…One of my fellowOCEFvolunteers keeps receiving the following email message, even after he removedfail2ban:/etc/cron.daily/logrotate: logrotate_script: 2: logrotate_script: fail2ban-client: not found error: error running non-shared postrotate script for /var/log/fail2ban.log of '/var/log/fail2ban.log ' run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/logrotate exited with return code 1It turned out this server’s log files rotation is handled byanacronjob. Even though fail2ban ...继续阅读 (75)

openvpn服务器和客户profile建立之后，安装设置客户端软件后就可以使用了！这篇博客介绍如何在Windows、Linux、和Mac上使用openvpn。我们假定你已经安全地把profile，即.ovpn文件转移到电脑上。Windows到这里下载客户端软件。一般来讲你要下载64位的。目前的文件名是openvpn-install-2.3.8-I601-x86_64.exe下载完毕后安装。它可能会问要不要安装一个叫TAP的东西。你需要安装；安装完毕，把那个.ovpn文件挪到C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config之下Run OpenVPN GUI as administrator。这只是开启了程序，现在还没有连接到openvpn服务器上；在屏幕右下角的空间里，找到OpenVPN GUI的图标，然后选择“connect/连接”；连接成功。打开浏览器，试试访问以前不能访问的网站，看效果如何。Windows 10注意事项我发现一些不是通过安装而是通过升级到Windows 10的机器会碰到一些问题，我猜和IPv6兼容有关。我发现如果我用火狐浏览器，就可以避免这个问题。全新的Windows好像没这个问题。Linux打开命令行，安装openvpn:apt-get install openvpnsudo openvpn --config /EnterPathTo/xxx. ...继续阅读 (267)

给虚机设定了基本的防护措施后，我们来安装openvpn服务器终端并生成profile文件。以下指令都是root级别。我假定你已经通过命令行连到服务器上。请根据需要在命令行前自行添加sudo或变成root。我原计划给读者提供一步一步的说明，但那样会太繁琐。前两天注意到github上有人已经把这一切打包成一个shell脚本。我今天看了下，觉得写得很好。经过我成功测试后，推荐给你使用。并且这个脚本对Ubuntu，Debian, CentOS, RedHat啥的都管用。请到 https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install 下载openvpn-install.sh脚本文件；打开命令行，运行：bash /EnterRightPathHere/openvpn-install.sh脚本程序会自动探测到你的IP网址，按回车键；脚本程序让你选择DNS。我不建议第一个选项（Current system resolvers）。2和6均可.脚本程序让你命名客户端名字。默认是client。我不建议你用默认。建议你根据其所用的设备和数据中心命名，如androidFrankfurt，iphoneFrankfurt，或winPcFrankfurt等等。请用英文字母来命名；再敲一次回车，程序就开始运行。运行时间查不多三五分钟，请等待，稍安毋躁。运行结束后，openvpn服务器已经搭建完成 ...继续阅读 (206)

选完虚拟机供应商、机器规格、操作系统啥的，机器启动后的第一件事是保护它的安全，尽可能减少被攻击面。我在这里只提供一些最基本建议，主要是在防火墙的设置方面。这里提供的一些指令假定你是用Debian 7或8。你如果用Ubuntu，这些指令基本上可以直接拿过来用。CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora方面的指令类似，请自行查询。如有需要，等我有空专门写CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora的设置。以下指令都是root级别。我假定你已经通过命令行连到服务器上。请根据需要在命令行前自行添加sudo或变成root。给服务器做软件更新，打补丁：apt-get updateapt-get upgrade(yum update)调整ssh接口端，防范ssh攻击：Linux服务器默认ssh接口端是22。很多网络攻击就从这个接口强攻，用程序频繁自动发起无数次的连接申请，所谓的dictionary attack和brute-force attack。把默认的接口改成其它如50683，是防止这种攻击的有效手段。用你熟悉的编辑器，打开/etc/ssh/sshd_config，然后查找”Port 22″，把22改成50683后保存文件。接下来请重新启动ssh服务：service ssh restart注意以后的远程连接你要记得加-p 50683建防火墙apt-get instal ...继续阅读 (55)