today's howto

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 18, 2024

• Network World ☛ How to see how many days passed since the beginning of the Linux epoch

  In this Linux tip, we’re going to look at a command that allows you see how many days have passed since the beginning of the Linux epoch – Jan 1, 1970. To begin, we use the command below to display the number of seconds since the epoch began on Jan 1, 1970. This is how Linux stores dates and times. $ date +%s 1719337777

• Hackaday ☛ A Look At The DEC VT220, A Proper Serial Terminal

  If you’re reading Hackaday, we’re willing to bet that if somebody asked you about a serial terminal, you’d immediately think about a piece of software — a tool you run on the computer to communicate with some hardware gadget over UART. You might even have a favorite one, perhaps minicom or tio. You’d be technically correct (which we all know is the best kind of correct), but if you wind back the clock a bit, there’s a little more to the story.

• OSTechNix ☛ Wcurl: A User-Friendly Curl Wrapper For Easy File Downloads

  Download files faster and easier with wcurl! No more confusing curl options. Just enter URLs and let wcurl wrapper handle your downloads.

• HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install Nextcloud on Ubuntu 24.04 Server

  Nextcloud is open-source software for public and private file storage. It allows you to create self-hosted services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Mega.nz. Initially, it was created by the original Owncloud developer, Frank Karlitschek. In 2016, he forked the Owncloud project and created a new project with the new name “Nextcloud.”

  Nextcloud project is growing rapidly and becoming more than file hosting software. It’s more like a file sync and content collaboration platform. Backed with many plugins, Nextcloud has become such a powerful collaboration software. You can install plugins for project management, video conferencing, collaborative editing, note-taking, email client, etc.

  This tutorial teaches you how to install Nextcloud on an Ubuntu 24.04 server. You’ll install Nextcloud with the LAMP Stack and then secure Netxcloud with HTTPS through Certbot and Letsencrypt.

• APNIC ☛ Revisiting IXP peering LAN security in the light of new threats and technology evolution

  This article revisits the assumptions on which peering LAN recommendations were based and identifies potential for improvement by analysing several years of Access Control Lists (ACLs) statistics at a large IXP.

• Rachel ☛ Unintentionally troubleshooting a new way to filter traffic

  Here's the deal: systemd implements that by injecting bpf program(s) when you ask it to filter traffic by IP addresses in the .service file. When this thing rejects traffic, it just drops it on the floor. It does this past the point where ip[6]tables would match it, and well before the point where it would generate a SYN/ACK or whatever else.

  There are no counters associated with this, and it doesn't generate any messages in the syslog or whatever. The packets just disappear.

• Chris Hannah ☛ Using Stow to Make Managing Your Dotfiles Easier

  As someone who regularly switches between various macOS and Linux machines, keeping my dotfiles synced everywhere gets a bit annoying. Fortunately, I've recently come across a tool called Stow from GNU, which helps you manage your dotfiles.

  Stow, combined with a git repository, makes managing and syncing dotfiles between devices much, much easier.