Category: Debian
Voice Keying with bash, sox, and aplay
August 24th, 2012, No Comments
There are plenty of times where it is nice to have Linux transmit things out a radio. One obvious example is the digital communication modes, where software acts as a sort of modem. A prominent example of this in Debian is fldigi. Sometimes, it is nice to transmit voice instead of a digital signal. This [...]
Windows & a dying hard disk: Solving with Linux
June 14th, 2012, No Comments
Today, my workstation sent me this email: The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors and then a little later, this one: The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], 1 Offline uncorrectable sectors From the hard disk’s SMART data, this is [...]
How to debugging Linux failure to resume from suspend?
June 14th, 2012, 15 Comments
I’m running a computer with a Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3 motherboard, and have never been able to get it to properly resume from suspend to RAM in Linux. It has worked fine on the rare occasion I’ve tried it in Windows 7. My somewhat limited usual for debugging aren’t particularly helpful. The system appears to suspend perfectly [...]
Shell Scripts For Preschoolers
February 10th, 2012, 5 Comments
It probably comes as no surprise to anybody that Jacob has had a computer since he was 3. Jacob and I built it from spare parts, together. It may come as something of a surprise that it has no graphical interface, and Jacob uses the command line and loves it — and did even before [...]
A Proud Dad
March 16th, 2011, 11 Comments
I saw this on my computer screen the other day, and I’ve got to say it really warmed my heart. I’ll explain below if it doesn’t provoke that reaction for you. So here’s why that made me happy. Well for one, it was the first time Jacob had left stuff on my computer that I [...]
rdiff-backup, ZFS, and rsync scripts
January 25th, 2011, 17 Comments
rdiff-backup vs. ZFS As I’ve been writing about backups, I’ve gone ahead and run some tests with rdiff-backup. I have been using rdiff-backup personally for many years now — probably since 2002, when I packaged it up for Debian. It’s a nice, stable system, but I always like to look at other options for things [...]
Research on deduplicating disk-based and cloud backups
January 20th, 2011, 18 Comments
Yesterday, I wrote about backing up to the cloud. I specifically was looking at cloud backup services. I’ve been looking into various options there, but also various options for disk-based backups. I’d like to have both onsite and offsite backups, so both types of backup are needed. Also, it is useful to think about how [...]
Wikis, Amateur Radio, and Debian
January 3rd, 2011, 10 Comments
As I have been getting involved with amateur radio this year, I’ve been taking notes on what I’m learning about certain things: tips from people on rigging up a bicycle antenna to achieve a 40-mile range, setting up packet radio in Linux, etc. I have long run a personal, private wiki where I put such [...]
Jacob: 4 Years Old, and Troubleshooting PCs
December 12th, 2010, 2 Comments
Back in April, I wrote about Jacob and I building his first computer together and how it’s running just the Linux command-line interface — no graphics at all. And he loves it. Well, as is often the case with him, his interest in various things waxes and wanes over time. He hadn’t spent much time [...]
Debconf10
August 16th, 2010, No Comments
Debconf10 ended a week ago, and I’m only now finding some time to write about it. Funny how it works that way sometimes. Anyhow, the summary of Debconf has to be: this is one amazing conference. Despite being involved with Debian for years, this was my first Debconf. I often go to one conference a [...]
