Computing

It is interesting how a user-space task could lead to hinder a Linux kernel software suspend operation. [11735.155443] PM: suspend entry (deep) [11735.155445] PM: Syncing filesystems ... done. [11735.215091] [drm:wait_panel_status [i915]] *ERROR* PPS state mismatch [11735.215172] [drm:wait_panel_status [i915]] *ERROR* PPS state mismatch [11735.558676] rfkill: input handler enabled [11735.608859] (NULL device *): firmware: direct-loading firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723befw_36.bin [11735.609910] (NULL device *): firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8723b_fw.bin [11735.611871] Freezing user space processes ... [11755.615603] Freezing of tasks failed after 20. [Read More]

apt-offline 1.8.1 [released](https://github.com/rickysarraf/apt- offline/releases/tag/v1.8.1). This is a bug fix release fixing some python3 glitches related to module imports. Recommended for all users. apt-offline (1.8.1) unstable; urgency=medium Switch setuptools to invoke py3 No more argparse needed on py3 Fix genui.sh based on comments from pyqt mailing list Bump version number to 1.8.1 -- Ritesh Raj Sarraf rrs@debian.org Sat, 01 Jul 2017 21:39:24 +0545 What is apt-offline Description: offline APT package manager apt-offline is an Offline APT Package Manager. [Read More]

I am pleased to announce the release of apt-offline , version 1.8.0. This release is mainly a forward port of apt-offline to Python 3 and PyQt5. There are some glitches related to Python 3 and PyQt5, but overall the CLI interface works fine. Other than the porting, there’s also an important bug fixed, related to memory leak when using the MIME library. And then there’s some updates to the documentation (user examples) based on feedback from users. [Read More]

Bugs can be annoying. Especially the ones that crash or hang and do not have a root cause. A good example of such annoyance can be kernel bugs, where a faulty hardware/device driver hinders the kernel’s suspend/resume process. Because, as a user, while in the middle of your work, you suspend your machine hoping to resume your work, back when at your destination. But, during suspend, or during resume, randomly the bug triggers leaving you with no choice but a hardware reset. [Read More]

I own a Fitbit Surge. But Fitibit chose to remain exclusive in terms of interoperability. Which means to make any sense out of the data that the watch gathers, you need to stick with what Fitbit mandates. Fair enough in today’s trends. It also is part of their business model to restrict useful aspects of the report to **Premium Membership. **Again, fair enough in today’s business' trends. But a nice human chose to write a bridge; to extract Fitbit data and feed into Google Fit. [Read More]

In my ongoing quest to get Tablet-Mode working on my Hybrid machine, here’s how I’ve been living with it so far. My intent is to continue using Free Software for both use cases. My wishful thought is to use the same software under both use cases. Browser: On the browser front, things are pretty decent. Chromium has good support for Touchscreen input. Most of the Touchscreen use cases work well with Chromium. [Read More]

I am pleased to announce the 1.71 release of Laptop Mode Tools. This release includes some new modules, some bug fixes, and there are some efficiency improvements too. Many thanks to our users; most changes in this release are contributions from our users. A filtered list of changes in mentioned below. For the full log, please refer to the git repository. Source tarball, Feodra/SUSE RPM Packages available at: https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools/releases Debian packages will be available soon in Unstable. [Read More]

LIO -fb is the new SCSI Target for Debian. Previously, we maintained the LIO tools from the pre-fork upstream branch. But, with good reasons, we’ve now moved to the newer -fb (Free Branch). As the maintainer for those pacakges, I have a local LIO setup. Overy the years, I’ve been tuning and using this setup with a bunch of SCSI clients. Now with the new -fb packages it was worrisome for me, on how to migrate (Note: migration is not supported by the Debian packages) my old setup to the new one. [Read More]

Now that we prepare for the next Debian Stable release (Stretch), it is time to provide some updates on what the current state of some of the (storage related) packages in Debian is. This is not an update on the complete list of packages related to storage, but it does cover some of them. REMOVALS iscsitarget - The iscsitarget stood as a great SCSI target for the Linux kernel. It seems to have had a good user base not just in Linux but also with VMWare users. [Read More]

I am happy to announce the release of apt-offline 1.7.2. This has turned out in time for the next release of Debian, i.e. Debian Stretch. A long standing cosmetic issue in CLI of the progress bar total item count has been fixed. There are also a bunch of other bug fixes, for which the specifics are present in the git logs. Also, in this release, we’ve tried to catch-up on the Graphical Interface, adding the GUI equivalent of the features, that were added to apt-offline in the recent past. [Read More]