• vim motions in bash shell
• minify images disk usage with CLI
• create table of contents in markdown files (the easy way)

vim motions in bash shell

If you want vim motions in your bash CLI, put this in your $HOME/.inputrc:

1set editing-mode vi
2set show-mode-in-prompt on
3set vi-ins-mode-string \1\e[6 q\2
4set vi-cmd-mode-string \1\e[2 q\2

Now you can enter vim Normal mode with ESC or CTRL+[.

When in Normal mode in bash, if you press v the command in the current line gets opened in a vim buffer! This is very useful for editing long commands in the comfort of the editor.

minify images disk usage with CLI for web upload

magick image.png image.webp
cwebp -q 40 image.webp -o image-smaller.webp

create table of contents in markdown files (the easy way)

• Download markdown-toc
• Insert !-- toc --> where you want the table of content in your file.
• Run markdown-toc -i filename.md to create the table of content.

In vim, run :!markdown-toc -i "%" using a keybinding like leader-t and your good to go.

I sometimes like to insert emojis at the start of headers (if you don’t approove it, you are too old 😙) and then make a toc with above mentioned method.

Problem is that when the markdown is rendered on Github, the emoji is part of the link gets underlined with the usual blue link bar.

I don’t like it.

So I made a sed command that formats the toc as I like and saved it in a script called t4g. I just select the lines in visual mode and run :!t4g.

I also needed one that formats the toc for Obsidian: t4o.

Here the sed commands:

1# t4g (*t*oc*4g*ithub)
2sed 's:\[\([^ ]*\) \(.*\)\](#[^-]*-\(.*\)):\1 \[\2\](#-\3):'

1# t4o (*t*oc*4o*bsidian)
2sed 's:\[\([^ ]*\) \(.*\)\](#[^-]*-\(.*\)):\1 \[\2\](#-\3):'

Given this toc:

- [😃 Smiling](#%F0%9F%98%83-smiling)
- [😻 Lovely cat](#%F0%9F%98%BB-lovely-cat)
  * [😅 Grinning subheader](#%F0%9F%98%85-grinning-subheader)

The scripts transform it like this:

# t4g
- 😃 [Smiling](#-smiling)
- 😻 [Lovely cat](#-lovely-cat)
  * 😅 [Grinning subheader](#-grinning-subheader)

# t4o
- [[#😃 Smiling]]
- [[#😻 Lovely cat]]
  * [[#😅 Grinning subheader]]

NetworkManager is managing my DNS at the moment.

I am using Arch Linux and I haven’t changed this configuration since install, so I guess this is the default config. I need to disable that.

Disable NetworkManager DNS management:

# /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
[main]
dns=none

Restart NetworkManager:

systemctl restart NetworkManager

I wanted systemd-resolved to manage my DNS servers.

Add this in /etc/systemd/resolved.conf to have quad9 servers as defaults:

DNS=9.9.9.9
FallbackDNS=149.112.112.112#dns.quad9.net 2620:fe::9#dns.quad9.net

Restart systemd-resolved:

systemctl restart systemd-resolved

Finally I set some wireguard VPN PostUp and PostDown directives for editing and restoring my /etc/resolv.conf file when I use my VPN. This is my wireguard conf:

[Interface]
Address = <ip address for vpn interface>
PrivateKey = <priv key>
DNS = <ip address of vpn dns>
PostUp = echo 'nameserver <vpn dns ip address>' > /etc/resolv.conf
PostUp = resolvectl dns %i <vpn dns ip address>
PostUp = resolvectl domain %i "~."
PostUp = resolvectl default-route %i
PreDown = systemctl restart systemd-resolved
PreDown = resolvectl revert %i

[Peer]
PublicKey = <pubkey>
Endpoint = <dns server ip or domain>
AllowedIPs = <allowed ip for the vpn>

All programs seem to use the right DNS now.

Hope it stays that way.

I don’t actually know why I chose GoDaddy since I’ve always read complaints about their services.

Well, better than my old registrar.

For my old domain I used Epik but after EpikFail I decided to drop it.

Did I download the leak to check if my personal information were in it? 🤔 I don’t remember.

Since this machine has a dynamic public IP, I wanted a script that changes my DNS records when the public IP changes.

The first time the public IP changed and I edited the DNS records by hand, I already had enough 🙈

I knew that GoDaddy had an API, but after creating the tokens and setting up everything, I discovered that they disabled the API for customers with less than 50 domains 🥲

In the last few weeks I checked various services but none of them satisfied me.

I didn’t want to register another domain with some dynDNS registrar and pay for it. I couldn’t host my own DNS server on a machine with a static public IP because I would need to pay that too.

But during my research a redditor saved the day:

As deSEC describes itself:

deSEC is a free DNS hosting service, designed with security in mind.
Running on open-source software and supported by SSE, deSEC is free for everyone to use.

What? OpenSource and backed by a german organization?

It MUST be good!

You don’t need to buy a domain from them, you can just let their nameservers manage your domains.

I quickly made an account on deSEC, deleted all my DNS records from GoDaddy and set NS records pointing to deSEC servers.

$ dig +short NS deafgod.xyz
ns2.desec.org.
ns1.desec.io.

They ask only for an e-mail and that’s it!

No KYC stuff!

They have both a web UI and a free API and the whole stack is on github.

Long story short:

• Made a script
• crontab -e a */10 * * * * /root/bin/ddns >> /root/bin/ddns.log 2>&1
• crontab -l to check everything was good

I have dynamic DNS now.

Open source, free and hackable.

 1#!/usr/bin/bash
 2
 3REAL_IP=`curl --silent https://checkipv4.dedyn.io/` || exit
 4DNS_IP=`dig +short A deafgod.xyz @ns1.desec.io` || exit
 5
 6if [[ "$REAL_IP" != "$DNS_IP" ]]; then
 7  echo "$(date) - IP: ${REAL_IP} - DNS: ${DNS_IP}"
 8  curl --silent --ipv4 https://update.dedyn.io/?hostname=deafgod.xyz \
 9  --header "Authorization: Token <secret>"
10fi

The records updated with the API have a TTL of 60.