Tingo's notes

Nikola - database error

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 08:50:43 GMT

Once in a blue moon, Nikola throws a database error when I do build and deploy.

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Formatting csv files in shell

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Sat, 15 Jul 2023 12:00:02 GMT

Often it is easier to read csv files if they are formatted as a table. One of my ansible playbooks outputs a list of machines o a csv file.

scp and proxy

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Mon, 22 May 2023 15:49:14 GMT

With scp you can use -J directly. Like scp -J user@proxyhost.example.org user@hiddenhost:/directory/some/file.zip . for example. As usual, the 'user' part can be left out if the user is the same on the hosts in question.

sshfs with proxy

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 19:47:06 GMT

The ssh command has the useful '-J' option which allows you to connect via a proxy host. Very useful for hosts which are not directly reachable from the current network you are on. Since '-J' corresponds to the ProxyJump directive, you can achive the same goal with sshfs like this: sshfs hidden-host.example.org:/some/directory/ ~/mountpoint/ -o ProxyJump=proxy.example.org this is very useful.

Setting up ssh-agent from cmdline

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 09:23:46 GMT

Sometimes I write content via a ssh connection, using vi as my editor. In order to deploy new content, it is useful to have ssh-agent running. Ony way to do that is like this:

[nikola] tingo@kg-core2:~/personal/projects/nikola % eval `ssh-agent -c`
Agent pid 65221

This command sets the environment variables SSH_AUTH_SOCK and SSH_AGENT_PID, and you are ready to add keys with ssh-add. When you are finished, you just use ssh-agent -k to kill the agent.

Nikola - beware of the slug!

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 15:40:11 GMT

Nikola uses the slug of a post or page to generate the output files and directories. So if you (for any reason) decide to rename a source file, remember to rename the slug also. Or else you will spend frustrating time wondering why nikola persists in rendering something at an old location. Perhaps you will try clearing the cache, removing the doit database, or even clearing the output directory and getting even more frustrated when it doesn't help.

Nginx - configuration problems

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:23:38 GMT

When I set up the webserver this very site is running on, I had trouble with Nginx at first.

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Deployment with Nikola

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 20:40:23 GMT

I now have manual deployment working. So now I set up a series of deployment commands in conf.py and try the out

DEPLOY_COMMANDS = {
    'default': [
        'cd output; git add .',
        'cd output; git commit -q -m "content added"',
        'cd output; git push web',
    ]
}

Will it work? Update: yes it works nicely. Nikola scores again!

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Working with Nikola

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 19:53:33 GMT

Learning to work with Nikola, instead of against it. Sometimes it is better to go with the flow.

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Pushing remote git repositories

Torfinn Ingolfsen — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 17:08:56 GMT

I followed the Using git to manage a web site howto. But it didn't work at first. Since I'm not very familiar with git "bare repositories", I started looking at that part. As it turns out, I should have started with the basics.

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