The European cloud and dedicated server provider Hetzner has silently dropped support for FreeBSD. A FreeBSD rescue system is not offered anymore so users running dedicated servers with FreeBSD may run into difficulties if anything goes wrong. But luckily it is still possible to install FreeBSD using a mfsBSD image and to manage the installation from the Linux rescue system to some degree if using a root-on-ZFS installation.
Continue readingShelly firmware with ECO-Mode support
Alterco has released a new eco-friendly firmware for their home automation “Shelly” devices. This firmware utilizes power saving functions of the Espressif ESP8266 (gen1 devices, FW version 1.11.8) and ESP32 (gen2 devices, FW version 0.10.0) modules. The firmware promises reduced power consumption by up to 30% and lowered operating temperatures by 5-10 °C.
Continue readingBluetooth mouse disconnects on Ubuntu
One of the most annoying problems I recently had with Linux notebooks with the “btusb” driver was the disconnect of bluetooth mouse devices. Devices like my Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Mouse 3600, Xiaomi Mi Portable Mouse or other Bluetooth LE (low energy) mice have had lost their connection when my notebooks ran on battery and a reconnect was possible only after a restart of the Bluetooth stack.
Continue readingOpenZFS 2.1 performance improvements
The version 2.1 of OpenZFS is going to be released soon supporting Linux kernels from 3.10 to 5.13 and FreeBSD 12+. This will be the first long term release (LTS) version of OpenZFS.
Alexander Motin and other OpenZFS developers are currently working on various micro-optimizations in areas like atomics, counters, scalability and memory usage. Most of the optimizations are already part of the upcoming release. Release candidate testers already report improved performance compared to OpenZFS 2.0 and previous releases.
Continue readingProblems with Ubuntu Linux on notebooks with AMD Ryzen APUs
End of last year I have replaced my aging ASUS Zenbook UX32LN with a Ryzen-based UM431DA. After installing Ubuntu 20.04 focal with kernel 5.4 I have noticed four annoying problems:
- Initializing X.Org and getting to the login screen may not work
- Suspend does not work (system freezes)
- There is disturbing tearing when moving windows or playing movies
- Sound is very loud and volume control does not work properly
Installing Android 9 Pie on a Xiaomi Mi5
The Xiaomi Mi5 was introduced in February 2016 as a flagship phone with a Snapdragon 820 processor, 3 GB RAM (Pro edition 4GB) and 32GB (standard), 64GB (Prime) or128GB (Pro) of internal storage. Three years later the phone still offers a decent mid-range performance. The phone was initially released with Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Continue readingHiding ZFS volumes from Nautilus, Caja and udisks2
On Ubuntu and derivatives, there are multiple ways how ZFS volumes can be hidden from the volume listing in Nautilus (GNOME) or Caja (MATE). It is possible to hide individual volumes by editing /etc/fstab or blacklisting all volumes in the udev rules configuration.
Continue readingFreeBSD finally supported by a CI system (Cirrus CI)
Web services providing Continous Integration (CI) have been around for several years. Many of them like Circle CI, Cirrus CI and Travis CI offer free compute time for open source projects. At the beginning, only Linux was supported but with growing popularity support for additional operating systems has been added.
mfslinux – minimalist in-memory Linux distribution
After many successful years developing mfsBSD for FreeBSD systems I started to work on a small memory-only diskless distribution for Linux. It comes in handy if you want to run a diskless system, have a recovery partition with a rescue system or simply want to modify your primary hard drive layout.
Customizing a Red Hat or CentOS Linux bootable ISO
RHEL and CentOS ship bootable CDs or DVDs in the ISO file format. It is possible to modify these ISO files with various types of customizations, e.g by adding additional boot menu items or an automated kickstart installation. This article contains a step-by-step guide how to customize and repackage a bootable CentOS ISO.