The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Hardware Development’ Category

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Ubuntu: Fixing the myserious “Failed to stop apt-daily.timer: Connection timed out”

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/05/14

Ubuntu is the only Linux system I had that – after installing a text-mode console setup – gets itself in the below state with only running apt update and apt-get upgrade.

Preparing to unpack .../archives/apt_1.2.19_armhf.deb ...
Failed to stop apt-daily.timer: Connection timed out
See system logs and 'systemctl status apt-daily.timer' for details.
Failed to get load state of apt-daily.timer: Connection timed out
dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1

I could not find meaningful search results for the above thing, nor did systemctl status apt-daily.timer return anything better than

Failed to get properties: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out

Heck, it doesn’t even reboot any more (no helpful search results either):

# reboot
Failed to start reboot.target: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out
See system logs and 'systemctl status reboot.target' for details.
Failed to open /dev/initctl: No such device or address
Failed to talk to init daemon.

Nor did systemctl status reboot.target return anything better than

Failed to get properties: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1': timed out

From the ubuntu-16.04-minimal-odroid-c1-20160817.img.xz base system, it only had these extra packages installed:

  • etckeeper
  • tmux
  • speedtest-cli
  • sendemail

Workaround found, but still unsure why this happened in the first place

Despite the workaround below, I still don’t know why I got into this situation and this leaves me with a very uncomfortable feeling.

Too bad some systems (like ODroid) only have Ubuntu based distributions as sorting out stuff like above took me way too much effort.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Development, etckeeper, Hardware Development, Internet, Linux, Odroid, Power User, SpeedTest, Ubuntu | 2 Comments »

Some Raspberry Ideas via Tweakers.net

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/05/11

via: [WayBack] Raspberry Pi Zero W met wifi en bluetooth kost 10 dollar – Computer – Nieuws – Tweakers

  • LibreELEC (media player OS for Kodi); if your PC is recent enough and supports CEC, you can even use the remote control of your TV to controle the KODI user interface
  • EmulationStation; play old NES/SNES/PS1/etc games on your TV
  • Pi Hole, alternative DNS server that blocks ads even on devices that do not support an ad blocker
  • Domoticz to support device and protocols like Klik-aan-klik-uit, Z-Wave, HVAC, thermostats, smart electricity meters, and make your home “smart”
  • Build Robotjes and control with your smartphone
  • Install Rasbian and replace simple desktop machine usage
  • Sick Beard
  • Sonarr
  • SABnzbd+
  • Couch Potato
  • Retropie
  • http://makezine.com/proje…ode-raspberry-pi-cluster/

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, Debian, Development, Hardware Development, Linux, Power User, Raspberry Pi, Raspbian | Leave a Comment »

CLIFF Electronic Components – Quicktest; Resistance wheel

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/11

[WayBack] CLIFF Electronic Components – Quicktest:

The Quicktest is ideal for electrical shops, factories, labs and service departments.

With its lid open the wires of a plugless lead can be inserted into the insulated clips. When the lid is closed, current passes to the equipment being demonstrated or tested.

A neon light shows that the connector is live and ready to use. The fuse (BS 1362) is easily accessible for replacement.

The connector is made of tough, safe materials. The base is phenolic moulded for insulation and rigidity. The lid is flame retardant glass filled thermo plastic.

The insulated clips are colour coded for easy identification. The flexible cable grip will take any normal mains cable. Only one small screwdriver is needed for both the base entry and the terminal screws.

Another handy tool is this: [WayBack] Resistance Wheel | Jaycar Electronics, but it’s hard to get so you can build similar devices yourself with a few hours of work:

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Hardware Development, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Is a raspberry pi 1 good enough for a pihole server? : pihole

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/10

Many people use it that way. Which means I can put it on an old Raspberry Pi B+ revision 1.2 board (which Wikipedia indicates as the B 1+ in the Specifications table but as Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ revision 1.2 in the schematics of connectors).

I might consider DietPi as distribution (which is Debian based) as it is even ligher.

See [WayBack] https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/6h39zr/is_a_raspberry_pi_1_good_enough_for_a_pihole/#divw0i5

One more note: I need to check out which Debian base name (which indicates the version) works best as there seemed to be a dnsmasq issue (not archived because discourse hatesdislikes the WayBack machine and Archive.is):

Like Apple, Android and Delphi, they use name based versions of which I always forget the order of. Luckily the source of the below table gets updated over time [2017 Archive.is, 2018 Archive.is] Debian releases and names – Electric Toolbox Debian releases are named after characters from Toy Story and are frequently referred to with the name rather than the version.:

Version Code name Release date Toy Story character
1.1 Buzz 1996-06-17 Buzz Lightyear
1.2 Rex 1996-12-12 Rex (the T-Rex)
1.3 Bo 1997-06-05 Bo Peep
2.0 Hamm 1998-07-24 Hamm (the pig)
2.1 Slink 1999-03-09 Slinky Dog
2.2 Potato 2000-08-15 Mr Potato Head
3.0 Woody 2002-07-19 Woody the cowboy
3.1 Sarge 2005-06-06 Sarge from the Bucket O’ Soldiers
4.0 Etch 2007-04-08 Etch, the Etch-A-Sketch
5.0 Lenny 2009-02-14 Lenny, the binoculars
6.0 Squeeze 2011-02-06 Squeeze toy aliens
7 Wheezy 2013-05-04 Wheezy the penguin
8 Jessie 2015-04-26 Jessie the cowgirl
9 Stretch 2017-06-17 Rubber octopus from Toy Story 3
10 Buster not yet released Andy’s pet dog
11 Bullseye Not yet released Woody’s horse
Sid “unstable” The next door neighbour

Via: [WayBack] Software-update: Pi-hole 3.3.1 – IT Pro – Downloads – Tweakers

–jeroen

Is a raspberry pi 1 good enough for a pihole server?
byu/Battlegenius inpihole

Posted in *nix, Debian, Development, Hardware Development, Linux, Power User, Raspberry Pi, Raspbian | 1 Comment »

Git repository with fixed binaries for Tumbleweed on Raspberry Pi 3 – Bug 1084419 – Glibc update to 2.27 causes segfault during name resolution

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/08

OSC downloads for [archive.is] https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1084812

The binaries provided by Stefan Brüns, together with installation instructions are now in a git repository at [WayBack] wiert.me/public/linux/opensuse/tumbleweed/aarch64 a.k.a. arm64/1084182-fix-osc-binaries · GitLab.

Follow the steps in Applying the fixes on a broken system to at least temporarily get your system to work (a new zypper dist-upgrade might fail, so be careful with that).

The cause was some ARM A53 errata handling:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, Hardware Development, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, Raspberry Pi, Source Code Management, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed | Leave a Comment »

Tumbleweed on Raspberry Pi 3 – Bug 1084419 – Glibc update to 2.27 causes segfault during name resolution

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/15

Need to watch these:

A few notes:

  • It is inside the glibc name resolution
  • IPv6 is OK, IPv4 fails.
  • ping/nslookup (which do not depend on glibc) are OK
  • there is an intermediate fix requiring direct osc downloads

A simple test case

Failing situation

$ curl --silent --show-error http://example.org > /dev/null
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Succeeding situation

$ curl --silent --show-error http://example.org > /dev/null

Non related, but in hindsight my own stupid fault during a similar update: a post mortem

Most important bits of my external infrastructure - page 1

Most important bits of my external infrastructure – page 1

I thought I had forgot about the SuSEfirewall2 changes (On my research list: migrate from OpenSuSE SuSEfirewall2 to firewalld) so assumed that was the reason I broke one of my secondaries (which runs on a Raspberry Pi 2):

Mistakes like these are the reason to have secondaries in the first place https://infrastatus.wiert.me and do port-mortems.

Which is kind of odd, as the SuSEfirewall2 didn’t throw any warnings like at this similar one:

This one still works because it is on the firewall in front of the Raspberry Pi 2:

(Screenshots of the above URLs are below).

In fact it was another mistake: I had forgotten to make the DHCP lease static, which resulted in a wrong IP address to be assigned upon reboot, instantly making the firewall rules invalid:

I could have fixed this remotely when I had thought about this.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Development, Hardware Development, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, Raspberry Pi, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed | 3 Comments »

Koushik Dutta (Koush) – Google+Hackintosh Guide: GA-X99P-SLI | Intel 6950X | GTX 980ti

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/05

If I ever want to create a GPU grade or server grade Mac system: [WayBack] Hackintosh Guide: GA-X99P-SLI | Intel 6950X | GTX 980ti New Hackintosh is complete. If you want to recreate my setup, here’s the guide I wrote up.… – Koushik Dutta (Koush) – Google+

It’s nicely wrapped up: koush/EFI-X99: Hackintosh Guide: Gigabyte X99P-SLI, Intel 6950X, GeForce GTX 980ti

(Apple still sells Mac OS X Server, but no server grade hardware any more)

Note there are others having an X99 hackintosh.

More details:

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, Development, Hardware Development, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, macOS 10.12 Sierra, Power User | 1 Comment »

Some links on getting a Remeha Avanta 35c connected to LoT

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/01

I like LAN of Things over Internet of Things, so I want to connect my Remeha Avanta 35c heater to something that has ethernet.

For Windows, there is Remeha ReCom software:

It connects via an (expensive) “USB” cable which basically is a USB to serial TTL converter:

Note that Avanta/Calenta/Tzerra heaters are all very similar, especially on the communication side.

For their differences, see [WayBack] Veelgestelde vragen – Remeha

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Hardware Development | Leave a Comment »

Always watch your uA sources: The mystery of the Zombie RAM | josh.com

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/13

Interesting read [WayBack]: The mystery of the Zombie RAM | josh.com that starts with

It all started one bright morning when I wondered: Can the RAM memory on an AVR chip continue to store data after power is removed? If it can hold the data even just for a brief moment, then…

TL;DR: Always watch your uA sources. Or like Lübbe Onken puts it on G+:

In my first company, we had built a piece of hardware, which turned itself on mysteriously sometimes. We found out that this was caused by a status led that created enough current in bright sunlight.

–jeroen

via:

 

Posted in Arduino, Development, Hardware Development | Leave a Comment »

Using a Mac for prepping the SD-card for an ODROID-C1+

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/12

Some notes based on The woods and trees of OpenSuSE on single-board computers – image abbreviations – and getting it installed using OS X « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.

I needed to get Ubuntu on an ODROID-C1+ (as it looks like nobody is maintaining a current OpenSuSE for it).

Installing the ODROID-C1+ image using OS X

Download image

Download either of these (note that “minimal” is different from “mate minimal”; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOYWx_YToh8) from de.eu.odroid.in/ubuntu_16.04lts:

Put image on SD card

I installed on a 8 gigabyte SD card that revealed itself as /dev/disk1 using this diskutil command (via osx – List all devices connected, lsblk for Mac OS X – Ask Different [WayBack])

diskutil list

So this wrote the image to SD card in a sudo su - prompt:

targetDevice="disk1"
unxz --keep ubuntu-16.04-minimal-odroid-c1-20160817.img.xz; \
diskutil umount "/dev/${targetDevice}s1"; \
dd bs=1m of="/dev/r${targetDevice}" if=ubuntu-16.04-minimal-odroid-c1-20160817.img; \
sync; \
diskutil list; \
diskutil eject "/dev/${targetDevice}"

Boot and first time steps on Odroid

Use the default user and password that [WayBack] ODROID Forum • View topic – Ubuntu Minimal User / Password mentions:

odroid login: root
Password: odroid

From there, create a new user and add it to the sudo group (I used visudo to check the correct group for sudoers) :

adduser jeroenp
addgroup jeroenp sudo

And then hook it up to the network and get the IP address:

ifconfig

Now you can ssh into the odroid with user jeroenp and the password assigned to it. You can also perform a sudo su - to get to root level.

ssh and configure a few things

First of all, install etckeeper as it’s a life saver:

apt-get install etckeeper

This will install some other packages, but that’s OK; it will end suggesting you to enter email address, name and perform an initial commit:

Initialized empty Git repository in /etc/.git/

*** Please tell me who you are.

Run

  git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
  git config --global user.name "Your Name"

to set your account's default identity.
Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'root@odroid.(none)')
etckeeper commit failed; run it by hand

Do that:

cd /etc
git config --global user.email "example@example.org"
git config --global user.name "Example User"
git commit -m "initial commit"

Now perform these steps:

  1. Change the root password
  2. Disable etckeeper daily autocommits
  3. Change the hostname
  4. Update/Upgrade/Distribution-upgrade
  5. Fix the cursor in console mode

Change root password:

# sudo su -
# passwd
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

Disable etckeeper daily autocommits involves one line in /etc/etckeeper/etckeeper.conf:

-#AVOID_DAILY_AUTOCOMMITS=1
+AVOID_DAILY_AUTOCOMMITS=1

Change the hostname; assuming your new host name is newHostName.

  1. edit /etc/hosts and replace the old hostname with newHostName
  2. Perform these commands:
    hostnamectl set-hostname newHostName
    exec bash
    hostname -f

Both the command prompt and the hostname output should show newHostName.

Update/Upgrade:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Fix the cursor in console mode:

Somehow the Odroid C1+ does not support a blinking hardware text cursor.

 

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, etckeeper, Hardware Development, Linux, Odroid, openSuSE, Power User, Raspberry Pi, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed, Ubuntu | Leave a Comment »

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