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About the Taylors

About the Taylors

Help! I’m being crushed!!


Hi!  I am Russel Taylor.  I am married to Donna and we have four growing boys: Preston, Russell, Todd, and Elliott.  We live in Holliday, Texas and are Christians who worship our Lord at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Wichita Falls, Texas.

The Taylors – 2016

I am the GIS Specialist for Gunn Oil Company. Donna is a Middle School English teacher.

Alienware M18 R1 AMD & Linux

Alienware M18 R1 AMD & Linux

I recently got the Alienware M18 R1 AMD gaming ‘laptop’. I got this computer because AMD GPUs are supposed to be better supported in Linux than NVIDIA ones. Of course, I have almost always used NVIDIA before, so it actually seems a little tougher at the moment!

Anyway, I’m just going to list some things that I’ve been figuring out…

In order for GPU switching to actually work, I need to add a boot time kernel parameter. My original source used two… I’m not sure if the pcie one is necessary, but I included it.

amdgpu.runpm=0
pcie_aspm=off

The parameters can be added to /etc/default/grub.conf. In Fedora Silverblue, the parameters can be added using the following commands:

rpm-ostree kargs --append=amdgpu.runpm=0
rpm-ostree kargs --append=pcie_aspm=off

The Steam client doesn’t like to work using the dedicated graphics card. That’s okay, because the games will. To make Steam start using the integrated GPU by default, copy the steam .desktop file from /usr/share/applications (or /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications/ if you use flatpak) to ~/.local/share/applications/, then edit it to change these lines from true to false:

PrefersNonDefaultGPU=false
X-KDE-RunOnDiscreteGpu=false

Also, for Steam, the download speeds are super slow unless you apply the following fix:
Edit the file ~/.steam/steam/steam_dev.cfg.
Add the following line:
@nClientDownloadEnableHTTP2PlatformLinux 0
You can also add the following line to increase the number of servers that the client connects to, though it can sometimes actually slow the downloads down: @fDownloadRateImprovementToAddAnotherConnection 1.0

Lots of updates

Lots of updates

It’s been over a year since my last update (gee, I suck at this!). So, since my last update, we have moved to another house…this one on the lake! Elliott has started Kindergarten. Time flies!

Our backyard at the new house!

Preston and Russell are both in the band, and they are going to State again this year. Should be lots of fun to watch in San Antonio again!

Docker Problems In Almalinux 8

Docker Problems In Almalinux 8

I kept having issues with Docker in Almalinux 8/Cloudlinux 8/Centos 8. Basically, any time that the server would reboot, my Docker containers would fail to start. If I restarted the Docker service manually, it would start working. The problem is that Docker manipulates iptables, but when the Firewall would start, Docker’s iptables would be overwritten. After doing a lot of Googling, it seems I have found a solution.

To resolve this create the following in /etc/csf/csfpre.sh

iptables -t nat -N DOCKER
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m addrtype --dst-type LOCAL -j DOCKER
iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT ! -d 127.0.0.0/8 -m addrtype --dst-type LOCAL -j DOCKER
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 172.17.0.0/16 ! -o docker0 -j MASQUERADE

iptables -t filter -N DOCKER
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -o docker0 -j DOCKER
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -o docker0 -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -i docker0 ! -o docker0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -i docker0 -o docker0 -j ACCEPT

I found this solution posted here.

Holliday Eagle Band Places 6th in State!

Holliday Eagle Band Places 6th in State!

My oldest boy, Preston, is in the 8th grade. They allow 8th graders to participate in Holliday High School’s marching band. Because of a lot of work and practice, the band placed 6th in the 2021 Texas State Marching Band Championships (Class 3A). I am super proud of all of the band kids, but especially Preston! Great job!

2021 Texas State Marching Band Championships – At the Alamodome in San Antonio
DirectAdmin + Seafile Configuration

DirectAdmin + Seafile Configuration

After a lot of trial and error, I have finally managed to get Seafile working with my DirectAdmin panel. I am posting my configuration here so that it will be much easier to do the next time!

First, here is my docker-compose.yml file:

version: '2.0'
services:
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.5
    restart: always
    container_name: seafile-mysql
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=************  # Requested, set the root's password of MySQL service.
      - MYSQL_LOG_CONSOLE=true
    volumes:
      - /app/seafile/seafile-mysql/db:/var/lib/mysql  # Requested, specifies the path to MySQL data persistent store.
    networks:
      - seafile-net

  memcached:
    image: memcached:1.5.6
    restart: always
    container_name: seafile-memcached
    entrypoint: memcached -m 256
    networks:
      - seafile-net

  elasticsearch:
    image: seafileltd/elasticsearch-with-ik:5.6.16
    restart: always
    container_name: seafile-elasticsearch
    environment:
      - discovery.type=single-node
      - bootstrap.memory_lock=true
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms1g -Xmx1g"
    ulimits:
      memlock:
        soft: -1
        hard: -1
    mem_limit: 2g
    volumes:
      - /app/seafile/seafile-elasticsearch/data:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data  # Requested, specifies the path to Elasticsearch data persistent store.
    networks:
      - seafile-net
  
  seafile:
    image: docker.seadrive.org/seafileltd/seafile-pro-mc:latest
    restart: always
    container_name: seafile
    ports:
      - "8082:80"
      - "8443:443"  # If https is enabled, cancel the comment.
    volumes:
      - /app/seafile/seafile-data:/shared   # Requested, specifies the path to Seafile data persistent store.
    environment:
      - DB_HOST=db
      - DB_ROOT_PASSWD=***********  # Requested, the value shuold be root's password of MySQL service.
      - TIME_ZONE=America/Chicago # Optional, default is UTC. Should be uncomment and set to your local time zone.
      - SEAFILE_ADMIN_EMAIL=********@***********.com # Specifies Seafile admin user, default is 'me@example.com'
      - SEAFILE_ADMIN_PASSWORD=************     # Specifies Seafile admin password, default is 'asecret'
      - SEAFILE_SERVER_LETSENCRYPT=false   # Whether to use https or not
      - SEAFILE_SERVER_HOSTNAME=************.com # Specifies your host name if https is enabled
    depends_on:
      - db
      - memcached
      - elasticsearch
    networks:
      - seafile-net

networks:
  seafile-net:

And now, here is the DirectAdmin Reverse Proxy code that should be pasted in to the Custom HTTPD section:

|*if SUB="seafile"|
SSLProxyEngine On
ProxyPreserveHost On

ProxyPass / https://seafile.EXAMPLE.COM:8443/
ProxyPassReverse / https://seafile.EXAMPLE.COM:8443/

|*endif|
Onlyoffice and Portainer Docker Install

Onlyoffice and Portainer Docker Install

It’s all fun and games, until someone gets hurt… here is how I setup OnlyOffice and Portainer using Docker. I am using a vps running Debian 10.

OnlyOffice

docker run -i -t -d -p 32769:443 --restart=always \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/logs:/var/log/onlyoffice \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/data:/var/www/onlyoffice/Data \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/lib:/var/lib/onlyoffice \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/rabbitmq:/var/lib/rabbitmq \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/redis:/var/lib/redis \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/db:/var/lib/postgresql onlyoffice/documentserver

Once the container is up and running, copy your ssl security information. I copy my user ssl.crt and ssl.ca into a single file: tls.crt, which should be installed at /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/data/certs/.

Next, copy the ssl.key to /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/data/certs/tls.key. Make it read-only by doing chmod 400 tls.key.

Restart the docker container, and you’re good to go. You can access the status page at https://yourwebsite:32769.

Portainer

First, I create the directory: /app/portainer/local-certs.

Next, I copy the ssl certificates to the directory I just created. They are are same as the onlyoffice ones, except I rename them portainer.crt and portainer.key.

docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9000:9000 -p 9443:9443 --name=portainer --restart=always --pull=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data -v /app/portainer/local-certs:/certs portainer/portainer-ee:latest --sslcert /certs/portainer.crt --sslkey /certs/portainer.key

Portainer can be accessed at https://yourwebsite:9443.

2020 – The Year of the Plague

2020 – The Year of the Plague

The trainwreck of a year

Hey, it’s July! That means we’re more than halfway through the year…thank God! 2020 has been a challenge for most people, I think. We’ve had the Coronavirus/Covid-19 that has been crippling our economy and killing people right and left. We’ve had the Black Lives Matter protests which have turned into riots (they do matter). And through it all, President Trump has been our fearless leader… or not. He seems to think that if he ignores everything it will all work out. I hope he’s right; I really do.

Looking on the bright side, though, we get to go see my mom in Michigan in a couple of days! To be honest, I think I’ve already checked out in my mind… I do dread the drive, though. Two long days… We’re splitting it up so that it is one super-long day, followed by one medium-long day. Hopefully that will make it work.

Fedora Boot Hang/Timeout

Fedora Boot Hang/Timeout

When I boot Fedora 31 on my Alienware Laptop, it hangs for about three minutes with the message “A start job is running for udev Wait for Complete Device Initialization”

Here’s one way to fix it:
sudo systemctl mask systemd-udev-settle