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Welcome to IGAZINE
Of all the websites in all the world you stumbled upon mine.
— Eric McWilliams 2025/05/08 18:48
I'm not sure what brought you here, be it random or some search engine, but welcome. I just wanted a place to put down random things in my head, day-to-day cool things I find, and anything I'd like to share with others.
The Blogs Starts here
This is just me thinking out loud.
Debian 12 logging change and my syslog project
Picking back up from my technical posting on configuring centralized syslog this is what my logging directory looks like in Debian 12 (Bookworm). Things have gotten interesting since the last time I started a syslog project.
root@syslog01:/var/log# ls README cloud-init-output.log exim4 runit alternatives.log cloud-init.log journal unattended-upgrades apt dpkg.log lastlog wtmp btmp droplet-agent.update.log private
Well it looks like a lot of things have changed in the logging world since Debian 9. I know people have had their political arguments over time but looks like systemd has finally taken over logging as well. I have never really had a dog in the fight and just kind of took to systemd as it took over the Linux world. Here is the README content.
root@syslog01:/var/log# less README You are looking for the traditional text log files in /var/log, and they are gone? Here's an explanation on what's going on: You are running a systemd-based OS where traditional syslog has been replaced with the Journal. The journal stores the same (and more) information as classic syslog. To make use of the journal and access the collected log data simply invoke "journalctl", which will output the logs in the identical text-based format the syslog files in /var/log used to be. For further details, please refer to journalctl(1). Alternatively, consider installing one of the traditional syslog implementations available for your distribution, which will generate the classic log files for you. Syslog implementations such as syslog-ng or rsyslog may be installed side-by-side with the journal and will continue to function the way they always did. Thank you! Further reading: man:journalctl(1) man:systemd-journald.service(8) man:journald.conf(5) https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-journal.html README (END)
Now after some reading I believe I will keep using rsyslog or syslog-ng (the debate will rage on during this project). I think some users have legit concerns with corruption and journald.
Had to delete 0 A.D. today
Alright no kidding I have very addictive tendencies when it comes to playing games. I get locked in on strategy games like Civ, Red Alert, and others. After I loaded LinuxMint (DBE) and started using it as my daily driver a friend of mine recommended I load 0 A.D. and at first I said no. I knew my limitations when it comes to holding back on a game like this.
0 A.D. (pronounced “zero-ey-dee”) is a free, open-source, historical Real Time Strategy (RTS) game currently under development by Wildfire Games, a global group of volunteer game developers. As the leader of an ancient civilization, you must gather the resources you need to raise a military force and dominate your enemies.
I decided to delete the game after about 20 hours of game play. Not because its not a great game and a very impressive demonstration of the power of opensource collaboration, but I had to drop it or I wouldn't get anything done. I have been blogging more and working on side projects more these days. I may load it again, I mean I really did enjoy the game, but I need to handle these games with caution or I will be 4000 hours in and not doing anything productive in life.
Moved to Full VPS instead of shared hosting.
— Eric McWilliams 2025/05/15 20:10
I started my dokuwiki adventures like 2 or 3 weeks ago hosting things in some shared space at Dreamhost. I prefer having my instance on a shared host and not hosting this myself. The server/webserver/php setup alone can get pretty demanding on my personal time although these days it was pretty much “Spin up Debian VM, configure initial server, install Apache and php, then download and tar the dokuwiki packaged from their download page. The real headache comes in setting dokuwiki server permissions and not granting to much access to the rest of the world. I am still not 100% sure I did it right and wouldn't be surprised if some bot finds this instance and spams the hell out of the backend.
Well as I started adding plugins for dokuwiki I got to the point of loading a plugin I loved, and used years ago called Graphviz. Graphviz is open-source graph visualization software and includes a language called dot built by AT&T Labs this whole package was used to automate large network/telco drawings. On the shared hosting provider, the plugin constantly broke for me. I wracked my brain out for a day or two and it dawned on me that the hosting provider probably wouldn't allow a web/php script to call back and run an executable without some special permissions. I spent another day trying to figure out a work around with no luck.
Just to test my theory I spun up another self-contained VM at Digital Ocean another cloud provider/ISP I have been using for years now. After configuring the server and packages I loaded up the dokuwiki plugins with Graphviz and gave it a test and YES it works now!
Blogging in a Wiki?!?!? What in the world?
Years ago I had used this DokuWiki to start keeping track of different types of documentation like firewall rules change proposals, network configurations, and other things. I then started blogging on platforms like LiveJournal but wanted something I could host myself like DokuWiki. Some people had built a blogging plugin for the Wiki back then and I kicked it around a bit but ended up going through my trials with WordPress over the years.
Well, I am back on DokuWiki and will probably stay here for a long time. Oh and speaking of LiveJournal I found out my old account was still active with some postings from 2005. I did some clean up and removed it from the internet but grabbed some screen captures I will be sharing here when the time is right.