PATH can be a pain, but there are some basics: Syntax $PATH before or after (before) Is EXPORT needed, or not (not) Where is PATH set All apps+shells /etc/environment All shells ~/.profile or /etc/profile for all users (or a separate file under /etc/profile.d/ if using pacman) Bash shell ~/.bashrc (or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bash_login) Fish shell ... Read more
Note: Amazon Linux AMI is essentially CentOS 6.x. Everything below works on CentOS as well. Preparation for Amazon LAMP The OpenVPN on Amazon Linux AMI is a good place to start in preping the L for the AMP part of the lamp stack. Lots of good stuff there. A followup is WordPress Multisite on Amazon ... Read more
OpenVPN is great, and the OpenVPN command line client and the Viscosity GUI are also nice. However, all configurations need to be checked to ensure there is no information leakage. Secondly, the basic OpenVPN connection needs another layer of encryption and/or obfuscation, in order to interoperate with Internet firewalls and services that use deep packet ... Read more
Amazon Lightsail is a VPS services offered by Amazon that competes with the likes of Rackspace, DigitalOcean, Linode, etc. Note: As of mid 2018 AWS effectively halved its prices on Lightsail. This means there is a $3.50 USD/mo. option and the $40 option listed below (4gb ram/2 cpu/60gb ssd/4tb xfer) is actually only $20 now. ... Read more
ufw is known as a Debian (and Ubuntu) firewall, which is disabled by default but easy to use. There are some GUI front-ends which make it popular for Linux on the desktop. Coming from a CentOS background (RHEL/Amazon Linux AMI), ufw is not as common (as, say firewalld, or simply iptables, to which both ufw ... Read more
I've gotten fed up with the nonsense that is Chromecast (slow, limited), Apple TV (slow, limited), and Fire TV Stick (slow, limited). I ran across the Vero 4K, which was announced in February, 2017. Besides good reviews about good hardware, the responsive and active half-way decent, half-asshat forum (using Discourse), the system uses OSMC (open ... Read more
What I learned in migrating from CentOS on Linode to Amazon AMI Linux on EC2. Note: Amazon Lightsail is probably a better comparison, but it is not available in the region we need it in, so EC2 is required for now. Update: Lightsail is now available in more regions. VPS Hosting and Operating System A ... Read more
See also OpenVPN on ChromeOS and Android OpenVPN on an AWS EC2 T2.Nano Instance The T2.Nano instance is the smallest instance generally available for AWS EC2. As of 17-June-2017, the Nano includes the following resources: 512mb RAM 1 vcpu (30 credits + 3/hr, up to 72 credits) 1gb network out traffic Alternatively, a $5 USD ... Read more
Amazon is different than other companies. From the outside, this difference can appear as anomolies, odd things that stand out. I belive that there is a fundamental way of understanding the current state and dynamo of change within Amazon. Customer Centrism Amazon is meant to be the most customer-centric company on Earth. Likely when we ... Read more
The first trillionaire will not be a human, it will be a bot (though a sophisticated one). Suffice it to say that making money, legally or extralegally, will be something that could be done by a system designed to do so, that could have enough ability to act in a marketplace, and enough insight to ... Read more