Creating git repositories on public source forges (GitLab, GitHub...)

Creating git repositories on public source forges

Last updated: 20211215
 

 Create local directory:

 
      mkdir <repository name> && cd $_
 

Create repository on GitLab/Hub:

 
      GitLab:
          Menu -> Create new project -> Create blank project
      GitHub:
          TBD
 

Initialize local repository and push initial commit:

      git init --initial-branch=master
      git config --global user.name "Kevin Bowen"
      git config --global user.email "kevin.bowen@gmail.com"
      git remote add origin git@gitlab.com:kevinbowen/sampleproject.git
      # git remote add origin git@github.com:kevinbowen777/sampleproject.git
      git add .
      git commit -m "initial commit"
      git push -u origin master

Upgrading OpenSSL from 1.1.0 to 1.1.1 in Linux Mint 19 and Ubuntu 18.04

According to the OpenSSL website:

> The latest stable version is the 1.1.1 series. This is also our Long Term Support (LTS) version, supported until 11th September 2023.

Since this is not in the current Ubuntu repositories, you will need to download, compile, and install the latest OpenSSL version manually.

Below are the instructions to follow:

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t).
2. wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1a.tar.gz
3. Unpack tarball with `tar -zxf openssl-1.1.1a.tar.gz` and then `cd openssl-1.1.1a`.   
4. cd to `openssl-1.1.1a`
3. Issue the command './config'.
4. Issue the command 'make' (You may need to run `sudo apt install make gcc` before running this command successfully).
5. Run `make test` to check for possible errors.
5. Issue the command 'sudo make install'.
6. Backup current openssl binary:
    sudo mv /usr/bin/openssl ~/tmp
7. Create symbolic link from newly install binary to default location:
    sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/openssl /usr/bin/openssl
8. Run command 'sudo ldconfig' to update symlinks and rebuild library cache.

Assuming that there were no errors in executing steps 3 through 6, you should have successfully install the new version of OpenSSL.

Again, from the terminal issue the command
    openssl version
Your output should be as follows:
    OpenSSL 1.1.1a  20 Nov 2018

Pre-flight steps for a Linux Mint desktop upgrade

Upgrading from Linux Mint from 18.3 to 19 on my systems was essentially painless.

There are a couple of things that I have gotten into the habit of doing prior to performing systems upgrades to provide me some peace of mind:

  1.  Back up your system.
  2.  Separately back up your .config and .local directories (I am selective in choosing which application preferences to preserve across machines and store them on dropbox).
  3.  Make a list of any PPAs you might be using and remove them from your sources.list or Update Manager. Here is a pointer to a script to get you started.
  4.  I store my dotfiles on a repo in GitHub (and replicate them out to GitLab and BitBucket), so that I can easily restore my bash, vim and tmux settings.
  5.  Make a list of your favorite apps (Personally, I use vimwiki stored in dropbox for my sysadmin notes).
  6.  I've found the following site very useful when turning up a new system: https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/Home (It's Mint-centric and has some very sane recommendations. Don't run the suggestions blindly. Review them closely and see if it applies to you.
  7.  Maintain a separate /home partition so that you can easily restart, or completely blow away, an installation if you need to without fear of losing your personal data.

This may sound like a lot of work to those just getting started in the Linux/Mint world; but, some conscientious janitorial work upfront saves one from frustration down the road.

Hope this helps. Enjoy the upgrade!

Switching between Java versions in Debian based distributions

Switching between installed Java versions can be accomplished using the update alternatives command.

To get a list of your installed Java platforms, run the following command from the terminal:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

This will give you a list output similar to this:

There are 2 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).
   Selection                             Path                                   Priority         Status
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin/java                1081            auto mode
*1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-i386/jre/bin/java    1071       manual mode
  2           /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin/java                 1081       manual mode
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

In this case, the Open JDK 6 version is running. To switch to the Open JDK version 7, you would select option 1 at the prompt and press the Enter key.

You will now be running the OpenJDK 7 version. No other changes will be needed to switch your Java versions.

Bands I have seen in concert

Yet again, I continue with publishing useless lists
Here is one, created from memory, of all of the bands that I have see perform live.

I'm sure there are many bands that I have forgotten.
I'm actually pretty amazed that I have remembered as many as I did.

I would love to see the lists of other folks. Make fun of me as you like.


Bands I have seen in concert:

Agnostic Front
Agent Orange
Alice Cooper
Anthrophobia
Arab Strap
Baby Flamehead
Big Smelly Fish
Black Flag
Bloodloss
Bongwater
The Boredoms
Boss Hog
Butthole Surfers
Buzzcocks
John Cage
Caspar Brotzmann Massaker
Nick Cave
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Cloaca
Cocteau Twins
Cop Shoot Cop
Cornershop
The Creatures
Cro-Mags
The Cure
Dead Moon
Miles Davis
Dirty Three
Disgruntled Postal Workers
Mike Doughty
Dancing French Liberals of '48
Dead Can Dance
Deadspot
The Decemberists
Dee-lite
Dio
The Fastbacks
GBH
George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars
Gene Loves Jezebel
Glass Eye
God Bullies
Grateful Dead
Groovie Ghoulies
Grotus
GWAR
Homo Picnic
Imperial Teen
Jesus Lizard
Jet
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Judas Priest
King Carcass
The Knitters
Mark Kozelik
Kultur Shock
Laughing Hyenas
Love Battery
L7
Lubricated Goat
Lungfish
The Melvins
Mission of Burma
Moby
More Fiends
Mudhoney
Murphy's Law
Nashville Pussy
Nebula
New Order
Onyx
Pagan Babies
Painkiller
Pain Teens
Pigface
Piss Drunks
The Pleasure Elite
Psychic TV
Red Hot Chili Peppers/Fishbone
R.E.M.
The Replacements
Reverend Horton Heat
RUIN
Sage
Seals & Crofts
Sebadoh
She-Males
Sink Manhatten
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Sky Cries Mary
Sleater-Kinney
Slint
The Smiths
Sonic Youth
Spore
Stereolab
Ken Stringfellow
Suicidal Tendencies
Sun Kil Moon
Sunny Day Real Estate
TAD
10,000 Maniacs
Token Entry
Tom Tom Club
Tons of Nuns
Visqueen
Yo La Tengo
X

Bitch Kitty Racing - My latest project

Bitch Kitty Racing is an online "lifestyle and entertainment" magazine. For the last month or two, I have been assisting in the ongoing maintenance and promotion of the site.

John Moroney invited me to join himself and his co-founder, Keith Bingman in their quest for world domination. Besides being involved in a cool project and building a loyal readership, I've been busy learning some technologies that I haven't gotten my hands dirty with previously, such as RSS(news) feeds, podcast creation, and distribution, and testing.

The site, itself, is powered by a light-weight, highly flexible Ruby on Rails content management system called Radiant. Now, while I don't consider myself a developer, by any stretch of the imagination; I see this as a good opportunity to collaborate on a cool project, and try to get up to date on some cutting edge web applications. I'm hoping , as time goes on, to also pick up a bit of the ruby programming basics.

Keith is the driving force behind the site design and functionality. He is also actively involved in the developer community behind the Radiant application. At this moment, he is creating extensions to help us manage the images and comments coming soon to Bitch Kitty Racing. The first is especially relevant since Keith is also a pretty good photographer. You should take a look at his work, here: keithbingman.com

John is the ringleader of the site and primary author of most of the content. He is also the star of the Bitch Kitty Racing TV podcasts. It's pretty funny, bizarre, and probably not safe for children, small woodland creatures, or work. We even made it onto ITunes with the series. Fun stuff.

Let's see...What else can I pimp while I am at it? I hadn't really intended to make this a Bitch Kitty Racing promotional weblog post; but....

Ah yes, we are also trying our hand at some band promotion with a local Seattle band, Hey Marseilles. Rumor has it that the big labels are looking at them, so we are enjoying promoting them while we can.
All in all, Bitch Kitty Racing has been keeping me very busy learning new skills.

Death of (another) philosopher

I'm sure that relatively few people will care about this passing.
I was just listening to podcast from the NPR program,Fresh Air, and discovered that the French post-modern philospher, Jean Baudrillard
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard), had just recently died.

I can't say that I am sad, or disheartened. Rather, I am somewhat amused by his passing. He is yet another of my self-appointed intellectual mentors who has passed on.
Gone beyond, so to speak, the illusion, that is the life he had lived.

Call me what you will; but, I found his philosophy to be supremely influential upon my general worldview(along with Foucault, and Deleuze/Gauttari), and appreciate his contribution to the world, and human thought, in general.
I had always appreciated his willingness to tell the emperor(you, the reader) that not only did he(you) really have no clothes, but he wasn't even actually an emperor. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't consider Mssr. Baudrillard a nihilist. Far from it.
I actually consider him a comic, in a sense, perhaps in the most generous sense. He was a philosopher in the truest sense. But, in this day and age, philosphers are not needed by most people. So, instead, he, and his wrtings, were relegated to the backwaters of the media and inteligensia as the ramblings of an esoteric crank. Or, at worst, his messages were inscrutable, and thus irrelevant. I suppose that he might have appreciated the irony in that. I have a way with picking the winners...

For better or worse, I guess his most famous quote is from the film "The Matrix". It is the character Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburn( whom I loved in Apocalyspse Now) that states to that dumbass initiate, Neo, "Welcome to the desert of the real."
He died on my mother's fifty-ninth birthday.

You will be missed, funnyman.