Use PHP mail function instead of SMTP in Framadate

Uli Köhler PHP

Problem:

You want to use framadate as a Doodle alternative, but you don’t have access to SMTP on your server

Solution:

This solution was tested with Framadate 1.0. It might not work with other versions. The best approach is to just try it out.

First, configure the mailer in app/inc/config.php just as you would with SMTP. Most importantly set

'use_smtp' => true

The settings in

'smtp_options' => [
    // [...]
],

do not matter, so you can leave them at their defaults.

Next, edit app/classes/Framadate/Services/MailService.php:

and find this line:

$mailer->isSMTP();

Comment it out:

//$mailer->isSMTP();

This tells PHPMailer, the underlying library, not to use SMTP but to use the PHP mail() function.

Now ensure that you have uploaded all the changed files to the server and test your modifications.

Fixing Angular Error: Unexpected value ‘undefined’ declared by the module

Uli Köhler Angular, Javascript

Symptom:

For a module of yours, you get an error message like this on load:

Error: Unexpected value 'undefined' declared by the module 'MyModule'
    at syntaxError (compiler.js:1021)
    at compiler.js:10623
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at CompileMetadataResolver.push../node_modules/@angular/compiler/fesm5/compiler.js.CompileMetadataResolver.getNgModuleMetadata (compiler.js:10621)
    at JitCompiler.push../node_modules/@angular/compiler/fesm5/compiler.js.JitCompiler._loadModules (compiler.js:23876)
    at JitCompiler.push../node_modules/@angular/compiler/fesm5/compiler.js.JitCompiler._compileModuleAndComponents (compiler.js:23857)
    at JitCompiler.push../node_modules/@angular/compiler/fesm5/compiler.js.JitCompiler.compileModuleAsync (compiler.js:23817)
    at CompilerImpl.push../node_modules/@angular/platform-browser-dynamic/fesm5/platform-browser-dynamic.js.CompilerImpl.compileModuleAsync (platform-browser-dynamic.js:143)
    at core.js:4999
[...]

Solution:

First, try to restart ng serve. In some cases this will outright fix the issue.

The error message is caused by some element of your @NgModule declarations: [ /* ... */ ] to be undefined.

For example, if you have a @NgModule declaration like this:

@NgModule({
  imports: [
    RecallCommonModule,
    CommonModule,
    MyRoutingModule
  ],
  declarations: [,
    MyDetailComponent,
    MySearchComponent
  ],
  providers: []
})

the issue is in the stray comma in the declarations line: When compiled, it results in [undefined, MyDetailComponent, MySearchComponent]. Removing the stray comma fixes the issue.

If you don’t have stray commata in your declarations, comment out every element in your declarations array and see which causes the error message to disappear.

Fixing NodeJS Intl.DateTimeFormat not formatting properly for locales

Uli Köhler Allgemein, Javascript, NodeJS

Symptom:

NodeJS starting from version v9.x supports the ES6 Intl.DateTimeFormat

When you use it with the ‘en-US’ locale, it works properly and prints "August 13, 2018":

const df = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en-US', {day: 'numeric', month: 'long', year: 'numeric', timeZone: 'UTC'});
console.log(df.format(new Date("2018-08-13T04:00:00.000Z")));

However, using it with a different locale fails:

const df = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('de', {day: 'numeric', month: 'long', year: 'numeric', timeZone: 'UTC'});
console.log(df.format(new Date("2018-08-13T04:00:00.000Z")));

While you would expect this to print "13. August 2018" , it will print "2018 M08 13"

Reason:

By default, NodeJS is only built with small-icu support, thereby only installing the en-US locale in order to reduce the installation filesize.

Solution 1 (preferred):

You can use the intl polyfill module to completely replace NodeJS’s implementation of intl:

Installation:
npm i --save intl
Usage:
// Replace Intl by polyfill
Intl = require("intl")

const df = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('de', {day: 'numeric', month: 'long', year: 'numeric', timeZone: 'UTC'});
console.log(df.format(new Date("2018-08-13T04:00:00.000Z")));

This will print 13. August 2018 as expected.

Solution 2 (alternate):

You can use the full-icu package to continue using the NodeJS ICU implementation (i.e. no polyfill), but just install the ICU data.

While this reduces the total installation filesize, installation is slow and the exact method depends on the NodeJS version and requires more work than just using the intl polyfill.

In order to install, use

npm i --save full-icu

This will take some time to compile the data and then will print instructions like this:

 √ icudt62l.dat (link)
Node will use this ICU datafile if the environment variable NODE_ICU_DATA is set to “node_modules/full-icu”
or with node --icu-data-dir=node_modules/full-icu YOURAPP.js
 For package.json:
{"scripts":{"start":"node --icu-data-dir=node_modules/full-icu YOURAPP.js"}}

By the way, if you have full data, running this in node:
> new Intl.DateTimeFormat('es',{month:'long'}).format(new Date(9E8));
... will show “enero”. If it shows “January” you don't have full data.
News: Please see https://github.com/icu-project/full-icu-npm/issues/6

In order to actually use full-icu, you need to use the --icu-data-dir=node_modules/full-icu argument every time you run node. In order to run node interactively, use

node --icu-data-dir=node_modules/full-icu

If you use scripts in your application (e.g. the start script, i.e. what gets executed if you run npm start), you need to adjust the configuration in package.json:

Instead of

// [...]
"scripts": {
    "start": "node index.js"
}
// [...]

use

// [...]
"scripts": {
    "start": "node --icu-data-dir=node_modules/full-icu index.js"
}
// [...]

Depending on your application, you might need to use a different script name than index.js – common names include server.js and start.js

How to fix Angular6 “_getAriaLabel is not a function” with production build

Uli Köhler Angular, Javascript

Problem:

You are building an Angular6 application and in development mode everything works fine. However, if you build in production mode:

ng build --prod --aot

you see an error like this in the client:

main.4d1baabffbba5677af03.js:1 ERROR TypeError: i.ɵnov(...)._getAriaLabel is not a function
    at Object.updateRenderer (main.4d1baabffbba5677af03.js:1)
    at Object.updateRenderer (main.4d1baabffbba5677af03.js:1)
[...]

Solution:

The issue appears to be caused by incorrectly updated NodeJS modules. You can fix it by simply deleting your node_modules folder:

rm -rf node_modules

Furthermore, it’s recommended to update @angular/cli as the bug does not seem to be present in newer versions of @angular/cli:

sudo npm i -g @angular/cli

Source & discussion on GitHub

How to fix phpMyAdmin error #1231 – Variable ‘lc_messages’ can’t be set to the value of

Uli Köhler PHP

Problem:

After logging in to your phpMyAdmin instance, you get an error message like this:

#1231 - Variable 'lc_messages' can't be set to the value of 'de_DE'

Solution:

This error message is caused by a bad language code – in the example listed above, MySQL does not understand the de_DE language code.

The easiest fix for this is to set phpMyAdmin to a fixed language. In order to do this, add this line to your config in config.inc.php on the server.

$cfg['Lang'] = 'en';

You can add this almost anywhere in the file, but I recommend adding it after the $cfg['blowfish_secret'] line.

In case the error message does not disappear after doing this, ensure there is no other $cfg['Lang'] line in config.inc.php.

How to translate using your custom AutoML model in Python

Uli Köhler Machine learning, Python

If you’ve successfully trained your first custom AutoML neuronal translation model, the next step is to integrate it into your application.

Here’s a python3 utility class that easily allows you to translate using your custom model:

class GNTMAutoMLTranslationDriver(object):
    """
    Custom AutoML model translator.

    Usage example (be sure to use your own model here!):

    >>> translator = GNTMAutoMLTranslationDriver('myproject-101472', 'TRL455090968000816104449')
    >>> translator.translate("This is a translation test")
    """
    def __init__(self, project_id, model_id):
        self.client = automl_v1beta1.PredictionServiceClient()
        self._name = 'projects/{}/locations/us-central1/models/{}'.format(project_id, model_id)
    
    def translate(self, engl):
        payload = {'text_snippet': {'content': engl}}
        params = {}
        request = self.client.predict(self._name, payload, params)
        return request.payload[0].translation.translated_content.content

See the class documentation for a usage example. Most of the code is also present in the official AutoML example, but I had to figure out some parts for myself, e.g. how to extract the string from the protobuf (request.payload[0].translation.translated_content.content).

Also note that AutoML is currently in Beta and therefore the API might change without prior notice.

How to disable SSL certification verification in LFTP

Uli Köhler Linux

Problem:

You want to use lftp to access a FTPS server, but you get an error message like this:

mirror: Fatal error: Certificate verification: certificate common name doesn't match requested host name ‘mydomain.de’ (C8:98:BC:01:1E:FF:08:CB:62:08:6B:F1:E8:4C:1F:13:0A:3B:D8:06)

Solution:

You can use the following command in lftp to disable certificate verification:

set ssl:verify-certificate false

Inside the lftp command line, you can run the command and then retry the command that caused the error message. As lftp has a memory of which commands you used before, just press the Arrow up key multiple times until you see the original command.

Example:

lftp w012e7fe@nemeon.eu:~> mirror . MyBackup
mirror: Fatal error: Certificate verification: certificate common name doesn't match requested host name ‘mydomain.de’ (C8:98:BC:01:1E:FF:08:CB:62:08:6B:F1:E8:4C:1F:13:0A:3B:D8:06)
lftp w012e7fe@nemeon.eu:~> set ssl:verify-certificate false
lftp w012e7fe@nemeon.eu:~> mirror . MyBackup
[...]

In case your server doesn’t actually support FTPS, you might need to use the set ftp:ssl-allow no command to disable FTPS entirely.

How to SSH to an IPv6 address

Uli Köhler Linux, Networking

If your IPv6 address begins with fe80::

This type of IPv6 address is called link-local and is therefore specific to a network interface on your computer. You can use ifconfig to show information about the network interfaces. You are looking for an identifer like eth0, wlan0, enp3s0, wlp4s0 or tap1. For this example we’re using eth0.

Now you can connect to the IPv6 using:

ssh <username>@<ipv6 address>%<interface>

for example

ssh user@fe80::21b:21ff:fe22:e865%eth0

Replace <interface> by the correct interface (if you don’t know, try out every interface), replace <ipv6 address> by the correct IP address and replace <user> by the correct username.

If your IPv6 address does NOT begin with fe80::

You can just use

ssh <username>@<ipv6 address>

for example

ssh uli@2a01:4f9:c010:278::1

Replace <ipv6 address> by the correct IP address and replace <user> by the correct username.

How to find the size of a lxc container

Uli Köhler Container, Linux

In order to determine the size of a LXC container, first run lxc storage list to list your storage pools:

uli@myserver:~$ lxc storage list
+---------+-------------+--------+------------------------------------+---------+
|  NAME   | DESCRIPTION | DRIVER |               SOURCE               | USED BY |
+---------+-------------+--------+------------------------------------+---------+
| default |             | dir    | /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default | 2       |
+---------+-------------+--------+------------------------------------+---------+

If the driver is not dir, you are using a COW-type storage backend. Using this technology it is not possible to easily determine the storage size of a container. The following instructions apply only for the dir driver.

Now open a root shell and cd to the directory listed in the SOURCE column and cd to its containers subdirectory:

root@myserver ~ # cd /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default
root@myserver /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default # cd containers/
root@myserver /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default/containers #

This directory contains the storage directory for all containers. Run du -sh * in order to find the size of each container:

root@myserver /var/lib/lxd/storage-pools/default/containers # du -sh *
2.0G    my-container

In this example, the container my-container occupies 2.0 Gibibytes of disk space.

Routing public IPv6 addresses to your lxc/lxd containers

Uli Köhler Cloud, Container, Linux, Networking

The enormous amount of IPv6 addresses available to most commercially hosted VPS / root servers with a public IPv6 prefix allows you to route a public IPv6 address to every container that is running on your server. This tutorial shows you how to do that, even if you have no prior experience with routing,

Step 0: Create your LXC container

We assume you have already done this – just for reference, here’s how you can create a container:

lxc launch ubuntu:18.04 my-container

Step 1: Which IP address do you want to assign to your container?

First you need to find out what prefix is routed to your host. Usually you can do that by checking in your provider’s control panel. You’re looking for something like 2a01:4f9:c010:278::1/64. Another option would be to run sudo ifconfig

and look for a inet6 line in the section of your primary network interface (this only works if you have configured your server to have an IPv6 address). Note that addresses that start with fe80:: and addresses starting with fd, among others, are not public IPv6 addresses.

Then you can define a new IPv6 address to your container. Which one you choose – as long as it’s within the prefix – is entirely your decision.

Often, <prefix>::1 is used for the host itself, therefore you could, for example, choose <prefix>::2. Note that some providers use some IP addresses for other purposes. Check your provider’s documentation for details.

If you don’t want to make it easy to find your container’s public IPv6, don’t choose <prefix>::1, <prefix>::2, <prefix>::3 etc but something more random like <prefix>:af15:99b1:0b05:1, for example2a01:4f9:c010:278:af15:99b1:0b05:0001. Ensure your IPv6 address has 8 groups of 4 hex digits each!

For this example, we choose the IPv6 address 2a01:4f9:c010:278::8.

Step 2: Find out the ULA of your container

We need to find the ULA (unique local address – similar to a private IPv4 address which is not routed on the internet) of the container. Using lxc, this is quite easy:

uli@myserver:~$ lxc list
+--------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
|     NAME     |  STATE  |         IPV4          |                     IPV6                      |
+--------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| my-container | RUNNING | 10.144.118.232 (eth0) | fd42:830b:36dc:3691:216:3eff:fed1:9058 (eth0) |
+--------------+---------+-----------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

You need to look in the IPv6 column and copy the address listed there. In this example, the address is fd42:830b:36dc:3691:216:3eff:fed1:9058.

Step 3: Setup IPv6 routing

Now we can tell the host Linux to route your chosen public IPv6 to the container’s private IPv6. This is quite easy:

sudo ip6tables -t nat -A PREROUTING -d <public IPv6> -j DNAT --to-destination <container private IPv6>

In our example, this would be

sudo ip6tables -t nat -A PREROUTING -d 2a01:4f9:c010:278::8 -j DNAT --to-destination fd42:830b:36dc:3691:216:3eff:fed1:9058

First, test the command by running it in a shell. If it works (i.e. if it doesn’t print any error message), you can permanently store it e.g. by adding it to /etc/rc.local (after #!/bin/bash, before exit 0). Advanced users should prefer to add it to /etc/network/interfaces.

Step 4: Connect to your container using SSH on your public IPv6 (optional)

Note: This step requires that you have working IPv6 connectivity at your local computer. If you are unsure, check at ipv6-test.com

First, open a shell on your container:

lxc exec my-container bash

After running this, you should see a root shell prompt inside your container:

root@my-container:~#

The following commands should be entered in the container shell, not the host!

Now we can create a user to login to (in this example, we create the uli user):

root@my-container:~# adduser uli
Adding user `uli' ...
Adding new group `uli' (1001) ...
Adding new user `uli' (1001) with group `uli' ...
Creating home directory `/home/uli' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for uli
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
        Full Name []: 
        Room Number []: 
        Work Phone []: 
        Home Phone []: 
        Other []: 
Is the information correct? [Y/n]

You only need to enter a password (you won’t see anything on screen when entering it) twice, for all other lines you can just press enter.

The ubuntu:18.04 lxc image used in this example does not allow SSH password authentication in its default configuration. In order to fix this, change PasswordAuthentication no to PasswordAuthentication yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restart the SSH server by running service sshd restart. Be sure you understand the security implications before you do that!

Now, logout of your container shell by pressing Ctrl+D. The following commands can be entered on your desktop or any other server with IPv6 connectivity.

Now login to your server:

ssh <username>@<public IPv6 address>

in this example:

ssh uli@2a01:4f9:c010:278::8

If you configured everything correctly, you’ll see the shell prompt for your container:

uli@my-container:~$

Note: Don’t forget to configure a firewall for your container, e.g. ufw! Your container’s IPv6 is exposed to the internet and just assuming noone will guess it is not good security practice.

How to fix puppetteer error while loading shared libraries: libX11-xcb.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Uli Köhler Linux

Problem:

You are trying to run puppetteer on Ubuntu, but when it starts to run chrome, you are facing the following issue:

/home/user/erp/node_modules/puppeteer/.local-chromium/linux-555668/chrome-linux/chrome: error while loading shared libraries: libX11-xcb.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution:

Install the missing packages using

sudo apt-get install gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils wget

Credits to @coldner on the puppetteer issue tracker for assembling the required pkgs.

If you encounter E: Unable to locate package errors, run sudo apt-get update.

How to make mongodump export JSON instead of BSON

Uli Köhler Databases

mongodump exports your MongoDB database to a BSON format, but if you want to use JSON instead, you need to use the mongoexport tool.

Examples:

mongoexport -d mydatabase -c mycollection # Prints to stdout
mongoexport -d mydatabase -c mycollection -o mycollections.json # Write to mycollections.json

Note that some datatypes that can be stored in MongoDB can only be represented in BSON – so in some cases, information may be lost by exporting to JSON.

Fixing npm/node-gyp Error: not found: make on Ubuntu

Uli Köhler Linux, NodeJS

When you run npm install and it tries to install a native package like bcrypt and you see an error message like this:

gyp ERR! build error 
gyp ERR! stack Error: not found: make
gyp ERR! stack     at getNotFoundError (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:13:12)
gyp ERR! stack     at F (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:68:19)
gyp ERR! stack     at E (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:80:29)
gyp ERR! stack     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/which.js:89:16
gyp ERR! stack     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/isexe/index.js:42:5
gyp ERR! stack     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/isexe/mode.js:8:5
gyp ERR! stack     at FSReqWrap.oncomplete (fs.js:182:21)

you simple need to install GNU Make. On Ubuntu, the easiest way of doing this is to run

sudo apt install build-essential

This will not only install make but also related tools like gcc and some standard header files and tools.

How to fix FreeCAD ‘No module named WebGui’ on Ubuntu 18.04

Uli Köhler CAD, Linux

On Ubuntu 18.04 there’s currently a known bug where FreeCAD starts but does not show any widgets at startup but this error message instead:

No module named WebGui

One way I’ve found of fixing this issue is to install FreeCAD not from the Ubuntu repositories but from the freecad-stable PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable
sudo apt-get update

Then you can install freecad again:

sudo apt install freecad

If you’ve installed previous versions of OpenCASCADE from the freecad PPAs, you might get an error message similar to this one:

Die folgenden Pakete haben unerfüllte Abhängigkeiten:
 freecad : Hängt ab von: libocct-data-exchange-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-foundation-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-modeling-algorithms-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-modeling-data-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-ocaf-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
           Hängt ab von: libocct-visualization-7.2 soll aber nicht installiert werden
E: Probleme können nicht korrigiert werden, Sie haben zurückgehaltene defekte Pakete.

In that case, you need to force apt to install OpenCASCADE 7.2 along with freecad and deinstall OpenCASCADE 7.1

sudo apt install freecad libocct-data-exchange-7.2 libocct-foundation-7.2 libocct-modeling-algorithms-7.2 libocct-modeling-data-7.2 libocct-ocaf-7.2 libocct-visualization-7.2

How to set cell value to string using js-xlsx

Uli Köhler Javascript, NodeJS

This snippet reads a XLSX file using js-xlsx, sets the C2 cell to abc123 and writes the result to another file:

const XLSX = require('xlsx');

const table = XLSX.readFile('mytable.xlsx');
// Use first sheet
const sheet = table.Sheets[table.SheetNames[0]];

// Option 1: If you have numeric row and column indexes
sheet[XLSX.utils.encode_cell({r: 1 /* 2 */, c: 2 /* C */})] = {t: 's' /* type: string */, v: 'abc123' /* value */};
// Option 2: If you have a cell coordinate like 'C2' or 'D15'
sheet['C2'] = {t: 's' /* type: string */, v: 'abc123' /* value */};

XLSX.writeFile(table, 'result.xlsx');

 

How to iterate over XLSX rows using js-xlsx

Uli Köhler Javascript, NodeJS

This snippet allows you to easily iterate over rows in any XLSX files using the js-xlsx library (in this example we don’t iterate over all columns but rather only get the B column as an example):

const table = XLSX.readFile('mytable.xlsx');
const sheet = table.Sheets[table.SheetNames[0]];

var range = XLSX.utils.decode_range(sheet['!ref']);
for (let rowNum = range.s.r; rowNum <= range.e.r; rowNum++) {
    // Example: Get second cell in each row, i.e. Column "B"
    const secondCell = sheet[XLSX.utils.encode_cell({r: rowNum, c: 1})];
    // NOTE: secondCell is undefined if it does not exist (i.e. if its empty)
    console.log(secondCell); // secondCell.v contains the value, i.e. string or number
}

 

How to fix Angular4/5/6 Unexpected token ‘px’

Uli Köhler Angular, Javascript

If you encounter an error message like this:

Parser Error: Unexpected token 'px' at column 3 in [70px] in ng:///AppModule/MyComponent.html@5:34 ("="let string of strings">

look at the line the error is referring to. It will look similar to this:

<mat-expansion-panel-header [collapsedHeight]="70px">

You have two options of fixing this:

Option 1: Recommended if the value (70px in this case) is always constant.

Remove the brackets from the attribute: [collapsedHeight] to collapsedHeight. The brackets mean that the value shall be interpreted as Javascript and removing them means interpreting the value as attribute. You code should look like this:

<mat-expansion-panel-header collapsedHeight="70px">

Option 2: Force angular to interpret the value (70px in this case) as a string:

Add single quotes before and after the value makes it valid Javascript:

<mat-expansion-panel-header [collapsedHeight]="'70px'">

I recommend to use this option only if you expect the value to be a non-constant javascript expression in the future.