Sys. Admin. Archives - Page 2 of 8 - How To Train Your Robot

2022-07-18

The end of TigerVPN… and what you can replace it with

If you have tried TigerVPN recently you may have noticed nothing but connection errors… and visiting the website, you may have noticed the message…

2022-06-182022-06-18

OpenShot on Ubuntu 22.04

If you install OpenShot on Ubuntu 22.04 or other newer Linux distributions you may note that it doesn’t run – which is an easy fix. Running the program from the terminal gave an error:

2022-05-232022-05-30

Packaging a Python application for ArchLinux/Manjaro Linux

In a previous howto I showed how to build a .deb installer file for a Python program. This would work for the majority of systems with Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint etc. However there are many users on Arch Linux or Manjaro, which do not take this .deb installer file. Some Linux computers such as the popular (and currently out of stock 🙁 ) Pinebook laptop, and Pinephone come with Manjaro Linux, which takes Arch packages. Thankfully there is an easy way to add a package to the AUR for these Arch-based devices.

2022-05-152022-05-17

Optimizing a Python program with profiling data

If you have been maintaining a Python program that has been growing for some time with new features you may notice at some point it can get a bit lagging and slow. For example, the app that is powered by hearham.com repeaters listing has grown from thousands of repeaters to now over 10,000 repeaters in the listing shown in the app. This hung things up especially on devices like Raspberry Pi or Librem phone while starting up the app.

2022-04-102022-04-11

Snap Store and Flatpak – missing “app stores” for Librem 5 Phone?

As you may have noticed, the Librem phone and other Linux phones don’t always have the same apps you may be looking for for iOS and Android, with few available within the built in store. While you must check with developers and encourage them to build their apps for Librem phone, there are a number of these that can be installed already from Flathub/Snap store:

2022-03-262022-03-26

Be ready for internet outages

Whether you have a very flaky internet connection at your residence, or you expect potential cyber attacks, it may be time to review Purism’s recent guide to prepping with some extra hard drives and some tools:

2022-03-152022-03-15

Fastorslow.com is shutting down – Possible alternatives?

If you have been using Fastorslow.com from Wordfence, you may have seen the news already, that Fastorslow.com is shutting down at the end of the month – for lack of being a viable business project for the Wordfence team 🙁

While this is disappointing, what other tools are out there that we can use?

2022-03-032022-03-03

Re-flashing the Librem Phone with Byzantium

If you just received a Librem 5 you probably have the latest software – including the new software that has a (mostly) working photos app, gps and a basic maps app! Development has continued on these devices but if you have one of the previous preorders you probably have been waiting on new updates and only getting a few standard package updates and no new apps 🙁

If you want to upgrade the phone in this case you need to re-flash it and wipe it with the newer version. Note this deletes everything and starts anew!

Their instructions here should be fine for some, but only if you have a very very new Ubuntu based system. If you have an older one such as Ubuntu 20.04 then you can get set up as shown below.

2022-02-102022-02-15

Linux tools on Windows with MSYS2 (And a Repeater app for Windows!)

One thing many don’t consider when setting up a GTK+ window application is that the same code that runs on a Linux phone or Linux computer, can also run on MS Windows with the same libraries! Next time you are on a Windows system and trying to set up a command or tool normally working on Linux, try this: