Scott and I were learning enough Blender to modify a mount for the Ranger, and Anya had randomly borrowed a “Blender for Dummies” book from the library. As we’ve been learning more about Blender, I came across a video series showing how to create chess pieces as a way of learning the program. Which has sparked the family blender challenge — everyone is creating their own chess set. Anya spent some of her holiday break translating one of her wood carvings into a model to use as the pawns … now Scott and I are behind! I think I’ll make a cat themed set … I just need to learn how to sculpt in Blender since the python API interface only seems to create basic shapes.
Category: Technology
PingFederate SAML Issuance Criterion – Or Operator
We use the “Issuance Criteria” to restrict access to applications that do just-in-time provisioning without processing group memberships to restrict who gets provisioned. The GUI, however, has an implicit AND operator … which means you cannot be allowed to log on if you are a member of X or Y
To use an OR operator, you need to use an OGNL expression. Show the advanced criteria
Use an OGNL expression — this is an example allowing members of two groups
<urn:TokenAuthorizationIssuanceCriterion AttrName="" AttrSourceType="Expression" ComparisonValue="" ErrorResult="No Role Assigned">
<urn:ExprText>#group = #this.get("memberOf"), #group.toString().contains("Scribe - Creator Access") || #group.toString().contains("Scribe - Viewer Access") ? @java.lang.Boolean@TRUE : @java.lang.Boolean@FALSE</urn:ExprText>
</urn:TokenAuthorizationIssuanceCriterion>
Expanding a qcow2-backed system disk (host + guest)
Expanding a qcow2-backed system disk (host + guest) — guest volume is lvm and xfs file system
HOST (resize qcow2)
- Optional backup:
cp –reflink=auto /vms/fedora02.qcow2 /vms/fedora02.qcow2.bak - Offline resize (VM stopped):
qemu-img resize /vms/fedora02.qcow2 +5G
# Start the VM after resizing.
GUEST (grow partition, PV, LV, filesystem)
- Confirm the disk shows the larger size:
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,MOUNTPOINT
#If needed:
#partprobe /dev/sda - Grow the LVM partition (sda2) to the end of the disk:
dnf install -y cloud-utils-growpart
growpart /dev/sda 2
partprobe /dev/sda - Resize the LVM PV and extend the root LV:
pvresize /dev/sda2
lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/fedora/root - Grow the filesystem:
xfs_growfs / - Verify:
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,MOUNTPOINT
df -h /
Exchange SMTP – Sender Reputation DB
Our Exchange server was refusing mail
451 4.7.0 Temporary server error. Please try again later. PRX5
Attempts to send mail would connect, send data, and then hang for a few seconds before returning the tempfail error.
Looks like there’s “sender reputation” data stored at .\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\data\SenderReputation that is used. Since I’m not actually doing filtering on the Exchange server, stopping the transport services, moving the files out of the folder, and then re-starting the services rebuilt the data and allowed mail to send again.
LSOF Scoped To Multiple PIDs
You can run lsof -p with a comma-delimited list of PIDs — but you can also transform the pidof output into a comma separated list of PIDs. Which means you can run lsof for all of the PIDs associated with a specific program. In my case, it’s rsync …
lsof -p “$(pidof rsync | tr ‘ ‘ ‘,’)”
Python: Partition and RPartition
Found a neat pair of methods that were added in Python 2.5 — it’s like split/index except it handles breaking the string into two elements for you. A tuple is returned with the part before the separator, the separator, and the part after the separator. If the separator is not found, element 0 and 1 are empty strings.
C:\Users\lisa> python
Python 3.13.3
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>> test = “This is a string | with pipe characters as | delimiters in the string”
>>> print(test.rpartition(“|”)[0])
This is a string | with pipe characters as
>>> print(test.partition(“|”)[0])
This is a string
>>>
Linux: Getting Drive Serial Number
[lisa@FVD01 /mnt/lisa/]# smartctl -i /dev/sdc
smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-6.15.7-200.fc42.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Red (CMR)
Device Model: WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0
Serial Number: WD-WCC7K4HY5TKD
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2b9a3d0c5
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity: 4,000,787,030,016 bytes [4.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Device is: In smartctl database 7.5/5706
ATA Version is: ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Tue Dec 2 17:24:27 2025 EST
SMART support is: Available – device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
2025-12-02 17:24:27 [root@FPP01 /mnt/MythAndZoneminder/]# smartctl -i /dev/sda
smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-6.15.7-200.fc42.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Red (CMR)
Device Model: WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0
Serial Number: WD-WCC7K7JZSZ0E
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 264576d5e
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity: 4,000,787,030,016 bytes [4.00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Device is: In smartctl database 7.5/5706
ATA Version is: ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Tue Dec 2 17:24:38 2025 EST
SMART support is: Available – device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Blender – Applying The Scale
We were playing with Blender this evening to modify a 3d model to mount the mirror on our Ranger — it reminds me a lot of learning vim where there’s just a lot of hidden “type this character and it does magic stuff“. Which, ironically, I love vim because of this … however I’ve also been using vi and vim since 1994. So I know the random character to type. Blender … not so much yet.
Oddity of the day — after scaling an object, you need take an additional step otherwise it’s not really scaled and measurements show up with unexpected values. To reset the scale:
Hit Ctrl + A
Select Scale in Object Mode to apply the current dimensions as the new scale of 1
They call this applying the scale. Which … I expected it did when I entered the scale factor and stuff changed size on the screen. But now I know!
Getting Cert Info From Host
An OpenSSL command to retrieve the cert chain from a host and parse out the CN and expiry info
[lisa@linux05 ~]# openssl s_client -connect 10.5.5.75:443 -servername lisa.rushworth.us -showcerts </dev/null 2>/dev/null | sed -n ‘/BEGIN CERTIFICATE/,/END CERTIFICATE/p’ | openssl x509 -noout -subject -startdate -enddate -nameopt RFC2253
subject=CN=lisa.rushworth.us
notBefore=Sep 2 03:28:34 2025 GMT
notAfter=Dec 1 03:28:33 2025 GMT
Ender 6
We finally have the Ender 6 printing – you need to keep the fan on any time the hot end is heating (or it clogs up), low retraction (2mm), and adjust the z offset as it prints the skirt (or brim, we’ve switched to using a brim to ensure adhesion)
