Skip to content

DOCKER ON VMWARE ESXI

By default you cannot run it here.

However if you:

Shutdown the VM

Browse to the VM’s folder within VMWare’s Datastore Browser

Download the VM’s .vmx file

Open it with a text editor

add this to the bottom:
vhv.enable = “TRUE”

Save the file

Upload it back to the storage manager and overwrite the original .vmx

Power the VM back on, it will now work

UPGRADE PORTAINER COMMUNITY EDITION ON DOCKER / / RASPBERRY PI

Here is a quick how-to for the way I updated my portainer to the latest

SSH to the Raspberry Pi 5

login

sudo su –
docker stop portainer
docker rm portainer
docker pull portainer/portainer-ce:latest
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9443:9443 –name=portainer –restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest

Open a browser, navigate to your Raspberry Pi 5:9443 and then login

Success!

INSTALLING PIHOLE ON RASPBERRY PI 5 WITH DOCKER

Assuming you already have a Raspberry Pi 5 setup with Debian, and also assuming you have Docker installed, here is how you setup Pi-Hole

Open a terminal

sudo su –
cd /home/yourusername
rm pihole.sh (if it exists)
nano pihole.sh
 Copy this new docker script
https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole/blob/master/examples/docker_run.sh
Change America/Chicago to America/New York
Save and Exit
sudo chmod u+x pihole.sh
./pihole.sh
Pihole now installs

Open a web browser and navigate to the IP/admin for example (not https)

Login… or if you did not get your password during the setup (happens sometimes)
From the terminal
docker exec -it pihole
sudo pihole -a -p
Create a new password

Back to your browser, and login.

Success

RUNNING OLLAMA ON UBUNTU 24.04 WITH NVIDIA GPU

Here is a quick step by step.

Install Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop. At the time Ubuntu Server 24.04 has issues. So run this on Desktop

Login and open a terminal
sudo su –

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

nvidia-smi
(this should show you your NVidia GPU. These drivers work well. Keep them)

apt install curl

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

If it errors, run it a second time. It fixes the error.
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

ollama pull llama2

ollama run llama2

Open a new terminal
watch -n 0.5 nvidia-smi
You can see the GPU work

Back in the LLama2 terminal
ctrl +c
this will kill the session

Add Docker’s official GPG key by selecting below and pasting it into the terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

echo \
“deb [arch=$(dpkg –print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo “$VERSION_CODENAME”) stable” | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

After the key installs:
apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

docker run -d –network=host -v open-webui:/app/backend/data -e OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:11434 –name open-webui –restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

sudo docker ps

Now open a browser and go to localhost:8080

Signup and create an account. this will be the administrator

Back in the Terminal, setup other modes:
ollama pull codegemma

ollama pull llama2:70b

ollama pull llama3:70b

ollama pull llama3

ollama pull dolphin-llama3:8b

ollama pull dolphin-llama3:8b-256k

ollama pull dolphin-llama3:70b-256k

ollama pull dolphin-llama3:70b-256k

ollama pull dolphin-llama3:70b

ollama pull llava

Now go and have fun

FLEXING COPILOT – INSTALL PYTHON ON WINDOWS

I have been finding out copilot’s limitations recently and to handle some items, I need to run python, using copilot generated code, so i can parse the data in my sharepoint library. For this article we will look at how to install python.

Open Windows Store

Search for Python

Click Install/Get

Once it is installed you can open a Command Prompt by:
Click Search in your Windows 11 task bar at the bottom of the screen

Type cmd

Then lets try to install some python packages at the C:\ prompt. You can do this by typing
pip install PyPDF2 pandas

If it installs, your python installation is successful

DOCKER PYTHON PIP INSTALL REQUIREMENTS

Without interrupting your existing environment I did this by creating an anaconda environment and installing python packages through pip this way

Install and Start Anaconda
docker run -i -t -p 8888:8888 continuumio/miniconda3 /bin/bash -c “/opt/conda/bin/conda install jupyter -y –quiet && mkdir /opt/notebooks && /opt/conda/bin/jupyter notebook –notebook-dir=/opt/notebooks –ip=’*’ –port=8888 –no-browser –allow-root”

Open your browser
Navigate to http://YOURIP:8888

Click New

Click Terminal

When the terminal opens, enter your package / version this way to install it, replacing pandas and version with the one you are trying to install
pip install pandas==1.5.1

That’s it. You are now functional.

ENABLE LONG FILE NAMES IN WINDOWS 11

Are you still getting that dreaded error message that your file could not be backed up, or it could not be copied because the file name was too long. Well here is how to fix it

On your Windows 11 device

Open Powershell as an Administrator

Copy the following code and press enter. It will add the proper reg key
New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem” -Name “LongPathsEnabled” -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

Reboot for good measure, it is Windows after all

You’re welcome

HOW TO SECURE YOUR TOR ONION KEYS

This is a quick guide on how to secure your Tor Onionsite from someone intercepting the keys and hijacking your domain.

Open a terminal and Type

sudo su –

Only hs_ed25519_secret_key is required for TOR to work

Copy other keys to a backup location

Do do this type:
mkdir /backup
mkdir /backup/current-tor-keys
cd /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
cp -R ./* /backup/current-tor-keys/
rm hs_ed25519_public_key
sudo chown -R debian-tor: /var/lib/tor/hidden_service
sudo chmod -R u+rwX,og-rwx /var/lib/tor/hidden_service

Now use WinSCP and copy the keys off the server to a safe location and delete them from your /backup directory

AUTOMATIC UPDATES FOR UBUNTU 22.04

Setting up automatic updates is critical if you want to maintain a secure environment. Make sure you have automatic backups that occur prior to the updates, so you have a rollback plan.

Here are the commands to set it up.

Open a terminal:
sudo su –
apt install unattended-upgrades
systemctl status unattended-upgrades
apt install update-notifier-common
nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

Now remove the // before each of these lines, and change the values to make them relevant for your system
Unattended-Upgrade::Mail “youremailaddress@yourdomain.com”;
Unattended-Upgrade::MailReport “on-change”;
Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Kernel-Packages “true”;
Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Kernel-Packages “true”;
Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Dependencies “true”;
Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot “true”;
Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot-WithUsers “true”;
Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot-Time “06:00”;
Unattended-Upgrade::OnlyOnACPower “true”;

Save and Exit the file

nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades

Now replace the contents of the file with the info below:
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists “1”;
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade “1”;

Save the File and Exit

dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

Reboot your system instead of running a service restart

That’s it!