In summary
Mar. 16th, 2026 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nanila
I am in the middle of writing three different posts about the whirlwind of the last two weeks, but unfortunately the storm won't pass until the end of the month. In the meantime, Comet here sums things up.
nanilaI am in the middle of writing three different posts about the whirlwind of the last two weeks, but unfortunately the storm won't pass until the end of the month. In the meantime, Comet here sums things up.
Performing some traffic maintenance today
Mar. 14th, 2026 01:04 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceHappy Saturday!
I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!
If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.
Linux Progress: backups
Mar. 10th, 2026 08:18 amarlieLast night I officially gave up on linux backup software and modified one of my existing backup-by-rsync scripts to backup my user account on the linux system to its new external drive. I took ravan's suggestion of adding the -delete argument to the rsync command; this should reduce the incidental duplication and reduplication of moved files.
As I went to bed, my first backup was still running. Subsequent ones will be much faster.
When I'm happy with the results, I'll remove the -v argument and substitute -q, then arrange to run the script from cron.
I'm a bit concerned that on a system with no local mail service, there will be no effective way to learn about errors from the cron job. I may have to install a rudimentary mail server just to get emails from cron sent somewhere where I'll see them. (Maybe some of the full fledged backup systems handle notifications via the system's notification manager, but I doubt it.)
Overall, I'm very disappointed with the offerings. There were far too many missing features, lots of missing or broken documentation, and one feature I didn't want - extra encryption for the backups, on top of any full disk encryption one might have on the receiving media. I don't object to this being available - you'd probably want it if backing up to a different machine - what I object to is making it mandatory (restic), or broken documentation that should have told me what encryption scheme to use to have no encryption (borg).
Deduplication would have been nice, given the mess I have from prior non-use of -delete in rsync-mediated backups. Also because it would save a lot of backup time when I move big chunks of data to new locations in the file system. But I need to clean up that mess anyway, and with an rsync backup I can do the same 'mv' within the backup files as I'm doing within the source files, thereby avoiding a stupid copy-to-new-location and delete-at-old-location.
ravan's suggestion of adding the -delete argument to the rsync command; this should reduce the incidental duplication and reduplication of moved files. As I went to bed, my first backup was still running. Subsequent ones will be much faster.
When I'm happy with the results, I'll remove the -v argument and substitute -q, then arrange to run the script from cron.
I'm a bit concerned that on a system with no local mail service, there will be no effective way to learn about errors from the cron job. I may have to install a rudimentary mail server just to get emails from cron sent somewhere where I'll see them. (Maybe some of the full fledged backup systems handle notifications via the system's notification manager, but I doubt it.)
Overall, I'm very disappointed with the offerings. There were far too many missing features, lots of missing or broken documentation, and one feature I didn't want - extra encryption for the backups, on top of any full disk encryption one might have on the receiving media. I don't object to this being available - you'd probably want it if backing up to a different machine - what I object to is making it mandatory (restic), or broken documentation that should have told me what encryption scheme to use to have no encryption (borg).
Deduplication would have been nice, given the mess I have from prior non-use of -delete in rsync-mediated backups. Also because it would save a lot of backup time when I move big chunks of data to new locations in the file system. But I need to clean up that mess anyway, and with an rsync backup I can do the same 'mv' within the backup files as I'm doing within the source files, thereby avoiding a stupid copy-to-new-location and delete-at-old-location.
The Associated Press Wants Me to Stop Reading Them
Mar. 10th, 2026 07:28 amarlieI've been using the AP as my source of US news headlines. I started with its daily email summary, which was actually one of a pair - morning and evening - and they presumed all readers subscribed to both. I didn't want twice-a-day news, but also didn't want to get stories framed as extra details/reaction to some story I'd never seen. Since my main reason for following daily new was to know about unicorn events that I might need to act on, I subscribed to their breaking news alerts, but never got around to unsubscribing from their morning summary.
My main news source is the Guardian. I pay them. The household also has paid subscriptions to local paper(s) that basically don't do national or international news.
This morning I clicked on the "read more" link in one of the AP emails, and got a spam wall - a requirement of a "free account" to continue reading. AP already knows my email, and IIRC they've bombarded me with unwanted extras - mostly ads for other newsletters - every time I've subscribed to one of them. Their "free" account will presumably involve more of the same, plus collecting and selling the details of what I click on - though frankly I'm surprised they aren't already doing that, via extra arguments to the links in their email newsletters.
I haven't decided yet whether I'll respond not by signing up, but by deleting my existing free email subscriptions.
Yes, I get it that they would like to be paid, and this is a step towards getting money from free readers like me. Moreover, they have a perfect right to refuse to provide a free service. But OTOH, their daily summary emails are a very poor imitation of what I'd prefer to be reading. To be suitable, they'd need to include breaking news that turned up between e.g. midnight my time and 6 AM my time, and *not* presume I'd already read their afternoon news email summary. I'm not eager to pay for service this bad, not even in wasted time.
I could, of course, create an account using an email alias, and deactivate that alias once confirmed, to avoid the expected flood of ads for other services. But they'll probably require me to use that email to login, and the gods alone know whether their login screen will play nicely enough with my password safe that I won't need to memorize my login ID.
I'll decide when I'm more awake, since I'm almost always at my grumpiest pre-coffee and pre-breakfast.
Meanwhile, I wonder how long they've had this spam wall, but I didn't notice because I didn't click on any of their stories.
[Edited to add: the Guardian seems to have mostly equivalent email subscriptions available. These may be the best available answer to AP's new feature.]
[Update: it seemed that I could click on AP break news alerts and see the underlying story, but not on links from their morning summary email. So I thought I might keep the alerts, for now, and drop the morning summary. But then I found that it's not that simpler - this evening I can follow links from the morning summary.]
My main news source is the Guardian. I pay them. The household also has paid subscriptions to local paper(s) that basically don't do national or international news.
This morning I clicked on the "read more" link in one of the AP emails, and got a spam wall - a requirement of a "free account" to continue reading. AP already knows my email, and IIRC they've bombarded me with unwanted extras - mostly ads for other newsletters - every time I've subscribed to one of them. Their "free" account will presumably involve more of the same, plus collecting and selling the details of what I click on - though frankly I'm surprised they aren't already doing that, via extra arguments to the links in their email newsletters.
I haven't decided yet whether I'll respond not by signing up, but by deleting my existing free email subscriptions.
Yes, I get it that they would like to be paid, and this is a step towards getting money from free readers like me. Moreover, they have a perfect right to refuse to provide a free service. But OTOH, their daily summary emails are a very poor imitation of what I'd prefer to be reading. To be suitable, they'd need to include breaking news that turned up between e.g. midnight my time and 6 AM my time, and *not* presume I'd already read their afternoon news email summary. I'm not eager to pay for service this bad, not even in wasted time.
I could, of course, create an account using an email alias, and deactivate that alias once confirmed, to avoid the expected flood of ads for other services. But they'll probably require me to use that email to login, and the gods alone know whether their login screen will play nicely enough with my password safe that I won't need to memorize my login ID.
I'll decide when I'm more awake, since I'm almost always at my grumpiest pre-coffee and pre-breakfast.
Meanwhile, I wonder how long they've had this spam wall, but I didn't notice because I didn't click on any of their stories.
[Edited to add: the Guardian seems to have mostly equivalent email subscriptions available. These may be the best available answer to AP's new feature.]
[Update: it seemed that I could click on AP break news alerts and see the underlying story, but not on links from their morning summary email. So I thought I might keep the alerts, for now, and drop the morning summary. But then I found that it's not that simpler - this evening I can follow links from the morning summary.]
Modern Software Quality
Mar. 7th, 2026 11:01 amarlieThis morning both computers displayed the quality standards of their developers.
The Mac did its usual thing. Safari had crashed, taking my windows with it. Not notable enough to record, since it happens multiple times a week, ever since "upgrading" to Sequoia, aka MacOS 15.5 (24F74).
The Kubuntu system had two windows/processes/apps that could not be given focus, and/or weren't responsive to being selected, and farthermore had ceased to receive input from the net. One was ProtonMail and the other was Discord. The system had been up for 7 days. It had also had multiple issues with the rsibreak app in the period it had been up; I'd been killing and restarting it when they occurred.
After rebooting the Kubuntu system, ProtonMail was once again functional, but Discord was demanding that I update it yet again - this being a manual process that also involves using a web browser. Sadly, thanks to the non-functional session management software, all my browser windows will appear on the same virtual desktop, creating a PITA nuisance to sort out, even though I was able to look through each virtual desktop before rebooting, and kill off any unwanted windows that were among the lucky few that were visible (and thus easily selectable) in the horizontal, thumbnail-including set of firefox windows available to select.
It looks like Canonical is consistent - they force updates approximately weekly, thanks to firefox both being a snap and changing that frequently. And their idea of "stable enough to ship" is that things might work for about a week before needing to be restarted.
This is not the sort of thing I want to encounter early in the morning before the kettle boils.
On the good side, my new backup disk on the linux system (not yet in use for backups) mounted correctly at boot.
The Mac did its usual thing. Safari had crashed, taking my windows with it. Not notable enough to record, since it happens multiple times a week, ever since "upgrading" to Sequoia, aka MacOS 15.5 (24F74).
The Kubuntu system had two windows/processes/apps that could not be given focus, and/or weren't responsive to being selected, and farthermore had ceased to receive input from the net. One was ProtonMail and the other was Discord. The system had been up for 7 days. It had also had multiple issues with the rsibreak app in the period it had been up; I'd been killing and restarting it when they occurred.
After rebooting the Kubuntu system, ProtonMail was once again functional, but Discord was demanding that I update it yet again - this being a manual process that also involves using a web browser. Sadly, thanks to the non-functional session management software, all my browser windows will appear on the same virtual desktop, creating a PITA nuisance to sort out, even though I was able to look through each virtual desktop before rebooting, and kill off any unwanted windows that were among the lucky few that were visible (and thus easily selectable) in the horizontal, thumbnail-including set of firefox windows available to select.
It looks like Canonical is consistent - they force updates approximately weekly, thanks to firefox both being a snap and changing that frequently. And their idea of "stable enough to ship" is that things might work for about a week before needing to be restarted.
This is not the sort of thing I want to encounter early in the morning before the kettle boils.
On the good side, my new backup disk on the linux system (not yet in use for backups) mounted correctly at boot.
Linux Backup Documentation Doesn't Seem to Consider What Users Know
Mar. 5th, 2026 07:46 pmarlieI'm back to looking at backup tools for linux, and massively unimpressed with the documentation of several that are reputed to be good.
Here's my use case:
- I have a fresh minty external drive, currently in an unopened box
- I wish to use it to backup my linux system.
(Implicit) Instructions for MacOS TimeMachine
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- tell the system you want to use the new desk (nicely identified by name) for Time machine
(I forget this was via a pop-up when the system saw the disk, or via the File Manager GUI)
- tell Time machine you *really* don't have any data you care about on the disk; it's free to format it any way it likes.
Instructions for Borg Backup and Restic
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- figure out how to format it, whether and how to partition it, etc.; put a file system on it, and mount it, and do so. Guess which file system type would be best. Guess whether there's any reason to use multiple partitions.
- now you can start using the documentation's quickstart guide.
This was fine back when most people installed their own linux systems, and the installation involved deciding how to format and partition your disks, and which file system type(s) to use.
But that hasn't been true for most linux users for the past decade or more.
(1) Plenty of folks happily buy pre-installed linux systems
(2) Those who don't find that the installation process gives them a single bootable partition, with a single file system, using the file system of its choice. Maybe it asks user input if it sees multiple disks/ssds, and it does ask for confirmation when installing to a disk that already has a file system.
( Read more... )
Here's my use case:
- I have a fresh minty external drive, currently in an unopened box
- I wish to use it to backup my linux system.
(Implicit) Instructions for MacOS TimeMachine
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- tell the system you want to use the new desk (nicely identified by name) for Time machine
(I forget this was via a pop-up when the system saw the disk, or via the File Manager GUI)
- tell Time machine you *really* don't have any data you care about on the disk; it's free to format it any way it likes.
Instructions for Borg Backup and Restic
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- figure out how to format it, whether and how to partition it, etc.; put a file system on it, and mount it, and do so. Guess which file system type would be best. Guess whether there's any reason to use multiple partitions.
- now you can start using the documentation's quickstart guide.
This was fine back when most people installed their own linux systems, and the installation involved deciding how to format and partition your disks, and which file system type(s) to use.
But that hasn't been true for most linux users for the past decade or more.
(1) Plenty of folks happily buy pre-installed linux systems
(2) Those who don't find that the installation process gives them a single bootable partition, with a single file system, using the file system of its choice. Maybe it asks user input if it sees multiple disks/ssds, and it does ask for confirmation when installing to a disk that already has a file system.
( Read more... )
Linux Progress
Mar. 4th, 2026 10:08 amarlieYesterday I decided to work on the long postponed adaptation of ancient DOS games, long ago purchased from GOG to run on my current linux system. They were neatly packaged for an earlier version of Ubuntu, but the DOSBox version they included was so old it required specific ancient versions of libraries neither present nor available for current versions of Ubuntu.
The fix was to install a current version of DOSBox, then modify each game's startup script to use that rather than the version included in their package. Bonus if I also freed up space by deleting the DOSBox version they came with. This proved to be utterly trivial - more trivial than changing each game's DOSBox configuration so that it will play nicely with my monitors, and allow me to conveniently move my mouse out of the game window. (I'd already had to do that earlier, to get them playable on a previous linux system.)
I went a bit farther than that. I condensed the scripts and other extras for one game, losing the ability to report issues to GOG, which doesn't support these games on recent linux versions. I got it down to one ultra-short script. And then I downloaded some games that weren't pre-packaged to run on linux - first DOS games I already owned from GOG, then others, elsewhere on the net, which I'd owned on diskette several decades ago.
I now have CIV I working on the linux box, and Merchant Prince ready to adapt. Both were games I loved, back in the day, which GOG hadn't chosen to adapt. (Possibly there were license issues.)
( Read more... )
The fix was to install a current version of DOSBox, then modify each game's startup script to use that rather than the version included in their package. Bonus if I also freed up space by deleting the DOSBox version they came with. This proved to be utterly trivial - more trivial than changing each game's DOSBox configuration so that it will play nicely with my monitors, and allow me to conveniently move my mouse out of the game window. (I'd already had to do that earlier, to get them playable on a previous linux system.)
I went a bit farther than that. I condensed the scripts and other extras for one game, losing the ability to report issues to GOG, which doesn't support these games on recent linux versions. I got it down to one ultra-short script. And then I downloaded some games that weren't pre-packaged to run on linux - first DOS games I already owned from GOG, then others, elsewhere on the net, which I'd owned on diskette several decades ago.
I now have CIV I working on the linux box, and Merchant Prince ready to adapt. Both were games I loved, back in the day, which GOG hadn't chosen to adapt. (Possibly there were license issues.)
( Read more... )