Category: Computing

General computing with a bias towards Unix, OS X, Apple products, for use in Music and Photography

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Linux and dimming screen on Boot

output from a neofetch command on a linux virtual machine running arch

When you have worked in IT as long as I have you tend to collect old computers and laptops. For linux I prefer debian as my daily driver, it’s solid and reliable. Its also fun to run Arch but I think I play too much and break it far too often.

I recently added another classic ThinkPad to my collection to tinker some more with Arch and hit an odd issue. I had just installed Arch with a minimal manual install and the standard kernel. All was working fine, I added and compiled DWM tweaked it a little and all was looking good.

Then I thought I aught to add the LTS version of the kernel as a backup incase of issues.

This is where my problems started.

# pacman -S linux-lts linux-headers

Installed the additional kernel and I updated my grub boot loader

-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Then a reboot and I booted into the Long Term Support Kernel, and all looked good. So another reboot and back into the current kernel, and part way thought the boot process the screen went really dim.

Lots of searching through the arch wiki and forums, suggestions such as adding “acpi_backlight=vendor” to the boot loader string, using systemctl to mask the backlight service, but nothing worked.

I removed the LTS kernel and headers, but still the problem persisted. Oh well I had hardly started the build so I wiped, reinstalled both kernel options and the problem remained. I wiped again and just installed the general kernel, now no issues. So installing the LTS kernel definitely breaks something.

Back to the wiki.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Backlight#Kernel_command-line_options

The forums had mentioned Vendor as a setting and Native, both of which I tried with the service masked and unmasked, but goingthrough the wiki I found this:

acpi_backlight=video
acpi_backlight=vendor
acpi_backlight=native

So there are three options for the command. I added the video line, rebooted and problem solved. Remembering the service was still masked so deleting the file in systemd to remove the mask and reboot again. Again normal brightness the problem was solved.

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Linux computing – Tips Arch on Synology NAS

My home server is Debian, the bookworm version, but I have a couple of test Debian instances running as virtual machines on my NAS for testing.

You hear a lot of noise about how great ‘insert latest distrubution here’ is. Debian gets a lot of flack for being old, but its stable and works, if you don’t want flashy I can recommend it, but it may not work on the latest hardware for a while.

Arch linux gets a lot of noise and seems to be the latest and greatest. Part of its appeal was the fact it was difficult to install, no longer true just type archinstall, but still no pretty GUI installer.

I use a selection of hypervisors for virtual machines, from KVM on my old Lenovo laptop running what ever is the flavour of the day of linux I want to play with, virtual box on my Mac laptop and virtual machine manager on my Synology NAS.

I do occasionally have issues with the Synology NAS, and Arch was no different with it seeming to hang. By default the NAS does not use UEFI which I prefer and change but the hanging issue was the video card. I had to change it from the default to just vga, then no issues.

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Database update – WordPress

Helen, stood in her kitchen wearing black stockings and a large white shirt.

I host my email service and web hosting in the EU. The last version of Windows I used at home was Windows 2000, as I switched to Linux and Fedora v1 when it was released in 2003.

This blog your reading was running on mysql 5.x, I had tried a few quick updates to the latest version but was encountering errors. So after work today, I set to have another go.

I created a new database and left it a while to settle; last time I think I had rushed it before things were ready.

I then downloaded my latest sql backup and uploaded to the new database. Again left things to settle and then updated my WordPress config file. WordPress connected asked me to update and here we are up to date.

Apart from giving large time gaps between the key steps, everything I did was the same as last time, but this time it seems to have worked.

Using a none windows OS, using other hosting methods other then just putting everything on Facebook, gives you freedom but also can generate issues. Still its worth it.

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Creating a movie library – ripping your DVD’s

Unboxing of a 14 inch MacBook Pro.

Like many people today, I find streaming highly convenient. The issue is you never own the media, the artist does not get paid as much, and if you, like us, live in a rural area with internet outages and powercuts, having the media locally is of benefit.

For music, I use Roon, but today I am going to talk about video. I have a lifetime license for Plex, and have a small Plex server, connected to my UPS.

The question a lot of people as is how to get your DVD film from a physical format to a file that you can use on your TV/Computer/Tablet or Phone.

One of the more common pieces of software people use is Handbrake, this is available for most operating systems.

Now Handbrake can not read all DVD’s for it to be able to read the majority DVD’s you need to install libdvdcss. For windows is usually a simple dll you download. For older Mac’s you can download the installer. For more modern Macs its a little more difficult and much easier if you install a package manager.

Most people use Brew. I suggest you go to there web page and read up. Basically you open up terminal and follow these instructions.

/bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)”

Once installed you need to update the environment variables so Brew can be found on your system.

echo >> /Users/richardbrown/.zprofile

 echo ‘eval “$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)”‘ >> /Users/your-user-name/.zprofile

  eval “$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)”

 You can now install the libdvdcss

brew install libdvdcss

The default location that that brew installs to, is not the location that Handbrake looks so you now need to copy the library to that location.

sudo cp /opt/homebrew/lib/libdvdcss.2.dylib /usr/local/lib/

You can now launch handbrake, rib your DVD’s and create your own locally hosted streaming library with the DVD’s you own.

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UK On line Safety Act – Age verification data hacked

So the UK on line safety act has only been active a few months. Meant to close the door on unsuitable material but already one of the companies doing the age verification has been hacked.

As was warned now adults have had there details stollen and are now at risk of identify theft.

We are seeing vital health knowledge now blocked to minors who need it.

Its not looking good, but its looks like UK government are looking to expand and increase censorship online for the UK.

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UK On line Safety Act now in force

Black and White Studio portrait of a young blond model. She is wearing an open white top revealing her cleavage. She is holding one hand to her face and a fan out of shot is blowing her hair up.

Today the UK’s new on line safety act came into force.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/important-dates-for-online-safety-compliance

The aim they say is to protect children, which we can all agree with, but will it work and is it too draconian.

The act makes it illegal for content that could offend or cause distress, and also bans pornography for those under the age of eighteen. The issue with the act is that it does not define these terms. Pornography is something that could turn on a viewer.

These bans will be controlled through age verification. There are no standards around age verification, no authorised companies, you have no idea what these third parties may do with your data and the risk of security leaks, identity theft and having your sexual preferences use to black mail you are all high risks. Your a teacher at a Catholic school and enjoy gay porn, if that got out, your out of a job.

The question is also will it work. I would think most children know one of there peers who could help them access an anonymous proxy, install a VPN, point them at TOR sites where the content could be god knows what. Getting around this is pretty easy.

The other issue is that it’s putting small sites out of business. They just cannot afford age verification. If your a small forum website that promotes cycling, and allow users to put up pictures of there routes and cycles, you run a risk. One of those accounts get hacked, someone uploads ‘porn’, your on holiday, and do not find out till its been on line for a week. Along come Offcom and your facing Jail or a significant fine. It’s not worth the risk, you close the site and create a Facebook page and let Facebook take the heat. You’re driving people into the arms of big tech and making the internet smaller and more controlled by a small number of billionaires.

The picture at the top of this post I consider clean and none offensive, but will everyone. Anyone now posting material is at risk. How many will close their sites?

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Social Media for Photographers

The inside of a cafe, looking out the window at an old market square. A person walking a dog is passing by.

At first we all used to have our own websites, then places like Facebook and Instagram came along, and drew us in.

Now with the algorithm dictating the terms, most sites promoting short form video in the hope of caching in on the TikTok trend, many promoting ideas that half of the population do not agree with; now many photographers are moving off these site that no longer seem to work for photographers. The question is where to go?

I have moved over to the Mastodon from Twitter a few years ago and recently started to post pictures to Pixelfed as well as Instagram. I have deleted my Facebook account, and am looking at getting rid of Instagram. As a photo sharing site it’s now pretty poor but I still find it useful to keep in contact with models.

Surprisingly one site from the past seems to be making a come back is Flickr I have recently started to post there again.

Doom strolling is certainly bad for us and being more selective with our social media can be nothing but good.

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Adobe Lightroom Preset

a screen print showing Lightroom presets, it shows a list for: None Default2024 Default2025

There are some settings I apply to every photo, one of these is copyright information. So beginning of each year I create some new default presets, This one Default2025 is for copyright information, I then have one for the main cameras so an M10 preset and a Z preset for example.

A bit of work at the start of each year, a new 2025 folder. structure and we are set for another year.

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Do you buy music or stream?

Like most people today, I tend to stream music rather than play physical media, but streaming services pay artists very little money.

So I occasionally buy physical media. So far this year I have bought eight new CD’s and a few second hand vinyl albums.

I rip my CD’s to Flac and import them into Roon to manage, thus I can stream them when out on my phone and around the house to any Roon end point.

So every few months I run a report in Roon on my listening, and any artist that comes up high on the list I go out and buy their CD. I have a physical copy and they get paid better.

Recently we had workmen digging up the road and they cut through the main fibre optic cable delivering broadband to the village.

We have very poor mobile phone signal in the village so suddenly no streaming services. With the several hundred CD’s I own ripped to my own media server I could still stream to devices around the house.

I also buy DVD’s still. These are also ripped to file and held on my media server, so we could still stream movies from our own library.