Category Archives: Ubuntu

Disable netplan.io and use native systemd-networkd on ubuntu 18.04

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Ubuntu’s first point release for Bionic Beaver (18.04 LTS) has been released.

Now this release has had some time to mature, it’s time to have a look.
First thing that you notice is that /etc/network/interfaces is no longer in use and we have netplan.io .

Come on Canonical, haven’t you learned from Mir?

So, if I’m to use this distro, I want to ditch netplan and use native systemd-networkd, which after all is what netplan is built onto.
So can we? Yes, we can.

With a simple setup where you only have one or more wired network cards, this is fairly straightforward.

Remove netplan:

apt remove netplan

Enable systemd-networkd

systemctl enable systemd-networkd

Add the following contents to a file called /etc/systemd/network/99-wildcard.network

[Match]
Name=en*

[Network]
DHCP=yes
IPv6AcceptRA=yes

(Of course I want IPv6 enabled)

Now reboot, and systemd-networkd is up and running:

root@1804:~# networkctl
IDX LINK             TYPE               OPERATIONAL SETUP     
  1 lo               loopback           carrier     unmanaged 
  2 ens3             ether              routable    configured

2 links listed.

root@1804:~# networkctl status ens3
● 2: ens3
       Link File: /lib/systemd/network/99-default.link
    Network File: /etc/systemd/network/99-wildcard.network
            Type: ether
           State: routable (configured)
            Path: pci-0000:00:03.0
          Driver: virtio_net
          Vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
           Model: Virtio network device
      HW Address: 1e:00:6f:00:17:ac
         Address: 185.66.250.47
                  2a00:f10:121:a00:1c00:6fff:fe00:17ac
                  fe80::1c00:6fff:fe00:17ac
         Gateway: 185.66.250.3 (ICANN, IANA Department)
                  fe80::d6ca:6dff:fe74:870d (Routerboard.com)
             DNS: 93.180.70.22
                  93.180.70.30
                  2a00:f10:ff04:253::53
                  2a00:f10:ff04:153::53
  Search Domains: zone01.ams02.cldin.net
    Connected To: n06.c01.ap01.zone01.ams02.cldin.net on port fe:00:6f:00:17:ac (vnet37)

Window is too narrow in bash

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I use my smartphone regularly to login on servers of mine with SSH. This works really well, but obviously you have less width than with a normal computer screen.

Some tools, like w, will not work with this limited width and give you a message like 

w: 60 column window is too narrow

Being a sysadmin, I don’t like to be told something just can’t work. So, a little trick to make it work:

 w | cat

This will have w output it’s text through stdout to cat and cat just outputs the text to the console, no questions asked.

Workaround to fix notifications in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

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Yesterday I have installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on my laptop to try it out.
While overall the experience is quite good, I found that notifications were broken for apps like slack and atom.
Following the issue found on github, I have found the following workaround to work for me:

Add the following line to /etc/environment ( edit as root ) and reboot ( or logout and login )

ELECTRON_USE_UBUNTU_NOTIFIER=1