Linux on passthejoe

When installing ufw closes all the ports

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 03:00:00 -0700

There comes a time in my setup of a Linux/Unix system where I want to tinker with the firewall. And I usually install ufw — the “Uncomplicated Firewall” to do it. It’s not complicated, and I like that.

But if you have existing services running on your server or workstation that you installed with a Linux package manager such as apt or dnf/yum, you have to remember to reopen all the ports you need, because the installation of ufw on most systems closes all of those ports.

GNOME Software was pretty much freezing in Debian 12. Here's how I fixed it

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 03:45:00 -0800

My 2011 iMac 27-inch running Debian 12 (upgraded since 10) was having an issue with GNOME Software. The app would start, but it would “spin” forever, never allowing me to add, remove or update software.

A quick search produced this fix, which worked immediately:

To fix Gnome Software getting stuck with “Software catalog is being loaded” being shown, kill the application and remove its cache using these two commands:

$ killall gnome-software
$ rm -rf ~/.cache/gnome-software

Then restart GNOME Software. It works!

Standard Ebooks runs everything on a 2 GB VPS with no database and almost no JavaScript

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 09:38:16 -0800

How Standard Ebooks serves millions of requests per month with a 2GB VPS; or, a paean to the classic web

They’re keeping the tech simple. They build ebooks and then distribute them.

One single-core server hosts all of their Git repos, builds their ebooks and serves their web site.

Alex Cabal says the web site runs on a “classic LAP stack.” It’s missing the “M,” meaning no MySQL — and no database at all.

How hard is it to move a Hugo setup from one computer to another?

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 20:48:34 -0800

I’ve done a lot of operating system switching over the past many months and not a whole lot of blogging. My question: Does this thing still work?

It’s not a terrible question. I’m maybe four complete OS changes away from the last time I really used this system, and now I’m on immutable/atomic Fedora Silverblue, yet the Hugo binary I stashed with this blog’s source still seems to work.

But will all of my scripts get this post to the live site? If you see this, it worked.

I love a quiet laptop

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 13:02:19 -0700

I love a quiet computer. That’s one of the great appeals of the Raspberry Pi. No fans, no spinning drives. If only they had enough power to really do desktop things.

I’ve never experienced a Pi “bigger” than a Zero W version 1.1, so I don’t have enough information.

And like most people who still use “real” computers that aren’t smartphones, I do most of my computing on a laptop. And that laptop has an x86_64 (in my case Intel) processor.

Debian 11 on a Mid-2011 Apple iMac 27-inch

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 16:59:21 -0700

An Apple Mid-2011 iMac 27-inch “Core i5” 2.7 fell into my lap some time around 2017, and even though it had a few years of MacOS support ahead, it was slow — never mind the 20 GB of RAM I added when supporting it for an Adobe Creative Cloud workflow.

Booting took forever. Updates took forever. Saving an inDesign document took … you guessed it. A lot of spinning beach balls. (You know when I get spinning beach balls in Linux? NEVER.)

Not a review of CentOS Stream 8

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 12:00:12 -0700

I have so many notes. I started running CentOS Stream 8 five months ago, and I wanted to document every win, loss, setback and solution as I tried to make what isn’t really a desktop distribution — Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and its clones) — into my laptop operating system.

I’m not going to look at my notes. This non-review won’t write itself, and the notes aren’t going to do it for me.

The 2021 Linux laptop rebuild

Sun, 11 Apr 2021 14:59:33 -0700

CentOS Stream 8 — a controversial yet boring Linux — would be my new operating system

After holding up due to indecision, I went ahead with the Linux laptop rebuild.

I decided to give CentOS Stream 8 a try. It’s a “hot” Linux distro. But for all the wrong reasons. I can say now that it’s technically excellent, with the extremely notable exception of an error in the Boot ISO (yes, I filed a bug) that makes it impossible to proceed before figuring out and manually entering a URL for a working mirror and then a regression in Mutter that killed Files/Nautilus for a day or so until I figured out a workaround. (Developers sent a new package soon thereafter.)

Pausing the Linux rebuild

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 16:48:56 -0700

I was all ready to crack open the HP Envy 15 laptop this afternoon, pull the 250 GB NVMe M.2 SSD and replace it with a 1 TB model. While in there, I planned to replace the battery, which has a dead cell.

But I decided to press “pause.”

I started running Linux on this particular laptop in 2019 (??) with Debian Stable (then Buster), replacing it with Testing (Bullseye) maybe a couple of months ago.

Backups in Linux: I keep it simple

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 15:55:35 -0700

The next step in putting a new hard drive into my laptop is to make a full backup of the /home files. I haven’t done a full-image Clonezilla-style backup in a long, long time, and I do recommend it it you have a spare drive and a lot of spare time.

Instead I just back up my user files. I have two working Linux computers right now, and if I need to rebuild one, I can do a reinstall and get my preferred applications set up fairly quickly.

Reinstalling a Linux computer system: Step by step

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:39:10 -0700

I’m about to put a new hard drive and battery in my main laptop, a 2017 HP Envy 15.

Whenever I make a change like this, I like to be ready with backups, Linux install images on USB drives and whatever tools and parts I might need.

I’m not as worried about running into problems because I now have a very decent second computer — the 2011 27-inch iMac running Debian Buster — if the laptop isn’t ready right away, I’ll still be able to work.

The new Debian Bullseye desktop background just moved onto systems

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 04:48:45 -0800

The new desktop background image for Debian Bullseye/Testing (the future Debian 11) appeared on my system last night in the updates.

It’s another in the hundreds (and probably thousands) of steps leading up to Bullseye becoming Debian GNU/Linux’s stable release later this year — sometime around July if the recent pattern holds.

I'm not opposed to nonfree firmware in Debian, but I removed it, and my laptop still runs fine

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 12:18:29 -0800

The debate over whether to include nonfree firmware in the Debian installer has emerged from the depths of the debian-devel mailing list under the title “Making Debian available.”

The gist of this extremely long e-mail thread (and Debian is a mailing list culture, despite attempts to pull it into the 21st century is that the Debian Project is hostile to new users because its standard install images do not include nonfree firmware, and installations on most laptops will go poorly because the Linux kernel and free firmware might not support their WiFi or display systems.

Ruby gems: Using Linux/BSD packages vs. gem install

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 16:06:15 -0800

As a Ruby user and programmer, I thought that Linux distributions and BSD projects offered packaged versions of Ruby gems to add sanity and stability to a computer.

The problem is that every distribution and project packages a different subset of all the Ruby gems available.

I’ve always tried to use as many “packaged” gems as possible in the systems I run — chiefly Debian and Fedora Linux, along with OpenBSD.

Why CentOS Stream and the end of CentOS Linux doesn’t really matter

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 17:18:25 -0800

There were clones of — or more accurately downstream projects based on — Red Hat Enterprise Linux before Red Hat bought CentOS in 2014.

CentOS started in 2006, and there have been other distributions based on RHEL. (My favorite is still Nux’s Stella from the CentOS 6 days.)

There are many (many!) other Linux distributions and BSD projects that can supply a server or desktop operating system. Most of them are not owned by corporations that can limit their distribution on a whim. CentOS was a big deal before Red Hat acquired the project in 2014. New projects will now take its place.

CentOS Stream and the end of the CentOS clone: perils, pitfalls, risks and opportunities for Red Hat

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 17:06:24 -0800

Red Hat unleashed the kraken with its recent announcement that its CentOS 8 clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux would be shut down in 2021 instead of 2029, to be replaced by the newish CentOS Stream 8.

What is CentOS Stream? It is a reimagining of CentOS as a continuously delivered yet version-constrained development distribution that tracks ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 yet stays within the RHEL 8 world from an ABI (Application Binary Interface)-compatibility standpoint.

How this Debian Stable user ended up with Google Chrome from Google’s repository

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 16:52:21 -0800

Update: On Jan. 1, 2021, an updated Chromium package moved into the Debian Stable repository. Hopefully it will also become part of the Testing repo and appear in the next Debian release. The original post follows:

I guess I knew that the Chromium web browser — the code from the open-source project that is still coded by Google people but isn’t fully Googled — was very out of date in the Debian Stable repository.

Vim tip: Open the last file you closed with :e#

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:03:49 -0800

I can’t believe I didn’t learn this earlier because now I do it all the time:

If you close a file, as I often do with :bd, to open the last file you closed, type e# in command mode:

:e#

The last closed file opens in your current window.

This is great for me because in my editing workflow, I have a story budget from one directory in one window, and I work on stories from a different directory in another. So my working directory is the story directory, and I would have to change it to reopen my budget file, which I often close when moving from one computer to another to do a Google Meet (aka Google Zoom) chat and not be too loud for everybody else in the house. (It’s 2020, and we’re quarantining.)

Upgrading my now-dying 2012 laptop to Fedora 32 probably won't happen

Sat, 09 May 2020 14:25:37 -0700

My 2012 HP Pavilion g6 laptop’s keyboard and touchpad are working intermittently. I’ve already replaced the keyboard twice. They are crazy cheap to buy (and also cheap in quality), but I’m tired of doing it. Not sure what is wrong with the touchpad, but it’s about time to cut my losses.

The laptop has run Fedora for a LONG time. It is now on F30. It has gone through many upgrades between about 2013 and 2019. I did a backup and downloaded the Fedora 32 upgrade, but that’s as far as I went. I have all the user files backed up. I could plug in an external keyboard and mouse, and it’ll work fine, but it’s pretty slow. It’s not worth investing in a SATA SSD and is already maxed out at 8 GB of RAM.

Ruby gtk3 GUI applications ARE cross-platform

Sun, 06 Oct 2019 13:48:05 -0700

I’ve been intermittently struggling and totally forgetting about the best way to create cross-platform GUI applications. I’ve veered between Tk for Ruby or Python, JavaFX and Qt.

I recently stumbled on GTK3 in Ruby, and I’ve been going through a couple of tutorials in an attempt to figure it out.

Since I’m back on Debian Stable for 90 percent of my computing, I figured I’d give GTK3 a try. I knew that you could run GTK apps in Windows (and presumably also on MacOS), but maybe I’d have to resort to exotic packaging to make it happen.

Printing in Debian 10: CUPS isn't in the default desktop if you forget to check the box during installation

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 07:13:18 -0700

I haven’t had the occasion to print anything in Debian 10 Buster in the couple of weeks that I have been running it, but today is the day.

I knew from the release notes that Debian 10 included “driverless” printing, but I couldn’t find any printers in GNOME Setings, even though I have a wireless printer on my local network.

The reason? I didn’t have CUPS. I had forgotten to check the “print server” box during my installation.

Debian 10 Buster with GNOME 3: I didn't expect it to be this fast, but that could be the SSD talking

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 13:30:00 -0700

I don’t know how much of it is Debian 10 and how much is swapping a 5400-RPM hard drive with an M.2 NVMe SSD, but my 2-year-old laptop is FLYING now that I’ve ditched Windows 10 and the 1 GB magnetic drive that came with it.

And this is with GNOME 3. The stock or lightly/heavily-favored desktop environment in Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu looks great, runs with no hesitation (in constrast to Windows 10) and doesn’t have me thinking that I need anything else for speed-related reasons.

Permissions are hard

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 19:56:40 -0700

Figuring out file and directory permissions on a server is hard.

You have to balance security with functionality. What are the most restrictive permissions you can set and still have everything work?

PulseCaster records both sides of your conversation - and I can confirm that it works

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 20:43:14 -0800

So I’m looking for PulseAudio-related software today, and I come across PulseCaster, a Python application created by former Fedora Project Leader (and current Red Hat employee) Paul Frields.

It’s a simple app. On Linux systems equipped with PulseAudio (which these days is most of them), it will record both sides of a conversation you are having on any application that pushes that audio over PulseAudio. The default is recording both sides of the conversation to a single OGG file. There is an “advanced” setting that records each side of the the conversation as a separate, uncompressed WAV file.

Firefox vs. Chrome on Windows and Linux

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 17:51:06 -0800

I spent quite a bit of time running Google Chrome/Chromium on both Windows and Linux, but between feeling uncomfortable giving away so much data to Google (when logged in on Chrome) and how well Firefox performs on Linux (which is very well from what I can see), I now use Firefox about 99 percent of the time in Fedora 20.

But on my Windows 7 work machine, which is a more powerful (quad-core AMD to my laptop’s dual-core, with 8 GB of RAM to the laptop’s 4 GB), I flip it, using Chrome about 99 percent of the time.

Amazon s3-style storage without Amazon

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:36:51 -0800

Since Amazon has an open API for its s3 Simple Storage Service, other cloud vendors (and even YOU) can spin up a similar service.

Rudy Godoy shows how you can use s3tools in Linux to tap into s3-like services both at Amazon and elsewhere.

When I try to arrange bookmarks in the Chromium or Google Chrome browsers in Debian Wheezy, the app crashes

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:05:09 -0800

Update: I only have this problem with the Chrome/Chromium menu while running the GNOME 3 desktop environment. In Xfce, everything is fine.

The original entry starts here:

I guess I should file a bug report against Chromium in Debian Wheezy about the following:

When I go into the menu in either Chromium or Google Chrome (yes, I have both) and try to edit the bookmarks, the browser crashes. So I can’t re-arrange my bookmarks in these two browsers.