# blog // ~ben

a blog about tildes and other things

### default branch name

June 16, 2020 — ~ben

changing git's default branch name has come up recently as an easy action we can take to update our language and remove harmful ideas from our daily usage.

i'm concerned that this effort to change the language used is ultimately a symbolic gesture to avoid scrutiny into actual change (notably github's push for this change and continued contracts with ICE).

however, it's an easy change to make.

let's have a look at how to change it for new repos:

    mkdir -p ~/.config/git/template
    echo "ref: refs/head/main" ~/.config/git/template/HEAD
    git config --global init.templateDir ~/.config/git/template

note that you can put this template dir anywhere you like.

you can also set this system-wide (not just for your user) in /usr/share, but note that this might get overriden by package updates.

    echo "ref: refs/head/main" | sudo tee /usr/share/git-core/templates/HEAD

the next time you `git init`, you'll be on a branch named main.

to change an existing repo, you can use the `-m` switch of `git-branch`:

    git checkout master
    git branch -m master main

push with `-u` to your remote if needed and update the default branch in the repo settings in the hosting platform of choice.

it's a relatively easy change, but don't kid yourself that it makes any real impact. go protest, donate and sign petitions, and get out there to fix the actual problems.

tags: git, linux, dev

### networking nonsense

February 11, 2019 — ~ben

i've recently been working on setting up drone ci on the tilde.team machine. however, there's been something strange going on with the networking on there.

read more...

### weechat setup

November 16, 2018 — ~ben

so you decided to switch from irssi to weechat?

what options do you need to set? what plugins? what scripts?

i'll go over some of the most essential of these, and share my full configs.

read more...

### november 13 post mortem

November 13, 2018 — ~ben

we had something of an outage on november 13, 2018 on tilde.team.

i awoke, not suspecting anything to be amiss. as soon as i logged in to check my email and irc mentions, it became clear.

tilde.team was at the least inaccessible, and at the worst, down completely. according the message in my inbox, there hade been an attempted "attack" from my IP.

read more...

### no more google

August 14, 2018 — ~ben

not sure if this is appropriately tagged, but i didn't feel like making a new one.

i figured i should probably get some notes down about moving off google.

to start, i'll get a list of the things i was able to easily replace:

- gmail => @tilde.team mail
- google drive => syncthing (with a persistent node running on my personal vps)

i'm still using:

- gplay music/youtube
- google maps (open streetmap isn't good enough to replace it)
- google photos - but this is going to be replaced long-term with syncthing

tags: linux, net-neutrality

### upsides of new dns nameservers

August 14, 2018 — ~ben

- no more google
- no more google
- automated certbot validation for letsencrypt wildcard certs!! no more manual TXT records every three months!

tags: dns, linux, tilde

### dns shenanigans post-mortem

August 14, 2018 — ~ben

let's start by saying i probably should have done a bit more research before diving head-first into this endeavor.

i've been thinking about transferring my domains off google domains for some time now, as part of my personal goal to self host and limit my dependence on google and other large third-party monstrosities. along that line, i asked for registrar recommendations. ~tomasino responded with namesilo. i found that they had $3.99 registrations for .team and .zone domains, which is 1/10th the cost of the $40 registration on google domains.

i started out by getting the list of domains from the google console. 2 or 3 of them had been registered within the last 60 days, so i wasn't able to transfer those just yet. i grabbed all the domain unlock codes and dropped them into namesilo. i failed to realize that the dns panel on google domains would disappear as soon as it went through, but more importantly that the nameservers would be left pointing to the old defunct google domains ones.

i updated the nameservers as soon as i realized this error from the namesilo panel. some of the domains propagated quickly. others, not so much. tilde.team was still in a state of flux between the old and new nameservers.

in a rush to get the dns problem fixed, and under recommendation from several people on irc, i decided to switch the nameservers for tilde.team and tilde.zone to cloudflare, leaving another layer of flux for the dns to be stuck in...

of the five domains that i moved to cloudflare, 3 returned with a dnssec error, claiming that i needed to remove the DS record from that zone. d'oh!

i removed the dnssec from those affected domains, so we should be good to go as soon as it all propagates through the fickle beast that is dns.

tags: linux, sysadmin, tilde, dns

### lxd networking and additional IPs

July 26, 2018 — ~ben

now that tilde.team is on a fancy-shmancy new dedi server, i've tried to get a secondary IP address assigned to a lxd container (which i plan to use for my personal stuff). lxd shows that the secondary IP is being picked up by that container, but i'm still seeing the host machine's IP as the external address.

i'm not sure how i'll need to configure the network settings on the host machine (now that we're running ubuntu 18.04 and it uses netplan for configs and not /etc/network/interfaces). another confusing thing is that the main config in /etc/netplan says that the network config is handled by systemd-networkd...

at least i have through the end of the year when my current vps runs out to get this up and running.

ping me on irc or email if you have experience with this.

tags: linux, sysadmin, ubuntu

### dotfiles

July 22, 2018 — ~ben

finally got around to updating my dotfiles to use gnu stow. i adapted ~tomasino's makefile for use with the configs that i'm keeping with it.

now i just need to figure out why my ssh config doesn't copy/symlink my config to ~/.ssh when it already exists.

tags: linux, dotfiles, git

### hi there

October 02, 2017 — tildeman

welcome to my tildeblog

you are here.

i like to mess around with linux sysadmin shtuff. tilde.team is my baby. let me know if you want to get involved.

thanks for being awesome. keep it up.

tags: linux, sysadmin, ubuntu, tilde