Switching off the GUI in Debian

  • Disable the GUI on boot: sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
  • Enable the GUI on boot: sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
  • Disable the GUI temporarily: sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target
  • Enable the GUI temporarily: sudo systemctl isolate graphical.target

Starting a virtual terminal: Press Ctrl+Alt+F2
To return: Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 or Ctrl+Alt+F7

Loading

Update for bot blocker

Update for bot blocker as mentioned here: https://3xn.nl/projects/2023/09/20/crude-solution-to-ban-bots-by-their-user-agent/

My website is still being kicked around sometimes, but I’m winning D:

'ubermetrics-technologies', 'seokicks', 'ClaudeBot', 'serpstatbot', 'Barkrowler', 'YisouSpider', 'babbar.tech', 'AwarioBot', 'bytespider', 'amazonbot', 'MJ12bot', 'YandexBot', 'SemrushBot', 'dotbot', 'AspiegelBot', 'DataForSeoBot', 'DotBot', 'Pinterestbot', 'PetalBot', 'HeadlessChrome', 'GPTBot', 'Sogou', 'ALittle Client', 'fidget-spinner-bot', 'intelx.io_bot', 'Mediatoolkitbot', 'BLEXBot', 'AhrefsBot'

Loading

[MASTODON 4.2.5] How to update Mastodon to a new version

For the old version, click here.

So a new release came out and it is important to get this update as soon as possible! This manual is a transcript of the way that I have updated my Mastodon instance. Please make sure you make proper backups and use your brain while updating things

Linux flavour: Debian
Update from: 4.2.X

  1. Log into your server
  2. su - mastodon
  3. cd /home/mastodon/live
  4. git fetch --tags
  5. git checkout [type the most recent version here, starting with the letter v. For example; v4.2.5
    
    git checkout v4.2.5
  6. If you get a ruby version error, please see bottom of this article for a fix!
    
    bundle install
    
  7. yarn install
  8. RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:migrate
  9. RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile
  10. exit

Okay, you can not choose to either reboot or restart the services.

REBOOT:

  1. This command may vary, depending on your Linux flavour.
    
    systemctl reboot

RESTART:

  1. This command may vary, depending on your Linux flavour.
    
    systemctl restart mastodon-sidekiq
    systemctl reload mastodon-web
    
    Optional:
    
    systemctl restart mastodon-streaming

RUBY VERSION ISSUES

My system was unable to find the required v3.2.3 of Ruby and I have fixed this by doing the following steps:

  1. Please make sure that your path is correct.
    
    git -C ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build pull
  2. rbenv install 3.2.3
    
    *WAIT TILL DONE* (it may take a little while)
  3. To check all the installed versions type:
    
    rbenv versions
  4. To set v3.2.3 as the global version, type:
    
    rbenv global 3.2.3
  5. To double-check the active, installed version, type:
    
    rbenv versions
  6. Done!

This manual is a transcript of the way that I have updated my Mastodon instance. Please make sure you make proper backups and use your brain while updating things.

Sources: https://richstone.io/where-is-ruby-3-0-0-on-rbenv/

Loading

How to switch back to the old UI in TeamViewer 15

It can happen that your TeamViewer instance is not starting any more after switching over to the new interface or that you really do not like the new looks of the new interface.

  1. Windowskey + R
  2. Type RegEdit and press enter
  3. Copy the following line and paste it into the “address bar” of RegEdit and press enter.
    Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TeamViewer
  4. Double click on the entry named “UIVersion”
  5. Change the value 4 to 2
  6. Press OK

Done.

 

Loading

Perfect Chips

From Heston Blumenthal’s In Search of Perfection, Season 1, Episode 4 named “Fish and Chips”.

  1. Buy floury potatoes with a dry content matter of around 22%. This is very hard to measure, so just see what you can get.
  2. Peel the potatoes and cut them into thick(ish) and equal parts. Perhaps a centimetre thick.
  3. Wash the chips and place them in a pot with lightly salted water.
  4. Cook them on simmering. Simmer to as close as possible to breaking up. If they break up, you will have potato soup. You should be able to scoop them out, and they need to look a bit fluffy. Cooking time is somewhere between 10-15 minutes.
  5. Place the chips carefully on a cake rack and place the rack in the refrigerator for 30-45 minutes. You want the moisture content to be as low as possible, and the dry air in a refrigerator helps greatly with that.
  6. The first fry is at 130C for about 5 minutes. The outside of the chip should get a bit of colour by then.
  7. Take the chips out, place them on the cake rack again and place the rack in the refrigerator for another 30-45 minutes.
  8. The second and last fry is at 190C for about 3-5 minutes. Look at the colour and test while frying the chips.

Enjoy!

Loading

Update in the script to block bots, spiders and indexers

Original post: https://3xn.nl/projects/2023/09/20/crude-solution-to-ban-bots-by-their-user-agent/

I’ve very much simplified the script that instantly redirects unwanted traffic away from the server. Currently, I am using a very cheap VPS to receive all that traffic.

Here ya go:

<?php

// CC-BY-NC (2023)

// Author: FoxSan - fox@cytag.nl

// This is a functional but dirty hack to block bots, spiders and indexers by looking at the HTTP USER AGENT.
// Traffic that meets the conditions is being yeeted away to any place of your choice.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Emergency bypass
// goto end;
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

// attempt to basically just yeet all bots to another website

$targetURL = "https://DOMAIN.TLD/SUB/";

// Function to check if the user agent appears to be a bot or spider

function isBot()

{

    $user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];

$bot_keywords = ['bytespider', 'amazonbot', 'MJ12bot', 'YandexBot', 'SemrushBot', 'dotbot', 'AspiegelBot', 'DataForSeoBot', 'DotBot', 'Pinterestbot', 'PetalBot', 'HeadlessChrome', 'GPTBot', 'Sogou', 'ALittle Client', 'fidget-spinner-bot', 'intelx.io_bot', 'Mediatoolkitbot', 'BLEXBot', 'AhrefsBot'];

    foreach ($bot_keywords as $keyword) {

        if (stripos($user_agent, $keyword) !== false) {

            return true;

        }
    }

    return false;

}

// Check if the visitor is a bot or spider

if (isBot()) {

// yeet

header("Location: $targetURL");

    // Exit to prevent further processing

    exit;

}

end:

// If the visitor is not a bot, spider, or crawler, continue with your website code.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

?>

Loading

More tweaks for the .htaccess file!

Here’s a list of stuff that I have in my .htaccess files on various websites.

I want to work on my website, but any other visitor should be booted to another website so I can work in peace. Sidenote: It's forever since I last used this, so it might work. Or not.

---

# YOUR IP address goes here:
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^000\.000\.000\.000$
# And provides you access to:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^https://DOMAIN.TLD$ [NC]
# Fine, go have all the media as well
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|svg|swf|css|ico|js)$ [NC]
# Any other visitor can go visit the following website:
RewriteRule .* https://DOMAIN.TLD/ [R=302,L]

# Hey, no viewing access to this file
<FilesMatch "^.ht">
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

# Disable Server Signature
ServerSignature Off

# SSL all the things!
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]

# No WWW
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.DOMAIN\.TLD$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "https\:\/\/DOMAIN\.TLD\/" [R=301,L]

# Do we like Symlinks? Yeah we do.
Options +FollowSymlinks

# No open directories or directory listings. What is this... 1998?
Options All -Indexes
IndexIgnore *

# Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits.
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]*\([^)]*\) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C)([^s]*s)+cript.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
RewriteRule .* index.php [F]

# PHP doohickies
php_flag register_globals off 
php_flag safe_mode off 
php_flag allow_url_fopen off 
php_flag display_errors off 
php_value session.save_path '/tmp' 
php_value disable_functions "exec,passthru,shell_exec,system,curl_multi_exec,show_source,eval"

# File Injection Protection, or a code-condom. What.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} [a-zA-Z0-9_]=http:// [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} [a-zA-Z0-9_]=(\.\.//?)+ [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} [a-zA-Z0-9_]=/([a-z0-9_.]//?)+ [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

# /proc/self/environ? Go away!
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} proc/self/environ [NC,OR]

# Disallow Access To Sensitive Files. Enter your own file names.
RewriteRule ^(htaccess.txt|configuration.php(-dist)?|joomla.xml|README.txt|web.config.txt|CONTRIBUTING.md|phpunit.xml.dist|plugin_googlemap2_proxy.php)$ - [F]

# Don't allow any pages to be framed - Defends against CSRF
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN
</IfModule>

# Disallow Php Easter Eggs
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} \=PHP[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12} [NC]
RewriteRule .* index.php [F]

# Libwww-perl Access Block
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl.* 
RewriteRule .* ? [F,L]

# Uh. I forgot.
<IfModule mod_autoindex.c>
IndexIgnore *
</IfModule>

# NO SNIFFYWIFFY OwO
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header always set X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff"
</IfModule>

# NEEDS TESTING
# Turn on IE8-IE9 XSS prevention tools
#Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"

# NEEDS TESTING TOO
# Only allow JavaScript from the same domain to be run.
# Don't allow inline JavaScript to run.
#Header set X-Content-Security-Policy "allow 'self';"

# Example if you don't like Russia and Turkey (Optional A1 is to block anonymous proxies)
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^(RU|TR)$
RewriteRule .* https://DOMAIN.TLD/directorywithindexdothtml/ [R=302,L]

# Caching stuff
<FilesMatch "\.(ico|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
</FilesMatch>

# Compress text, html, javascript, css, xml!
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/xml text/css text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml application/xhtml+xml application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rdf+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf application/x-font-otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/truetype font/opentype
</IfModule>

# Joomla! core SEF Section.
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php [L]

# PHP TWEAKS 
php_value upload_max_filesize 200M
php_value post_max_size 200M
php_value max_input_vars 2000
php_value max_execution_time 120
php_value memory_limit 1024M

## BEGIN EXPIRES CACHING 
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive on
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/cache-manifest "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/xml "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/xml "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/json "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/rss+xml "access plus 1 hour"
ExpiresByType application/atom+xml "access plus 1 hour"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType video/ogg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType audio/ogg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType video/mp4 "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType video/webm "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-component "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType font/opentype "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-font-woff "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header append Cache-Control "public"
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
## END EXPIRES CACHING

Loading

Increasing the character limit on Mastodon 4.1.x and 4.2.x

There is a very small difference between the two Git branches, so pay attention.

su - mastodon

Edit if your Mastodon instance is v4.1.x

nano live/app/javascript/mastodon/features/compose/components/compose_form.js

Edit if your Mastodon instance is v4.2.x

nano live/app/javascript/mastodon/features/compose/components/compose_form.jsx

In this file, you will find the number “500” twice. Replace that number with your desired character limit and save the file.

nano live/app/validators/status_length_validator.rb

In this file, you will find the number “500” once. Replace that number with your desired character limit and save the file.

nano live/app/serializers/rest/instance_serializer.rb

FIND the line that reads:

:languages, :registrations,

ADD the following to that line:

:max_toot_chars

Pay attention if a comma is used at the end or not.

Scroll down to the end of the file until you reach the “private” section.

ADD

def max_toot_chars 
[the number of your desired character limit without the brackets]
end

EXAMPLE

def max_toot_chars 
5000
end

Go back to the live directory and enter the following commands, one by one:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile
exit
systemctl restart mastodon-sidekiq
systemctl reload mastodon-web
[OPTIONAL] systemctl restart mastodon-streaming

Done.

Loading