I’ve seen this multiple times over the years: if ifconfig suddenly stops working, especially after an upgrade. your kernel and world are out of sync. Rebuild and make sure you get both updated.
sysmouse fixes everything
Well, it doesn’t fix anything, but it seems like an answer that almost always helps: running sysmouse usually fixes most X11 mouse problems.
ChiBUG meeting, now
The ChiBUG monthly meeting has gone virtual, so go now if you are interested. The thread about it also includes some notes on how to connect under BSD that may be useful beyond this immediate event.
How to lose all your packages
If you delete all your installed packages, you will also lose the certificate used by pkg to verify the connection to download new ones. There’s several workarounds for this problem.
DragonFly + iwm
If you buy a Lenovo Yoga 500, or any laptop with an iwm(4) chipset, here’s how to get it going with DragonFly.
Screen switching, briefly
Screen switching, where an xterm’s contents return to what it was before starting a full screen program, was turned on and then back off for DragonFly. It would have only affected DragonFly-current users, and even then only for a short window of time. If you encounter it anywhere else, though, here’s how to turn it off using Xresources.
Unnoted changes, one place
Instead of posting about updates, here’s a feature that you will hopefully never notice: ‘make upgrade’, part of the upgrade process in DragonFly, will now go look for 3rd party software built to depend on deprecated DragonFly system libraries, before removing those libraries. (details) If you’ve had a program stop running because something else was upgraded – and I’m sure you have, cause “dll hell” is an actual phrase – you’ll be thankful for this.
Updating pkg when pkg is broken
A note for the future: if pkg itself isn’t working, you can use pkg-static.
sklearn and installation on DragonFly
I didn’t know what sklearn was, but I know how to get it working on DragonFly, now.
Booting DragonFly on APU2 boards
If you happen to have an APU2, here’s some tips on the boot process.
pf table size check and change
Did you know there’s a default size limit to pf’s routing table? I did not, but it makes sense that there is one. If for some reason you bump into this limit (difficult for home use, I’d think), here’s how you change it.
Tianocore update
If you have UEFI hardware, there’s been an update in DragonFly of the TianoCore EDK II headers. If you are like me, you will find the tianocore.org site helps to understand what this is for.
A tip for UEFI installs
karu.pruun posted an answer on how to get DragonFly onto your GPT/EFI drive.
ssh-copy-id now included
The ssh-copy-id utility is now included in DragonFly 5.8 and in -current. Useful for your next machine setup.
jails and loopback IPs
Jails on DragonFly can now route to loopback addresses (i.e. 127.0.0.1). Because of this, they can work like shared IPs and the jail can connect to the host.
I think this means that you no longer have to bind jail services to specific IPs as you did previously. Don’t quote me on that; I’ve run few jails in my life.
Update: I should have linked this too: the sysctl jail.defaults.allow_listen_override that makes it easier in the host system too.
Lazy Reading for 2020/03/15
Again, dumping out all the links I can in case you are stuck at home.
- Secure erase. I have done this yes.
- “Encrypted email is LARP security”
- 4 Columns. Linked for the interface and how it’s tied to the content.
- Best Ever Spooky House Adventures.
- On The Metal, a technical podcast described as a garbage replacement, though without the BSD content.
- Void: Terminal-based personal organizer. Looking at the resources listed at the end of the README is also instructive. (via)
- Is Myst still one of the worst games ever?
- The Best Fountain Pens Under 100 Dollars. The TWSBI 580 is my favorite.
- 4 Plain Text resource links.
- Teletext: the Boring talk.
- Variables, Pointers, and Indirection in Arduino C. (via)
- You are a raccoon. Descend into a dungeon, looking for lost books. (via)
- Removing characters with tr.
- CSS didn’t decouple content from presentation.
- A Quick Tour of the HP-9000 712/100 NEXTSTEP Workstation. (via)
- Terminal Vision. Terminal == Serious Computer. (via)
- Obscure features of JPEG. (via)
Your unrelated music link of the week: Hannibal Rex – The One Hundred & Forty Faces Of?.?.?. Has the same drive as early Mix Master Mike, to my ear. (via)
Setting UTF-8 in the shell
Linked cause I always forget the right shell command for UTF-8, to reduce the amount of ???? ??? ??? ??????? ??.
Font installation in DragonFly
I imagine this may work for any BSD, really. Aaron Li has the instructions, which may be especially useful for non-English readers.
Lazy Reading for 2019/12/29
There’s several accidental themes fighting it out this week.
- Please for the love of Blarg, Start a Blog. Seriously.
- Blogging Less in the 2020s. Social media demands your complete attention to “succeed”.
- Why NUKEMAP isn’t on Google Maps anymore. The problem of depending on external services that can be turned off or changed.
- This Page is Designed to Last. I have this worry about the Digest. (via)
- Working on our Thoughts, a publish-in-multiple-formats (website, book, etc) method. (via)
- Back In Time For Xmas. Linked for the picture of fiber wrapped around a large auger; the stuff of nightmares for anyone responsible for network infrastructure.
- Public Sans, a typeface from the U.S. Government. (via)
- PinePhone review.
- Plasma Mobile as Daily Driver on PinePhone. (via)
- Anyone Can Build This Open Source, DRM-Free Kindle Alternative. That is kinda linkbaity but what the heck. (via)
- Inkplate 6, crowdfunded, via comments on the previous source.
- reMarkable: the perfect tablet for academics. (via)
- 2019 Retrospective. Interactive Fiction. (via)
- Miller, a command line tool for tabular data. (via)
- The tyranny of ideas. (via I lost it, sorry)
- The Blue Tape List. When I do this at a new job, I call it the Crazy List. You have only the first 6 months at a new job before everything that struck you as crazy becomes accepted, and you won’t be able to see the problem any more. (via)
- In Memoriam of Chuck Peddle. He created the 6502, which powered it seems like almost every home computer. (via)
- Tiny Tiny RSS + Readability == The best way to read RSS feed. I use Tiny Tiny RSS and had no idea how nice the Readability plugin is. (via)
- Filenames and paths should be a unique type and not a form of strings. Ugh but convincing argument.
- Separate or merge audio and video using ffmpeg and Crop a video using ffmpeg. Linked cause you’ll need it sooner or later.
- The man who made Wolfenstein. One of the few commercially purchased Apple ][ games I ever had – and still have. (via)
Your unrelated music link of the week: Cosey Fanni Tutti ?– Tutti. Found via Ted Gioia’s Best 100 Albums of 2019, which was discovered via Conversations with Tyler. There, now you definitely have enough to listen to until 2020.
Binary packages and the DragonFly installer
I thought this would happen: the nrelease(7) process can use binary packages to build DragonFly. (For the dports packages, not the base system.) This is very interesting to me, but also useful for anyone who wants to build a custom DragonFly; something I think more people could do.