The One with the Thoughts of Frans

Setting up Syncthing on a Debubuntu VPS

It couldn’t be much easier. First of all, you install the application using the official Apt repository. You want the repo so security updates and the like are automatically applied alongside your regular unattended upgrades. You are automatically applying security updates, aren’t you?

# Add the release PGP keys:
curl -s https://syncthing.net/release-key.txt | sudo apt-key add -

# Add the "release" channel to your APT sources:
echo "deb http://apt.syncthing.net/ syncthing release" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/syncthing.list

# Update and install syncthing:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install syncthing

Following installation, I’ve seen it suggested to temporarily change the configuration to allow remote web access, but it seems to me that SSH tunneling is much easier to use than changing the configuration every time you might want to enter the settings. Something like this should do. (Update: the manual already mentions it.)

ssh user@hostname -L 8500:localhost:8384

Subsequently, use localhost:8500 to access the configuration. You can of course use the same trick to make phpMyAdmin more secure. With that out of the way you can follow the manual for setting up Syncthing as a systemd service.

CommentsTags: , , ,

Let’s Encrypt on Debian/Jessie

Wow, that was easy. I’ve been reading about Let’s Encrypt all over the place, and I wouldn’t like any snooping on my feeds password, now would I?

  1. Add the jessie-backports repository.
  2. sudo apt install -t jessie-backports certbot python-certbot-apache
  3. sudo letsencrypt --apache -d example.com [-d subdomain.example.com]

This stuff expires every 90 days, so you still need a cron job to renew.

sudo crontab -e

Let’s say 4 at night every Sunday.

* 4 * * 0 letsencrypt renew >> /var/log/letsencrypt-renew.log

Neat!

CommentsTags: , ,

Switching to FreshRSS

QuiteRSS is a terrific piece of software. It only has one flaw, which is that it only runs on my desktop. Unfortunately this has led to me increasingly getting behind on the things I like to read. Sometimes this is fine, like when I can read a book instead, but other times it’s mildly frustrating.

QuiteRSS in three-column mode.

It would seem that none of the online feeds readers, whether self-hosted or SaaS, support the paradigm I’m used to. They’re all following the “golden standard” of nightmarish, thankfully-it’s-gone Google Reader. Basically I use feeds like emails. Most I delete after reading. Those I want to keep for reference I keep around, marked read.

But not so with these feedreaders. Feeds you want to keep for later reading should preferably be favorited, bookmarked, or maybe saved to a system like Wallabag. This has advantages too, of course. By centralizing your to-read list in one location, like Wallabag or Pocket, you don’t have the problem of remembering what’s where, or that you have loads of unread open tabs in various browsers.

Long story short, after sampling a whole bunch of feedreaders I opted for FreshRSS. It suffers from the omnipresent “no pages” disease. Got a feed with a thousand items? (Yes, they exist.) You can go to the start or the beginning by sorting in ascending or descending order, but reading things somewhere down the middle? Forget it.

These minor inconveniences are worth it, however. This way I can easily read my feeds from any computer anywhere in the world. The feeds are always updated, provided you set up a cron job. I don’t have to start up my computer or risk missing anything if I’m on vacation for a few days. I can quickly check them on my cellphone during an otherwise wasted moment. Overall I’m happy. Goodbye, QuiteRSS. You were a good friend after Opera died, but it’s time to move on.

PS Here are some feed-related links that should go along nicely with any feed reader.

  • Feed Creator allows you to create feeds for webpages that are missing them.
  • So does RSS-Bridge, but since it’s self-hosted it fits perfectly next to FreshRSS in the kluit spirit.
  • Tubes is a tool I wrote a few years back that can filter and fix up feeds. Useful if a website happens to have a feed, but not on a per-category basis or some such. Or of course because you might want to subscribe to an hourly news podcast, but only get the news once a day.

CommentsTags: , , ,

Cloud, Kluit, Clod?

Just a quick demonstration of the power of openclipart.org. I dubbed my “personal cloud” experiment kluit: a Dutch word meaning both clod and the ball of earth around the roots of a tree. In other words, kluit is firmly grounded because you’ve got your own ground with you wherever you go. Be like Dracula. With a name in mind, I also wanted a matching logo. Following a quick search for leaves, root (or was it tree) and after a little initial play something like attraction, this is the quick and satisfying result.

A couple of floating leaves still connected with their roots. This arrangement symbolizes how creating your personal cloud keeps it grounded.

And of course the remix is free for all. Enjoy.

Comments (1)Tags: , , ,

Using Syncthing to Replace Dropbox on Android

According to the timestamp on Getting Started.pdf, I’ve been a happy Dropbox user since 2010. For probably equally many years, they’ve had the most obnoxious Android app. Perhaps I don’t want to put my whole Dropbox on my Android phone (although I’m not so sure I don’t), but obviously you should be able to select a whole directory to sync. Solutions like Dropsync are unfortunately super slow, probably because it seems to be mostly a clever hack that syncs files one by one.

Instead of a similar alternative, I’ve really always been irked by the lack of an easy to use Unison-like sync for my phone. Running Unison in a chroot just doesn’t quite cut it… The obvious solution is something like Syncthing or Bittorrent Sync, which works regardless whether or not there’s a remote server involved. And if there is, it’d be a remote server under my own control.

Syncthing isn’t ideal because of its lack of subdirectory selection. But since in reality it’s almost exclusively a one-way street anyway, it doesn’t matter so much. The main point is that this is all easier than running an FTP server on the device, plugging it in over USB, running a webserver on it to drop files into a browser window or whatever other overly complicated solutions might exist. To install Syncthing, get it on F-Droid. Or Google Play, if you don’t think it’s obnoxious.

You can get by almost entirely on F-Droid alone. In fact it’s where most of the best software is found.

Unfortunately Syncthing can’t sync wherever. Oh well, we’ll just sync within its own directory instead.

On my phone, Syncthing can’t handle the MicroSD card, but we can trick it.

It’ll make some things a touch more complicated. Maybe a symlink? Oh drat, FAT32 strikes again. Meh.

Aard Dictionary doesn’t care where it’s located.
Add a favorite, a shortcut, or both. It’ll be difficult to interact with the directory otherwise.

The sync problem isn’t really solved yet, but it’s sure a lot better. All in all, Android is still awful and you should probably consider getting an Ubuntu Phone instead. The end.

As for Syncthing, perhaps its most interesting property is that it can largely replace both Dropbox and Unison. In fact it can probably completely replace Unison for me, because I haven’t actually bothered replicating my stuff onto a separate physical HDD in years. And Syncthing definitely makes it easier to add more of my laptops and whatnot into the mix. On the flipside, the fact that I run Unison once a week or so forces a kind of built-in review of the changes I made, so I can undo them if desired. In this way it’s more like a backup. But of course, Syncthing can sync between more than two computers at once, while the changes are happening. It’s worth a look, if nothing else.

Comments (1)Tags: , ,