Technology

Do you get log entries that look like this? Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd-logind[329]: New session 3264 of user foo. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd: pam_unix(systemd-user:session): session opened for user foo by (uid=0) Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[1]: Starting user-1000.slice. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[1]: Created slice user-1000.slice. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[1]: Starting Session 3264 of user foo. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[1]: Started Session 3264 of user foo. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[1]: Starting User Manager for UID 1000... Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Starting Paths. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Reached target Paths. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Starting Timers. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Reached target Timers. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Starting Sockets. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Reached target Sockets. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Starting Basic System. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Reached target Basic System. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Starting Default. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Reached target Default. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[16056]: Startup finished in 13ms. Jun 29 10:40:31 www systemd[1]: Started User Manager for UID 1000. Jun 29 10:40:31 www console-kit-daemon[1489]: missing action Jun 29 10:40:32 www systemd-logind[329]: Removed session 3264. Jun 29 10:40:32 www systemd: pam_unix(systemd-user:session): session closed for user foo I got hundreds upon hundreds of kilobytes of logspam like that and I wanted to solve the root cause, not just ignore it in logcheck. I happened to stumble upon the solution on LinuxQuestions.org, and promptly made a fool out of myself there, too. One solution is to enable lingering for user accounts that have cronjobs. For root, that would be: loginctl enable-linger root Since I searched for quite some time but this didn’t come up immediately, I’m putting it here to increase findability. ...

Before you throw any bricks, know that I’ve been a Jolla supporter from before day one. I had my preorder in there and my money earmarked the moment I knew it wasn’t going to be vaporware. I ran the Swiss Jolla Twitter community for several months even before there was a product and I have a TOHKBD and a Jolla Tablet preordered, as well as a second spare Jolla phone sitting in its original packaging. ...

In the last 8 years or so, I’ve regularly looked at the ebook market to figure out if they’ve fixed it yet. In 2015 I can say: no, they haven’t. But there is a new star on the horizon, at least. Let’s start with a harmless example: Out of the five sci-fi ebooks that Kobo recommends for 2014, they refuse to sell you three. They claim that the books are not available in your country, Switzerland in my case. However, if you check out the competition, you notice that even newcomers to the ebook market like Thalia/Orell Füssli have the ebooks. What’s even worse, Amazon will not hestitate to sell all those five books to you for Kindle. ...

For several months, I’ve been using Steffen Brüntjen’s EurKEY keyboard layout. That layout combines a general US feel with special characters for many western European languages. That’s fantastic for programmers. You get easy access to keyboard shortcuts that would otherwise be impossible or in weird locations – try typing Alt-` on a Swiss-German keyboard for example, you’ll find it’s impossible. When it comes to braces, most keyboard layouts in Europe are a nightmare. Some require shifting, some require alt-shift to get to the braces and quotes you need several hundred times a day as a programmer. EurKEY instead makes all manner of braces available with one keystroke, just like on a US keyboard. This makes it much more relaxing to type, whether on the shell, in an editor or in some heavyweight IDE. ...

If you’re running KDE and Pulseaudio and have the problem that you can’t configure your audio sources in KDE’s multimedia settings, there might just be a component missing: apt-get install vlc-plugin-pulse I’m not sure if this is usually part of some KDE desktop metapackage, but for me this package had been missing and one of the symptoms was that only “alsa” and “oss” were shown as audio sources, with no sound playing at all. Those icons also had little VLC traffic cones on their heads. ...

I just found this very helpful blog post by Alexander, listing the proper CalDAV/CardDAV URLs to use with SyncEvolution on Sailfish OS if you want to sync with ownCloud. Make sure to make backups of your contacts and calendars before you start, since setting the wrong side to be master can potentially wipe out all your data on the other end (as it should, you fool!)

If you need Chinese character input in KDE (typing in pinyin and then selecting the correct word), it’s quite simple on Debian GNU/Linux: apt-get install task-chinese-s-kde-desktop fcitx-pinyin That’s all there is to it. Afterwards you should be able to start fcitx in KDE and you get a new icon in your system tray. Go there to configure your input methods. By default, ctrl-space will switch to another input method, if you don’t have anything else installed, that will be pinyin input. Ctrl-space again will take you back to one of your previous input methods. ...

Update: Nowadays, better look into a Matrix homeserver. With Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp, many people are turning to alternatives such as Threema or MyEnigma. But these alternatives, while offering better security than WhatsApp, are still based on proprietary technology and controlled by a single company. Also, they have somve privacy issues: Threema requires that you have the Google apps installed on your Android phone. This is nonsense, since you can buy the .apk file directly from Threema, but cannot use it unless you have the Google apps, and in that case you could have bought it through Google Play as well. Threema uses Google Cloud Messaging for notifications. That means Google still knows about your chat activity. Threema and myEngima are both closed source, so you cannot be sure what they actually do. You also cannot get them through F-Droid or other app stores that carry Free Software. myEngima seems to not be available through any other means than through Google Play. Update: This is wrong, myEngima customer support gave me a direct URL to the .apk file. I just don’t know if they use Google Cloud Messaging, they didn’t respond to that. If you want to avoid these problems, you can, thanks to Free Software. You can offer your friends and family your own solution for chatting, and as a free bonus, this stuff comes with full desktop support, not just mobile. So you can transparently chat with your friends either from a mobile device, your tablet, your laptop or your desktop, and you have the full source code of all the components involved. ...

I’ve had my Jolla phone for a little over a week now and I’ve completely switched off my Android phone. Time to see how well things are going! Some native applications I had to grab from alternative sources: Mitäkuuluu, the WhatsApp client. I got this from OpenRepos.net, a repository of Sailfish and Meego Harmattan apps. Harbour Tethering GUI. I got this straight from GitHub. I had to install both on the terminal using rpm: devel-su rpm -i package.rpm. You can execute this either on the built-in terminal application or by SSHing into your phone. The SSH server is built right into Sailfish, by the way, all you need to do to get it is to enable developer mode in phone settings. It even helpfully tells you its own IP. ...

So you’ve found replacements for all the things you used to get from Google, and you’re ready to delete your account. Nice! Good job. I just did the same thing yesterday: Make sure to tick every single box, otherwise they won’t let you go. Also, be sure to download any YouTube clips you may have uploaded. I had a YouTube clip with over half a million views and 3000 thumbs up, so that hurt a little bit. But it’s all good, I will be hosting that clip here in the future. ...