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Solution for >>pacman and yay-bin are in conflict (libalpm.so). Remove yay-bin? [y/N]<<

yay-bin is currently not compatible with pacman 6.

If you update your system, you get the following error

pacman and yay-bin are in conflict (libalpm.so). Remove yay-bin? [y/N]

How to solve it? It is super simple, just build yay from source.

yay -S yay

Check the aur package page for an update.

Zabbix: Mass update items update interval

The issue was, that we've just added more and more systems and with that items to our zabbix monitoring solution.

The housekeeping process was getting slower and slower so we reasked our self "do we need that kind of accuracy"? Well, for the most parts, we figured out a bit "No". What was left was a handfull of critical sytems.

Instead of checking each host and item, we just noted the critical systems. This list represents the hosts we want to check individually. All otheres where "aligned" with one big mass updated.

We will use pure sql here, either via command line, adminer or what ever you like.

What do you need to know? Inside your database zabbix, there is a table called items. Each item has the column delay which represents the update interval.

After knowing this, we just need to know one more thing. What kind of update intervals do we have.

You fetch this information via the following sql statement.

SELECT `delay` FROM `items` GROUP BY `delay`;

After that, you only have to update each fitting item. For example, if you want to raise the delay from 1 minute to 5 minute just execute the following command.

UPDATE `items` SET `delay` = '5m' WHERE `delay` = '1m'

And that's it.

Zabbix and how to the filesystem template to send warn or crit for fixed free space values

We are monitoring our servers with zabbix.

A lot of servers are running in a slightly different configuration, especially when it comes to harddisk space. Furthermore, it is fine to operate on "almost full" disk or "near the limit".

The task was to adjust the existing zabbix templates without creating and maintaining our own ones. A part of our servers should warn us if there is only 5 GB of free disk space left and should send us a crit if the amount of free disk space drops below 3 GB.

So we ended up with a bit of calcuation. E.G. a server has 170 GB of disk space, we are running the following math.

#calcuation for critical, if free disk space is below 3 GB
$percentage = (3 GB / 100 %) * 170 GB; #results in 5.1 %
$numberForZabbix = (100 % - $percentage) #100 - 5.1 = 94.9

Once we have done the math for the warning (5 GB) and for all the servers, we can go into the host configuration and use the mighty macro section.

For the example host above, we want to add the following two macro lines

Macro|Value
{$VFS.FS.PUSED.MAX.CRIT}|94.9
{$VFS.FS.PUSED.MAX.WARN}|91.5

Of course, the crit message now says "more than 94.9 percent of disk space used" but this is the compromise we have to deal with. The other solution would be to maintain our own template, what we want to avoid.

Microsoft Sticky Notes Alternative Windows 10

After upgrading many clients to Windows 10, we ran into multiple issues with Microsofts Sticky Notes. Notes are "lost", Sticky Notes stopped working or has been removed by the system or what ever.

Simply Sticky Notes is our decided alternative.

Benefits are:

  • multiple language support
  • lightweight
  • contains backup mechanism
  • notes are stored in a sqlite database
  • you can move the storage path wherever you want