Admins Werk und Users Beitrag

Nextcloud: Solving slow logins

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My wife was complaining about slow logins for our Nextcloud instance. Indeed, while my logins were as fast as expected, her account took over 3 minutes logging in to seeing the Nextcloud Dashboard.

After some internet research I found a thread on the Nextcloud board which recommended checking the auth tokens of the affected user.

That was a good recommendation:

mysql> SELECT uid, count(id) AS nbtokens FROM oc_authtoken GROUP BY uid;
+--------------------------------+----------+
| uid                            | nbtokens |
+--------------------------------+----------+
| m3adows-nextcloud-acc          |       22 |
| my-wifes-nextcloud-acc         |      412 |
+--------------------------------+----------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Whoops, that’s quite a lot! As the Nextcloud Board user MelwinKfr recommended, I also deleted all her authtokens, as I didn’t care if she had to reconnect her sessions. Beware: This will probably delete all App passwords!

DELETE FROM authtoken WHERE uid = 'my-wifes-nextcloud-acc';
Query OK, 412 rows affected (0.08 sec)

Lo and behold, her login became blazing fast again.

Now, I’m searching for the source of this problem, as it occured multiple times. I suspect it to be Thunderbirds Lightning calendar, but we’ll see about that. I will follow MelwinKfrs advice of using App Passwords for one application after the other to find out which one really was the problematic one.

Change SATA operation mode without Windows reinstallation

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As I recently encountered this problem while exchaning the NVMe of a notebook, here’s a quick rundown on how to change the SATA operation mode for a Windows system without the requirement for a reinstallation or an OS repair:

Boot up Windows as normal
Start CMD as admin and run bcdedit /set safeboot minimal to enable safe mode on next boot
Restart the PC and enter UEFI
Now change the SATA Operation mode, in my case from RAID to AHCI
Save the UEFI changes and let Windows boot to Safe mode
Once again open CMD as admin and run bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot to disable safe mode
After another reboot Windows will automatically start with the new drivers enabled

Starting applications before and after running a Steam game

Sun, 09 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Once in a while I’m rediscovering Stardew Valley*, a very relaxing and charming Farming game. Occasionally, I decide to also play it on Android at the time. Sadly, there’s no inbuilt way of syncing the saves between my (Windows) PC and my Android device, although the file saves are compatible.

There are a lot of tutorials online how to achieve that, so I won’t cover this. I more or less followed this tutorial on Reddit (archive.is link). In short: I symlinked my saves directory on the PC into my Dropbox folder and then use an App, FolderSync, to sync these saves to Android.

This worked nicely 90% of the time. Sadly, Stardew Valley on PC crashed every once in a while while saving. The error logs in the ErrorLogs directory made the problem very clear:

Message: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
InnerException: 
Stack Trace:    at StardewValley.SaveGame.<Save>d__63.MoveNext() in C:\GitlabRunner\builds\Gq5qA5P4\0\ConcernedApe\stardewvalley\Farmer\Farmer\SaveGame.cs:line 344
   at StardewValley.Menus.SaveGameMenu.update(GameTime time) in C:\GitlabRunner\builds\Gq5qA5P4\0\ConcernedApe\stardewvalley\Farmer\Farmer\Menus\SaveGameMenu.cs:line 109
   at StardewValley.Menus.ShippingMenu.update(GameTime time) in C:\GitlabRunner\builds\Gq5qA5P4\0\ConcernedApe\stardewvalley\Farmer\Farmer\Menus\ShippingMenu.cs:line 333
   at StardewValley.Game1._update(GameTime gameTime) in C:\GitlabRunner\builds\Gq5qA5P4\0\ConcernedApe\stardewvalley\Farmer\Farmer\Game1.cs:line 3032
   at StardewValley.Game1.Update(GameTime gameTime) in C:\GitlabRunner\builds\Gq5qA5P4\0\ConcernedApe\stardewvalley\Farmer\Farmer\Game1.cs:line 2913
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.Tick()
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.HostIdle(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GameHost.OnIdle()
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.WindowsGameHost.RunOneFrame()
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.WindowsGameHost.ApplicationIdle(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponent.FDoIdle(Int32 grfidlef)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(IntPtr dwComponentID, Int32 reason, Int32 pvLoopData)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(Form mainForm)
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.WindowsGameHost.Run()
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.RunGame(Boolean useBlockingRun)
   at StardewValley.Program.Main(String[] args) in C:\GitlabRunner\builds\Gq5qA5P4\0\ConcernedApe\stardewvalley\Farmer\Farmer\Program.cs:line 152

Another process was accessing the save file, presumably Dropbox which wanted to sync the changed file. Therefore I searched for a solution to automatically stop Dropbox before starting Stardew Valley via Steam and resuming it after I was done playing. While this is pretty easy in Linux, due to Dropbox offering proper command line access, there’s no such CLI access on Windows.

Thusly, I had find another solution. I found it in the pssuspend command from Microsofts Sysinternals PsTools. It suspends an application using Windows internal tools. When I exit Stardew Valley, pssuspend resumes Dropbox. This is the Batch I’m using, already prepared to being reused. ;-)

rem @echo off

set PssuspendPath="C:\m3adow\apps\pstools\pssuspend.exe"
set SyncExe="Dropbox.exe"
set GamePath="C:\m3adow\games\steam\steamapps\common\Stardew Valley"
set SteamId=413150
rem Don't use ticks for the variable or the 'tasklist' line will not work properly
set GameExe=Stardew Valley.exe
rem The estimated additional time (to the LoopTime) the game needs to start up
set /A StartupTimeAddition=15
rem The time to sleep between game checks
set /A LoopTime=10

%PssuspendPath% -nobanner "%SyncExe%"

cd %GamePath%
start steam://rungameid/%SteamId%
@ping -n %StartupTimeAddition% localhost> nul

:GAMELOOP
@ping -n %LoopTime% localhost> nul
tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq %GameExe%" 2>NUL | find /I /N "%GameExe%">NUL
rem if ERRORLEVEL is 0, the game is still running
if "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="0" GOTO GAMELOOP

rem Do a double resume because Dropbox sometimes doesn't resume properly
%PssuspendPath% -r -nobanner %SyncExe%
@ping -n 1 localhost> nul
%PssuspendPath% -r -nobanner %SyncExe%

What does it do exactly?

The application %SyncExe% is suspended, Dropbox.exe in my case.
The game with the Steam ID %SteamId% is started, Stardew Valley does have the 413150.
Before entering the GAMELOOP and waiting %LoopTime% seconds the batch waits an additional %StartupTimeAdditional% seconds to ensure a proper game startup
In the GAMELOOP the batch wait %LoopTime% seconds, then checks if the %GameExe% exe file - Stardew Valley.exe in my case - is in the tasklist of Windows. If so, the loop is started anew.
Otherwise the %SyncExe% is resumed twice. Dropbox oftentimes didn’t resume the first time, so I lazily added the resume twice which did the job for me.

I hope this helps other people trying something similarly.

* = Affiliate Link

Kustomize: Wildcard replace all items of a list

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Most users of Kustomize know this problem: You have some kind of list and want to replace the same key in every item of the list in an overlay. Let’s say you have a list of ClusterRules:

---
apiVersion: monitoring.googleapis.com/v1
kind: ClusterRules
metadata:
  name: pods
spec:
  groups:
    - name: main
      interval: 30s
      rules:
        - alert: PodCrashLooping
          expr:  max_over_time(kube_pod_container_status_waiting_reason{reason="CrashLoopBackOff", job="kube-state-metrics"}[5m]) >= 1
          for: 5m
          labels:
            severity: warning
          annotations:
            summary: "Pod '{{ $labels.exported_pod }}' CrashLoopingPod"
        - alert: PodNotHealthy
          expr: max_over_time(kube_pod_status_phase{phase!~"Running|Succeeded"}[5m]) > 0
          for: 5m
          labels:
            severity: critical
          annotations:
            summary: "Pod '{{ $labels.exported_pod }}' not healthy"

But you want to have a more lenient alerting time in the development environment, as the stuff there tends to break and isn’t as important as production. Thusly, we want to patch the spec.groups[].rules[].for path. Should be easy, targeting list items with Kustomize patchesJson6902 method is simple. Sadly, wildcard replacement for list items are not implemented in the JSON Patch standard. To replace each value of the list above, we would need to use a dedicated JSON Patch for each list item:

patchesJson6902:
- target:
    version: v1
    group: monitoring.googleapis.com
    kind: ClusterRules
    name: pods
  patch: |-
    - op: replace
      path: /spec/groups/0/rules/0/for
      value: 15m
    - op: replace
      path:/spec/groups/0/rules/1/for
      value: 15m

That’s okay for two list items like in this example, but becomes tedious if you have a list with many. You could use a Helm template, but depending on the rest of your code, that may be overkill.
That’s why I searched for a better way to programmatically patch all items in a list with Kustomize. And I found an - admittedly very hacky - solution. Entering Kustomize replacements. Replacements are the destined successor of Kustomize deprecated vars feature which weren’t powerful enough in any scenario I wanted to use them for anyways. According to the documentation,

Replacements are used to copy fields from one source into any number of specified targets.

That’s not exactly what we want, we don’t have a field…yet. But that’s not a problem, right? The simplest solution is to create a ConfigMap which contains the wanted key:

--- # This CM is only used for Kustomize replacements
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: alerting-time-replacement-dummy
data:
  for: 15m

Refering to that value in the kustomization.yaml is not difficult:

replacements:
  - source:
      kind: ConfigMap
      name: alerting-time-replacement-dummy
      fieldPath: data.for
    targets:
      - select:
          kind: ClusterRules
          name: pods
        fieldPaths:
        - spec.groups.*.rules.*.for

That properly replaces the values as we wanted:

---
apiVersion: monitoring.googleapis.com/v1
kind: ClusterRules
metadata:
  name: pods
spec:
  groups:
    - name: main
      interval: 30s
      rules:
        - alert: PodCrashLooping
          expr:  max_over_time(kube_pod_container_status_waiting_reason{reason="CrashLoopBackOff", job="kube-state-metrics"}[5m]) >= 1
          for: 15m
          labels:
            severity: warning
          annotations:
            summary: "Pod '{{ $labels.exported_pod }}' CrashLoopingPod"
        - alert: PodNotHealthy
          expr: max_over_time(kube_pod_status_phase{phase!~"Running|Succeeded"}[5m]) > 0
          for: 15m
          labels:
            severity: critical
          annotations:
            summary: "Pod '{{ $labels.exported_pod }}' not healthy"

If you dislike the need to have a permanent useless ConfigMap in your cluster, I have slightly bad news for you: Using patchesJson6902 to delete the ConfigMap is not possible. Therefore, I recommend coupling this dirty hack with another small hack and using a “no-op” Job with a low ` ttlSecondsAfterFinished` value (available since Kubernetes 1.23) using an annotation as a replacement:

---
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: no-op
  annotations:
    # Refer to it via `fieldPath: metadata.annotations.my-replacement-value`
    my-replacement-value: 15m 
spec:
  ttlSecondsAfterFinished: 1
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: no-op
        # Don't use dynamic tags in production kids, mkay!
        image: busybox:stable 
        command: [":"]
      restartPolicy: Never

The job will be deleted nearly instantly, not leaving any trace in your cluster (although churning away some of your resources for a couple of seconds).

Steam: Fix Software install on every Startup

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

While enjoying first playthrough of Borderlands 2, I encountered an annoyance. Every time I started the game, Steam tried a first-time setup by installing the Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (vcredist). Additionally it also required me to confirm the install process every time, due to Windows UAC. I encountered similar annoyances a couple of weeks later when playing Dishonored.

Some research revealed that this is a very common issue with Steam games, especially older(ish) ones. For some reason the required program installations are not recognised which leads to this installation dialogue before each game start.

I did some more digging and found out, that the source often times lies in a missing Windows Registry key. Therefore I created a Github Gist which contains all registry entries I could find: https://gist.github.com/m3adow/721947cf076a0eec5bc2b194e16853d9 Here’s a short instruction how to use the Registry Gist:

Get the Steam ID of the game which bugs you with the installation on every start. The easiest ways are by checking the desktop shortcut. Right-Click it, choose “Properties” and note down the number in the URL entry after steam://rungameid/. In the picture below that would be 20590.
Copy the Code from my Gist into a new text file. Save the text file with a .reg file extension, steamfix.reg for example.
Change the {{ INSERTYOURAPPIDHERE }} part to the Steam ID of your game and save the file. In my example the replacement would result in [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Valve\Steam\Apps\20590].
Double click the file and confirm you really want to apply these changes.

BAM! You’re done. The installation of programs at each start of the game should be history.
If this is not the case please add a comment containing the game, its Steam ID and the software it tries to install every time, so others or I are able to invest more research into it.

Extract ICS from Google Calendars

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to import the Openshift.tv Google Calendar to my Nextcloud calendar app. The URL looks like this:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=redhatstreaming@gmail.com

A simple import in Nextclouds calendar app didn’t work, I figured I needed to get either an ICS or ICAL file, but couldn’t find any easy way. No button on the website, no knowledge base entries either.
By chance, I found a thread in Googles support forum which describes a way how to extract the ICS from a Google calendar:

Go to the settings for the Other Calendar, and note down the Public URL to this calendar, for example: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=en-gb.christian%23holiday%40group.v.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe%2FParis

Now take the part after ‘src=’ up to and including calendar.google.com so in this case our subscribed calendar ID is en-gb.christian%23holiday%40group.v.calendar.google.com

Now replace the ********** here with that text: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/**********/public/basic.ics to give the final feed URL which you can download directly in your browser: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/en-gb.christian%23holiday%40group.v.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

For the Openshift.tv calendar, this lead to this ICAL URL: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/redhatstreaming@gmail.com/public/basic.ics

Finding Pump Express compatible chargers

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A friend of mine recently asked me to find Pump Express compatible chargers. I never heard that term, so I needed to research it. Apparently Pump Express is the fast charging solution of mid budget chip maker Mediatek. It’s the direct competitor to Quick Charge from Qualcomm or Oppos VOOC/OnePlus Dash Charge (they are using identical technology).
But in contrast to the formerly mentioned competing technologies where you can easily find chargers on Amazon (Quick Charge/VOOC), finding Pump Express compatible chargers wasn’t as easy.

But that’s only because Mediatek did their charging technology the right way. To quote from Mediateks Pump Express Marketing Site:

The technology is compatible with the international standard of ‘USB PD 3.0 programmable power supplies’, allowing standard USB PD 3.0 fast chargers to boost Pump Express 4.0-enabled smartphones.

So instead of relying on a proprietary technique, they are utilizing USB Power Delivery. Therefore any USB PD 3.0 compatible charger should be able to “pump” the battery of your smartphone. I did some searches on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de so all of the less tech savy people can choose a device of their liking without the need of delving deeper. ;-)

(Image source: Mediatek)

Openshift: Change Pull Secret

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Warning: This procedure will lead to Node drains, node restarts and - as a result pod restarts! Prepare accordingly!

To change the pull secret of an Openshift cluster (e.g. because you switched Red Hat accounts), save your new pull secret you downloaded from cloud.openshift.com in a file, lets call it my-pull.secret. Then execute this oc command:

oc set data secret/pull-secret -n openshift-config \
  --from-file=.dockerconfigjson=my-pull.secret

Of course you’ll need the proper permissions, I assume it’s Cluster Admin, but I didn’t test the exact permission requirements.

Openshift: Remove Zombie machines

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When an Openshift MachineSet was created with a faulty configuration, Machines created from it may be undeletable by the Controller although the Machines are not existing at all. The status of the Machines will then stay in the “Deleting” state.

$ oc get machine -n openshift-machine-api
NAME                              PHASE      TYPE              REGION       ZONE   AGE
m3adow-infra-westeurope1-5asrt    Deleting                                         3d2h
m3adow-infra-westeurope1-ioq4z    Running    Standard_D2s_v3   westeurope   1      3d

To manually remove the Machine from the API, remove its finalizers via patch:

oc patch machine -n openshift-machine-api --type=merge -p '{"metadata":{"finalizers":null}}' m3adow-infra-westeurope1-5asrt

This will instantly remove it.

Blog: Codebites removal announcement

Tue, 19 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been inactive for a long time and I won’t promise any more activity. I just wanted to inform all potential feed readers that I will remove Codebites as their own section soon. The plans I initially had with Codebites didn’t work well, Life and Work prevented me from writing more posts, so I don’t think having the few posts I write separated into different sections makes any sense. Therefore from now on all posts will be available in the one (and only) RSS feed (feed.xml) once again. This may lead to some old and/or already read posts reappearing in your feeds. Also, if you’re using one of the deprecated ones, you may encounter problems. While I tried redirecting the old RSS feeds to the new one (with Javascript, which surprisingly worked best for the three applications I tested with), I’m not certain all RSS readers support redirects.