"Blogs are a conversation nobody wanted to have with you" — Michelle Wolf
The Wi-Fi adapter on my VivoBook 17 has been acting up under Ubuntu 18.04 LTS insofar that at a random point in time, possibly accelerated by power saving features, the Wi-Fi will stop working with suspicious syslog entries: ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: failed to wake target for read32 at 0x0003a028: -110 The usual tricks (suspend/resume, reload driver, … Continue reading Resetting a PCI device
The title says it all; at some point Ubuntu 18.04 stops playing sound and the only available sound device is "Dummy Output". Apart from rebooting (which fixes the issue) this command executed from the terminal fixes the issue: pulseaudio -k && sudo alsa force-reload Contributed by user Kim, source: https://superuser.com/questions/17312/restart-ubuntu-sound-processes-via-command-line
If you're a seasoned server administrator then this post will boring beyond oblivion to you; the ingredients: a headless server (no screen, keyboard)years of personal backups on a linux software RAIDa botched system upgradehappy ending The pretext Several years ago I bought an HP Proliant microserver on discount and set up a NAS with Ubuntu … Continue reading A crazy server recovery
As time goes by, my [place appropriate interval] backups may not grow much, but the size of my entire data archive exceeds the largest available hard disks (don't ask). Taking into account correctness guarantees by hard disk manufacturers, transmission errors over the network and who knows what else, I don't feel confident that I'll flip … Continue reading parchive: protecting backups against data corruption
Following the proud tradition [1],[2],[3] of documenting Linux installations on all the hardware I break, I'm happy to report that Ubuntu 18.04 works fine on the ASUS VivoBook 17 (model number X705U). Things I tested and that work: OS boots from USB and from harddisk Secure boot WLAN USB On board and external (USB) camera … Continue reading Ubuntu on the ASUS VivoBook 17
TL;DR: Recovering data from a password-protected SATA hard disk that was locked by a Thinkpad I wish this post would be as generally valid as the title suggests; at this hour I'm just unspeakably glad to have unlocked a hard disk I didn't even know I had locked and can finally go to bed. What … Continue reading Unlocking a password-protected hard disk
I have been moderately content [1] with Ubuntu 14.04 on the Acer Aspire E15 for about a year. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, another long term support release, has recently been published and of course I had to try it out! Installing the live image on a USB stick: bring some patience The first obstacle is that … Continue reading Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on the Acer Aspire E15
I increasingly use Ansible not only for glorious tasks like setting up my various VMs I use for prototyping but also for mundane things like resetting my personal laptop every time I get a new one or break it (dedicated readers of this blog will know me to do that a lot [2],[3],[4]). Most of … Continue reading Ansible local_action privilege de-escalation or: how to wait for a reboot
Having failed the 3rd repair attempt at the Thinkpad E540 [1] I gave up and bought the next best laptop from the nearby store that somehow is usable for programming. Behold: the Acter Inspire E15. 8GB RAM, i5, matte screen (1920x1080). It worked out of the box with the SSD transplant from the old Lenovo, … Continue reading Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire E15 (E5-571G-51TH)
Update 25.03.2015: I strongly recommend against the Thinkpad Edge 540. There seems to be a systematic manufacturing problem with keyboards in many Edge models. Mine broke down a week after ordering, I installed a replacement keyboard which broke within two weeks of installing. For details see: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/11e-Windows-E-and-Edge-series/thinkpad-edge-15-keyboard-problem/td-p/406731/page/8 Original text: After not being so long … Continue reading Ubuntu 14.04 on the Lenovo Thinkpad E540
