Aug 6, 2017

Where I can use it:

• GitLab, GitHub, git README.md in general
• Work documentation, which can then easily be copied to a wiki
• This website. It now runs on ghost.

Markdown has an almost unified standard, except that everyone has their own variation, but most of it is the same.

It's prettier. Formatting, formatting, formatting.

Better readability without the need for heavy programs. It's light AF.

Easy copy-paste to a formatted structure from Chrome via Chrome template extension. This means I can write the same documentation everywhere and just copy and paste. No more messing around to adapt the formatting.

If you are using atom it has a few plugins that make writing in .md easier.

The How

I used Nextcloud, and it was OK, but it was too heavy for what I required, and I wanted to get rid of PHP altogether.

I started searching for replacements, looking at various online markdown editors, but none of them worked for me. So, I decided to mix it up. Introducing Jupyter + Syncthing.

A combination of these 2 services allows me to achieve everything I wanted; store contents online, which I can now also sync with all my machines and even my phone with syncthing and edit them online if I need to at work with Jupyter.

Ghost Setup

Install dependencies

Ghost runs on NodeJS, so we need to install it. In my experience, this is easiest to do with nvm. Just run the wget or curl scripts from the install section on their GitHub. Once that is installed source the .bashrc and install the latest stable nodejs with

nvm install `nvm ls-remote --lts | grep "Latest LTS: Argon" | awk '{ print $1}'` && nvm use nodeba

This will list and find the recommended NodeJS version as of writing this, install it and activate.

Install Ghost

(you can use this guide to install it via CLI if you want v1)

Setup Ghost as a forever service

Inside start-ghost.sh

#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/home/ddulic/.nvm/versions/node/v6.11.0/bin/
cd /var/www/ghost
#export NODE_ENV=production
NODE_ENV=production forever -a -l /var/log/ghost start --sourceDir /var/www/ghost index.js

After that do crontab -e and add @reboot /home/user/ghost-start.sh at the bottom to start your blog with the forever service at every boot.

Nginx

Paste the following inside /etc/nginx/sites-available/ghost to enable https, this also enables you...

nginx code was here :O

Letsencrypt

letsencrypt via letsecnrypt

• sudo apt install letsencrypt
• sudo letsencrypt certonly --standalone --webroot-path=/var/www/ghost -d example.com

Generate DH parameters sudo openssl dhparam -out /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem 2048

Ghost 1.0 -.-'

With the release of Ghost 1.0 it's no longer complicated to install and configure ghost. Follow their installtion docs and if you wish to migrate to 1.0 check out this.

Jupyter

Install Jupyter notebook.

Configure Jupyter

• generate password file with jupyter notebook password
• generate the config file with jupyter notebook --generate-config

Edit the .jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py: and change the following to your preference

c.NotebookApp.base_url = '/files/' # changes our base url, I didn't like the /ipython...
c.NotebookApp.trust_xheaders = True # needed for nginx
c.NotebookApp.open_browser = False # since we aren't running on localhost we don't need a browser which will open when we load jupyter
c.NotebookApp.tornado_settings = {'static_url_prefix': '/files/static/'} # same as base_url, but used for static files
c.NotebookApp.default_url = '/tree/Sync/Ghost' # change to our default directory so we don't have to go to it every time we open jupyter

Nginx

Add the following code to /etc/nginx/sites-available/site under the https server block

location /files { proxy_pass http://localhost:8888; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade"; proxy_set_header Origin ""; }

Systemd config

Create a systemd startup script by creating a jupyter.service file in /etc/systemd/system with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Jupyter Notebook

[Service]
Type=simple
PIDFile=/var/run/jupyter-notebook.pid
User=user
Group=user
ExecStart=/home/user/.local/bin/jupyter notebook
WorkingDirectory=/home/user
Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable & Start Jupyter

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start jupyter
sudo systemctl enable jupyter

There are a few themes you can install. Personally, I like everything to be dark, so I decided on the oceans16 theme. Follow the instructions on the GitHub page on how to install and configure. I also enabled the logout button with jt -t oceans16 -T -N, since by default for reasons its disabled.

Now it's time to convert our notebook into a markdown editor. Luckily, there is a plugin which can do this for us - ipydm.

When creating a new file; code is the default parser, we want this to be markdown. Go to the site-packages directory of your python environment and modify site-packages/notebook/static/notebook/js/main.min.js. For me, it's .local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/notebook/static/notebook/js/main.min.js. Find Notebook.options_default and change default_cell_type: 'code'into default_cell_type: 'markdown'.

This isn't perfect. Editing a markdown which is divided by cells can be annoying, and I still don't understand how cells work, and saving a file also creates an additional hidden .checkpoint file. If anyone knows how to fix this, feel free to commend below :)

Syncthing

If you are on Debian/Ubuntu, it's recommended to install via the syncthing repo.

Once that is done, we just have to set up a reverse proxy. However, the previous instruction doesn't work for me, and I have no idea why. This config, however, works:

location /syncthing/ { proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; proxy_pass https://localhost:8384/; proxy_read_timeout 600s; proxy_send_timeout 600s; }

And that is it. You can now configure syncthing under example.com/syncthing here is a good getting started with syncthing.

Enjoy :)

Cover Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

Plex Anime Setup

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Plex Anime Setup