I needed to install Advanced Diary on an Ubuntu Linux system. for someone who had been using the program for journaling on a Microsoft Windows system. I had previously installed Wine, a program that allows one to run Windows applications on Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD systems. I used AdvDiary.sh, which contains the following lines, to install Advanced Diary:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 AdvancedDiarySetup.exe"
  exit 1
fi

INSTALLER="$(realpath "$1")"
PREFIX="$HOME/.wine-advdiary"

echo "Creating 32-bit Wine prefix..."
export WINEPREFIX="$PREFIX"
export WINEARCH=win32
winecfg -v win7 >/dev/null 2>&1 || true

echo "Installing required components (gdiplus, corefonts)..."
winetricks -q gdiplus corefonts

echo "Forcing native GDI+..."
cat > "$PREFIX/user.reg" <<'EOF'
[Software\\Wine\\DllOverrides]
"gdiplus"="native"
EOF

echo "Running Advanced Diary installer..."
wine "$INSTALLER"

echo
echo "✔ Installation complete"
echo "Run with:"
echo "WINEPREFIX=$PREFIX wine \"$PREFIX/drive_c/Program Files/Advanced Diary/Diary.exe\""

To run it, you need to assign "execute" permission to the file, which can be done in a Terminal window with chmod + x filename or chmod a+x filename to make a file executable by all users or chmod u+x filename to make it executable by just the owner of the file, i.e., the user.

alice@Wonderland:~/Downloads$ chmod u+x install-advanced-diary.sh 
alice@Wonderland:~/Downloads$ 

When I ran the shell script .sh file, I realized I hadn't installed Winetricks beforehand, so I installed it with sudo apt install winetricks after running the script. I then reran the installation script for Advanced Diary. The installation completed successfully — I selected the option to have the program opened automatically at the conclusion of the installation — and it appeared to open normally (I had to press Enter in the terminal window to return to the shell prompt).

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[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link

If you need to determine if a drive in a Microsoft Windows system or connected to it via USB is BitLocker encrypted, you can use the manage-bde utility. To use the program, open a command prompt window with administrator privileges and then issue the command manage-bde -status to see the status of all drives. To see just the status of one drive, e.g., C:, you could use manage-bde -status C:.

C:\Windows\System32>manage-bde -status c:
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.26100
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Volume C: [Windows]
[OS Volume]

    Size:                 14826.87 GB
    BitLocker Version:    None
    Conversion Status:    Fully Decrypted
    Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
    Encryption Method:    None
    Protection Status:    Protection Off
    Lock Status:          Unlocked
    Identification Field: None
    Key Protectors:       None Found


C:\Windows\System32>

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You can run the Big Fish Games Game Manager on an Ubuntu Linux system under Steam. You can install Steam as a Snap package from the Ubuntu App Center.

Steps:

1. Download the Big Fish Games App (Game Manager) for PC
2. In Steam on the Ubuntu system, click on Add a Game, which is at the lower, left-hand corner of the Steam window, then select Add a Non-Steam Game, then browse to where you downloaded the .exe installer for the game manager, click on it, and then click on Add Selected Programs.
3. You should then see the Big Fish Game Manager in the "Uncategorized" list of games at the left side of the Steam window, e.g., you may see bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe listed. Right-click on it and then select Properties, then Compatibility, and then, from the drop-down list that becomes available, select Proton Experimental or the latest stable version — I selected Proton Experimental.
4. You can then close the Compatibility window by clicking on the "X" at the upper, right-hand corner.
5. Then with the Big Fish Game Manager selected in the Uncategorized list, click on the Play button to launch the Big Fish Game Manager Setup and agree to the License Agreement when you see it appear.

When I started the install process, the installation appeared to hang at "Execute: C:\Program Files (x86)\bfglient\epoch.exe". When I clicked on the title bar for the window, I saw "About Wine", so it appeared to be using Wine, which I had previously installed on the Ubuntu system. But I waited and eventually the installation succeeded, though I think it took over 15 minutes. I closed the window and then went back to the Steam window, I saw bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe was still there. This time when I clicked on it, the Big Fish window where I could sign in to Big Fish Games opened fairly quickly.

Note: if the window goes blank or displays just a white background, minimize it by clicking on the "-" in the upper, right-hand corner of the Big Fish window and then switch to it again, which you can do with Alt+Tab — continue to press the Tab key while continuing to hold down the Alt key to cycle between open open windows until you get to the Big Fish window.

Initially, you will see "No games to play," but if you have already purchased games that you've played on another system, you can click on Purchase History and install them on the Linux system. When I installed the Big Fish Games Manager under Steam, I had my wife check one of her games, Aquascapes, and that ran fine. I then closed the Big Fish window and the Steam window and reopened it. Note: if you want to change the name that appears for Big Fish Games in the Uncategorized list, you can right-click on the entry, e.g., bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe, and choose Properties and then change the "Shortcut" value to something you prefer, such as "Big Fish Games". When I reopened Steam and started Big Fish Games, I saw the Aquascapes game under "My Games".

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

To access a directory that is shared from a Microsoft Windows system in a Windows domain, you can take the following steps on a Ubuntu Linux system. Note: you will need to have a package installed that provides Server Message Block (SMB) support. If the libsmclient0 package is installed, you should be able to use these steps. You can check if it is installed by opening a Terminal window and issuing the command dpkg -s libsmbclient0. If it is not installed, you can install it with sudo apt install libsmbclient0.

alice@Wonderland:~$ dpkg -s libsmbclient0
Package: libsmbclient0
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: libs
Installed-Size: 259
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Multi-Arch: same
Source: samba
Version: 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2
Replaces: libsmbclient
Provides: libsmbclient (= 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2)
Depends: samba-libs (= 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2), libbsd0 (>= 0.0), libc6 (>= 2.38), libndr6 (>= 2:4.17.2), libtalloc2 (>= 2.0.4~git20101213), libtevent0t64 (>= 0.15.0)
Breaks: libsmbclient (<< 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2)
Description: shared library for communication with SMB/CIFS servers
 This package provides a shared library that enables client applications
 to talk to Microsoft Windows and Samba servers using the SMB/CIFS
 protocol.
Homepage: https://www.samba.org
Original-Maintainer: Debian Samba Maintainers <pkg-samba-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org>
alice@Wonderland:~$

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

[/network/web/browser/firefox] permanent link

If you need to list all of the accounts on an Ubuntu Linux system, there are many commands that you can use.

1. cat /etc/passwd
2. grep -oE '^[^:]+' /etc/passwd - for just the account names
3. cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd - for just the account names
4. awk -F: '{print $1}' /etc/passwd - for just the account names
5. lslogins
6. compgen -u - for just the accunt names
7. getent passwd

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

If you need to determine the amount of memory in a system that is running the Ubuntu Linux operating system (OS), you can open a Terminal window from the App Center and then use the free command. If you use the command without any options, you will see the amount of memory displayed in bytes. To display the value in a more human-friendly format, you can add the argument -h or --human, e.g., to see the value in gigabytes.

alice@firefly:~$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            14Gi       2.4Gi        10Gi       426Mi       2.3Gi        12Gi
Swap:          4.0Gi          0B       4.0Gi
alice@firefly:~$

Other options for the command are shown below:

jim@Serenity:~$ free --help

Usage:
 free [options]

Options:
 -b, --bytes         show output in bytes
     --kilo          show output in kilobytes
     --mega          show output in megabytes
     --giga          show output in gigabytes
     --tera          show output in terabytes
     --peta          show output in petabytes
 -k, --kibi          show output in kibibytes
 -m, --mebi          show output in mebibytes
 -g, --gibi          show output in gibibytes
     --tebi          show output in tebibytes
     --pebi          show output in pebibytes
 -h, --human         show human-readable output
     --si            use powers of 1000 not 1024
 -l, --lohi          show detailed low and high memory statistics
 -L, --line          show output on a single line
 -t, --total         show total for RAM + swap
 -v, --committed     show committed memory and commit limit
 -s N, --seconds N   repeat printing every N seconds
 -c N, --count N     repeat printing N times, then exit
 -w, --wide          wide output

     --help     display this help and exit
 -V, --version  output version information and exit

For more details see free(1).
jim@Serenity:~$ 

Note:The free command in Linux shows the total amount of installed physical memory in the total column, but this value is less than the actual hardware random-access memory (RAM) installed because the Linux kernel reserves a portion of memory for itself and for hardware devices (like video card buffers) at boot time. The total shown is the usable RAM available to the OS, not the absolute hardware total.

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On a Ubuntu Linux system, you can determine which users are allowed to use the sudo command by looking at the contents of the /etc/group file. If you grep for sudo you will see which accounts on the system can use the command.

jack@firefly:~$ grep sudo /etc/group
sudo:x:27:jack,jill@ad.example.com
jack@firefly:~$ 

The above output shows that the local jack account and a Windows domain account, jill@ad.example.com, can use the command. You can see what groups a particular user belongs to with the command groups username, where username is the user's account name.

jack@firefly:~$ groups jill@ad.example.com
jill@ad.example.com : domain users@ad.example.com ra_allowmediaaccess@ad.example
.com ra_allowcomputeraccess@ad.example.com ra_allowaddinaccess@ad.example.com ra
_allowshareaccess@ad.example.com ra_allowremoteaccess@ad.example.com wssusers@ad
.example.com ra_allowvpnaccess@ad.example.com ra_allowhomepagelinks@ad.example.c
om
jack@firefly:~$ groups jack
jack : jack adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev users lpadmin
jack@firefly:~$

You can also determine if a user has sudo privilege using groups username | grep -c sudo. If the result is 0, then the user does not have that privilege. If the result is 1, inciding that the grep command found username one in the output of the groups command, then the user has that privilege.

jack@firefly:~$ groups jill@ad.example.com | grep -c sudo
1
jack@firefly:~$

You can grant a user that privilege by issuing the command sudo usermod -aG sudo username from an account that already has the capability to run the sudo command.

jack@firefly:~$ sudo usermod -aG sudo mary
[sudo: authenticate] Password:
jack@firefly:~$

You can remove a user's account from the list of those allowed to run the command using the gpasswd command, which is part of the sysutils package by issuing the command sudo gpasswd -d username sudo.

jack@firefly:~$ sudo gpasswd -d mary sudo
Removing user mary from group sudo
jack@firefly:~$ groups mary | grep -c sudo
0
jack@firefly:~$

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

Python Code:

from datetime import date

# Get today's date as a date object
today = date.today()

# Format the date into a string variable in YYMMDD format
# %y gives the two-digit year, %m gives the zero-padded month, and %d gives the # zero-padded day formatted_date_string = today.strftime("%y%m%d")

# Print the result (optional, for verification)
print(f"Today's date in YYMMDD format: {formatted_date_string}")

Steps:

• from datetime import date: This line imports the date class from the built-in datetime module, which is necessary to work with dates in Python.
• today = date.today(): This uses the today() method to get the current local date as a date object.
• today.strftime("%y%m%d"): The strftime() method is then applied to the today object to format it into a string. The format string uses specific directives:
  • %y: Represents the year without the century (e.g., 26 for 2026).
  • %m: Represents the month as a zero-padded decimal number (e.g., 02 for February).
  • %d: Represents the day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number (e.g., 15 for the 15th).

The resulting string, stored in formatted_date_string, will look like 260215 (for February 15, 2026)

[/languages/python] permanent link

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[/os/windows/commands] permanent link

OpenSSH Server for Windows 10 requires at least Windows 10 (build 1809). You can determine the build number for Windows 10 by typing winver in the Windows "Type here to search" field at the bottom of the screen or at a PowerShell prompt. Or you can use the systeminfo utility and pipe it's output into the findstr command, filtering on the line that has "OS" at the beginning of the line and also "Version" in the line.

PS C:\> systeminfo | findstr -B "OS" | findstr "Version"
OS Version:                10.0.19045 N/A Build 19045
PS C:\>

The SSH Client software may already be installed. You can determine if it is already installed by opening a PowerShell prompt and typing ssh. If it is installed, as it was on the Windows 10 Professional Version 22H2 (OS Build 19045.6466) system on which I wanted to set up the OpenSSH Server software, you will see a response like the following one:

PS C:\> ssh
usage: ssh [-46AaCfGgKkMNnqsTtVvXxYy] [-B bind_interface] [-b bind_address]
           [-c cipher_spec] [-D [bind_address:]port] [-E log_file]
           [-e escape_char] [-F configfile] [-I pkcs11] [-i identity_file]
           [-J destination] [-L address] [-l login_name] [-m mac_spec]
           [-O ctl_cmd] [-o option] [-P tag] [-p port] [-Q query_option]
           [-R address] [-S ctl_path] [-W host:port] [-w local_tun[:remote_tun]]
           destination [command [argument ...]]
PS C:\>

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[/os/windows/network/ssh/OpenSSH] permanent link

You can check the health of a NVM Express (NVMe) drive on an Ubuntu Linux system using the nvme-cli command-line interface (CLI) application. The description for the package is as follows:

NVMe management command line interface

nvme-cli is a NVMe management command line interface. NVM Express™ (NVMe™) is a specification defining how host software communicates with non-volatile memory across a PCI Express® (PCIe®) bus. It is the industry standard for PCIe solid state drives (SSDs) in all form factors (U.2, M.2, AIC, EDSFF).

You can install nvme-cli throught the App Center on a Ubuntu Linux system.

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

https://ytdown.to/en2/
https://v6.www-y2mate.com/

Since I had WinPython, a free and open-source version of the Python programming language installed on a Windows laptop and she is using a Windows 11 system at the moment, though she wants to switch to Linux, I decided to try the yt-dlp Python program that allows one to download YouTube videos from a command-line interface (CLI).

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[/video/youtube] permanent link

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[/network/web/browser/firefox] permanent link

[/financial] permanent link

dnl # The following example makes mail from this host and any additional
dnl # specified domains appear to be sent from mydomain.com
dnl #
dnl MASQUERADE_AS(`mydomain.com')dnl
dnl #
dnl # masquerade not just the headers, but the envelope as well
dnl #
dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl
dnl #
dnl # masquerade not just @mydomainalias.com, but @*.mydomainalias.com as well
dnl #
dnl FEATURE(masquerade_entire_domain)dnl
dnl #
dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(localhost)dnl
dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(localhost.localdomain)dnl
dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(mydomainalias.com)dnl
dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(mydomain.lan)dnl
MAILER(smtp)dnl
MAILER(procmail)dnl
dnl MAILER(cyrusv2)dnl
MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(`verizon.net')dnl
MASQUERADE_AS(`moonpoint.com')dnl

After I edited the sendmail.mc file, I rebuilt the sendmail.cf file by restarting sendmail with the command service sendmail restart , which put the following line in sendmail.cf:

C{M}verizon.net

The person who was sending the newsletter died several years ago and I took over maintaining the membership list for the organization as well as distributing the email version of the newsletters to members. Though the account from which the newsletter is sent is intended to be used only for sending the newsletter and members are advised to send an email related to the organization to the organization's Gmail email addresses, occasionally members will reply directly to the "from" address used for the newsletter. When checking the account for that address, I found that someone with a verizon.net address had sent a reply to the account, but if I replied my reply would go not to his verizon.net address, but to his email name followed by my domain name, which would result in the email bouncing since that address would not be a valid address on my server. I corrected the problem by removing the two MASQUERADE lines in sendmail.mc that resulted in the change to the domain name part of email addresses if any email came from a verizon.net address and then restarted sendmail, which resulted in the C{M}verizon.net line being removed from sendmail.cf.

The sendmail.mc file is a human-readable macro configuration file, while the sendmail.cf file is the more complex configuration file actually used by the Sendmail message transfer agent (MTA). The .mc file serves as the source, which is processed by the m4 macro to generate the final, often uncommented sendmail.cf file used by sendmail. The command m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf can be used to rebuild the .cf configuration file after one makes changes to the sendmail.mc file, but the changes won't take effect until sendmail is restarted. Or, on many newer versions of the Linux operating system, one can simply restart sendmail and a new .cf file will be automatically generated and applied to sendmail, if any changes have been made to the .mc file

References:

1. 18.4. The sendmail.cf and sendmail.mc Files
   Linux Network Administrators Guide

Related articles:

1. Modifying the "from" domain of a message with sendmail
   Date: June 1, 2018

[/network/email/sendmail] permanent link

I installed Calibre 8.8.0 on a Ubuntu Linux system through the Ubuntu App Center (I had to filter by Debian packages rather than by Snap packages in the App Center to see Calibre packages as there isn't a Snap package for the software). But when I checked to see if that was the latest version on the Calibre website, I found the latest version is 8.16.2. Also, the Calibre Download for Linux page states "Please do not use your distribution provided calibre package, as those are often buggy/outdated. Instead use the Binary install described below." So I uninstalled the version I installed and then reinstalled the software using the command provided on that Calibre webpage, sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin - a command that can be run on any version of Linux.

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[/ebook/calibre] permanent link