Cookies! Time to (Third) Party!

Posted on by dk

So, I am (more or less) forced to use Chrome for work, although my default browser is still Firefox (with a nifty little extension called OnChrome that automatically redirects/re-opens all links for specific domains set to open in Chrome with a specific profile instead – a huge shout out to @Gervasio Marchand)…

But within several of the web-based programs my employer uses, it often embeds resources that point back to Google sites, documents, etc. – which then simply shows a 403 error instead of the intended resource…

Continue reading →

scrcpy 1.2.5 and jpeg-xl 0.7…

Posted on by dk

I use scrcpy on a Mac for work, it being much more reliable than Apple’s phone screen casting.

Unfortunately, a recent update somewhere broke scrcpy, throwing the following errors about libjxl.0.7.dylib, which I hunted down to be part of the JPEG-XL libraries. Unfortunately, a brew reinstall jpeg-xl did not fix anything, nor an update to ffmpeg via brew.

dyld[85687]: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib
  Referenced from: <A5A72418-D065-3FAA-8CD4-AC945B980E8D> /usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/5.1.2_1/lib/libavformat.59.27.100.dylib
  Reason: tried: '/usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache), '/usr/local/Cellar/jpeg-xl/0.8.1/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/usr/local/Cellar/jpeg-xl/0.8.1/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/Cellar/jpeg-xl/0.8.1/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache)Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib
  Referenced from: <974A1E71-57EB-3EE9-90F2-ECA39A6415F6> /usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/5.1.2_1/lib/libavcodec.59.37.100.dylib
  Reason: tried: '/usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/opt/jpeg-xl/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache), '/usr/local/Cellar/jpeg-xl/0.8.1/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/usr/local/Cellar/jpeg-xl/0.8.1/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/Cellar/jpeg-xl/0.8.1/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/lib/libjxl.0.7.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache)

In a rush to get things fixed, this is my “quick fix”…

Continue reading →

Ubuntu 22.04.1 Upgrading Pains…

Posted on by dk

So, I had left my little Ubuntu server alone and neglected, giving it the occasional glance, the occasional log in and do an apt-get update && apt-get autoremove…

Well, with my recent shenanigans surrounding a power cut (self-caused, mind you), I was also prompted to upgrade to Ubuntu LTS 22.04.1…

“.1“… Well! That should be more stable (than the .0 released back in April)! O00-kay! Time to give it a whack!

Turns out, things went south pretty fast and I needed half an evening to right everything…

Continue reading →

Playing SMB’s “Who Am I”?

Posted on by dk

So, for the nth time, I found myself wondering “what name did I use to map this network drive” in Windows Explorer…

A quick Google search dug this up, so, just to document it for my own (future) reference:

wmic netuse where LocalName="Z:" get UserName /value

Where “Z” is the mapped drive letter in question…

Missing The (Mount) Point…

Posted on by dk

So my Silverstone DS-380 casing’s power LED seems to have bought it… In an attempt to try fix it (or at least test it), I had to get to the motherboard and that meant I had to remove all the drives, drive cage, etc… Since piecing everything back together again was a pain, I left the 3.5″ spinning media drives out to boot the system several times during testing.

After giving up on the power LED, I re-plugged in everything + the drives… Only to find that, of some 11 different ZFS sub pools, 10 were missing…

My heart stopped and the universe whirled around me…

zpool status showed the drives were all present and accounted for…

Thankfully, zfs list showed all my ZFS sub pools/”partitions” were still there… So, what gives?

Continue reading →

Snagit’s Video Capture Snag…

Posted on by dk

Recently, I had to capture screen clips and decided to utilise Techsmith’s Snagit, which worked wonderfully in the past…

However, try as I might, it now hung on my PC whenever I stopped the capture (and it tried to save the clip), showing me a spinner that sat there forever (till its process was killed).

Scrounging around the ‘net provided little clue, but seemed that quite a few people had run up against it also. Then, after weeks of on-and-off searching, I finally ran across this little answer hidden in the corner of the ‘net…

Check the simple fix (if you had not already clicked through the linked solution from above)…

Continue reading →

Zoom 64-bit (x64) Offline Installer…

Posted on by dk

I absolutely abhor applications that infest your machine in the C:\Users\<blah>\AppData\<blahblah> folder, needlessly littering their “little pebbles of rabbit droppings” all over your hard drive (similar to Mac OS’s ._crap). I have administrator access and don’t want multiple copies of your program, thank you – much less mis-matched, outdated versions.

It’s hard enough to explain software interfaces to my elderly parents without having to also waste time explaining why their applications have different buttons due to different versions due to these “profile-local” installs, or why their C:\ boot drive, running on that small, purposely designated PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, was running out of disk space with multiple copies of the same files…

Spotify and Zoom are prime examples, particularly Spotify – at least Zoom provides an offline MSI installer (which then properly installs into C:\Program Files (x86)\)…

But… although there’s a desktop x64/64-bit installer (which infests individual profile’s personal directories), there’s no x64/64-bit version of said MSI installer… But is there?

Continue reading →

su-up!

Posted on by dk

So, I finally got sick of typing my root user password in my Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), *nix Docker containers and Linux servers…

The answer (for some flavours of *nux): just create an addendum to /etc/sudoers by creating any new file in the /etc/sudoers.d/ directory!

Continue reading →

VoLTE on the Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro…

Posted on by dk

I was having a brief “WTH” hour with a particular “always-in-beta-so-far” mobile service provider here in my home country as, after swapping to use their SIM, I could not make nor receive calls (but LTE data connection was groovy)… Turns out said service provider requires all calls to be made via VoLTE – but they seem to only support a limited number of devices.

As the Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro does support VoLTE, I was suprised that nothing happened when I dialed out. Vice versa, said provider provided that canned verbal message that the “mobile number is not available” when I tried to call the number from another phone…

So, it turns out that the Poco F2 Pro was not on the “supported” list, but I had to “hack” my way around it…

Digging around the Internet quickly turned this up.

So, to fix my problem, I had to:

  1. run the Android hidden code *#*#86583#*#* via the Dialler “app”
    • this toggles the network check for VoLTE support – since this is the first time I ran it on this firmware instance, I was effectively disabling the check
    • i.e. said mobile service provider did not appear to provision VoLTE support during device network registration
  2. reboot
  3. enable VoLTE using the new “Use VoLTE” setting that appeared under the “Settings” > “SIM cards & mobile networks” > SIM card of choice
  4. profit!

2022/02/17 Update: “Upgrading” to a Poco F3, I had to do the same thing (since it was with the same Telco)

2023/04/11 Update: Works/needed on the Xiaomi 13 Pro also.

2023/05/16 Update: Works/needed on the Poco F4 also.

2023/11/23 Update: Works/needed on the Poco F5 also. (Yeah, I’m still buying Pocos)

Breaking My Bluetooth Disconnecting-Reconnecting Cycle…

Posted on by dk

For some odd reason, some Windows 10 update or software of some sort seems to have suddenly borked my Bluetooth connection/s, whereby any Bluetooth headset and/or speaker would disconnect and reconnect repeatedly from my Bluetooth 5.0 radio (that came with the after-market Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6/802.11ax NGFF M.2 card I installed on my PC)… I do not have other Bluetooth device types to test, so cannot say if other devices would have also experienced the same connect/disconnect cycle.

Nevertheless, I quickly found a solution: disabling power saving on the “USB hub” devices the “Intel Wireless Bluetooth” device was hanging off… (Assuming you have administrator rights/permissions on Windows…)

Continue reading →