I made a little mistake the other night while fiddling with my laptop. In an alcohol infused rush to mount an NFS share I missed an argument while modifying groups. I was adding myself to a group that facilitates R/W access on my NFS accessed RAID. DO NOT RUN THIS user@machine$ sudo usermod USER -G GROUP Where USER and GROUP are the relevant ones for the system. The problem with this is that withou “-aG” this subsitutes GROUP as the sole group for the user. The effect of this on an Ubuntu system with only one user is that you’ve now just removed the ability to act as root, while simultaneously breaking access to anything your user needs from other groups (this will affect applications and files). My additional complication here is an encrypted disk. Fortunately, a fix quickly came to mind. Boot a live disk (Ubuntu MATE 18.04 in this case) Mount the encrypted drive, made…
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OK, so this is a little more than making a Chromecast work in a VM but this is what spurred me to this solution. As I do all my primary computing in virtualisation now I encountered an issue; I couldn’t reach my Chromecast from within a basic virtualised network. I use Qemu KVM, libvirtd and Virt-Manager to handle my VMs on a Linux host but the following principles are applicable to other platforms with different methods. Virtual NAT In a virtual NAT, all network traffic for your VM routes through your host machine using NAT. NAT has a number of advantages of it’s own, chiefly that it allows a large number of devices to utilise a single internet address and that it can make certain kinds of malicious traffic easier to block. Out of the box, a computer behind a NAT is harder to reach unless it’s trying to communicate…
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I’ve just been through a few days of struggling with the System thread exception not handled BSOD on my Windows 10 VM under qemu kvm/virt-manager. This has been an interesting issue to resolve as it hasn’t really behaved consistently. Upon first encountering it, my initial response was “too hard basket”. As I’ve gone to the trouble of creating my passthrough VMs and backups, I immediately resorted to restoring a full virtual disk back up. This worked and had me very pleased as a proof of my premise…briefly. After a few reboots it was back. The next candidate was Windows Update, as I assumed some process must be dynamically interfering with the system to replicate the issue, and the most likely to start reproducing a problem on an aged image was updates; the updates would download right away. I then had the system fully working with latest updates and thought I…
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Shrinking a virtual disk isn’t something that comes up often. Usually you tend to grow your virtual machines. I, however came across the requirement on my home workstation to shrink a Qemu virtual disk running Windows 10 as I wanted to enhance backup/deployment of the OS itself and externalise the games/other software therein. If you’re running a home system with contention for SSD space then you might have a similar issue. Information wasn’t readily available though I did find a very helpful response on Server Fault that gave me the basis for my method. You may want to cross reference that for further information. If you already have an adequate amount of unallocated storage on your disk, skip to step 3. If you do not have storage unallocated to partitions on the virtual disk, you’ll need to shrink your partition/s. In Windows you can do this in Disk Management, even for an online…
Leave a CommentI think this blog has probably run it’s unproductive course. I’ve created a new site that centres on myself as a cyclist, this blog is called A Few Spokes Loose in reflection of my cycling obsession. I may update this site for some purposes but I’ll be spending more time over there (not that I spent much here).
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So a blog update, as always is very overdue. Here’s a report I’ve been sharing around from my experience at the Australian National Championships. Last week I travelled to Ballarat for the most significant event of my short cycling career, the Australian National Championships. An ambitious first hit out for the Oral 7 GDT racing team. It would be a week of many lessons, my first lesson was that red eye flights are evil, with my flight leaving late on a Monday night and arriving around 6am AEDST. The next lesson was that it pays to check the destination weather when travelling a few thousand kilometres as I arrived in shorts and a shirt in 12 degrees with a threat of rain. One van rental later and a quick reunion between the two halves of the Oral 7 GDT team (Matt and I had caught the same flight, Jordan and…
Leave a CommentUnsurprisingly, yet again it’s been an age since I’ve posted anything. Since my lasr post I’ve competed in last year’s target race the Tour of Margaret River, raced a number of criteriums with varying levels of success, travelled to Adelaide for a wonderful week of cycling and stalking the Tour own Under and unforunately suffered several crashes. My last crash was On Wednesday, as a result I’m holed up on bed rest with my leg in a splint so I thought I’d check out some of the action cam footage I’ve been hoarding for an age. I’ve got a couple of videos from my time in Adelaide ready to go, I’m going to work on more and put fingers to keys on writing up some of my experiences. Here’s some footage of an ascent up Adelaide’s Mt Lofty via the Old Freeway, quite a stunning climb (at least from my…
Leave a Comment“You deserve to die” Those were the words from the toothy, beer-gutted man from the safety of his two tonne 4WD. Surely I had committed a grievous transgression to warrant these words. I pondered to myself what it could be. That morning I’d left home for work at 5:25am, travelled 3km to this point and not encountered a single car. Until now. I had my bright lights on, I was wearing a helmet and obeying all laws. In fact I was stationary at the time this happened. The man in his four wheeled cage had pulled up next to me at the traffic lights, straddling a lane marker to squeeze in intimidatingly close to my side. He’d waited until the light change to roll down his window and drop his knowledge on me, followed by something unintelligible. He then accelerated and cut across my path. It’s mighty harsh to deem…
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21/09/2014 was not the greatest day for a race, it was shall we say a bit moist in Pinjarra: Nasty weather meant some fair delays in prep and warmup, as a result I was only able to get in 1 kilometre before marshalling for the start. The start was into the rain. Bitching could be heard from those running full carbon wheels that they’d have no brakes, at least you barely need them in a race. The start was sedate, likely everyone without rollers or a trainer was getting their warmup in during the first 5km. An early breakaway of 8 formed within the first 10km while I was napping at the back of the bunch. No use crying over spilled milk, I resolved to attack on the days biggest climb with encouragement from Pete. After a few small rollers I see what I figure to be the base of…
Leave a CommentThis blog has been utterly neglected. Not that it was ever nurtured in the first place. I’ve felt the sudden need to tidy it up as I have my brain in the last couple of years, its time to use this for the outlet of expression it deserves to be. Rather than the bastard child that occasionally gets to see sunlight on his birthday. To that end: – I’ve removed a bunch of posts that are old and embarrassing – This blog is changing direction, I no longer have the passion for technology that I once did. It’s now my profession more than my hobby – Expect more random ramblings – Hopefully I’ll still come up with the occasional helpful insight – Prepare for bicycle posts!
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