Intro to Minio S3 Object Storage

 

Minio  S3 object storage is powerful and easily run in a Docker, LXD, Podman or other container environment. Super easy to setup, super easy to understand, and the latest console has a ton of features to improve the intuitiveness of the platform. 

The command run in the video is the same as in the previous blog:

sudo docker run -it --name=miniotest -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 minio/minio server /data --console-address ":9001"

To map a volume to the container one can create a directory on the local machine and add the -v <localvolume>:/data to the above command. That should help keep the buckets and related files available if the container is ever removed.

Example below from the container created in this test.

More information is below:

https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-docker-quickstart-guide.html

https://www.truenas.com/docs/core/services/s3/

https://s3browser.com/

https://s3tools.org/s3cmd

Happy to field any questions, just let me know. 

Integrate Firefox .tar into Linux native

Ubuntu 22.04 is here and with it are more polish and features. One feature / change is that Firefox is now a snap package. 

Snaps? What? 

Snaps are the way a lot of third party software gets bundled and packaged in Ubuntu. Developed by Canonical, they are a good way to run applications in a sandboxed environment on the PC. Many, many applications that are either not focused on the Linux community, or otherwise not devoting resources to building applications to run natively on Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Debian, Arch, etc. can be installed and run on the Linux Desktop by way of Snaps. Full list here: https://snapcraft.io/store

The major competitor to Snaps is Flatpak which is another great project. I may do a blog or video comparing the two in the future, but essentially both help package hundreds of applications for Linux that run in an isolated environment on the host system. Unlike Docker or Podman, these contained applications function pretty much like a standard desktop application with icons, launchers, etc. 

Now Firefox is a member of the Snap family. Great. Why the blog post?

Well Snaps have a reputation of occasionally being somewhat slow to load. Once running fine, but that initial click seems to take a while even with an SSD. I first learned about this with Ubuntu 18.04 running an admittedly 'netbook-like' device (low power laptop) when clicking the most basic calculator seemed to take several seconds. It wasn't until I learned about Snap packages vs native apt or .deb packages that I found the issue. Running calculator installed using the command 'apt install gnome-calculator' just pops right up, the Snap version takes a few seconds longer than it should. 

This is true with the Firefox Snap as well. Being honest, I was kinda looking for it, because when I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu Mate 21.10 to Ubuntu Mate 22.04 one of the things highlighted was that Firefox would be removed and replaced with a Snap. Indeed, when first using it I had lost all my settings (not too many), and it seemed slower to boot. No apt package available, I set out to install using the Firefox download.

If you download Firefox it gives you a Zip file - technically a .tar.bz2 zip file - that you can unzip and just run Firefox from the 'firefox' directory - just double-click the file firefox-bin. To make this more integrated in the desktop experience do the following. 

Download and unzip Firefox from the official Mozilla website: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/?redirect_source=firefox-com

Based on the location of the files create a firefox.desktop file under /usr/share/applications. *This will require 'sudo' or 'root' permissions.

Make the file:

• Open a text editor - Text Editor, Pluma, Kwrite, Nano, VI, VIM - any will do.
• Enter the following:
  [Desktop Entry]
  Version=1.0
  Name=Firefox
  GenericName=Internet Browser
  Type=Application
  Categories=Network;
  Exec=/<extract location>/firefox/firefox-bin
  Icon=/<extract location>/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default32.png
• Save as firefox.desktop in the /usr/share/applications directory on Ubuntu
  
• Log out and log back in to confirm. 

That's it. 

Firefox will get displayed as a searchable application. In my case it even reappeared as the top of my favorites just like it had been saved before I upgraded.

Snaps are great for ease of use and running proprietary applications, such as games, or perhaps the odd communication platform. However, I think for something as commonly used as a browser, having something running on the operating system leads to a speedier experience. 

Hope it helps!

 

 

Fixing filesystem permissions in Flatpak

 

I had a problem with my Flatpak installation of Slack - I couldn't save files. 

I don't recall this being an issue before, but in my new computer with Ubuntu Mate 21.10, it was. 

Turns out the solution is fairly straightforward. 

Flatpak has the option to specify a file path which can then be written to. If this file path is then the default download folder everything is copacetic.

Steps:

Close Slack and make sure it is not running in the background. 

Run flatpak ps to ensure com.slack.Slack is not listed.

Create a directory for storing the download files. This can be in your file manager (Nautilus, Caja, Dolphin, Thunar, etc.), or with the mkdir command.

Once created you can run the following:

flatpak override com.slack.Slack --filesystem=<your full directory path>

*This command needs to be run as root in my testing (use sudo). 

Then start the Slack application again and go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Download location. Set it the same as the directory path just mapped. 

That's it. Files should now be able to be saved to that specific directory. 

Hope it helps anyone who needs to do something similar in Slack or another Flatpak application.

Nextcloud External Storage and Apps

 

This post and video go through how to add external storage in Nextcloud and introduces the wide number of applications that can be used to tailor the functionality of Nextcloud. 

For the external storage, the example is S3 object storage from a Minio container. Minio is a fantastic project that allows for locally hosted S3 API equipped storage. It's also nice because it is quite easy to start and get running, particularly on Docker. 

The command I used to make the Minio test container is below:
sudo docker run -it --name minios3 -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 minio/minio server /data

*Update: Minio's latest image (tested 4/2022) needs to define the console port or it tries to auto find a port that was a bit hit or miss for me.
Revised:

sudo docker run -it --name=miniotest -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 minio/minio server /data --console-address ":9001"

I did need to make some cuts in the video which is why the mouse jumps in a couple of places. Most notably, I initially had the wrong IP address of the Minio instance. This was essentially because in the test environment both containers were running on the same system and couldn't connect using the host IP. External systems wouldn't have had that issue. Around minute 7:25 the change will show moving from the host IP to the actual IP of the container. 

In more detail:

Docker, Podman, and other container management tools assign IP addresses to each container service. When running as a group, say if using a pod and Kubernetes, or running the containers together with Docker Compose, the containers are part of a single network and can identify each other by the service name. 

In this example, the containers were created separately, and being on the same host where unable to reach each other using the address I provided. Changing to the Minio specific IP was all that was needed, but as this was out of scope for the video - and honestly not something that would normally come up, so I chose to omit the debugging.

Some more information and resources about both Nextcloud and Minio are below.

Nextcloud Docker

Minio

Minio Quickstart

Minio Docker

Creating a web application with a MongoDB backend and Docker

This is a bit of a POC that turned into a project.

I was playing with MongoDB to create a front-end that would store data in a user friendly way. I didn't want to take on things like WordPress or others, and had an idea for a note taking application that could be on-prem, and put teams or catalogs first with grouping.

I think there is quite a bit more that could be done, like adding reminders/due dates to the posts/notes and adding more management to groups so new authors can add more people to a project/group. For now this is being used to demonstrate the capabilities of PHP with MongoDB.

A killer feature in MongoDB is the ability for it to not need to be primed in anyway. This feature allows for this app install using Docker to exist. In a traditional/relational database a user needs to setup the database and table structure in order for data to be inserted. With NoSQL/MongoDB you can just point an app at the DB and with the correct credentials start adding and editing a whole DB in the service itself. This is what I do in the initial login screen. I check if the DB and admin exist, and if not, they get automatically populated so a user on a completely fresh install can just start using the application. 

Currently this application is far from perfect, but I hope it helps users get an idea of what an be done using PHP, HTML, CSS, and MongoDB together. I also hope it can be useful, and if anyone requires additional assistance, please feel free to leave comments on the GitHub page. I am not at the caliber of a professional open source developer, and have limited time, but I am interested in the feedback, and willing to assist as I can to further promote usage of the project.

I hope this can be a useful project either for internal team collaboration or simply as reference code for other users. The code is published with the permissible Apache 2.0 license (same as Apache and MongoDB that it builds off).

Notes:

Source code is here: https://github.com/JoeMrCoffee/OurNoteOrganizer

A word on TinyMCE

TinyMCE is an external text editor which is used to help enhance the ease for writing and editing posts. It is an external tool that requires connectivity to external networks in order to function. For environments that do not have external Internet connectivity a standard 'textarea' without rich formatting is employed.

As this project is made to be hosted on any on-prem environment, there is no TinyMCE API key provided or registered. Users can create their own keys based on their domains and needs. To remove the notification about getting started, users can follow the quick steps, create their own API key, and add it to line 8 of the newpost.php file.

More information on TinyMCE and getting started:

https://www.tiny.cloud/

https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/quick-start/