How to Run MEGA VPN on Ubuntu Using wg-quick (The Fastest Method)

If you are a Linux user with a premium MEGA account, you might have noticed there is no official, standalone desktop app for MEGA VPN on Linux. However, because MEGA builds its network on the lightning-fast WireGuard protocol, you don’t need a bulky app.

You can launch your VPN directly from the terminal in seconds.

While many tutorials suggest complex setups using NetworkManager or moving system files around, the absolute fastest way to connect is by using the native wg-quick tool. Here is a step-by-step, human-tested guide to getting MEGA VPN running on Ubuntu with zero fluff.

Prerequisites: Install WireGuard

Before grabbing your configuration file, you need the standard WireGuard tools installed on your system. Open your Ubuntu terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run:

Ref: https://www.wireguard.com/install/ 

 sudo apt update  
 sudo apt install wireguard openresolv -y  

Note: We include openresolv here because it automatically manages your DNS settings when the VPN switches on, preventing any accidental DNS leaks.

You Probably Don't Need Obsidian: Here's When You Shouldn't Use It

When Not to Use Obsidian: Why You May Not Need a Second Brain

Obsidian is one of the most powerful note-taking and knowledge-management applications available today. It can help you connect ideas, build a personal knowledge base, organize research, and create what productivity enthusiasts often call a “second brain.”

But there is a question that gets surprisingly little attention:

When should you NOT use Obsidian?

After spending considerable time exploring Obsidian tutorials, workflows, plugins, backlinks, graph views, and various “second brain” systems, I came to a fairly simple realization:

Obsidian is not automatically useful just because it is powerful.

In fact, for some people, using Obsidian can introduce more friction than value.

You may not need a second brain. You may simply need to think, decide, and get things done.

What Is Obsidian Actually For?

Obsidian is a local-first Markdown-based knowledge-management and note-taking application. One of its defining features is the ability to link notes together, allowing you to create a network of interconnected ideas.

This makes Obsidian particularly attractive to people who:

• Think through writing

• Conduct extensive research

• Write articles, books, or academic papers

• Need to retain large amounts of information

• Frequently revisit old ideas

• Want to connect concepts across different areas

• Enjoy building personal knowledge systems

For these users, Obsidian can be incredibly useful.

But there is an important distinction:

A powerful tool is not necessarily the right tool for everyone.  

[SOLVED]: Yarn Debian Key Expiry Date Updated

 Solved by re-installing:

 curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -  
 echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list  
 sudo apt update  
 sudo apt install yarn  

Ref: https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-yarn-on-ubuntu-20-04/

[SOLVED] - Install phpMyAdmin & LAMP on Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop

Install phpMyAdmin & Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB & PHP [LAMP] on Ubuntu 20.04 desktop.

Below you will find the instructions that I myself have tried and successfully implemented on my system.

 1. Install Apache Web Server

 sudo apt update  
 sudo apt install apache2  

2. Install MariaDB

 sudo apt install mariadb-server  
 sudo apt install mariadb-client  

After that, run the commands below to secure the MariaDB server by creating a root password, disallowing remote root access removing anonymous, and more.

 sudo mysql_secure_installation  

 If you've just installed MariaDB, and haven't set the root password yet, you should just press enter here.  
 Enter current password for root (enter for none): PRESS ENTER  
 Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n] n  
 Change the root password? [Y/n] n  
 Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y  
 Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y  
 Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y  
 Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y  
 All done!  

3. Install PHP

 sudo apt install php7.4 php7.4-common php7.4-mysql php7.4-gmp php7.4-curl php7.4-intl php7.4-mbstring php7.4-xmlrpc php7.4-gd php7.4-xml php7.4-cli php7.4-zip  

4. Install phpMyAdmin

 sudo apt install phpmyadmin  

When prompted to choose the web server, select apache2 and continue.

   

When prompted again to allow web config-common to install a database and configure select Yes and press ENTER.

Then type and confirm a password.

After installing phpMyAdmin, open your web browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address followed by /phpmyadmin.

 http://localhost/phpmyadmin  

If you encounter the following error implement the solution below to resolve the issue:

ERROR: mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/1698): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost'

Open your terminal and run the following commands:

 sudo mysql -u root  

 use mysql;  
 update user set plugin='' where User='root';  
 flush privileges;  
 \q  

Now the LAMP cum phpMyAdmin should be working for you.

>> Ref:

1. https://geekrewind.com/how-to-install-phpmyadmin-on-ubuntu-linux-with-apache
2. https://stackoverflow.com/a/45142195/7206497

[SOLVED] Suspend-Resume Not Working in Ubuntu 20.04

If you are unable to suspend your laptop, here's the solution which I've tried & tested and it worked with my Lenovo Thinkpad T440.

 Open your terminal and enter the following commands:

>> Steps 1: Create backup of the following file 'logind.conf':

 sudo cp /etc/systemd/logind.conf /etc/systemd/logind-backup.conf  

>> Steps 2: Depending upon the GUI based code editor you have, such as gedit, Geany etc or text based editor nano or the default vi enter the following command below. If you have & want to use Geany then you can replace vi with geany:

 sudo vi /etc/systemd/logind.conf  

 >> Steps 3: Step 3: Carefully navigate and make sure the following lines are changed to look like shown below. If the lines are commented (Example: #HandleSuspendKey=suspend), uncomment them.

 HandleSuspendKey=suspend  
 HandleLidSwitch=suspend  
 HandleLidSwitchDocked=suspend  

 >> Steps 4: Save the file.

 >> Steps 3: Reboot & check. You can reboot from the terminal using the following command:

 sudo reboot  

[Solved] - How to Find Composer Name of Mageplaza Paid Extensions - Magento 2

Don't know why Mageplaza haven't still listed the composer name of their paid extensions. Look at the comment section of this tutorial: https://bit.ly/2Z9P7jC; you will see users asking for composer name, and still no solution is provided by them. Today I tried posting this solution as a comment in the aforementioned page, and each time my comment got deleted for reasons unknown to me. That's why I have decided to post this solution here.

The solution is very simple. Just download the extension, and look in the composer.json file. You will see a key/value pair entry as follows:

  "name": "mageplaza/module-search"  

Here module-search is the composer name of the paid extension Ajax Search for Magento 2.

NOTE: If you are installing Mageplaza extensions for the first time via composer, make sure to run the following command first:

 $ composer config repositories.mageplaza composer https://repo.mageplaza.com  

Setup WordPress CRON in Cloudways

In this tutorial, I will show you, how to Setup CRON in your Cloudways Hosting Account for WordPress.

1. First you will have to disable WordPress's default CRON.Check this tutorial by Kinsta to know how to do it: https://bit.ly/37RQjvW.

 // Disable WordPress Default CRON  
 define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);  

2. Log into your Cloudways account & go to the CRON Configuration page. You can do so by clicking on the following link: https://platform.cloudways.com/apps.

2. Select the App whose CRON you would like to setup.

3.1. Click on Cron Job Management
3.2. On the Cron Job Management page, click on ADVANCED
3.3. Add the following command to setup/enable Manual CRON.
NOTE:

• Replace http://example.com with the name of your website
• /5 signifies 5 minutes. You can replace it with 10 minutes or 15 minutes, if you are in a shared host
• 2>&1 disables email notifications after each CRON run

 */5 * * * *   wget -q -O - http://example.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1  

4. Finally click on SAVE CHANGES.

Manual CRON run should be setup in your site now.

You can install the WP-Cron Status Checker plugin to check whether CRON is running correctly or not.

Allow Clemetine Remote App Access in UFW [Uncomplicated Firewall]

If you would like to use the Clementine Remote App with your Ubuntu system, then try the following steps:

Image 1

 

Image 2

1. Open Clementine
2. Open Preferences using the keyboard shortcut (CTRL+P) or open on Tools >> Preferences from the Clementine menu
3. Click on Network Remote tab on the left, and make note of the following two values:
• Port
• Your IP Address
4. In my case, my IP address was 192.168.0.113
5. Open your terminal, and enter the following command:
   sudo ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 to any port 5500. Please note that if your IP is, say for example 192.168.1.20, then your terminal command should be as:
   sudo ufw allow from 192.168.1.0/24 to any port 5500
6. Download the Clementine Remote app by clicking on the following link http://bit.ly/39CTNCo Play store. Now open the app, and you should be seeing a screen as shown in the Image 2 above. Enter your IP address & click on connect.
   
7. Now you should be able to remotely access your Clementine music player from your Clementine Remote App

[SOLVED] - Alibaba Cloud (ECS) - The Requested URL Could Not Be Retrieved. Unable to Access Website

ERROR

The requested URL could not be retrieved

The following error was encountered while trying to retrieve the URL: http://149.x.x.1/

    Connection to 149.x.x.1/ failed.

The system returned: (111) Connection refused

The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again.

Your cache administrator is webmaster.

Solution

Today after restoring my snapshot to one of my Alibaba Cloud ECS instance; I was unable to access my website from my browser. I tried a lot of this and that but all in vain. Then finally, after much research, I read that the connection was getting refused by my Web Server, in my case the Apache Web Server.

Once I restarted, the Web Server, the website was accessible now.

Command to restart the Apache Web Server:

For Ubuntu:

 sudo service apache2 restart  

For RHEL/CentOS 7:

 systemctl restart httpd  

[SOLVED] - Fix Corrupt NTFS Parition In Ubuntu Using ntfs-3g, Without Using Windows OR fsck

Since yesterday, I've been trying to backup my hard drive using Clonezilla but without any success. Twice I got the following error, when I tried to backup my full hard drive by using Clonezilla.

ntfsclone-ng.c: NTFS Volume '/dev/sda6/' is scheduled for  a check or it was shutdown uncleanly. Please boot Windows or fix it by fsck

& I know why this issue has cropped up. Few days back I used GParted to expand my main ext4 partition that has Ubuntu installed on it by using a chunk from another NTFS partition.

 >> SOLUTION:

Here's what worked for me. Open your terminal [CTRL+ALT+T]:

1. First list all the partition in your hard drive.

 df -h  

You should be getting a list of parition as shown in the image below. In my case, the NTFS parition is '/dev/sda6.'

Click on image to enlarge

 2. Now unmount the NTFS partition using the following command. Please note, the command is 'umount' and not 'unmount.'

 sudo umount /dev/sda6  

3. If you do not have ntfs-3g installed, you can install it using the following command:

 sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g  

4. Now run the ntfs-3g command to check/repair your corrupt/problematic NTFS partition:

 sudo ntfsfix -b -d /dev/sda6  

here,

• b: clear-bad-sectors -- Clear the bad sector list 
• d: clear-dirty -- Clear the volume dirty flag

5. If the CHECK/REPAIR operation is successful, you should be getting a message as shown in the image below:

Click on image to enlarge

>> REF: Fix corrupt NTFS partition without Windows

[SOLVED]: Module 'Amasty_Base' from 'app/code/Amasty/Base' has been already defined in 'vendor/amasty/base'

If you have been trying to install Amasty Extension(s) in your Magento 2 installation by using SSH, and run into this error 'Module 'Amasty_Base' from 'app/code/Amasty/Base' has been already defined in 'vendor/amasty/base'', use the solution below to resolve your issue.

This issue occurs if you have installed Amasty Extension(s) manually and the 'Amasty Base' file already exists inside the directory 'app/code/Amasty/Base.' & later when you try to install another Amasty extension using SSH, composer will notice this file in app/code and hence the error. Composer creates the 'Base' directory in the following location 'vendor/amasty/base'.

>> SOLUTION:

1. Go to the root directory of your Magento Installation.
2. Enter the following commands:

1:  composer remove amasty/composer_name_of_your_extension  
2:  rm -rf app/code/Amasty/Base  
3:  rm -rf vendor/amasty/base  
4:  composer dump-autoload  

3. Now INSTALL your Amasty Extension by running the following command:

1:  composer require amasty/composer_name_of_your_extension  
2:  php bin/magento setup:upgrade  
3:  php bin/magento setup:di:compile  
4:  php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy  

NOTE:

To find the composer name of your extension:

• Log into your Amasty Account
• Goto to My Downloads page and look under Composer Name column. See image below to get an idea.

Click on image to enlarge

[SOLVED]: Same Web Property ID Is Tracked Twice | Google Tag Manager | Magento 2

Click on image to enlarge

If your Tag Assistant is firing this warning 'Same web property ID is tracked twice' while testing in your Magento 2 site, then it's because you've enabled Google Analytic in your Magento store backend, and also in Google Tag Manager.

SOLUTION: Enable Google Analytics tracking either from your site's backend or by using Google Tag Manager, but not both.

Click on image to enlarge

If you want to use Google Tag Manager for Google Analytics then disable tracking from your site's backend.

Third Party IT Repair Services & Tech Support Ads Banned By Google Ads

Today while trying to launch some PPC Campaign for a Repair Service for my business, I was met by a RUDE SHOCK due to a policy change in Google Ads.

Each time I tested keywords such as 'iphone repair dubai' 'data recovery dubai', I was greeted with this unfamiliar message 'This candidate is not permitted to show ads in your targeted location.', as shown in the image below:

Click on image to enlarge

After much searching and researching, I finally found out that IT Repair Services, Tech Support, both online or offlline has been banned by Google Ads globally for any 3rd party company. Meaning unless you are the real vendor/manufacturer of the product, you aren't allowed to display Ads providing service or support for that product. Please check the links I've listed below for further clarification. Hard pill to swallow, leave alone digest, but that's what seems to be the case at the moment. And I guess this is the result of all those Indian Tech Scammers, who have been targeting mostly Americans. Because of them now all have to suffer! :-(

Click on image to enlarge

References:

• This candidate is not permitted to show ads in your targeted location. Learn more - Google Advertiser Community
• Update to Other restricted businesses policy (October 2018)
• Restricting ads in third-party tech support services
• Other restricted businesses
• Google Ads policies
• Unsupported Shopping content

[SOLVED] - Thunderbird Could Not Get Password - Fix for Ubuntu/Linux

If you have been getting the following error "Thunderbird Could Not Get Password," and because of this have been unable to log into your Email Account or Send Emails, you can try the solution below that worked for me.

>> Close your Thunderbird Email Client. Goto your Home folder and Press CTRL+H to view hidden folders, or in your Menu, goto View >> Show Hidden Files.

Click on image to enlarge

>> Click on the .thunderbird folder.

Click on image to enlarge

>> Click on the shbh8pem.default folder.

Click on image to enlarge

>> DELETE the following two files as highlighted in the image above:

• cert8.db
• key3.db 

>> Now OPEN Thunderbird and press F5 to Send/Receive Emails. If it prompts for a password enter it.

>> Try SENDING an Email from. If it prompts for a password enter it.

>> If the above solution doesn't work, RESTART your system, and repeat the steps above.

>> Your problem should have been resolved now.

Learn in 10 Seconds How to Easily Copy Same Data Across Multiple Cells in LibreOffice Calc

Here's a very easy way that I've found with which you can easily copy same data across multiple cells.

If you are COPYING TEXT, then you don't need to press any keys. But if you would like to COPY Numbers across cells, then press CTRL key while dragging the mouse, as shown in the video.

Check Disk Space Usage from Terminal in Ubuntu/Linux

To view disk space usage of your partitions/hard drive in your terminal, use the following command:

 df -h  

You should get result as shown in the image below:

Click on image to enlarge

[SOLVED] - Delete Categories in Magento 2 using MySQL & phpMyAdmin

You can use the SQL code below to DELETE your Categories in your Magento 2 installation. It will reset your categories to as it was after a fresh installation.

Copy the code below and execute it as shown in the image:

Click on image to enlarge

Successfully Install Porto/Magento 2 Theme Quick Start Package

This was the second time I was using Porto/Magento 2 theme in one of my project. The instruction provided in their documentation to install their Quick Start Package is not at all clear, and doesn't help at all. So, after some trial and error, I have found the following steps to work me, and sharing it with everybody here:

1. First Install a fresh copy of Magento with no sample data. Make sure your Magento's Version matches Porto's Quick Start Package version, else you will get error. Do not use table_prefix in your database. You can create table_prefix later on after successfully installing the Quick Start package.
2. After installing Magento, now unzip the Quick Start Package zip file in your Magento root folder.
3. Import the database provided with your Quick Start Package File. Don't use any table_prefix because the Quick Start Package database doesn't have any, and you will encounter errors if you use one.
4. Check whether the base-url in the core_config table are correct. If not set them to the admin-url you set in Step 1 during the Magento Installation process.

   

   Click on image to enlarge

5. Delete the following folder/files using the command below: 

    rm -rf var/di/* var/generation/* var/cache/* var/page_cache/* var/view_preprocessed/* var/composer_home/cache/*   
   

   If in localhost, you might have to use sudo to exectute the commands.
   
6. Run the following command:
   

    php bin/magento setup:di:compile  
   

   It will compile and generate the factory class and depended proxy classes. Also, if in localhost run the following command
   

    sudo chown -R www-data:www-data magento-folder  
   

7.  Clean your site cache.
8. The admin login that you created in Step 1 might not work now after importing Porto's Quick Start Package database, so create a new one using this tutorial: Create Admin User from Terminal in Magento 2.x.
9.  Activate SW Extensions, open command line in folder root of magento and run commands via ssh using putty or others, php bin/magento setup:upgrade.
10. Log into your site's backend and Select Smartwave Porto theme in Stores > Configuration > General > Design > Design Theme > Design Theme for Magento 2.0.x version, and select Smartwave Porto theme in Content > Design > Configuration page for Magento 2.1.x version. You can select Smartwave Porto RTL theme, if you want to build a RTL site.

Download Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Virtual Disk Image (VDI) File for VirtualBox

I was trying Ubuntu 18.04 today on my VirtualBox, and created this VDI file. Sharing it with all here:

Download Link: Ubuntu 18.04 VDI File
Username: virtualbox
Password: ubuntu1804

NOTE:

• VB Guest Addition Tool is not installed. So you will have to install it. 
• Variety wallpaper & Cairo Dock app has been installed as bonus.

Upgrade/Update Magento 2x Using Web Setup Wizard

NOTE: Depending on your server's computing power, the upgrading time may vary. For me it took a good 15-17 mins. I have trimmed/edited the video to shorten the process. So, once the check are successful and you START the UPGRADING PROCESS, do not terminate it, unless the whole process is complete and you see a SUCCESS message as shown in the end of this video.