Tips & Tricks - Nam Vu Personal Site

November 5, 2019

Note to self: how to copy files to Google Cloud VM Instance as Root using WinSCP

If you use VPSSIM or any other administration script in your VPS or GC VM Instance, you’re probably finding yourself unable to copy or modify anything when connecting to your server using WinSCP.

The reason is that, by default, your server is configured to only allow key pairing authentication, so in order to login as a regular user, you have to do 2 things. First, enable password authentication and secondly, enable Login as Root

To connect as Root, you first need to set a password for your Root user (sudo passwd), then allow logging in remotely as root. To do so, fire up your /etc/ssh/sshd_config

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Add a line in the Authentication section of the file that says PermitRootLogin yes. This line may already exist and be commented out with a “#”. In this case, remove the “#”.

# Authentication:
#LoginGraceTime 2m
PermitRootLogin yes
#StrictModes yes
#MaxAuthTries 6
#MaxSessions 10

Scroll down a few lines and change this line:

# To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here!
#PasswordAuthentication yes
#PermitEmptyPasswords no
PasswordAuthentication yes

Save the updated /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and restart the SSH server (service sshd restart)

Should be good to go now

August 14, 2019

My Electron Toolbelt

Love it or hate it, Electron is now an important part of your everyday life. For those who haven’t heard of it by now, Electron is a software framework that enable developers to create desktop applications using web technologies (HTML, CSS, JS). It garnered a lot of attention in recently years.

Sure, many elitist developers have publicly spoken against it. They argue that their performance is sub par comparing to native applications, even go as far as calling Electron apps “web pages”. In reality, they were correct, and also completely missed the point. What Electron brings to the table isn’t performance, but availability. Electron massively lowered the barrier-to-entry in desktop software development, and cut the cost of porting applications across platforms to almost nothing at all. Truth is, I think what the elitist developers are so pissed off about is that fact Electron enabled ‘lesser devs’ to build beautiful, functional apps that work cross-platform, something that would take decades for them to achieve.

While I can see why the old devs are unhappy with these changes, as an end user I couldn’t be happier with Electron. It’s a godsend.

Anyway here’s my list of Electron-based apps that I couldn’t live without

August 14, 2019

My ghetto $40 home cloud server/media center setup

So I have a bunch of old hard drives laying around. About 5-6 different hard drives of various capacities ranging from 1TB to 2TB, not counting the 2.5″ drives. Looking at that pile, naturally the first thing that comes to mind is building a NAS. I was going to get a cheap Buffalo NAS for around $50 but then I realized I’d also need it to double as a workstation since I do need (I think ‘need’ is the right word) a computer in my workshop

Here’s the parts I used:

Hardware Setup:

Mobo: Lenovo MTQ45MK -est. $15 | salvaged from an old ThinkCentre M58, what I like is that unlike most OEM PCs, this mobo actually has 4 RAM slots, making it a lot cheaper to add more memories since 2GB sticks are dirt cheap.

CPU: Intel Quad Q6600 -est. $8 | probably the best bang for the buck CPU you can get for socket 775, a quad-core processor that goes for under $10, with an amazing overclocking head room (not that we are going to be doing any OCing, but it’s nice the have the option)

Memories: (x4) Kingmax 2GB DDR3 1333Mhz -est. $4/ea | DDR3 memories are cheaper than dirt these days, plus you most likely have stick or two already lying around somewhere. I already 2 sticks so I only needed to order 2 more. If you want to meet FreeNAS minimum requirements, this is probably the cheapest way get at it, at $16 for 8GB.

May 25, 2019

How to install the latest version of NodeJS on MX Linux 18 “Continuum”

I recently needed to install a couple of packages using npm on my MX Linux box. Now MX Linux is fantastic distro, but their repos leave a lot to be desired.

I basically did a standard sudo apt-get install nodejs, I soon realized that this version of node is severely outdated, and thus utterly completely useless, as you can’t even call npm from the CLI. So I turned online for help, surely someone else must’ve come up with a working solution.

Turns out, somebody did.

The problem is, it didn’t work.

Not on my installation of MX Linux anyway. The script always failed with this message

## Your distribution, identified as "Continuum", is not currently supported, please contact NodeSource at https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/issues if you think this is incorrect or would like your distribution to be considered for support

This puzzles me a lot because Continuum was clearly listed as one of the supported distributions right inside the script itself. So I turned to Reddit for help, and they delivered. It appears that listing Continuum alone wasn’t enough, you actually need to append MX or mx-linux in front of it to be identified correctly.

So long story short, here’s the instruction on how to install the latest release of Node.js on MX Linux 18 Continuum

November 26, 2018

The best way to install and manage your fonts (even without admin rights)

If you’re a font hoarder like me, you’re likely to have a folder somewhere in your cloud drive that has hundreds of thousands of TTFs, OTFs. However, the process of installing fonts had always been a daunting one.

Normally, on Linux, the poor UX ideology means you have to resort to the terminal to get things done, a most unituitive way. On Windows,you can just type the word ‘Fonts’ in the Run dialog and get access to the font folder, while it’s not ideal, it’s still far better UX than OS X and Linux. However, on Windows, there’s one major obstacle, you need admin right to get access to the system font folder. At least on OS X and Linux, you can install the fonts locally.

Historically, people had to resort to a dirty workaround, that is to install PortableApps.com. It’s a messy hack as this app wasn’t specifically designed for this purpose.

Thankfully now we have a more elegant solution.

November 10, 2018

Zeplin Desktop client for Linux

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, we now have an excellent tool for screen design to work on right there on Linux. But what about design handoff? With Figma, normally you have 2 choices for handoff: one is Avocode, the other is Zeplin. Most people would prefer Zeplin since Avocode is a subscription based abomination. But there’s one problem for Linux screen designer: Zeplin does not have a desktop client for Linux. Now this isn’t much of an issue like other softwares because they have a webapp, but you can’t integrate Figma with the webapp, unfortunately.

After looking around, I realize Zeplin, like many other great web-based apps, was built on top of the execellnt ElectronJS framework, that means porting it is fairly trivial. After murking around, I came up with this, let me know if it works:

Download zeplin-linux-x64.tar.gz

Made with nativefier

So now that we’ve managed to make desktop client for both Figma and Linux, it should be trivial to integrate them right? Well not really, turns out the folks over at Figma currently only has the integration option enabled for their Windows and Mac client. If you’re a designer working on Linux right now, and need Figma & Zeplin integration, consider spamming their support blog for this feature. I mean, we did that hard part, creating the desktop clients for them, right? All they need to do now is enable integration between the 2 apps.

October 30, 2018

Installing Figma client on Deepin Linux 15.7 Desktop

Grab install.sh from this Github and just run it.

It’s that simple, really. This is why the opensource community is great. The Figma team had failed to create a native Linux desktop app for over 2 years (which is still nothing compare to Google on their promise to launch a Google Drive client for Linux), and yet an unknown individual managed to do it in his/her spare time.

Why would you need a desktop app when Figma works in your browser, you ask? Here’s a hint: Native Font! I mean Figma did a great job integrating Google Fonts in their app (I figure that would be sufficient for 90% web-related design work). But any real designer would have to have their own font collection, and not being able to use it in their favorite design tool is just bad design.

Note: if for some reason the install script fails, you can always download a premade AppImage for Figma from the same Github

September 17, 2018

Installing multiple WordPress modules for Bitnami WAMP Stacks

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I absolutely love Bitnami due to its sheer simplicity in making the process of setting up a local web stack a complete breeze, especially how adding modules like WordPress, Drupal, Magento etc. is as easy as installing Skype. There’s one thing that bothers me with the module installers though, is that there’s no multi installation option available during the installation process. Well after a bit of digging around, I realize that the option is there, but for some reason it’s not baked into the GUI installer. Instead you’d need to pass the option using the command line interface. That’s not a problem for me but many people who’s not familiar with the CLI may find it a hassle, which it is. But once you get the hang of it, it’s actually the easiest way to add additional installation of a webapp to your development stack (yes, even easier than doing it manually since you don’t have to go through the database creation process).

To install the WordPress module into an alternative location, you need to use the switch –wordpress_instance_name NEW_BLOG where NEW_BLOG is the directory you want to install your copy of WP in.

Specifically, here’s the instruction for each platform:

Windows

shell> ./bitnami-wordpress-VERSION-module-windows-installer.exe --wordpress_instance_name NEW_BLOG_NAME

Linux

Only use sudo if the stack was installed as root.

sudo chmod a+x bitnami-wordpress-VERSION-module-linux-x64-installer.run
sudo ./bitnami-wordpress-VERSION-module-linux-x64-installer.run --wordpress_instance_name NEW_BLOG_NAME

Mac OS X

hdiutil mount bitnami-wordpress-VERSION-module-osx-x86_64-installer.dmg
/Volumes/WordPress\ Module\ VERSION/BitNami\ WordPress\ Module.app/Contents/MacOS/installbuilder.sh --wordpress_instance_name NEW_BLOG_NAME

Once you have the module installed, you will be able to access it through http://localhost/NEW_BLOG_NAME

(if you launch it using the launcher, it will still go to the default address http://localhost/wordpress, you will need to enter the address manually in the URL bar).

Bitnami is a great product and hopefully the company will have enough money to afford a read developer who could put this simple option in the GUI installer soon.

August 23, 2018

A Discord-like color scheme for Slack

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I love Slack as a productivity chat client (except the ridiculous pricing) but there’s one thing I think it could use some improvement, its color scheme. Looking at Slack after coming over from Discord is like looking directly at the sun. Slack does allow you to change the color scheme of the sidebar, but the main part that you look at, you can only change via loading a custom css via their ssb-interop.js file. So here’s how you do it:

August 19, 2018

Install Unity3D on Deepin Linux 15.6

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Okay this post is nothing but a link, which is this one:

Download Unity 2017.4.9f1 (latest version as of this post (yeah I know, it’s almost 2019 but I guess Unity isn’t big enough to hire a real Linux maintainer)

Seriously, that link should’ve been the first result when you google ‘Unity3D Installer for Linux’, but google thinks you want to read a blog post instead. Typical third rate search engine.

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