The One with the Thoughts of Frans

PipeWire on Ubuntu 21.10

On Debian 11 and Ubuntu 21.04, you can use the Debian wiki to get a basic setup working, but adapting that to newer version is a bit laborious. Instead a kind soul has already taken care of everything over at pipewire-debian. It’s also a more recent version.

So why use it? In my case, I’ve had PulseAudio crap out when having to deal with more over 20 or so things at once. PipeWire deals with load rather significantly better. I understand latency’s much better too, but that’s never bothered me too much for my fairly regular uses. What’s nice though, is that you can use JACK tools like catia to map stuff around. I don’t think PA had any graphical tools like that, and cryptic command-line commands are too much of a bother for quick one-offs. For the moment I mildly miss PulseAudio’s networking ability.

In short, I’ve switched over my laptops. But I might give it a try on my desktop too.

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Put Save Dialog Buttons Back at the Bottom on Debian 11 Xfce 4.16

Apparently action buttons have moved to the top now, even though people scan from the top left to the bottom right?
xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/DialogsUseHeader -s false

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Setting up Syncthing on a Debubuntu VPS

It couldn’t be much easier. First of all, you install the application using the official Apt repository. You want the repo so security updates and the like are automatically applied alongside your regular unattended upgrades. You are automatically applying security updates, aren’t you?

# Add the release PGP keys:
curl -s https://syncthing.net/release-key.txt | sudo apt-key add -

# Add the "release" channel to your APT sources:
echo "deb http://apt.syncthing.net/ syncthing release" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/syncthing.list

# Update and install syncthing:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install syncthing

Following installation, I’ve seen it suggested to temporarily change the configuration to allow remote web access, but it seems to me that SSH tunneling is much easier to use than changing the configuration every time you might want to enter the settings. Something like this should do. (Update: the manual already mentions it.)

ssh user@hostname -L 8500:localhost:8384

Subsequently, use localhost:8500 to access the configuration. You can of course use the same trick to make phpMyAdmin more secure. With that out of the way you can follow the manual for setting up Syncthing as a systemd service.

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Run Enpass on Debian Buster (testing)

Steam is working problem-free these days, unlike last year, but a recent update broke Enpass. Hopefully it’ll be fixed again soon, but in the meantime:

OPENSSL_CONF=/etc/ssl/ /opt/Enpass/bin/runenpass.sh

Otherwise you’ll have to contend with this fun error:

$ /opt/Enpass/bin/runenpass.sh
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
QLayout: Attempting to add QLayout "" to QPasswordEdit "", which already has a layout
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
Auto configuration failed
140475586791488:error:25066067:DSO support routines:DLFCN_LOAD:could not load the shared library:dso_dlfcn.c:185:filename(libssl_conf.so): libssl_conf.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
140475586791488:error:25070067:DSO support routines:DSO_load:could not load the shared library:dso_lib.c:244:
140475586791488:error:0E07506E:configuration file routines:MODULE_LOAD_DSO:error loading dso:conf_mod.c:285:module=ssl_conf, path=ssl_conf
140475586791488:error:0E076071:configuration file routines:MODULE_RUN:unknown module name:conf_mod.c:222:module=ssl_conf
QMutex: destroying locked mutex
Segmentation fault!

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Qalculate!, My New Favorite Calculator

Over the past few years I acquired a bad habit of using search engines for basic calculations and conversions. I’m not talking about the stuff you should just do in your head — not quite that bad, but about the fact that several Linux distros, including my favorite of Debian Xfce, don’t seem to ship with a calculator by default. So I finally got around to testing some programs and Qalculate! does all I want. You can install it on Debian using sudo apt install qalculate-gtk. There’s a list of features on the website. Enjoy a few screenshots.

Celsius to Fahrenheit.
Kilometer to mile.
Euro to Dollar.

I hope you’ll like it too!

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libGL error in Steam and Broken Age in Debian Stretch

After some update or other, Broken Age refused to start.

$ ./start.sh 
Running Broken Age
libGL error: unable to load driver: radeonsi_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: radeonsi
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  155 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  3 (X_GLXCreateContext)
  Value in failed request:  0x0
  Serial number of failed request:  91
  Current serial number in output stream:  92

Oh well, let’s give it a little hand, shall we?

LD_PRELOAD='/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0' ./start.sh

This loads the included libraries before any others, in order to override the incompatible libraries shipped with the program in question. The same trick also works for Steam. If gaming is your goal, you should probably stick to whatever version of Ubuntu is supported best. I’m just pleased that I can play the occasional game like Oxenfree (no preloading required, mind you) or Broken Age on my workhorse without having to install any stability-reducing binary blobs.

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Fix No gksu(do) Permissions Prompt on Gparted, Synaptic, Mounting Drives, Etc. in Debian

I run Debian Stretch (testing) as my daily driver, and at some point I stopped being able to start programs like start Synaptic, Gparted, Synaptic etc. without manually typing gksu(do). The solution is as simple as it is seemingly unnecessary and stupid:

sudo apt install policykit-1-gnome

The problem is apparent upon reading the description:

This implementation was originally designed for GNOME 2, but most
GNOME-based desktop environments, including GNOME 3, GNOME Flashback,
MATE and Cinnamon, have their own built-in PolicyKit agents and no
longer use this one. The remaining users of this implementation
are XFCE and Unity.

Reported as Debian bug #843224. My first?


D’oh, I wrote this on November 5, 2016. I’ll still publish it anyway in case it’ll still help someone searching for a solution.

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Scanning with an HP MFP (multi-function peripheral) on Debian

You need to install hplip. It looks like something’s still off about the colors compared to Ubuntu and Windows, and I can’t figure out what the difference is. Alas. :/ Also, don’t buy HP.

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Less is More

A minimal Debian install comes without the ability to view man pages. Fair enough, it’s minimal after all. But they can be quite useful. A sudo apt install man later results in man pages being shown. That’s all, folks? Unnfortunately not, because the man pages are shown using the more command, which doesn’t allow for scrolling up and down with the arrow keys or j and k, Pg Up and Pg Dn, and all the other usual niceties. To fix you need to sudo apt install less, a “pager program similar to more.” And better, at least on any machine with sufficient RAM. Meaning anything anyone is likely to use in 2016, or probably also in 1990 for that matter.

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Let’s Encrypt on Debian/Jessie

Wow, that was easy. I’ve been reading about Let’s Encrypt all over the place, and I wouldn’t like any snooping on my feeds password, now would I?

  1. Add the jessie-backports repository.
  2. sudo apt install -t jessie-backports certbot python-certbot-apache
  3. sudo letsencrypt --apache -d example.com [-d subdomain.example.com]

This stuff expires every 90 days, so you still need a cron job to renew.

sudo crontab -e

Let’s say 4 at night every Sunday.

* 4 * * 0 letsencrypt renew >> /var/log/letsencrypt-renew.log

Neat!

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