I messed up my automation of backups, meaning that after two years my entire VPS had secretly filled up. This lead to MariaDB being unable to initialize. After taking care of the root cause MariaDB still refused to start.
$ sudo tail -3 /var/log/mysql/error.log
2018-02-20 12:07:45 140649776292416 [Note] Recovering after a crash using tc.log
2018-02-20 12:07:45 140649776292416 [ERROR] Can't init tc log
2018-02-20 12:07:45 140649776292416 [ERROR] Aborting
Stupidly, just removing the zero byte `/var/lib/mysql/tc.log` file took care of the problem.
Wait, what? You heard me. On Windows you can set sample rates per sound card. It looks like this.
In PulseAudio you’re limited to a primary and secondary sample rate. I’ve actually been using pasuspender more, also because its AC3 passthrough never seemed to work.
Thunar is one of the best graphical file managers I’ve used, and I say that even while I own a Directory Opus license for Windows. I have some minor quibbles like very sparsely populated default actions on files and folders, but the biggest flaw is doubtless that the breadcrumb navigation doesn’t feature all of the regular folder interactions. In any case, in this blog post I intend to show how I improve on both Thunar and GNOME Search in one fell swoop.
I’ll start with a screenshot of the desired end result. You right click on a folder, and you’re presented with the option to search for files in it.
In order to add this custom action, you’ll have to configure custom actions.
Then you click + to add a new one, or you can edit an existing action.
You can type the name that will show up in the context menu, a little description for yourself, choose a fancy icon, and under appearance conditions you can choose whether this custom action applies to a specific type of files or folders. Unfortunately this dialog can’t be resized, but since you can copy and paste it’s not too bad.
gnome-search-tool --path=%f --contains=
Finally, here is the result. Note that since I started gnome-search-tool with --contains=, the option to search for files containing specific text will show by default.
You can perform similar tricks with any of these other options.
$ gnome-search-tool --help
Usage:
gnome-search-tool [OPTION...] - the GNOME Search Tool
Help Options:
-h, --help Show help options
--help-all Show all help options
--help-gtk Show GTK+ Options
--help-sm-client Show session management options
Application Options:
--version Show version of the application
--named=STRING Set the text of "Name contains" search option
--path=PATH Set the tet of "Look in folder" search option
--sortby=VALUE Sort files by one of the following: name, folder, size, type, or date
--descending Set sort order to descending, the default is ascending
--start Automatically start a search
--contains=STRING Select and set the "Contains the text" search option
--mtimeless=DAYS Select and set the "Date modified less than" search option
--mtimemore=DAYS Select and set the "Date modified more than" search option
--sizemore=KILOBYTES Select and set the "Size at least" search option
--sizeless=KILOBYTES Select and set the "Size at most" search option
--empty Select the "File is empty" search option
--user=USER Select and set the "Owned by user" search option
--group=GROUP Select and set the "Owned by group" search option
--nouser Select the "Owner is unrecognized" search option
--notnamed=STRING Select and set the "Name does not contain" search option
--regex=PATTERN Select and set the "Name matches regular expression" search option
--hidden Select the "Show hidden and backup files" search option
--follow Select the "Follow symbolic links" search option
--mounts Select the "Exclude other filesystems" search option
--display=DISPLAY X display to use
As another addendum to my notes on image optimization, here is how to cut a piece of audio or video as losslessly as possible with just ffmpeg on the commandline.
In this example we want the piece of audio from 1:30 to 2:00.
To deal with the inferior FAT file system, it would seem that consumer-level Sony video cameras write video files of a maximum of about 2.1 GB. A sensible approach, but annoying to work with. Luckily they can be concatenated without any concerns or side effects for easier viewing and editing.
Back in November I decided to try Aard 2 on my laptop. I followed the instructions and it worked. Then I created a launcher with the following command and suddenly it did not.
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.
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
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.
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.