Systemd Service Hang

Why and when do systemd services hang indefinitely

 Posted on April 22, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  831 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

Finally, TIL, what can all be the reason for systemd services to hang indefinitely. The internet is flooded with numerous reports on this topic but no clear answers. So no more uselessly marked workarounds like: systemctl daemon-reload and systemctl-daemon-reexec for this scenario. The scene would be something along the lines of: rrs 6467 0.0 0.0 23088 15852 pts/1 Ss 12:53 0:00 | | \_ /bin/bash rrs 11512 0.0 0.0 14876 4608 pts/1 S+ 13:18 0:00 | | | \_ systemctl restart snapper-timeline. [Read More]
Linux  Containers  systemd  hang  daemon-reexec  daemon-reload  systemd-timesyncd  systemd-tty-ask-password-agent  systemd-time-wait-sync 

Linux Tablet-Mode Usability

 Posted on January 17, 2017  |  6 minutes  |  1167 words  |  

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]
calibre  gnome  multitouch  touchscreen  tablet  goldendict  onboard 

Linux Power Savings 2016

 Posted on March 1, 2016  |  7 minutes  |  1356 words  |  

Having moved to a new place, now at times, I also have to deal with power outages. As heat increases, the power outages will be much longer and more frequent. So much, that UPS and Power Inverters run out. Such are ideal times to measure idle power consumption for my laptop. Here’s what my default (and idle) OS looks like. It should be standard to most “typical” users. Some minor odds could be apport, dnsmasq, and maybe, tor. [Read More]
power saving  laptop-mode-tools  laptop  battery 

Linux IO + Memory + CPU Contention

 Posted on February 26, 2016  |  1 minutes  |  165 words  |  

I very recently met someone, and we had a good productive discussion on the features and (long standing) bugs of the Linux kernel. No doubt, Linux is the most featureful kernel in the market. Is also a lot appealing given its breadth of platform support. Of that discussion we had, it led about Linux’s behavior in tighter stressed scenarios where there is a lot of contention among the core subsystems. From the conversation, I got the feedback that perhaps the issue is no more valid. [Read More]
linux  memory  block  cpu  contention 

Freedom, Privacy and Our Choices

 Posted on December 4, 2015  |  4 minutes  |  775 words  |  

When I bought my [Lenovo Yoga 2 13](http://www.researchut.com/blog/lenovo- yoga-2-13-debian), I had great plans. I wanted a device, that I could use both, as a laptop, and also as a tablet. The path hasn’t been easy. But then, no path in Free Software against Freedom and Privacy has been easy. The choice is left to us, the users. I had been a long time KDE User. With KDE’s decision to have different UIs for different form factors (plasma active, plasma netbook, plasma desktop), it was now time to try something different. [Read More]
KDE  gnome  Yoga 2 13  Yoga  Lenovo  Touch  UI  Design  Freedom  Privacy 

Micro DD meetup

 Posted on July 20, 2015  |  3 minutes  |  621 words  |  

A couple of us DDs met here on the weekend. It is always a fun time, being part of these meetings. We talked briefly about the status of Cross Compilation in Debian, on the tools that simplify the process. Next we touched upon licensing, discussing the benefits of particular licenses (BSD, Apache, GPL) from the point of view of the consumer. The consumer being an individual just wanting to use/improve software, to a consumer who’s building a (free / non-free) product on top of it. [Read More]
linux containers  lxc  systemd  systemd-nspawn  machinectl 

Apport Integration with Debian - GSoC Update

 Posted on July 6, 2015  |  1 minutes  |  199 words  |  

For this year’s Google Summer of Code, I have been mentoring Yuru Roy Shao, on Integrating Apport with Debian. Yuru is a CS student studying at University of Michigan, USA completing his PhD. For around 2+ years, Apport was packaged for Debian, but remained in Experimental. While we did have a separate (Debian BTS aware) crashdb, the general concerns (bug spam, too many duplicates etc) were the reason we held its inclusion. [Read More]
GSoC  Google Summer of Code  apport  debian 

Lenovo Yoga 2 13 with Debian

 Posted on May 19, 2015  (Last modified on May 24, 2015)  |  21 minutes  |  4386 words  |  

I recently acquired a [Lenovo Yoga 2 13](http://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo- yoga-2-13-inch/). While, at the time, the Yoga 3 was available, I decided to go for Yoga 2 13. The Yoga 3 comes with the newer Core M Broadwell family, which, in my opinion, [doesn’t really bring any astounding benefits](http://www.digitalversus.com/laptop/lenovo-ideapad- yoga-2-13-3-p18512/test.html). The Yoga 2 13 comes in mulitple variants worldwide. Infact these hardware variations have different effets when run under Linux. My varaint of Yoga 2 13 is: [Read More]
Lenovo  Yoga  Yoga 2 13  debian 

Debian GNU/Hurd on VirtualBox

 Posted on February 1, 2015  |  2 minutes  |  240 words  |  

One of the great things about Debian is the wide range of kernels it supports can run. This gives the user the flexibility to not spend time on the common userland stuff. For example, most apps, package management and system admin tasks are common across all Debian platforms. These platforms may not be optimal at par to Linux, but still, choice is good. For long, I had used Debian GNU/Hurd, only on a KVM hypervisor. [Read More]
Hurd  debian  Mach  VirtualBox  VBox 

Linux Containers and Productization

 Posted on December 26, 2014  |  3 minutes  |  595 words  |  

Linux has improved many many things over the last couple of years. Of the many improvements, the one that I’ve started leveraging the most today, are Control Groups. In the past, when there was a need to build a prototype for a solution, we needed hardware. Then came the virtualization richness to Linux. It came in 2 major flavors, KVM ( Full Virtualization ) and Xen ( Para Virtualization ). Over the years, the difference of para vs full, for both the implementations, is almost none. [Read More]
docker  lxc  linux containers  virtualization