Dell C1100 – Partitioning for RAID 10

In the Rocky Linux installer, choose custom partitioning.  First, create a /boot mount point that is 2GiB in size.  Set device type to RAID and RAID Level to RAID1.  Next, create / as an LVM partition on a RAID 10 pool.  Lastly, create the SWAP area as an LVM partition on the RAID 10 pool.  That's all you need to do. 

Grub will be synced across the four drives.  Thus, if one drive fails, the other drives can still boot Rocky Linux so that the RAID array can be rebuilt.   

Lantronix Spider SLS200 KVM – Reset to defaults

If you buy some cheap SLS200 KVM spiders off of eBay, you'll need to reset the configuration of the spider back to its default configuration so that you can access it using the default login and password (and have it set to use DHCP). 

You'll need an ethernet to USB serial cable that you'll plug into the serial port on the spider.

Get it to boot by plugging in both USB connectors so that the device receives the power it needs.  Open Putty and connect to the proper COM port your USB serial cable is providing an interface for.  For me, it was COM3, but you can detect it by going to Device Manager –> Ports (COM & LPT).

With Putty open and receiving the serial output, insert a paperclip or similarly small wire into the Lantronix reset area and press the reset button down. 

With Putty as the active window, press the down key on your keyboard followed by escape.  Now type defaults

The device will reset to defaults.  You can login when it has been reset by using sysadmin as the login and PASS as the password.

Here is the source for the above instructions:  https://ltrxdev.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LTRXTS/pages/97944090/Reset+a+Spider+to+factory+defaults+using+the+serial+console+port+and+the+Reset+button | Mirror

Now you can update the firmware to the latest version.  Be sure to check if it is a USB 01 or USB 02 version by looking at the device model sticker on the KVM spider.  If it is USB 01 (older), you can use this firmware:

https://ts.lantronix.com/ftp/spider/4.3.6/spider-v4.3-38143_2025-08-07.zip

Here's a mirror if the above is offline:

Mirror

Clone and Compress LVM Volume to Disk Image

If you need to backup an LVM volume, you can do so by first turning off the virtual machine that is using the volume, and then you can use the dd and gzip utilities to create a copy of the volume to an .img file and compress the image file.  This compressed image file can then be transferred remotely over SSH or HTTP (for fastest results) to another server where it can be restored.

Need More Storage Space for the Backup Image (Optional)?

If you don't have enough storage space on the root LVM volume the main system uses on the host server to handle saving the backup image file to, you can always create a new LVM and then mount it on the host LVM file system to save it there.

These steps are optional:

1.  Create new hard drive in your vm pool using virt-manager and name it temp_storage – you don't need to setup the OS or continue creating the virtual machine

2.  Format and mount this new LVM volume (update vms with your pool's actual name – on my server, it is named vms):

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vms-temp_storage
mount /dev/mapper/vms-temp_storage /mnt/store

Copy and Compress the LVM

Use the below commands to copy your LVM volume to an img file.  Update the names and the paths as needed.

dd if=/dev/vms/name_of_lvm of=/mnt/store/name_of_lvm.img bs=8M status=progress
gzip name_of_lvm.img -1

Uncompressing and Restoring the LVM

Just decompress the image file and then use the dd command to restore the image to the LVM volume created on the target or restore server.

gunzip name_of_lvm.img.gz
dd if=name_of_lvm.img of=/dev/vms/restore-lvm-name bs=8M status=progress

And you're done 🙂

Updated uBlock Origin for Pale Moon / Firefox Legacy Browsers

https://github.com/UCyborg/uBlock-for-firefox-legacy/releases/tag/1.16.6.0

Using Wireless Adapter as KVM Network Bridge (br0 or br1) – Rocky Linux 9.X

They said it couldn't be done, but it can, depending on your wireless adapter card.  I recently bought a Minisforum EM680 Mini PC, and to my surprise, it didn't come with any ethernet ports.  It only has a Wi-Fi PCI-E card in it.  Ok, so that presents a problem, as I wanted to use it as a KVM virtual machine host with bridged networking.  At first, I wasn't able to get this to work, but after finding this post, I got it working!  If your wireless adapter supports 4addr (WDS mode), you can get it working as you normally would when using an ethernet port.  Here's how.

Step 1:  Connect to your desired wireless network normally post installation of Rocky Linux 9.

Step 2:  Create your network bridge configurations as you normally would (not specified in this guide).  My script creates br0 (for use at datacenters with static IPs) and br1 (a general DHCP bridge). 

Step 3:  Enable 4addr for your adapter.

Get the name of your wireless device by running the following command:

ip a

Mine happens to be named wlp1s0. Yours could be different. Make a note of the name of your connected wireless adapter and use it in the below scripts:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/4addr.service 

Add the following contents to this file:

[Unit]
Description=wlan-4addr
Wants=network.target
Before=network.target systemd-networkd.service
BindsTo=sys-subsystem-net-devices-wlp1s0.device
After=sys-subsystem-net-devices-wlp1s0.device

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/iw dev wlp1s0 set 4addr on
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and exit.

Enable the service at boot:

sudo systemctl enable 4addr.service 

Step 4:  Reboot

Step 5:  Check that 4addr is on and working

iw dev wlp1s0 info

You should see something like:

4addr: on 

At the end of the output. 

Step 6:  Configure your wireless adapter to be controlled by your desired network bridge.  In my case, I wanted my wireless adapter to be a part of br1 (my general DHCP bridge).  To do this, I edited the associated .nmconnection file in the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections directory.  The name of the .nmconnection file will be the wireless SSID you're connected to.  So, for example, if your SSID is test, it will be named test.nmconnection.

Add the controller and port-type configuration lines as shown in the below sample configuration.  My .nmconnection configuration looks like this (SSID and passwords removed):

[connection]
id=cool
uuid=015a8f8f-5440-40b5-8caf-e6ff3f9d63e1
type=wifi
interface-name=wlp1s0
controller=br1
port-type=bridge

[wifi]
mode=infrastructure
ssid={WIFI_SSID_HERE}

[wifi-security]
auth-alg=open
key-mgmt=wpa-psk
psk={WIFI_PASSWORD_HERE}

[bridge-port]

Save your changes.

My ifcfg-br1 bridge configuration file in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory looks like this:

TYPE=Bridge
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
DEVICE=br1
ONBOOT=yes
ZONE=public

Step 7:  Reboot

KVM guests using br1 and the default NAT interface (managed by QEMU and KVM) will work just fine via your wireless device now!

Element for Linux Client – Without Flatpak

If you'd like to install the Element Matrix client for Linux without using flatpak or snap, you can use the following script to do so:

sudo apt-get install wget unzip
wget -N "https://dinofly.com/files/linux/element_bash_install.zip" && unzip element_bash_install.zip && sudo bash install_element.sh

This will install the Element client application on Linux, create an app shortcut for it, and add it as an automatic startup program when the computer is first started.

This was tested on Ubuntu 18.04, but it should work on newer versions of Linux as well.

Latest Skype for Debian / Ubuntu – Without Flatpak or Snap

I found this script posted on Github that essentially unpacks the last created Skype .deb file released by Microsoft, downloads the latest snap package for Skype, extracts and replaces the Skype binary from the snap package to the deb source files, replaces some version number strings, and then repacks the files into a deb you can install on Ubuntu / Debian.  I modified the script slightly to install some dependencies and then actually install the deb file that is generated for you.

To install the latest version of Skype for Ubuntu / Debian (tested on Ubuntu 18.04 – and should work on newer versions), first uninstall any previous version of Skype you've installed on your system, and then run the following script:

sudo apt-get install wget unzip
wget -N "https://dinofly.com/files/linux/skype_for_linux_deb_install.zip" && unzip skype_for_linux_deb_install.zip && sudo bash skype_for_linux.sh

If after logging in for the first time, your Skype looks like this (a blank page with it not doing anything):

Restart your computer and load Skype again.  It will work fine after this.

Moving a Website to Another Server – Redirect Traffic to the New Server While DNS Propagates (for No Downtime)

If you're migrating a website from one server to another and have updated the DNS for the domain to point to the new server, some traffic will still be directed to the old server due to DNS caching.  So, while the DNS changes propagate over the internet (can take up to three days), you can still redirect traffic to the new server from the old server so that you won't suffer any downtime. 

On the old server, run these commands to redirect web traffic on port 80 (http) and port 443 (https) to the new server (adjust the {DESTINATION_IP_ADDRESS} variable accordingly):

echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination {DESTINATION_IP_ADDRESS}:80
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 443 -j DNAT --to-destination {DESTINATION_IP_ADDRESS}:443
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -p tcp -d {DESTINATION_IP_ADDRESS} --dport 80 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -p tcp -d {DESTINATION_IP_ADDRESS} --dport 443 -j MASQUERADE

Reference:  https://serverfault.com/questions/371833/changing-servers-redirect-to-new-ip-no-downtime#371870