2024

GitJournal

June 16, 2024

GitJournal

I’m switching my task management from Google Tasks to “plain text” with the GitJournal Android App.

This allows me to more easily edit/move/delete tasks both on Mobile and on Desktop in e.g. my Visual Studio Code (VSC) text editor - integrated together with my longer MD ToDo Notes. (Plain “text” here means Markdown (MD) - it IS 2024 and not 1999, after all… 😄)

GitJournal, unlike Google Tasks, doesn’t have details, end-dates, sub-tasks, repeating tasks - but I’m thinking that’s a great ✅ KISS Feature, not a Bug… 😸

Pass through" a physical disk in Virtual Machine Manager

May 31, 2024

Pass through" a physical disk in Virtual Machine Manager

Here is how to “pass through” an actual physical disk from a Linux (workstation) host into a (Linux) virtual machine, using the Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) UI with click-click.

One reason why one might want to do this could be e.g. to explore running TrueNAS in a VM.

Steps

Open VM’s settings via menu Edit > Virtual Machine Details
Click Add Hardware (lower left)
Read more →

Running Ollama LLMs in an AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT on Fedora 40

May 19, 2024

Running Ollama LLMs in an AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT on Fedora 40

Ollama makes it very easy to get up and running with large language models (LLM).

I recently got a shiny new AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT, and of course had to try out Ollama with that new graphics card on my Fedora Linux Workstation.

Because I’m generally not a big fan of running shell scripts with sudo from strangers, and usually prefer launching some 👹 daemons like this one in the foreground instead of having them be started by systemd, I installed and started it simply like this, at least for starters:

Visual Studio Code Tunnel systemd service authorization token refresh

February 20, 2024

Visual Studio Code Tunnel systemd service authorization token refresh

If VSC shows you:

An unexpected error occurred that requires a reload of this page. The workbench failed to connect to the server (Error: The VS Code gateway is not currently running.)

and a web page reload doesn’t help, and if code tunnel service log (or systemctl --user status code-tunnel.service, which is ~same, under Linux) shows:

● code-tunnel.service - Visual Studio Code Tunnel
     Loaded: loaded (/home/vorburger/.config/systemd/user/code-tunnel.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/user/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2024-02-20 20:35:36 CET; 7min ago
   Main PID: 439302 (code-cli)
      Tasks: 13 (limit: 76604)
     Memory: 3.0M
        CPU: 63ms
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/code-tunnel.service
             └─439302 /home/vorburger/.local/bin/code-cli --verbose --cli-data-dir /home/vorburger/.vscode/cli tunnel service internal-run
Feb 20 20:41:47 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:41:47] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:41:57 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:41:57] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:42:07 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:42:07] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:42:18 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:42:18] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:42:28 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:42:28] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:42:38 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:42:38] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:42:48 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:42:48] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:42:58 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:42:58] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:43:08 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:43:08] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.
Feb 20 20:43:19 HOSTNAME code-cli[439302]: [2024-02-20 20:43:19] trace refresh poll failed, retrying: Error getting authorization: authorization_pending The authorization request is still pending.

then this means that the authentication token which the tunnel uses does not work (anymore, expired, or some GitHub security limitation; with VSC not renewing it), note this:

FOSDEM 2024

February 4, 2024

FOSDEM 2024

I attended FOSDEM 2024 in Bruxelles (Brussels) on Sat/Sun Feb 3/4, 2024.

The full agenda shows there again was a lot of content, as at many big tech conference. Below are notes about a few session I listened in to. Do have a look around the schedule and check out the slides and recordings of other sessions in your own areas of interest!

This must have been I think my 4th or 5th time attending this “event for free software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate”. Looks like I last blogged in 2021 (but I seem to have been too lazy in 2023 and 2019 & 2018).

GPG hangs on hostname change

January 4, 2024

GPG hangs on hostname change

I currently use GnuPG with Yubikeys, mostly (but not only) for pass.

One fine day I’ll switch to age (from FiloSottile; with SK and TPM) with passage, and other awesome stuff; but today it’s gpg.

Today that gpg (GnuPG) 2.4.3 suddenly stopped working, just stuck and hanging in there… I’ve debugged it with strace:

$ strace gpg --debug-all --card-status
(...)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/etc/localtime", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 4
newfstatat(4, "", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1909, ...}, AT_EMPTY_PATH) = 0
newfstatat(4, "", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1909, ...}, AT_EMPTY_PATH) = 0
read(4, "TZif2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\5\0\0\0\5\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 1909
lseek(4, -1217, SEEK_CUR)               = 692
read(4, "TZif2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\6\0\0\0\6\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 1217
close(4)                                = 0
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/run/user/1000/gnupg/S.keyboxd", {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0700, st_size=0, ...}, 0) = 0
socket(AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0)         = 4
newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/run/user/1000/gnupg/S.keyboxd", {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0700, st_size=0, ...}, 0) = 0
connect(4, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, sun_path="/run/user/1000/gnupg/S.keyboxd"}, 32) = 0
recvmsg(4,

Turns out this is https://dev.gnupg.org/T6838, which I found after some research, via https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2249218.

Linux Laptop power consumption optimization

April 1, 2023

Linux Laptop power consumption optimization

Setting up a new laptop today was the opportunity to read up and refresh my memories about how to optimize power consumption.

I published what I learnt in the docs of my dotfiles.

Linux "tainted" local HW clock

March 31, 2023

Linux “tainted” local HW clock

While I was setting up a new laptop, I noticed that systemd status printed Tainted: local-hwclock, see:

$ systemctl status
● laptop
    State: running
    Units: 500 loaded (incl. loaded aliases)
     Jobs: 0 queued
   Failed: 0 units
    Since: Sat 2023-04-01 20:31:56 CEST; 1h 36min left
  systemd: 253.2-1.fc38
  Tainted: local-hwclock
   CGroup: /
...

The reason for that is further explained by this:

$ timedatectl
               Local time: sam 2023-04-01 19:02:13 CEST
           Universal time: sam 2023-04-01 17:02:13 UTC
                 RTC time: sam 2023-04-01 19:02:13
                Time zone: Europe/Zurich (CEST, +0200)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: yes

Warning: The system is configured to read the RTC time in the local time zone.
         This mode cannot be fully supported. It will create various problems
         with time zone changes and daylight saving time adjustments. The RTC
         time is never updated, it relies on external facilities to maintain it.
         If at all possible, use RTC in UTC by calling
         'timedatectl set-local-rtc 0'.

As it says, this is fixed by doing:

Voxxed Days Zürich 2023-03-16

March 16, 2023

Voxxed Days Zürich 2023-03-16

Today I attended Voxxed Days Zürich.

Voxxed Days are a series of technical conferences for developers, affiliated with the legendary https://devoxx.com.

Future events include the Voxxed Days in Ticino on 2024-01-19 and next year’s in ZRH on 2024-03-07.

It is locally organized, with 25% of speakers from Switzerland (and 22% female speakers, great!), and sponsored by Swiss IT companies such as Swisscom, Gradle Enterprise (!), ELCA, Julius Bär, Red Hat, Ergon, Adesso, Mimacom, CSS.

Java JDK Source Code in Visual Studio Code

January 29, 2023

Java JDK Source Code in Visual Studio Code

I’ve switched from using Eclipse to Visual Studio Code (VSC) for Java coding, and was missing the JDK Source Code in VSC.

The discussion in this bug didn’t help, because the problem was the following:

It appears that the Language Support for Java by Red Hat CSV extension “helps” users with its (Ctrl-Shift-P) Install New JDK UI feature. Those get installed into ~/.vscode/extensions/redhat.java-1.14.0-linux-x64/jre, are entirely separate from any “system package” JDK installs - and do not appear to include the src.zip with JDK source code (at least some of them, such as Eclipse Adoptium’s Temurin).