General Info

• inxi -Fxxxz (neat output, but makes the system send me security “password required” alert mails because of attempts to execute hddtemp).
• hwinfo
• lshw
• Temperature and fans: sensors
• hostnamectl (host name, kernel version, Distribution etc.)
• dmidecode: Lots of info on and by the BIOS (From computer model an make down to exact part number of installed DIMM memories etc.)

Status

• Logs: journalctl and dmesg
• systemctl, with all its variants
• Network: ifconfig
• Wifi: iwconfig
• Bluetooth: hciconfig, bluetootctl, btmon (for dumping traffic)
• CPU: lscpu
• PCI bus: lspci
• USB: lsusb
• RAID: mdadm –detail /dev/md0

Operating system

• List open files: lsof
• Memory usage: free, lsmem and read /proc/buddyinfo
• Various kernel statistics (including memory): vmstat (takes info from /proc/stat and /proc/meminfo in particular)
• Block devices and partitions: blkid and lsblk
• List namespaces: lsns
• List loaded kernel modules: lsmod
• List locks: lslocks

• Create a virtual host on my apache httpd server (port 99)
• Uncompress the site’s entire public_html directory into the virtual host site’s root directory (that’slazy, I got a lot of unnecessary files this way)
• Create a git repo, and add the blog/ directory so I have a look on what happens (not really necessary, but I make git repos everywhere)
• Create a new database, and fill it with an SQL backup of the site:

  $ mysql -D blogmirror < ~/Desktop/blogdb-Mon_17.01.23-05.23.sql

• Change the database settings in wp_config.php. For a local database, which requires no password, it became (DB_HOST remained “localhost”):

  define('DB_NAME', 'blogmirror');
  
  /** MySQL database username */
  define('DB_USER', 'eli');
  
  /** MySQL database password */
  define('DB_PASSWORD', '');

• Change WordPress’ view of the blog’s root (following this post), or it diverts from the allocated port 99. Add the following two lines to wp_config.php:

  define('WP_HOME','http://10.10.10.10:99/blog');
  define('WP_SITEURL','http://10.10.10.10:99/blog');

  Note that there’s no trailing slash. Adding one makes double slashes on the URLs generated by WordPress.

That’s it. At this point the blog worked. Log in with the same user and password as the real blog.

Automatic upgrade of the mirror

Create a new user, sitemirror, but don’t create the user’s home directory. Instead, edit /etc/passwd to set the home directory at the site’s root directory (not the public_html, but where public_html can be found).

Also, change the ownership of that directory to that user, or the modification through ftp won’t work:

# chown -R sitemirror sitemirror/

And start the ftp service (it doesn’t matter that the WordPress has an SFTP option. It goes for regular port 21 anyhow):

# service vsftpd start

Also, make the path accessible to the sitemirror user (in my case, it meant making the home directory accessible to all. Temporarily!)

Now, on the automatic upgrade page, go for localhost and the username/password of the ad-hoc sitemirror user.

And you get something like this:

And now revert the damage made above: Shut down vsftpd (and verify port 21 is closed), fix the ownership of the sitemirror directory, and restore the ownership of the home directory.

Then remove the sitemirror user (but not its home directory, obviously).

This is for upgrading the local mirror blog. On the real blog, it was just clicking on the button for upgrading. No questions asked about FTP or anything like that.

But the irony is that after upgrading (to 4.7.2), I attempted to publish this post, but “Publish” button was inactive, and the editor stuck on “Saving Draft…”. To double the irony, I upgraded just because one has to, as a security measure. All was fine.

Oddly enough, I didn’t have a similar problem with the (upgraded) mirrored blog.

I wrote a separate post on how I worked around this issue.

How I love upgrading. Actually, I love downgrading more.

This is a note for myself, in case I need a quick replacement for my ADSL connection on the desktop computer (Fedora 12, and oldie). It may seem paradoxical that I’ll read this in order to access the internet (…), but this is probably where I would look first. With my cellphone, which is also the temporary access point, that is.

In short, there’s a lot of stuff here particular to my own computer.

I’m using the small TP-LINK dongle (TL-WN725N), which is usually doing nothing in particular.

Notes to self

• This post is also on your local blog (copy-paste commands…)
• wlan1 is the Access Point dongle (maybe use it instead…?)
• Put the phone in the corner next to the door (that’s where I get a 4G connection) once the connection is established…
• … but not before that, so you won’t run back and forth

Setting up the interface

# service ADSL off
# /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/firewall-wlan0
# ifconfig wlan0 up
# wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
ioctl[SIOCSIWAP]: Operation not permitted
# iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:34:DA:3D:F8:F5
                    ESSID:"MYPHONE"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11bgn
                    Mode:Master
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:108 Mb/s
                    Extra:rsn_ie =30140100000fac040100000fac040100000fac020c00
                    IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
                        Group Cipher : CCMP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
                    IE: Unknown: DD5C0050F204104A0001101044000102103B00010310470010A7FED45DE0455F5DB64A55553EB96669102100012010230001201024000120104200012010540008000000000000000010110001201008000221481049000600372A000120
                    Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0

# iwconfig wlan0 essid MYPHONE
# dhclient wlan0 &

Note that wpa_supplicant complained, and it was still fine. Use the -d or -dd flags for some debugging info.

It seems like the iwconfig is redundant, as wpa_supplicant handles this, thanks to the “scan_ssid=1″ attribute in the config entry (?). The DHCP client isn’t redundant, because the routing table isn’t set correctly without it (making wlan0 the default gateway)

Shutting down

• Kill wpa_supplicant (it was run as a daemon)
• Kill DHCP client:

  # dhclient -r

• Restart networking

  # service network restart
  # service firewall restart
  # service ADSL start

WPA supplicant config file

The WPA supplicant scans wlan0 and finds matching SSIDs. If such is found, it sends the password. Looks like it handles the association.

/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf should read:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel

network={
  ssid="MYPHONE"
  scan_ssid=1
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  psk="MYPASSWORD"
}

(it’s already this way)