Alan Tindale

Secure Boot and Linux nVidia Drivers
January 30, 2022

Secure Boot and Linux nVidia Drivers

For some time now I have struggled with getting the proprietory nVidia drivers to work on a system with UEFI Secure Boot enabled. What would happen is the drivers install correctly but do not load due to Secure Boot signing verification mechanism does not complete successfully. Reading suggests that mokutil --import MOK.der should load the key to the Secure Boot database ready for the enrolment process to complete upon reboot. This enrolment process should present a screen where the certificate password is requested.
Adding a Cron Job to ESXi

Adding a Cron Job to ESXi

December 11, 2018

There is often a need to have scheduled maintenance tasks run on the free ESXi edition which unfortunately has some crippled features. An example of this is when implementing the fine ghettoVCB backup scripts. As this is an often needed feature I thought I’d document the process in this article. Having enabled ssh access to your ESXi server, ssh in as root. Firstly, add the cron job to the root crontab:
Git Log Commands

Git Log Commands

December 30, 2016

A selection of useful git log commands including searching the commit history.
Building Websites with Python and Flask

Building Websites with Python and Flask

March 18, 2015

Over the course of my learning I have ended up with a base configuration for serving Python web applications. This configuration utilises the nginx web server together with uwsgi as the Python > web app gateway. As is the norm, it is recommended to utilise a python virtual environment to isolate your software requirements. The full stack is: virtualenv Python Flask uwsgi Supervisor nginx The standard operating system I go to for web apps such as this is Ubuntu.
Selecting First/Least/Max Row per Group in SQL

Selecting First/Least/Max Row per Group in SQL

July 24, 2012

Here are some common SQL problems, all of which have related solutions: How do I find the most recent log entry for each program? How do I find the most popular item from each category? How do I find the top score for each player? In general, these types of “select the extreme from each group” queries can be solved with the same techniques. I’ll explain how to do that in this article, including the harder problem of selecting the top N entries, not just the top 1.
VMware ESXi Version and Build Number Reference

VMware ESXi Version and Build Number Reference

June 25, 2010

The arcticle is a reference table listing VMware ESXi version, release date and build numbers.