today's howtos
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How to Automatically Update Podman Containers
It is a good practice to update software, especially when you get new features and/or added security in the new updates.
In this article, I will show you how to enable automatic updates for the containers managed by Podman.
For demonstration purposes, I will use the caddy image from Docker Hub.
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How to install ADB on Windows, macOS, and Linux
Several features of the Android platform can be accessed only through paths and methods that are hidden away from the average user. These have generally been done with the help of some command line Android Debug Bridge (ADB) commands, a tool that Google offers for developers to debug various parts of their applications or the system, but which we can use for all kinds of neat and hidden tricks. A prerequisite to these tricks is installing ADB on your computer. So, in this guide, we will show you how to install ADB on Windows, macOS, and Linux in quick and easy-to-follow steps.
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How to Use Blocky to Quickly Filter DNS Queries
Learn how to set up the Blocky DNS server to filter and secure DNS queries on your network.
The Domain Name System (DNS) puts you in a position to contain the spread of malware and prevent suspicious activities within your corporate network and, with appropriate filters on your DNS server, prevent user tracking and advertising on websites. Moreover, researchers at the University of Bonn have shown that almost 20 percent of HTTP requests load advertising content and that blocking these ads reduces the power consumption of terminal devices.
Blocky, a DNS proxy and ad blocker for local networks, has been under active development by German developer Dimitri Herzog since January 2020 and is available on GitHub. The tool lets you effectively filter domains on the basis of blacklists and whitelists or regular expressions. The filters can differ to match the groups on your local network (e.g., different filter rules can be implemented in different departments).
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Understanding the Bash shuf Command
“The shuf command is helpful for randomly shuffling input lines to standard output. The shuf command takes input from files or the standard input, randomizes the input, and gives output. It works like how you shuffle cards and pull a random output or randomly arrange the cards depending on the options that you give it.
The shuf works in three ways. You can use it as range, list, or file shuf. Let’s see the various ways you can use the shuf command.”
shuf is part of the GNU Coreutils, and you can open its help page to see the various options you can use.
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Read SysCall in Linux
“As the title says that the read system call must be reading something from a particular location. Linux provides us the read system call to read data from any file and display it on the console, and the kernel of the Linux system should be involved in this whole process, i.e., to open the file, read from it, write data to another file, etc. This guide will be a bonus to every Linux and C user who wants to learn to use the read system call while coding. Before having a glance at the C code snippet, we are going to create a text file and a C file. The text file will contain random text data that will be used by the read() function. Both the files are created by the same “touch” query one after another, and the “ls” query shows them in a home folder.”
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Bash Pattern Matching
Bash pattern matching is an indispensable concept that comes in handy when selecting different filenames from a directory and checking if a string matches a given format. Whether you are starting out with bash pattern matching or looking to brush up on your skills, this guide covers the various ways and tips for pattern matching.
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How to Change Ban Time Fail2ban, Even Ban Forever if Desired
“Fail2ban is an open-source log parsing application that prevents your system from brute force attacks. It parses log files and blocks IP addresses that have too many authentication failures. This usually happens when a user attempts to log in using the trial-and-error method. Fail2ban then takes action like updating the firewall rules to ban that IP address for a specific time period which is by default 10 minutes or 600 seconds. The banned IP address is automatically unbanned after 10 minutes to avoid locking out any legitimate users who might have mistakenly mistyped their passwords repeatedly.”
In this article, you will learn how to change ban time in fail2ban as well as how to ban an IP address forever if desired.
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How to Set Up Bluetooth on Linux
Sometimes your Linux distribution doesn’t detect your laptop’s Bluetooth hardware. Or perhaps you want to add a USB Bluetooth dongle to a desktop computer. Either way, here’s how to get Bluetooth working.
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Manage Chroot Environments in Linux with Atoms | TechRepublic
Jack Wallen shows you a GUI that takes the complication out of creating and using chroot environments on Linux.
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SQLite for Secrecy Management - Tools and Methods | Linux Journal
Secrets pervade enterprise systems. Access to critical corporate resources will always require credentials of some type, and this sensitive data is often inadequately protected. It is rife both for erroneous exposure and malicious exploitation. Best practices are few, and often fail.
SQLite is a natural storage platform, approved by the Library of the U.S. Congress as a long-term archival medium. “SQLite is likely used more than all other database engines combined.” The software undergoes extensive testing as it has acquired DO-178B certification for reliability due to the needs of the avionics industry, and is currently used on the Airbus A350's flight systems. The need for SQLite emerged from a damage control application tasked for the U.S. battleship DDG-79 Oscar Austin. An Informix database was running under HP-UX on this vessel, and during ship power losses, the database would not always restart without maintenance, presenting physical risks for the crew. SQLite is an answer to that danger; when used properly, it will transparently recover from such crashes. Despite a small number of CVEs patched in CentOS 7 (CVE-2015-3414, CVE-2015-3415, CVE-2015-3416, CVE-2019-13734), few databases can match SQLite's reliability record, and none that are commercially prevalent.