SOCK5 proxy configuration on Vultr

As of now, Vult was not (yet) blocked, probably because it is less known in the CIS. If you missed our Digital Ocean sock5 configuration guide, then you can follow this guide.

For us, both DO and Vulture work as of now.
- https://spark-in.me/post/vultr-sock5-proxy-server

You can use our referral links to create accounts
- https://m.do.co/c/6f8e77dddc23
- https://www.vultr.com/?ref=7402755

If you like the above guides, consider buying us a coffee
- https://www.buymeacoffee.com/8oneCIN

#linux
#digital_freedom

A small saga about OpenVPN

TLDR:
(0) Purchase a cheap VDS from a noname provider with decent bandwidth => install OpenVPN => forget about problems => share with friends and family;
(1) This guide just works https://goo.gl/K2xjby (do not be afraid of its length - it is just verbose);
(2) I tested it with DigitalOcean and hostus.us;

From a financial standpoint US$1-5 per month per 3-5 users without any 3rd party services seems to be a bargain.

Hosting options:
(0) With DO it just works (just follow the guide step by step). But the cheapest VDS (which is overkill for this) costs US$5 per month. If you use my link - https://m.do.co/c/6f8e77dddc23 - you will get US$10 for free;
(1) Tested it with hostus.us. Follow my link, if you would like to support us - https://my.hostus.us/aff.php?aff=2169. A decent VPS can be found in Amsterdam for as cheap as US$5-8 for 3 months. Be careful - their UX is a bit misleading at times - (!!!) the country choice does not seem to flow from one menu to another (!!!). This seems to be more than enough - https://goo.gl/GyPZ6u;
(2) If you want to search yourself - go here - http://lowendstock.com/ - the best 2 options seem to be VirMach and hostus, but the former is sold out;

Host.us caveats:
(0) If you would like to follow the DO guide but use hostus, then for the cheapest options do not forget to enable this in the admin https://goo.gl/DRx3UX;
(1) VPS provisioning time there is 0-8 hours. In my case it was ~40 mins;
(2) I also faced this bug -https://goo.gl/BTqeTX;

What if I have a problem with ssh keys on windows?
(0) This will give you some basic info about managing Linux servers https://goo.gl/TgL61G;
(1) Here we explain how to use Putty and ssh keys on Windows https://goo.gl/xxvGBb (also just google it);

Why OpenVPN:
(0) Seems to be the most well-known open-source VPN software with easy accessible clients for all major platforms;
(1) I know people who used it;

Alternatives:
(0) https://github.com/trailofbits/algo - seems to be newer and cooler, but I do not know living people who reported actually using it;

#linux
#digital_freedom

Using ncdu with exclude

A really good extension of standard du

sudo ncdu --exclude /exclude_folder /

Useful when something is mounted in /media or /mnt

#linux

A very useful combination in tmux

You can resize your panes via pressing
- first ctrl+b
- hold ctrl
- press arrow keys several time holding ctrl
...
- profit

#linux
#deep_learning

Playing with renewing SSL certificates + Cloudflare

I am using certbot, which makes SSL certificate installation for any web-server literally a one-liner (a couple of guides - https://goo.gl/nP2tij / https://goo.gl/X6rVxs).
It also has an amazing command certbot renew for renewing your certificates.

Unsurprisingly, it does not work, when you have Cloudflare enabled. The solution in my case was as easy as:
- falling back to registrar's name-servers (luckily, my registrar stores its old DNS zone settings)
- certbot renew
- reverting back to cloudflare's DNS servers
- also, in this case when using VPN I did not have to wait for DNS records to propagate - it was instant

#linux

Yet another proxy - shadowsocks

If someone needs another proxy guide, someone with an Arabic username shared some alternative advice for proxy configuration
- http://disq.us/p/1tsy4nk (wait a bit till link resolves)

#internet
#linux

Thanks for everybody who used our DO / host.us affiliate links!

They finally started to vest)

Affiliate links:
https://m.do.co/c/6f8e77dddc23
https://my.hostus.us/aff.php?aff=2169

There were a couple of simplistic guides:
- Socks5 https://spark-in.me/post/vds-socks5-proxy-server
- OpenVPN https://t.me/snakers4/1945

#linux

Python3 nvidia driver bindings in glances

They used to have only python2 ones.

If you update your drivers and glances, you will get a nice GPU memory / load indicator within glances.
So convenient.

#linux

Getting your public key from Github ... with wget!

I kind of saw it when installing Ubuntu 18 from scratch. But it is super awesome!

wget -O - https://github.com/snakers4.keys >> test

Just replace test with your authorized_keys file and profit!

#linux

Creating a new user

With the above hack, user creation can be done as easy as:

USER="YOUR_USER" && \
GROUP="YOUR_GROUP" && \
sudo useradd $USER && \
sudo adduser $USER $GROUP && \
sudo mkdir -p /home/$USER/.ssh/ && \
sudo touch /home/$USER/.ssh/authorized_keys && \
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /home/$USER/.ssh/ && \
sudo wget -O - https://github.com/$USER.keys | sudo tee -a /home/$USER/.ssh/authorized_keys

#linux

Environment setup for DS / ML / DL

Some time ago made a small guide for setting up an environment on a black Ubuntu machine.

If works both for CV and NLP.

If you like this, please tell me, I will add newer things:
- nvtop;
- CUDA10 with PyTorch 1.0;
- Scripts for managing GPU fan speed;

http://github.com/snakers4/gpu-box-setup/

#deep_learning
#linux

Linux subsystem in Windows 10

It works and installs in literally 2 clicks (run one command in Powershell and then just one-click install your Linux distro of choice in Windows Store (yes, this very funny indeed))!

Why would you need this?
To make and backup files on one command for example =)

Something like this becomes reality on Windows:

cd /mnt/d/ && \
TIME=`date +%b-%d-%y` && \
FILENAME=working_files_tar-$TIME.tar.gz && \
INCREMENTAL_FILE=backup_data.snar && \
echo 'Using folderlist' $FOLDERS && \
tar -czg $(<folders_backup.txt) --listed-incremental=$INCREMENTAL_FILE --verbose -f $FILENAME

Also, you may add rsync or scp and you are good to go!

Also other potential use cases:

- You are somehow vendor locked (I depend on proprietary drivers for my thunderbolt port to attach an external GPU) or just are used to Windows' windows (or are just lazy to install Linux);
- You need one particular Linux program or you need to quickly test something / do not want to bother replicating your environment under Windows (yes, you can also run Docker, but there will be some learning curve);
- You run all of your programs remotely, and use your Windows machine as a thin client, but sometimes you need git / bash / rsync - i.e. to download movies from your personal NAS;

#linux

A bit of lazy Sunday admin stuff

Monitoring you CPU temperature with email notifications

- Change CPU temp to any metric you like
- Rolling log
- Sending email only one time, if the metric becomes critical (you can add an email when metric becomes non-critical again)

https://gist.github.com/snakers4/cf0ffd57c3ef7f4e2e25f6b3347dcdec

Setting up a GPU box on Ubuntu 18.04 from scratch

https://github.com/snakers4/gpu-box-setup/


#deep_learning
#linux

Tracking your hardware ... for data science

For a long time I though that if you really want to track all your servers' metrics you need Zabbix (which is very complicated).

A friend recommended me an amazing tool
- https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/node-exporter/

It installs and runs literally in minutes.
If you want to auto-start it properly, there are even a bit older Ubuntu packages and systemd examples
- https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/tree/master/examples/systemd


Dockerized metric exporters for GPUs by Nvidia
- https://github.com/NVIDIA/gpu-monitoring-tools/tree/master/exporters/prometheus-dcgm

It also features extensive alerting features, but they are very difficult to easily start, there being no minimal example
- https://prometheus.io/docs/alerting/overview/
- https://github.com/prometheus/docs/issues/581

#linux