Category: Software

Setting up a Mac Laptop for a Software Engineer Coming from a Linux Desktop

Posted on by rchapin

I’ve recently started a new job and am setting up a MacBook Pro M4. I’ve been using either a native Linux Desktop, or a Linux Desktop as a VM on a Windows box for most of my career. There are a number things about the Mac that are different than Intel based machines running Linux following are the list of changes that I have made to make it usable as a development environment.

Disable the “Press and Hold” Feature

By → Continue reading “Setting up a Mac Laptop for a Software Engineer Coming from a Linux Desktop”

How to Install Windows 11 on a Dell Optiplex 990 (and perhaps other older hardware)

Posted on by rchapin

To perform a clean install

  1. Configure the BIOS
    • Set boot mode to UEFI
    • Set SATA configuration to AHCI
    • Enable Secure Boot/TPM
  2. Prepare a USB drive
    • Use Ventoy to create a USB drive
    • Copy the win11 ISO to the data partition of the drive
  3. Wipe the drive during the install process
    • Boot from the USB
    • When you see the “Where do you want to install Windows?” screen press Shift + F10 to open a command prompt
    • Then type the following commands,
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Mount External, Encrypted, LMV drives

Posted on by rchapin

First decrypt the drive. When I plugged it in GNOME displayed a dialog and asked for the key. I’m guessing that cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/device device_crypt would work as well.

Run lvdisplay to get the LV Path for the logical volume that you want to mount.

Then, activate the volumes , there is a way to activate a specific one volume, but the following activates them all.

vgchange -ay

Then mount it

mount <lv-path/mnt

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PDF Commands Cheat Sheet

Posted on by rchapin

Following are a number of common PDF processing commands on a Linux box

Convert a series of images to a PDF

convert image-1 image-2 ... images.pdf

convert-im6.q16: attempt to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy `PDF’ @ error/constitute.c/IsCoderAuthorized/426.

ImageMagick, specifically version 6 (im6), is preventing the conversion of PDF files due to a security policy. To address this

  1. As root, edit /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml
  2. Search for the line <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PDF" /
  3. Update rights="none" to rights="read|write"
  4. Save
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Debian Package Management Cheat Sheet

Posted on by rchapin
  • List version of an installed package: dpkg -s docker-ce | grep Version
  • Show all available versions of a package: apt-cache madison <package>

Packages being held back because of phasing

Run the following command replacing the package in question

apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade <package-name>

The following packages have been kept back

Try the following, in order. Each is less risky than the next. Stop as soon as you have fixed the problem.

Solution 1

apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade <list of packages kept back>
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How to partially cherry-pick a commit in git

Posted on by rchapin

There are times when you need to cherry-pick a commit from another branch. Then there are times when you only need parts of that commit.

Following is how you can partly cherry-pick a commit to get only the changes that you need.

Get the patch for the entire commit. Include the -n for no commit so that it does not add it as a commit to your branch

git cherry-pick -n <commit>

Then unstage the the changes from the cherry-picked → Continue reading “How to partially cherry-pick a commit in git”

Go template that properly renders delimiters for a slice of structs

Posted on by rchapin

It is common to write go text/templates that range over a slice of objects to write out a list or array of items that are separated by some delimiter defined in the template.

In the case of a JSON array of objects, the cleanest output would be a , separating each object without a leading or trailing comma.

Because go template if statements are falsey in that a 0 value will evaluate to false you can write a template as → Continue reading “Go template that properly renders delimiters for a slice of structs”

How to set up a locally hosted git server and create new repositories

Posted on by rchapin

You may have code and configurations that are required to stay on premise. As a result, you will need to setup your own git server and create and manage repositories locally. Following is an overview of how to set that up.

We will leave aside server setup, configuration, and networking and assume that we have a machine on which we will host the repos, git-server, and machines that will clone, pull, and push updates, clients.

Setting up the

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© 2005 Ryan Chapin