Debconf10
Debconf10 ended a week ago, and I’m only now finding some time to write about it. Funny how it works that way sometimes. Anyhow, the summary of Debconf has to be: this is one amazing conference....
View ArticleWikis, Amateur Radio, and Debian
As I have been getting involved with amateur radio this year, I’ve been taking notes on what I’m learning about certain things: tips from people on rigging up a bicycle antenna to achieve a 40-mile...
View ArticleResearch on deduplicating disk-based and cloud backups
Yesterday, I wrote about backing up to the cloud. I specifically was looking at cloud backup services. I’ve been looking into various options there, but also various options for disk-based backups. I’d...
View Articlerdiff-backup, ZFS, and rsync scripts
rdiff-backup vs. ZFS As I’ve been writing about backups, I’ve gone ahead and run some tests with rdiff-backup. I have been using rdiff-backup personally for many years now — probably since 2002, when I...
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A Proud Dad
I saw this on my computer screen the other day, and I’ve got to say it really warmed my heart. I’ll explain below if it doesn’t provoke that reaction for you. So here’s why that made me happy. Well for...
View ArticleShell Scripts For Preschoolers
It probably comes as no surprise to anybody that Jacob has had a computer since he was 3. Jacob and I built it from spare parts, together. It may come as something of a surprise that it has no...
View ArticleHow to debugging Linux failure to resume from suspend?
I’m running a computer with a Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3 motherboard, and have never been able to get it to properly resume from suspend to RAM in Linux. It has worked fine on the rare occasion I’ve tried it...
View ArticleWindows & a dying hard disk: Solving with Linux
Today, my workstation sent me this email: The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors and then a little later, this...
View ArticleVoice Keying with bash, sox, and aplay
There are plenty of times where it is nice to have Linux transmit things out a radio. One obvious example is the digital communication modes, where software acts as a sort of modem. A prominent example...
View ArticleWhy and how to run ZFS on Linux
I’m writing a bit about ZFS these days, and I thought I’d write a bit about why I am using it, why it might or might not be interesting for you, and what you might do about it. ZFS Features and...
View ArticleFirst impressions of systemd, and they’re not good
Well, I finally bit the bullet. My laptop, which runs jessie, got dist-upgraded for the first time in a few months. My brightness keys stopped working, and it no longer would suspend to RAM when the...
View ArticleUpdate on the systemd issue
The other day, I wrote about my poor first impressions of systemd in jessie. Here’s an update. I’d like to start with the things that are good. I found the systemd community to be one of the most...
View ArticleDebian – A plea to worry about what matters, and not take ourselves too...
I posted this on debian-devel today. I am also posting it here, because I believe it is important to more than just Debian developers. Good afternoon, This message comes on the heels of Sam Hartman’s...
View ArticleHas modern Linux lost its way? (Some thoughts on jessie)
For years, I used to run Debian sid (unstable) on all my personal machines. Laptops, workstations, sometimes even my personal servers years ago ran sid. Sid was, as its name implies, unstable....
View Article“Has Linux lost its way?” comments prompt a Debian developer to revisit...
I’ll admit it. I have a soft spot for FreeBSD. FreeBSD was the first Unix I ran, and it was somewhere around 20 years ago that I did so, before I switched to Debian. Even then, I still used some of the...
View ArticleFirst steps with smartcards under Linux and Android — hard, but it works
Well this has been an interesting project. It all started with a need to get better password storage at work. We wound up looking heavily at a GPG-based solution. This prompted the question: how can we...
View ArticleDetailed Smart Card Cryptographic Token Security Guide
After my first post about smartcards under Linux, I thought I would share some information I’ve been gathering. This post is already huge, so I am not going to dive into — much — specific commands, but...
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Hiking a mountain with Ian Murdock
“Would you like to hike a mountain?” That question caught me by surprise. It was early in 2000, and I had flown to Tucson for a job interview. Ian Murdock was starting a new company, Progeny, and I was...
View ArticleCount me as a systemd convert
Back in 2014, I wrote about some negative first impressions of systemd. I also had a plea to debian-project to end all the flaming, pointing out that “jessie will still boot”, noting that my preference...
View ArticleI’m switching from git-annex to Syncthing
I wrote recently about using git-annex for encrypted sync, but due to a number of issues with it, I’ve opted to switch to Syncthing. I’d been using git-annex with real but noncritical data. Among the...
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