Happy Holidays Everyone!

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!

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! 🙂

---------- On Red Hat Linux ---------- 
$ cat /etc/redhat-release

---------- On CentOS Linux ---------- 
$ cat /etc/centos-release

---------- On Fedora Linux ---------- 
$ cat /etc/fedora-release

---------- On Debian Linux ---------- 
$ cat /etc/debian_version

---------- On Ubuntu and Linux Mint ---------- 
$ cat /etc/lsb-release

---------- On Gentoo Linux ---------- 
$ cat /etc/gentoo-release

---------- On SuSE Linux ---------- 
$ cat /etc/SuSE-release

AS you can see this various depending on on which form of the original Linux Operating System so I usually end up searching for this as it is not something that I use day to day in my professional or work life. I hope it makes somees’s day that much easier. 🙂

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

I stumbled across this interesting article this week from The Verge from my beloved NetNewsWire feeds. The article is titled Today I learned you can easily pause the Windows Task Manager to stop apps moving around. The gist of the article is the below quote for those in a hurry. 😝

I can’t believe I’ve been struggling with apps in the Task Manager randomly moving around without realizing there’s a simple keyboard shortcut to pause the Task Manager and stop its contents in their tracks. Yup, all you have to do is hold down the CTRL key and it will pause the Task Manager on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, and perhaps even older versions of Windows, too.

Tom Warren via The Verge

This tip only applies to Windows 10 and 11 and I wish I had known this years ago! At any rate as you can see in the original article at your leisure and I hope it helps out others out there in this wide world.