Technology

Can't log in to Linux with correct password, error "POWER FAILURE"?

Today, I had a very annoying problem that I managed to fix. It's a couple of hours of my life that I won't get back, and I found very little online to help me.

So, to help anyone else with the same problem, here's the problem and the solution.

For what it's worth, this is with Fedora 39, KDE Plasma spin. But I honestly suspect that makes little difference. Other distros (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) are probably just the same.

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Technology

How to: Set up MinIO with apache2 reverse proxy

"MinIO is a high-performance, S3 compatible object store." So says their homepage.

In brief, it's a self-hosted suite of tools to let you run your own storage server that is fully compatible with the Amazon S3 standards. They have a free version licenced under GNU ACPL v3, and a commercial supported version with their own licence.

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Technology

Setting wallpaper in a script with KDE Plasma

I'm currently running a computer that uses Fedora Linux, with the spin that comes with KDE Plasma as the desktop (I happen to prefer that to Gnome).

I wanted a script that will download a desktop wallpaper from the internet, and then set that to be my current wallpaper.

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Technology

MySQL Permissions Required to Export Procedures

If you run an application that includes a database, you want to be taking backups regularly. Your backup needs to include tables, views and triggers. It must also include any stored procedures / routines you are using. Otherwise, when you restore from backup, your procedures will be missing.

This article is not about Microsoft SQL Server. This concerns MySQL and its forks MariaDB and Percona.

I've found lots of people asking this question on the web, but not many of the posts I've found have a working answer.

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Technology

Stopping BitDefender reverting your Hosts file

Currently, my anti-virus software of choice is Bitdefender.

There's a file on a Windows computer called the "hosts file", that most people have no need to change. It lives at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. (Linux-based systems have a hosts file too, at /etc/hosts.) In fact, unless you have a need to change it, and know what you're doing, leave well alone.

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Technology

Preserving window sizes for individual message in Microsoft Outlook

This is one of those posts where I stick something on here to help me find it again, and because I won't be the only person trying to solve this.

The Problem: Size and Position of Individual Messages

Microsoft Outlook (msoutlook) is an email client, part of the Microsoft Office suite, and available as part of the Office 365 subscription. Do not confuse this with their online Outlook email service, which is the successor of Hotmail.

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Technology

Consumer Warning: SodaPDF cannot be trusted

I was a longtime customer of PDF software made by a company called Docudesk. After they got bought by SodaPDF, who in turn got bought by Avanquest, the software I'd paid for stopped working. This post details the problem, and how they eventually fixed it for me.

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Technology

Facebook: Hacked versus Cloned

“I think my Facebook account has been hacked. Sorry everyone.”

Anyone who uses Facebook, and has a decent number of Facebook friends, will see this message from time to time.

People get confused about exactly what’s happened, and therefore how to prevent this from happening and how to fix this if it does.

The key thing to understand is that there are two distinct things that can happen to you: Hacked, and cloned.

Facebook Hacked

This is when someone else is able to log in to your Facebook account.

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Technology

Keeping track of upstream security issues

Drupal no longer releases a new version of Core when an upstream dependency fixes a security vulnerability. It is the responsibility of site maintainers to keep track of security advisories for all such dependent libraries. That is no small task, and a way to automate this is needed. This post looks into how this can be done.

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Drupal Planet

Checking for modifications to default.settings.php

Drupal sites contain a settings.php file with site-specific settings, that is based off default.settings.php at the time the site is installed. As Drupal evolves, default.settings.php will change. Sometimes, it's worth incorporating those changes into the settings.php file for an already-installed site. This post runs through a low-friction way to keep on top of this house-keeping.

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Drupal Planet

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The Problem: Size and Position of Individual Messages

Facebook Hacked

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