🕒︎ - 2021-01-24
Oh no, Tucows are closing down their
venerable download service - where are all the Windows 98 users going to
download their renamed and trojaned versions of GIMP from now?!
I usually recoil slightly with surprise when I run
whois on a
domain and see Tucows as the registrar, but apparently they do many
other things than distribute questionable installers for software
surrounded by heaps of dodgy adverts.
🕚︎ - 2021-01-23

The Danish national broadcasting tv show
"Morgensang" (Morning
Song) did a cover of D-A-D's rock anthem "Sleeping
My Day Away" the other day. Fun!
Here is the original, for reference.
🕥︎ - 2021-01-21

Working from home, I needed some network ports at my desk - I had stolen
the network cable from the printer and used that for the work laptop,
but that's kind of annoying when I need to print, and then have to
re-log on to the VPN after moving the cable back to the laptop.
Also, I might want another laptop for video-conferencing, and I didn't
want to have multiple cables going from the router (creating more
blinking lights) across the room to the desk like a savage, so I went
looking for a little cheap switch.
Sorting by price ascending I started going down the list and found the
TP-Link Easy Smart TL-SG105E - it looked a good size, has cutouts for mounting it on the wall/table, and
what looked like a pretty low power consumption, so I ordered one.
When it arrived I drilled a couple of holes on the underside of the
table and mounted it there, next to the power strip, and plugged in some
network cables.
The manual said that the switch would request an IP-address by dhcp, so
after a quick inspection of syslog on my home network server, I got the
IP and logged in.
The switch immediately asked me to change the password, good, and I then
looked through the menus. It is impressive how much can be configured in
a basic 5-port switch costing 161 DKK!
One option intrigued me: "LED On/Off". It defaulted to On, so I switched
it Off, expecting that the power LED would be turned off and that the
LEDs on the network ports would keep blinking.
BUT THEY DIDN'T!
Much to my delight, all the LEDs turned off, no light pollution at
all. I wish my ISP's router could
do the same.
The TP-Link SG105E? After a whole day of experience - recommended.
🕚︎ - 2021-01-18

An innocent question about a warning from Gnus on Reddit led me
down a rabbit hole: "Unexpected error message when starting
Gnus".
My Gnus didn't show that warning message. Why? Because I had
gnus-read-active-file
set to nil
. Reading the Gnus
manual makes
it abundantly clear that the default 'some
is superior to nil
, so I
changed to that.
Now I also get the error, once for Feedbase,
once for Lantern and once for
each of my email (nnml) servers. Hm.
The error is because those servers don't support "LIST NEWSGROUPS". It
turns out that I never implemented "LIST NEWSGROUPS" in Feedbase and
Lantern - because I had configured Gnus in a way so it didn't issue it
in the first place!
So I implemented "LIST NEWSGROUPS" in Feedbase's nntpd and in
Lantern's
nntpd.
Ok, good, now I have an answer: I only get those messages for my email servers.
With the changed configuration of gnus-read-active-file
Gnus now
issues a "LIST NEWSGROUP" at start-up and displays descriptions in the
*Group*
buffer. I actually don't want to see the descriptions, so I
changed my gnus-group-line-format
to not include %D
. This also has
the nice side effect that "LIST NEWSGROUPS" is no longer issued at
start-up and the warning isn't shown for the (remaining) servers that
don't support it. So now I also have a suggestion on how to avoid the warning.
🕑︎ - 2021-01-16
Hm, backing up my "closet" server took almost an entire day:
--------------[ Session statistics ]--------------
StartTime 1610129605.00 (Fri Jan 8 19:13:25 2021)
EndTime 1610215763.66 (Sat Jan 9 19:09:23 2021)
ElapsedTime 86158.66 (23 hours 55 minutes 58.66 seconds)
SourceFiles 3139332
SourceFileSize 1020064979159 (950 GB)
MirrorFiles 3075601
MirrorFileSize 1020831786704 (951 GB)
NewFiles 204031
NewFileSize 33490928359 (31.2 GB)
DeletedFiles 140300
DeletedFileSize 34220568133 (31.9 GB)
ChangedFiles 31337
ChangedSourceSize 15721366415 (14.6 GB)
ChangedMirrorSize 15758534186 (14.7 GB)
IncrementFiles 375683
IncrementFileSize 38022063321 (35.4 GB)
TotalDestinationSizeChange 37255255776 (34.7 GB)
Errors 0
--------------------------------------------------
This is using rdiff-backup 1.3.3 backing up
an NVMe SSD to a 3.5" USB-3 harddisk.
It might be time to look into another solution. I do like how
rdiff-backup lets me browse and copy from the most recent backup
directly though... Any suggestions? Maybe rdiff-backup 2 is faster?
Email me.
🕡︎ - 2021-01-14

Debian just started "freezing" the
distribution, which is what happens in the time leading up to a new
release.
The upcoming release will be Debian 11, codenamed "bullseye".
Reading the
announcement
made me think of how upgrading my server (which runs Debian stable) over
the years has been quite uneventful.
Here are my upgrade notes over the years:
I didn't write about upgrading to 5 (lenny), and the note on 4 (etch) is
ambigious; Debian keeps on trucking, which is great.
🕖︎ - 2021-01-12

Some time ago I dropped the key to my Citroën C-zero and as the key hit
the ground, one corner was damaged. The next time I used the key in the
ignition, it fell apart, and I lost one of the two button "shields".
Kind of annoying, but not the end of the world, I removed the other
button shield, taped the key case together and everything worked. But
exposing the rubber-buttons to the elements might not be a great idea,
and it doesn't look so nice.
Finding the correct replacement was not that easy, as none of the
sellers of key cases seem to list the Citroën C-zero as a matching
model, but I finally found this product on AliExpress: KEYYOU Flip Car
Key Case For Peugeot 4007 ET 4008 For Citroen C-Crosser C4 Aircross
Replacement 2 Button Remote Key Shell
MIT11R.
It took almost 5 weeks to arrive from China, but it's the right one!
It was a little tricky moving over the metal part of the key (getting
the spring right), but I succeeded at last, and now it looks nice and
seems to be exactly the same as the old broken shell. Recommended!