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Delete files between two dates

To delete all files in a directory, between two dates, use the find command:

find /path/to/dir/ -type f -newermt 2022-01-01 \! -newermt 2023-01-01 -exec rm -fv '{}' +

Scan for newly added disks

To scan for newly added/modified disks, run the following command as root:

for f in /sys/class/scsci_host/*; do echo "---" > $f/scan; done

Ansible EX294 practice exam and solutions

I am hopefully going to take the second half of my RHCE exam this year, which is EX294. I have taken inspiration from and , and have decided to provide my own answers and explanations as I myself prepare for the exam.

I’ve also only used 4 VM’s in total, 1 controller and 3 nodes, and not 4 nodes as the practice exam suggests.

Here are the tips that I’ve found helpful so far:

How to unregister Viscosity

I was helping a colleague of mine set up VPN, with the client Viscosity to be specific, on macOS. During the process of setting it up, we noticed that remains of an old license, from another place, was still there. When she tried connecting to one of our remote servers, she got the following error:

This copy of Viscosity is registered using a license that does not allow connections to one or more of the remote servers for this connection. Please contact your VPN Provider for further details.

Tried searching for options to unregister the old license, but there was nothing visible in the GUI. I finally found a solution though, but it needs to be done in the terminal.

defaults delete com.viscosityvpn.Viscosity License

Then press Enter. Now start Viscosity again, and it should no longer give you that error. If your trial period has ended, you will have to enter a new valid license.

iTerm and alt+backspace

I recently changed jobs, going from a Linux environment to macOS. When I worked in the terminal in Linux, I got used to using alt+backspace to delete entire words. Unfortunately, it seems that this function isn’t native to the Terminal application that macOS has.However, in the application iTerm2 it’s possible to add your own key-combinations so that alt+backspace, or in this case cmd+backspace, works as it does in Linux.

Just follow these instructions:

  • Open up iTerm2 and head on over to Preferences
  • Go to Keys -> Key Mappings and press the +.
  • In the Action field, select Send Hex Code.
  • In the field Keyboard Shortcut, just press cmd+backspace.
  • In the field Hex code enter 0x1B 0x08.

And that’s it! cmd+backspace in iTerm2 should now have the same functionality as alt+backspace in Linux!

SimpleHTTPServer with SSL

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

and the result:

jorge@applepie:~ $ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8080 ...

It listens on all IPv4 interfaces, and binds to the port you specify, which in my case is 8080. The person on the other side will then be able to access the files in the directory from the outside by going to http://server1.example.com:8080, provided that your machine has the hostname server1.example.com, and that you have the port 8080 forwarded to the IP of server1.

sysprep – a fatal error occurred

I’m currently testing out Windows Deployment Services, and while working with sysprep on a Windows 7 Pro client machine, I got the following error:

sysprep error

Nothing seemed to work, till I tried the following recipe:

Open the run-menu, type in regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\Status\SysprepStatus. Find GeneralizationState and set the value to 7.

Run a command prompt with administrative privileges. Type:

msdtc -uninstall
msdtc -install

Open up regedit again and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform. Find SkipRearm and set the value to 1.

net stop WMPNetworkSvc

Try running sysprep again now. Hopefully it should work. That’ll save you some time of frustration and hopefully you won’t go bald sooner.

Should this not work, check the sysprep-log file at C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\Panther\setuperr.txt.

VMware, i3 and multiple monitors

For a while now I’ve been trying to set up VMware to work with multiple monitors, in a Linux guest. With some windowmanagers it works out of the box without any issue, such as with Unity. I never figured out how to do it with xmonad, and recently I switched to i3 just to try something new. The damn “Cycle multiple monitors” button didn’t work here either. When I tried it, a message popped up saying:

The virtual machine must have up-to-date VMware Tools installed and running.

ncat, a modern implementation of netcat

ncat is a utility that is like the UNIX cat command but for network connections. It’s based on the original netcat and comes with a couple of more modern features.

In this short post, we’ll go through a couple of examples to see exactly what uses this tool has. I’m currently using ncat version 7.01, in Ubuntu 16.04. ncat is a part of the nmap package in Ubuntu.