Technical on Shami's Blog

Development Environments With Podman

Thu, 28 May 2026 09:56:28 +0300

I switched to NixOS a while back. Then I tried to learn Rust. Turns out, Rust does not play nicely with Nix. So the journey of finding an alternative began.

Forgejo Rootless Install with Podman and Ubuntu 24.04

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 05:23:25 +0300

I have recently switched from Docker to Podman, mostly because Podman’s integration with SystemD feels better to me than Docker Compose, especially with podman-quadlet. Setting up rootless Forgejo with Podman took some time figuring out so I decided to document it here.

Automating Hugo Deployments With Webhooks, Bitbucket, and CloudFlare

Thu, 14 Sep 2017 17:22:23 +0300

I’ve been using Hugo for a while now and love it. I don’t update my blog much and with Hugo I don’t need to spend more time updating the CMS than actually blogging. The markdown files are hosted at BitBucket along with my other code and I use CloudFlare for protection as well as a CDN.

Disable Google Analytics While Running Hugo Test Server

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 13:42:39 +0300

So while I was writing my previous post I realized that Google Analytics was being called from the localhost server. I also had lots of grief with Disqus back when I migrated to Hexo; It filled my account with posts related to localhost. I wonder why Disqus built it this way.

I hard-coded the Disqus URL in my theme (Both Hexo and Hugo) but then realized I can’t do the same for Google Analytics. I needed a way to disable it altogether. The fix turned out to be quite simple.

Adding Oracle Support PHP On Ubuntu Xenial

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:29:10 +0300

I’ve been recently asked to enable a web server running to PHP to connect to an Oracle database for a client. Sadly this doesn’t work natively on FreeBSD so I’m documenting how I managed to do it on Ubuntu Xenial. This was inspired by this post and this post.

Use Just What You Need Out Of Bootstrap And Similar Frameworks

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 13:56:17 +0300

If you know me, you’ll know I’m obsessed with speed. I like websites that are light and load quickly. At first I used WordPress because I knew how to optimize it and make it load quickly. I also used the GeneratePress theme because I loved how quickly it loaded. You can read this post to see why I migrated away.

Ghost introduced me to Markdown and I could never look back, but since I didn’t find any themes that I liked and the fact that Ghost looked as if it hadn’t been maintained in a while lead me to look for alternatives.

Allowing Read-Only Access To A Git Repository Via HTTP

Sun, 02 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Today I thought about a way to easily distribute an Ansible playbook. I thought about having a tgz file somewhere but I wanted read only access through HTTP in case I wanted to update clients that have already downloaded the content.

The easiest solution I have found was using cgit. Simply run it with nginx and fcgiwrap.

No Output From Drush

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A while back Drush stopped working on my servers and it would just return without doing anything. Today I decided to finally debug the issue. Turns out the FreeBSD port just fetches the Phar archive and installs it.

After digging around I found the following post which says that Suhosin blocks Phar file execution. The fix turned out to be quite simple; Just edit the Suhosin ini file (in FreeBSD it’s /usr/local/etc/php/ext-30-suhosin.ini) and add the following after the “extension” line:

1suhosin.executor.include.whitelist = phar

And you’re back in business :)

New Domain, Same Great Content

Wed, 23 Nov 2016 10:21:45 +0000

I’ve been wanting to get shami.blog ever since the generic TLDs have been introduced.

Now I finally have it, welcome to the new domain :).

XBOX LIVE With pfSense

Fri, 07 Oct 2016 06:14:25 +0000

A couple of months ago I switched from running OpenWRT on a TL-WDR4300 to running pfSense on a Netgate RCC-VE 2440. Not that OpenWRT is bad, it’s only because I’m a big fan of FreeBSD and I’ve been wanting to run a similar setup ever since I discovered custom firmware like DD-WRT and afterwards m0n0wall and Soekris. When I finally decided to get the hardware I thought Netgate had a better offering and I went for it.

Hexo Photo Gallery

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 17:14:07 +0000

So while I was migrating my data over from wordpress there were a few posts with photo galleries. The options I had were to write each photo gallery by hand or use the photos array in the front matter. What I did was change the photos array a bit and added the following code as a module

Responsive Youtube Videos With Hexo

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 14:05:00 +0000

Update: I have since moved to Hugo with Tailwind CSS and not sure if this code is still valid.

So now that I have finally finished fixing my content migration issues I can get back to writing.

While checking my old posts I noticed embedded using the {% youtube %} tag looked like this:

Welcome To My New Blog

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 23:11:28 +0000

Update: I have since migrated to Hugo which seems to be better maintained and generally easier for me to update. I have also started using Texts more for editing Markdown

I haven’t been very active on this blog over the years, one of the reasons was Wordpress itself; As nice as it is, I grew sick of updates always breaking something. Another thing that always made me feel uneasy was the email I got every once and a while from my blog telling me it updated itself. True, this is good when people ignore their blogs but I didn’t feel in control of my own blog any more and sometimes I wouldn’t have enough time to debug any plugins that broke when the blog decided it was time for me to upgrade.

Copying Content From A Word Document To A CKEDitor

Tue, 03 May 2016 02:42:13 +0000

So I’ve been assisting a customer with their website and I was helping them with some data entry. Most of the content they sent me was in MS Word format. Copying the text directly to Drupal’s CKEditor had all formatting messed up so I was copying to notepad, copying from there to Drupal and then formatting manually. This turned out to be a nightmare when I had to copy 10 tables in a single page.

'apt-get update' Failing After A Fresh Ubuntu 12.04 Installation

Mon, 02 May 2016 10:51:09 +0000

So I’m currently working with a customer that requires Ubuntu 12.04 for their servers since their apps were built and tested on that version, so every new install I run into the following issue

Corrupted image_captcha In Drupal

Sat, 23 Apr 2016 22:46:54 +0000

I have noticed that the image_captcha Drupal module has been showing empty images on some of the websites I administer. When checking the cause of this I tried to view the image directly and got:

Moving A Magento Instance To A New Domain

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 13:21:20 +0000

Quick one here, when you move a Magento instance to a new domain or URL it will keep redirecting to the old address. There is a quick fix

HOWTO: Small Mail Server With Salt, Dovecot, And OpenSMTPD

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 17:25:10 +0000

Update: Sadly OpenSMTPD version 5.4.4 on FreeBSD broke the passwd table, I’m checking the Gills to get this fixed.

Update2: I am no longer using OpenSMTPD. I’ve switched to dma for servers that only need to send emails and went back to Postfix for servers that require an actual MTA. Not that OpenSMTPD is bad, I just prefer Postfix. I might reconcider in the future when OpenSMTPD is more mature.

Perl One-liner To Generate htpasswd Passwords

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 01:59:00 +0000

Update: An easier way to do it that doesn’t require you to install anything special (Works with nginx) 1openssl passwd -apr1 Instead of having to install Apache or use an untrusted website just to generate the required password, you can use the following perl one liner 1perl -e 'chomp($password=<>);chomp($salt=`tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 </dev/urandom | head -c 1024`); print crypt($password,$salt)."\n";'

Using Your Own Router With The New @orangejo Modem

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 12:11:11 +0000

Update: I have since moved to Damamax and am MUCH happier with their service. Their network is more reliable, faster, and their support staff is wonderful. It’s a bit more expensive but considering the advantages I highly recommend switching if they cover your area.

ADSL In Jordan

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:36:54 +0000

I’ve heard various complaints from a few friends of mine about the status of Internet connectivity in Jordan, especially ADSL. So I’m writing this article to explain what is going on and why ADSL the way it is, but first, some history.

Back in pre-broadband times, people used dial-up modems to connect to the Internet. The name “modem” came from the fact that data was being modulated (Turned from digital to analog form) to be sent over the phone lines, and demodulated (Turned from analog to digital form) at the other end. This utilized the same frequencies used for regular phone conversations, this is why you could hear the weird sounds if you picked the phone up while being connected to the Internet. Given the relatively narrow frequency range used by phones this technology was limited to about 56Kbps, the best speed I got was back in 2003 which was about 5KB/s for my downloads, and that was considered fast at the time.

First Thoughts of @ZainJo's HSPA+ Service

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:18:27 +0000

Lately ISPs have been bombarding us with all sorts of Internet related ads, promising “high speeds” or “unlimited downloads”. Osama Hajjaj said it best with this comic:

Ubuntu 10.04

Sun, 02 May 2010 08:29:50 +0000

When Ubuntu 9.10 came out I was very eager to try it, but sadly I was very disappointed. So when I was downloading 10.04 I wasn’t really expecting anything. I’m glad I was wrong.

Delete All Messages From A POP3 Account

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:52:54 +0000

Here at the office, we host a few domains with Verio. Not my choice, and I’m not happy with it. We also host some mailboxes for one of those domains with Verio. I got a message from Verio support saying the mailboxes for that domain are occupying around 1GB of space, and that we need to delete some of them.

My Experience With The Motorola CPEo 400 Wimax CPE

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:05:35 +0000

Where I live we have no proper DSL (512Kbps max), GSM signals are weak. Sometimes I have to stick my head out of the window just to be able to make a call. Even when I got my Wimax account the indoor CPE kept disconnecting every few minutes. I finally managed to get my hands on an outdoor CPE which made things much better. Typical for someone living at the edge of the world (West Amman).

The Motorola CPEs act as network gateways, they connect to the Wimax network and do NATing for you. That’s nice for a home network, less stuff to configure and less clutter.

VMware Remote Console Firefox Plug-in And Arrow Keys

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:11:48 +0000

VMware remote console was working properly for me when I was using Ubuntu Hardy. After upgrading to Jaunty the arrow keys stopped working inside the remote console. Seems some people face this problem even under windows.

Lighttpd, Joomla, And Clean URLs

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:48:26 +0000

So I’m working on a new web server but I don’t want to use Apache since it’s a virtual machine. Had some trouble with the rewirte rules but I think I got them

Google Chrome On Ubuntu

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:37:35 +0000

I came across this guide about installing Google Chrome under Ubuntu. It is somewhat slow, slower than Windows and much slower than Firefox but it still works, well, kinda. You have a few problems with fonts, as well as sites that don’t work properly with Chrome yet. I’m sticking with Firefox for the time being, but at least I have an option for those sites that aren’t compatible with it.

Slow Browsing Under Ubuntu

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:35:23 +0000

EDIT: This post only covers IPv6, please check the update post which covers IPv6 and Firefox

Today when I rebooted to my Windows installation which I very rarely do, I noticed that browsing under Windows feels much faster than under Ubuntu. After booting back to Ubuntu I noticed the “looking up domain.tld” part was taking a lot of time, which seemed a little odd.

Microsoft Keyboard Function Key Fix

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:18:36 +0000

I’ve owned a Microsoft MultiMedia Keyboard 1.0A for years now. It’s a well belt keyboard to say the least. Only one problem though, the “F Lock” key. As a Linux user I have no use for the “Special” keys Microsoft added to the keyboard, and the button always starts turned off, no way to fix it.

FreeBSD, Postfix, Dovecot, and Active Directory

Sun, 25 May 2008 00:08:00 +0000

A while back one of my clients had an unpatched qmail server configured with local system users, it was set up in a collocation long before I took over. After having to listen to a lot of complaints about slow internet connectivity I found out that 40-50MB attachments were very common. Another thing I didn’t like about this set-up is the fact I had to maintain 2 password databases; An Active Directory for local user login and a shadow file for mail. So a local set-up with Active Directory as a back end was needed.

Surround Sound Under Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:50:18 +0000

Been using Ubuntu Hardy Heron for about a month now, and I have to say it rocks, the best Desktop Linux so far.

Booting Windows and Linux using the NT loader

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:48:12 +0000

I recently decided to install Windows on my home PC since I wanted to play some games, it’s been about 3 years since I started using Linux exclusively but thought a change would be nice. Since I didn’t find good guides I decided to write my own :)

Some Gnome Key Binding Tips

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:20:19 +0000

A few days ago I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade from Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.04. I’ve been using IceWM for a while and thought I should give Gnome a try. I’m used to Win+Something shortcuts so I wanted to implement those under Gnome. Here is a list of shortcuts that should cover the concepts:

Printing A Page Range In Outlook 2007

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:18:39 +0000

My current employer is switching from FirstClass to Microsoft Exchange. One of the questions I got from an employee was how to make Outlook print the first page of an email. When I went to the print dialog I was surprised that it doesn’t have a page range selection option, which surprised me. Having used Windows since version 3.0 I found that option in all Windows applications. Anyways, according to Microsoft, you can’t.

Solving "Body type not supported by remote host" Under Postfix

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:43:11 +0000

The other day I got some complaints from one of my mail users that he can’t send an email to someone. Since I’m the one causing the company to loose money because of my bad servers I had to “fix this issue”.

Signatures With Date Fields In Microsoft Outlook

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:43:19 +0000

Ok, so today our CEO said he wanted everybody to stamp their emails with the sending date. It’s very simple to just add the date manually, but as you know, a good engineer is a lazy engineer. So this is how I did it:

Apache, Rewrite Rules, Redirection, And Multiple Aliases

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 11:43:14 +0000

One of our clients has a website that you can go to using multiple URLs. The server was set up in a way which does a redirection to point into a sub folder. This redirection changed the URL used to a specific one, and the client didn’t like that.

Why Windows Is Less Secure Than Linux

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 01:45:00 +0000

A good Windows administrator can put together a more secure setup than a bad Linux administrator. This is an article I stumbled upon today, it shows, from a programmer’s point of view, why Windows is harder to secure than Linux. http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=311 (Sadly the link no longer works)

Thunderbird, Linux, And New Email Notification

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 03:56:00 +0000

Now that I think of it, I’ve been using Mozilla Thunderbird for more than 3 years now, it is one of the best email clients I have ever seen, and with the available extensions, it can do almost anything.

At home, I only open Thunderbird when I want to check for new email, but at work, I like to leave it open all the time in case I get any emails from my coworkers.

My Wireless Experience

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 01:50:00 +0000

I guess you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted anything for a while now. Well, I’ve been a little busy lately, one of the things I was working on is installing a wireless network at home. That project took too much time to complete because of some issues I had. And I’d like to share my story.At first, I went and bought a D-Link DSL-G624T. Good wireless range, nice external finish, built in DSL modem, it sure does remove a lot of the hassle of building a network. But after experimenting with it for 2 days, I was unable to forward SSH to my PC, the router is Linux based, and the firewall kept sending the SSH connections to itself, instead of forwarding them to the internal LAN.

Rotating Tomcat Logs

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:00:00 +0000

Something that had puzzled me for a while, when I first stared working for Integrant Inc. I noticed that the catalina.out file generated by tomcat was growing so big it sometimes reached 3 or even 4GB.

Sonicwall Global VPN Client

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 10:30:00 +0000

Last week while I was going over a checklist on a client’s system when our Leased Line service was disconnected.

No worries, that happens some times. I wait for the connection to go back up so I can finish my work, but I could not connect to the client’s network after that happened. So I think to myself, maybe the firewall still had the connection opened, so I go about and restart the firewall -which is a Sonicwall tz170 btw.

An Internal Memory Card Reader/Writer and Gentoo Linux; The Dangerous Combination

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 15:14:00 +0000

Hello everybody, it’s me again. Before I begin, I just want to say that this one’s dedicated to my friend and brother Kilo, you’ll love it :D.

After spending some time with my new w810i -which I love so far, I decided to get a card reader/writer to transfer files to/from the phone. Even though the USB cable that came with the phone worked like a charm, but I don’t want to use it since it charges the battery as soon as the phone is plugged, and I like to charge batteries only when they die.