Das Werkstatt

I've replaced an Nvidia card with an AMD one on a Xubuntu 18.04 desktop machine. Now I'm always seeing a few percent of CPU usage and a constant system load of around 3.00. That's odd. Since I'd like to have the Nvidia card (and its fine-tuned, properly working settings) as a fallback, I don't want ...

[PROBLEM] Fresh setup of Debian 10 (Buster), I got a strange error message when updating the repository sources: E: Release file for http://xxx/mirror/debian/dists/buster-updates/InRelease is not valid yet (invalid for another 11h 54min 2s). Updates for this repository will not be applied. [SOLUTIO...

[PROBLEM] On a fresh install of Debian 10 (Buster), I switched to root using "su" - but strangely, I couldn't execute "dpkg-reconfigure". I then saw that all commands in /sbin/ couldn't be "found". [SOLUTION] Plain "su" doesn't provide the root-specific PATH ...

[PROBLEM] Fresh installation of Xubuntu 18.04.4, GFX card Nvidia GF119/GT520 - Dual screen setup with 2 very different monitors. Everything works fine, screen resolution and offset as it should, BUT: The lock screen looks weird, because it has a quite low and possibly 4:3 resolution (on 16:9 monito...

I have bought several notebooks that had Windows preinstalled, but the license key was only stored in the BIOS (no more stickers on the bottom like in the good old days). I never used the Windows on the more recent machines, and only have GNU/Linux installed on it. However, I like to know license ke...

New hardware, new setup - unknown "freezes". Behavior: * Xorg: Mouse pointer movable, nothing else moves. * Ctrl+Alt+F[1-9]: Works, and presents login prompt. * Login on shell presents welcome message, but never reaches the prompt. * Ctrl+Alt+Del causes systemd messages to show up on the t...

Metacynic:

Baby, my transcode time is expensive.

[PROBLEM]
Using Pandoc to generate LaTeX from Markdown gave me the following error:

LaTeX Error: File `booktabs.sty' not found.

[SOLUTION]
Whatever was missing seems to be in this package: OS was Xubuntu 18.04.4.

Happens (at least to me?) every now and then and I find it a bit "unrelaxing" that sometimes a meta-package is being (marked as?) removed due one of its dependency-packages not being present. There are different situations (perfectly reasonable and legal package install/removal use cases) ...

Hardware: Mainboard: MSI Mortar B450M Controller Chip: Nuvoton NCT6797D Running "sensors" displayed at least 3 temperatures from the "k10temp" kernel module: k10temp-pci-00c3 Adapter: PCI adapter Tdie: +39.9°C (high = +70.0°C) Tctl: +49.9°C BUT: The [NCT6775 kernel driver](https...

[PROBLEM] Trying to set the hostname using "hostnamectl" (Xubuntu 18.04.1): $ hostnamectl set-hostname MY_HOSTNAME Get the following error: Could not set property: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.hostname1': timed out (service_start_timeout=25000ms) [SOLUTION] It's weird, beca...

IDEA: First: Only one word: " sicherheitshalber ." printed on T-shirts, pullovers, etc: Different colors, different styles, different fonts - but the same word. The "." (dot) at the end is important ;) In today's times, this word unfortunately seems to be used (and accepted?) a &...

Another option that I now find slightly cleaner than modifying "/etc/sysctl.conf" directly, is to use the "/etc/sysctl.d" folder to keep this config separately (and easier to enable/disable it). 1) Create a file called "/etc/sysctl.d/70-disable-ipv6.conf" 2) Put the sam...

[PROBLEM] I've attached a SATA disk using a SATA-to-USB3 adapter. dmesg output said it shows up as "/dev/sdh", but gparted didn't show it - and gparted threw the following error message: Problem opening /dev/sdh for reading! Error is 123. [SOLUTION] It was a 3.5" regular spinning HDD...