Replacing ntpd with systemd-timesyncd (Mint 18.1)

Introduction It all began when I noted that my media center Linux machine (Linux Mint 18.1, Serena) finished a TV recording a bit earlier than expected. Logging in and typing “date” I was quite surprised to find out that the time was off by half a minute. The first question that comes to mind is [...]

Upgrading to Linux Mint 19, running the old system in a chroot

Background Archaeological findings have revealed that prehistoric humans buried their forefathers under the floor of their huts. Fast forward to 2018, yours truly decided to continue running the (ancient) Fedora 12 as a chroot when migrating to Linux Mint 19. That’s an eight years difference. While a lot of Linux users are happy to just [...]

Linux + APC Smart UPS 750 notes (apcupsd and other stuff)

Introduction These are my somewhat messy jots while setting up an APC Smart UPS 750 (SMT750I) with a Linux Mint 19 machine, for a clean shutdown on power failure. Failures and mistakes shown as well. Even though I had issues with receiving a broken UPS at first, and waiting two months for a replacement (ridiculous [...]

Lubuntu 16.04 on ARM: Turning off the “Suspend” etc. options

In short On an embedded ARM-based Lubuntu 16.04, I had LXDE’s logoff dialog window offering suspend as an option, and when that was chosen, the system got itself into some nasty state with network and keyboard off. The serial console was still active, and yet, I was better off without it. It turned out that [...]

systemd random jots

As systemd seems to be here to stay (or at least I hope so), this is a post of random notes to self that I jot down as I explore it. It will probably grow with time, and become a mixture of basic issues and rather advanced stuff. Also see my post on systemd services [...]

A watchdog script for restarting Cinnamon hogging memory at startup

Introduction August 2019 update: I’ve disactivated the service described below on my own machine, because in the end, the system didn’t recover properly from the condition it was supposed to solve. No solution, in the end. Having installed Linux Mint 18.1 (kernel 4.4.0-53) with overlayroot on a Gigabyte Brix BACE-3160 (see other notes on this [...]

systemd user services and Pulseaudio on Lubuntu 16.04

Introduction These are my notes as I made Pulseaudio work on an ARM v7-based Embedded Lubuntu 16.04, which doesn’t support Pulseaudio otherwise. The goal: On a mini-distribution based upon Lubuntu, for use of others, make Pulseaudio work even though the Lubuntu desktop won’t start it. In fact, it’s supposed to run even without any X [...]

Tvheadend starting slowly with a HD-901T2 DVB-T2 USB stick: The udev solution

The problem Having A HD-901T2 DVB-T2 stick on a Linux Mint 18.1 running a 4.4.0-53-generic kernel, Tvheadend started painfully slow. It took more than a minute before the web interface was available. And here’s why: Mar 11 10:22:35 tv systemd[1]: Starting tvheadend.service… Mar 11 10:22:35 tv tvheadend[6019]: * Starting Tvheadend tvheadend Mar 11 10:22:35 tv [...]

A udev rule for my USB stick (disk-on-key)

Introduction I use USB flash sticks for backing up my system periodically by creating an image of the filesystem, and raw-writing it directly to e.g. /dev/sdd1. It’s just a matter of time before I wipe my hard disk by selecting the wrong /dev/something. Or just some other USB stick that happened to be plugged in. [...]