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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I have an ongoing irritation with windows (use it for work, Linux at home): It steals focus from the window you’re using if another window opens.

    Drives me nuts. I’ll be typing my password and pop! Oh look I just typed my password into something else that popped up because IT requires this program to run on login today.

    KDE is much better about not stealing window focus like that.



  • I read most of his points and I agree with them…

    But I have so much else to worry about, I just can’t get worked up about this.

    And I think he is ignoring the firestorm that would ensue if, say, openssh tried to change from using the current directory. There would probably be five forks started immediately to restore the original functionality - and is ssh really adding new features like he claims?

    Maybe it could be a config option in the site install (which I thought it already was), but forcing a change to fix what is a minor problem isn’t worth the headache.

    I do hate that some of those package systems install software into home. It inflates my backups dramatically and unnecessarily. I use opt for that sort of thing instead. For example, my immich docker install is in /opt.











  • Yeah as someone that was in the car scene during that era, I can’t recall a single time it was used to refer to a person. It was all about the car and its mods - and even then, it was used to describe any car, Asian or other, that was overdone or, often, just not to the taste of the viewer. One time since described my user of a Sony radio as “rice” because they were supposedly not reliable. I never had any issues, but that was their reaction.

    I understand why people might consider it racist, and I’m not a fan of the term because of that, and I’d prefer something better. But I do not believe racism was the intent when I saw it used.



  • Interesting concept. I have a script that uses long term tokens and curl to tell HA to turn on certain things I need before running a certain game, then turns them back off afterward. Presumably this could take the place of that script.

    It’s an interesting idea, I wonder what other ideas people will have once it’s working.

    I just wish I could get my script to disable the screensaver in KDE. I have the command that should do it, and it’s changing the right setting (ie, changing the same setting manually in the gui works correctly), but it seems like KDE isn’t aware of the config change, and the things I’ve tried to get KDE to reload that config aren’t working. No error, but the screen saver stays active.



  • I may have posted this before, but…late last year I realized my Debian server with circa 2009 hardware, with 4 gb of RAM and Core 2 Quad processor, was no longer up to the tasks I wanted it to perform; in particular, running a Home Assistant server. Back in 2018 or so, I added a software Linux RAID5 array with 5 active 3 TB drives and one hot spare, along with a “cold spare” that I’ve never actually used.

    So, early this year, I bought hardware to upgrade my desktop machine, which was still plenty fast for me, and move the guts to my server. This is how my server usually gets upgraded. Upgrade the desktop machine, give it a few days or weeks to make sure it’s stable, and then upgrade the server.

    I installed the hardware without a problem, booted it up, and everything seemed okay, except that I …couldn’t access the RAID. At first it was like, well, I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but then when mdadm could even FIND it, I started to get extremely worried. Fear set in.

    Long story short: When I built the RAID, I followed directions that used the entire discs as the RAID, instead of making a partition on the disc and using that partition. The old motherboard didn’t care, but the new one saw the bare discs and was like, “Hey, those are messed up, I’ll fix the partition table for you!” Turns out, building Linux RAIDs by using the full discs like that is a VERY BAD IDEA for exactly this reason - but there are still guides out there showing that method and not mentioning the risks.

    I was panicking. I spent days trying to figure out what to do and nothing was working. I was asking for help on the Linux-RAID list (and most of them were as helpful as they could be). Unfortunately my backups were NOT up to par (something I should have checked before starting), and I was at the point where I was like, well, I’ve lost x, y, and z.

    I had basically given up and was just recreating the RAID using the “create command” then trying to see if I could mount the drive read-only. With 6 drives, there are quite a few possible combinations that could be the right one. If I remember correctly, I was able to figure out which drive was the spare, so I could limit my searches to the other 5, and knowing all 5 were in use, it was a matter of trying different orders. I think I got close one time and ext4 gave me weird read error, so after that I swapped two drives, and hit the right order.

    Eventually … I found it. I found the right combination and could reload it! Everything was there, untouched! As quickly as I could, I copied everything to a 10 TB drive I bought and installed into the desktop system. I saved the command, rebooted, and the same thing happened again - so it was definitely a motherboard problem - but this time I knew how to recreate it, and did so.

    Since I now had a backup, I partitioned each drive and rebuilt the array using partitions…and I saved every piece of data I could think of about building the array, outputs of mdadm, outputs of /proc/mdstat, partition IDs, etc. Naturally, having that info likely means I’ll never need it.

    I was so relieved when I saw that mount command work without error. I spent close to a week worrying about it, and in that moment it was a huge rush.

    New setup handles HA and other duties with aplomb and is very reliable, so in the end it was very worth it.

    This is less “silly” and more “horrifying”. Sorry.


  • I need to do this with my gaming computer yet. I run Linux on my other machines (and have for many years), but this one is Windows. I bought the computer in 2021, but it doesn’t have the trusted computing module, so I can’t upgrade it to Windows 11 even if I wanted to.

    Last night I tried to add an SSD that I had from a laptop that died, figuring I’ll put a fresh install of Linux on the second SSD and not touch the original drive. Unfortunately, the computer didn’t want to boot off the original drive any more - even when I changed the boot priority to the original drive, I still got grub from the new drive. I had to disconnect the new SSD to get the computer to boot Windows on the original drive (I wasn’t ready to do the Linux install and might need Windows in the mean time).

    I know it’s a temporary issue at worst, as the installer will likely pick up that Windows installation and make it an option in grub. But it was a setback I wasn’t expecting. I figured I’d put in the drive and have it just idling there until I had time to run the Linux installation.