Happy Holidays Everyone!

This is a really weird edge case that I came across at work. After an update to Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL) I was no longer able to use my Cisco AnyConnect VPN connection to connect to any of the infrastructure I manage.

WSL (112) ERROR: CreateProcessParseCommon:782: Failed to translate

Currently, the only method that I have to use a WSL Virtual Machine (VM) is to use this great third party script so that my VM knows how to actually use a network. I do with Microsoft had an easier way to do this, WSL has no network connectivity once connected to a VPN. 🤦🏻‍♂️

At any rate, all of these weird tech issues aside with how I choose to SSH into the systems I manage at work, this is how you correct the error WSL (112) ERROR: CreateProcessParseCommon:782: Failed to translate when attempting to use a WSL VM on a VPN Connection. You will need to edit the .profile folder in your home directory (/home/your_userneame_here) and add the following line to the end of the file.

wsl.exe -d wsl-vpnkit --cd /app service wsl-vpnkit start

To apply the fix, power cycle your WSL VM with your method of choice. I hope this helps and same you time having to search all over the Internet or watch a Youtube “tutorial” what wastes your time. If you have any questions, etc. hit me up via one of the methods on my contact page. Thanks for stopping by! 🙂

So at long last I am finally getting around to (stop procrastinating) getting this site going again. It has taken a lot longer than I planned but between my work and my home life it seems like there is never enough time and/or energy to get things done. More to come as I get to it!

Some of these are pretty basic and some are a bit more advanced and/or obscure in my opinion. I hope they are also useful to others out there. Please not that files names and file paths are just made up examples and might not fit what you are attempting to accomplish.

• cd – change directory
• Carl + c – cancels the currently running foreground operation
• pod – s/how your current fill file path
• cp /path/to/file.txt /path/to/your/new/file.txt – copy a file from one location to another location
• move (rename) a file from one location to another location – mv file1.txt file1.back.txt
• show the tail end of a file with any new additions that are written to the file – tail -f /var/log/messages.log
• determine if a node is online – ping duck.com
• determine the network route to a given node – trace route duck.com
• perform a DNS lookup on a given address – nslookup duck.com
•  show xx number of lines at the tail end of a file – Show the tail end of a file with any additions – tail -f /var/log/messages
• run a shell script – bash shellscript.sh OR sh shellscript.sh
• check drive mappings for the currently mounted file system – do -h
• change to another system user – su username
• easy way to change to the root user if you have sudo level access – sudo -i

Recently WordPress has updated their WYSIWYG editor to Gutenberg which is absolutely fantastic!  The only issue thus far is that when editing or updating a post within WordPress you see is the following.

This prevents the auto save and publish functions from working.  WordPress and Cloudflare are working on the issue and have a workaround in place.   The fix involves disabling two rules in the WordPress rules set in the Web Application Firewall settings in your Cloudflare account.

1. Once you are logged in click on the domain that you need to edit.
2. Click on Firewall from the top menu.
3. Scroll down to the section titled IP Firewall Button.
   1. Click the button to the left titled Web Application Firewall.
4. Look for the section titled Package: Cloudflare Rule Set.
   1. Click Rule Details.
5. Scroll down to the section titled Cloudflare WordPress and click the link.
6. Click on page 4 from the pagination at the bottom of the section.
7. Look for the rules WP0025A and WP0025A.
   
8. On the far right side of the section under the Mode heading you will see a drop down list.
9. Choose disable for both rules.
10. You should see a green par across the bottom of the screen indicating that the settings are saved.
11. Click the Close button.
12. Go back to your WordPress Admin area and try to edit a post.

Unfortunately this workaround has never worked for me even after Gutenberg was updated and Cloudflare pushed out patches on their end.  As a last resort I had to whitelist my IP from the Firewall Events section of the Firewall page.

Now I am once again able to edit posts and whatnot in WordPress!

In my day job I recently came across a much easier was to deal with file and/or directory permissions on Linux based systems. Typically, to determine the permissions of a file or directory you would use the ls command with various potions appended to the end of the command and to change the same file or directory’s permissions you would use the chmod command. As I recently discovered the chmod is also able to clone or copy permissions as well as manually set them.

To lustrate what I ma talking about let’s create a hypothetically example where we have two files with the following permissions.

$ ls -l file*
-rwxr-xr--. 1 lrendek lrendek 0 Apr  7 14:39 file1
-rw-rw-r--. 1 lrendek lrendek 0 Apr  7 14:40 file2

If we wanted to copy the permissions from file 1 onto file2 we would run the following option appended to the chmod command.

$ chmod --reference=file1 file2

As we can see the permissions for file2 have been cloned from file1.

$ ls -l file*
-rwxr-xr--. 1 lrendek lrendek 0 Apr  7 14:39 file1
-rwxr-xr--. 1 lrendek lrendek 0 Apr  7 14:40 file2

If we extend this example further we can also clone the permissions of a directory as well!

$ ls -ld dir*
d--x--x--x. 2 lrendek lrendek 40 Apr  7 14:52 dir1
drwxrwxr-x. 2 lrendek lrendek 40 Apr  7 14:52 dir2
$ chmod --reference=dir1 dir2
$ ls -ld dir*
d--x--x--x. 2 lrendek lrendek 40 Apr  7 14:52 dir1
d--x--x--x. 2 lrendek lrendek 40 Apr  7 14:52 dir2

I had a little bit of an issue finding this but stubbled across this site that provided me with the syntax and examples. Although, I am making this entry mainly for myself but I also hoping that this post will make another Sys. Admin. Job easier. Uf you have any questions, comments, etc. please feel free to contact me on my Contact page or on Twitter.

This month my home experienced a rare power outage.  It did not last very long but somehow during the outage my trusty ASUS router was powering up but it was not passing any traffic.  I tried various troubleshooting methods but nothing resurrected it.  So, now I am forced to use the WiFi function of my DSL Gateway.  This system is really great for range but terrible for speed and reliability,  My household suffers through this for a few days before we decided that now we are in the market for a new router so after doing some research at The Wirecutter to see what they recommend as they have a really good testing methodologies.

 

The clear winner was of course the Eero Mesh WiFi System.  So my Wife and I made a trip to our local Best Buy to pick up the system that works best for the layout of our ranch style home.  Before installing the new system I ran a few speed tests from my office on a desktop and in carious places through the house on my smart phone.  The results are as follows.

Speed tests from DSL Gateway.

As you can see the signal strength is good but the speeds are terrible.  We were fin unless someone wanted to stream a video and we were buffering very often.

The setup process.

Setting up the Eero Gateway was very easy.  Unbox the gatewayy, install the eero application from your mobile app store of choice, and follow the prompts.

For my home I have the following setup.

• 1x Eero Gateway in the Living Room
  • 1x Belkin undamaged switch
• 1x Eero Beacon in the Kitchen
• 1x Eero Beacon in the Master Bedroom

Once everything synced up and the app advised me everything was connected it did a quick firmware update and restarted all 3 devices.  Once they were all showing back online I ran the same speed tests again.

Speed tests from the Eero Gateway

I find the results pretty compelling and my household is much happier now.  This is not the cheapest router out there but it is a huge improvement  over anything I have used in a long time.  Additionally, this router will never need me to manually upload to