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Writing a panel applet for Cinnamon: The basics

Introduction What I wanted: A simple applet on Cinnamon, which allows me to turn a service on and off (hostapd, a Wifi hotspot). I first went for Argos catch-all extension, and learned that Cinnamon...

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Solved: Missing ktorrent icon on Linux Mint / Cinnamon

Running ktorrent on Linux Mint 19 (Tara), the famous downwards-arrow icon was invisible on the system tray. Which made it appear like the program had quit when it was actually minimized. Clicking the...

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Cinelerra 2019 notes

Cinelerra is alive and kicking. I’ve recently downloaded the “goodguy” revision of Cinelerra, Nov 29 2018 build (called “cin” for some reason), which is significantly smoother than the tool I’m used...

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Replacing ntpd with systemd-timesyncd (Mint 18.1)

Introduction It all began when I noted that my media center Linux machine (Linux Mint 18.1, Serena) finished a TV recording a bit earlier than expected. Logging in and typing “date” I was quite...

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Perl, DBI and MySQL wrongly reads zeros from database

TL;DR: SELECT queries in Perl for numerical columns suddenly turned to zeros after a software upgrade. This is a really peculiar problem I had after my web hosting provider upgraded some database...

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When mplayer plays a black window (or: Cinnamon leaking GPU memory)

The incident All of the sudden, playing videos with Mplayer opened a black window. Sometimes going fullscreen helped, sometimes it didn’t, sometimes with video playing but without OSD. ffplay worked,...

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Solved: systemd boot waits 90 seconds on net-devices-eth0

Introduction After installing wireshark (and tons of packages it depends on) on a rather fresh and bare-boned Debian 8 (Jessie), I got the “A start job is running for...

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systemd / DBus debugging starter pack

Introduction Trying to solve a 90 second wait-on-some-start-job on each boot situation, I found that there’s little info on how to tackle a problem like this out there. Most web pages usually go “I did...

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Linux: Writing a Windows MBR instead of grub

On a test computer, I use /dev/sda1 to contain whatever operating system I need for the moment. At some point, I installed Linux Mint 19.1 properly on that partition, and then I wanted to return to...

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ImageMagick convert to scale jpgs

Instead of using my scanner, I put my cell phone on some kind of stand, and shot a lot of paper documents (voice activation is a blessing). But then the files are unnecessarily large. Don’t need all...

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VIA VL805 USB 3.0 PCIe adapter: Forget about Linux

TL;DR Bought an Orico PCIe adapter for USB 3.0 for testing a USB device I’m developing (PVU3-5O2I). It has the VL805 chipset (1106/3483) which isn’t xHCI compliant. So it works only with the vendor’s...

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Linux: Atheros QCA6174′s Bluetooth disappearing after reboot

When Bluetooth goes poof Having rebooted my computer after a few months of continuous operation, I suddenly failed to use my Bluetooth headphones. It took some time to figure out that the problem...

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Linux: Command-line utilities for obtaining information

There are many ways to ask a Linux machine how it’s doing. I’ve collected a few of them, mostly for my own reference. I guess I’ll add more items as I run across new ones. General Info inxi -Fxxxz...

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apt / dpkg: Ignore error in post-install script

You have been warned This post shows how to cripple the installation of a Debian package, and make the system think it went through OK. This might very well bring your system’s behavior towards the...

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Making a snapstot of a full Ubuntu / Mint repository on the local disk

What’s that good for? This isn’t about maintaining a local repository that mirrors its original, following along with its changes. The idea is to avoid the upgrades of a lot of packages every time I...

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Linux: Permanent graphics mode (resolution) on Cinnamon

The goal Quite simple: Set a fixed graphics mode on the computer screen. More precisely, make Cinnamon (version 3.2.6) on Linux Mint 18.1 (Serena) show the desktop with a predefined resolution, no...

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Linux / X-Windows: Which process owns this window?

Once in a while, there’s a piece of junk on the desktop, and the question is who should be blamed for it. The short answer is: $ xwininfo and fetch the window’s ID from the line at the beginning saying...

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MySQL, OOM killer, overcommitting and other memory related issues

It started with an error message This post is a bit of a coredump of myself attempting to resolve a sudden web server failure. And even more important, understand why it happened (check on that) and...

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A VoIP phone at home: The tech details on leaving your phone company

Introduction This is some information and hard-learned wisdom I collected while setting up an Israeli phone number for use with a VoIP phone, so I can accept calls with a regular Israeli phone number...

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systemd: Reacting to USB NIC hotplugging (post-up scripting)

The problem Using Linux Mint 19, I have a network device that needs DHCP address allocation connected to a USB network dongle. When I plug it in, the device appears, but the DHCP daemon ignored eth2...

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