Category Archives: Linux

Off the Matrix Notes

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Namecheap Shared Hosting

  • Free Dynamic DNS with domain (Namecheap has a free Windows client. Use zoneclient for Linux)
  • Email (IMAP): usese Maildir (for those who need migration)
  • Contacts: CardDav (use DavX5 adapter on Android)
  • Calendar: CalDav (use DavX5 adapter on Android)
  • Notes/Tasks: NextCloud (can sync with NextCloud’s built-in CalDav server)
  • Blog: WordPress
  • And of course, your own website!

VPS Hosting

  • NextCloud has File-On-Demand (like OneDrive) called Virtual File System (VFS)
  • YunoHost: easy to use modular self-hosting
  • UBOS Linux: distro for self-hosting. Even works for Raspberry Pi
  • Awesome-Selfhosted: has many free web services packages

Phone (Android only)

  • De-google your phone with microG Project
  • Play store: F-droid (Bonus: many open source apps that are paid apps on Google store offer the full version for free on F-droid to encourage you to move away from Google Play), Yalp Store

Research

  • restoreprivacy.com
  • Rob Braxman Tech (He knows about the nasty dictators like the Chinese Communist Party. Don’t think you are safe in America. The reach of the Chinese Communist Party Mafia, formerly known as the Chinese SOVIET Republic) is beyond our imagination.

Alternatives to Big Tech respecting privacy (for now)

  • Search (Google): DuckDuckGo
  • Browser (Chrome): Brave
  • Email (Gmail): see above (self-host) or ProtonMail (zero knowledge encryption)
  • Cloud (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc): see above (self-host) or use zero-knowledge encryption
  • Text/Chat (Whatsapp, Line): Signal App
  • Calling: Telegram has better voice quality than signal, but sometimes it has weird behavior on certain phones. Telegram does not have zero-knowledge proof, so it’s up to Pavel Durov (he’s usually good at not bending to totalitarians).

Alternatives to Big Tech that refuses to censor and manipulate users (for now)

  • Video (Youtube): Odysee (LBRY), Rumble
  • Facebook: MeWe
  • Twitter: Gab, Safechat, CloutHub has a crappy search feature, Parler now has PC bots patrolling and misfiring

Zero-knowledge encryption means the server have no access to the info you put in there as they are all encrypted and protected by a password which only you have (preferably use zero-knowledge proof so the owner of the server do not have any master keys to see your data: you lost the key and the data is practically gone forever)

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Updates to Linux on Pogoplug v4

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I have an old Pogoplug v4 series hacked to install Debian Linux based on this instruction long ago: http://blog.qnology.com/2014/07/hacking-pogoplug-v4-series-4-and-mobile.html
which boots on an SD card, which I used as a no-ip update client.

I realized some of the URLs to the package servers are broken. So here’s my notes to update it.

First apt-get doesn’t work anymore because the files has been moved to the archive package server. The solution is to replace all the contents (now obsolete) in /etc/apt/sources.list by this line:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian wheezy main

Then you update the package manager (apt-get) with this command:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Note that it’s still Debian 7 and it will not work with new software that requires later versions

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Linux setup notes – hostname to communicate with Windows computer

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In Debian, the hostname is located in /etc/hostname. The name won’t show up on my router (linux firmware) until I’ve got the right hosts order:

# /etc/nsswitch.conf
hosts:          files dns wins

However, Windows doesn’t recognize the hostname since it uses NetBIOS, which means I need nmbd in sambapackage:

apt-get install samba

Install it and I can ping right away and use the SMB shares!

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Use SSD for bootable USB stick Linux liveboot

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If you flash a Debian-style Linux live-boot image that’s intended for USB stick on a USB-SSD itself (for speed), it will get stuck at initramfs on boot because unlike USB sticks, USB SSD drives are not considered removable drives, yet the live-boot parameters (scripts) set to search only removable media, hence it cannot find the right device.

The solution is to remove live-media=removable as boot parameter (typically under append initrd). You can do that quickly on each boot by TAB key to modify this key-value pair out of the boot parameters and hit enter.

To make it persistent, you have to edit the scripts where these boot parameter lives. The live USB stick/CD was supposed to be mounted as a read-only volume, so we need to first remount it as writable in order to modify the scripts:

mount -o remount -w /lib/live/mount/medium

Note the -w parameter which means writable. -o means options. -o remount,rw means exercising the remount option as a writable drive (-w is alternate syntax for writable).

Make sure you have root access (to modify these files), and edit these live*.cfg files if it shows up in the following folders:

/lib/live/mount/medium/syslinux/live*.cfg
/lib/live/mount/medium/EFI/boot/live*.cfg

Then take out live-media=removable in for the boot menu item you normally use for each of these script .cfg files. Reboot after you are done.

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Foobar2000 alternatives for Linux

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I am a big fan of foobar2000 because it’s one of the most terse yet flexible package for playing music. I tried using RhythmBox that came with Linux Mint, but it’s annoying as hell. When you double click an audio file, it’ll adds to a default playlist and after it finished playing, it’ll go and play other songs you’ve previously clicked (because they were accumulated on the playlist).

Out of frustration, I tried to stick with my favorite, I found foobar2000 has a wine port available on Snap package manager. Downloaded it and realized it has a lot of work to do to make it work on linux:

  • Fonts do not scale. It’s always that tiny and not all the UI controls looks odd
  • The paths assumed windows drive letters. Sometimes if I drag and drop files from a bitlocker drive (mounted with dislocker), it’ll assume the file came from some complicated path under Z:\. WTF

Ended up downloading Clementine. It at least let me remove songs from the playlist by pressing “Del” button. But I’m not happy that it doesn’t have CDDB.

Turns out there are better options the Clementine. I found this StackExchange while searching for FreeDB options:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/541977/a-music-player-with-cd-ripping-and-cddb-lookup

Turns out DeaDBeeF (a hex pun) looks like a watered down version of foobar2000. So, Clementine, Foobar2000-Wine and RhythmBox is out.

EDIT: DeadBeef v1.82 offered on Ubuntu (Cinnamon Remix) 20.04’s repository mishandled files on an encrypted volume that’s unlocked. I went to Deadbeef’s website and downloaded DeaDBeeF 1.8.7 universal deb package amd64, installed it with dpkg -i and it worked!.

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