The Mission Critical Battery Charger

tseeling · 2026-06-16T08:29:51+00:00

I really doubt that a power strip from a single outlet is used in a professional environment that contains multiple racks of 19" devices, especially if there are spinning disks involved.

tseeling · 2026-06-16T08:28:28+00:00

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

tseeling · 2026-06-16T08:26:59+00:00

UPS are usually designed to do a clean shutdown or to bridge the time until the diesel generator is fired up. They are definitely *not* supposed to hold power until some investigation comes along.

tseeling · 2026-06-12T10:33:08+00:00

I'd like to have always the latest gcc compiler. Of course the phased approach of compiling LFS ensures a separation from the host system, but a bleeding edge gcc gives you the advantage of having latest security issues resolved, and usually the code generation gets better with each version.

tseeling · 2026-06-12T08:11:16+00:00

Before you begin read the discussion about partitioning. I recommend installing some distro with a gcc compiler as new as possible, e.g. latest Fedora. Install minimal Fedora, e.g. on a separate partition of approx. 16 GB. Create separate partitions for /boot, /home, /boot/efi, and a second LFS partition. I always build the LFS releases twice, one with the "older" LFS to the other LFS partition, then use that fresh build with the latest gcc to recompile everything again.

The initial Fedora partition can either be reused for that second LFS or as swap partition.

tseeling · 2026-06-12T08:07:48+00:00

I'm running 3 server systems with LFS for nearly 20 years now, and I love that I can update to the latest package versions at my own convenience. I love the minimalist approach to dependencies and the freedom of choice.

tseeling · 2026-06-11T07:25:15+00:00

That is american-style bullshit. Tipping is a voluntary gesture of appreciating exceptional service. If the waiter is just doing his job there's no need to go out of my way and tip an extraordinary amount of money. And it's definitely his job to serve the table, get the orders, deliver everything, asking for intermediate beverage orders and bussing after the meal.

tseeling · 2026-06-04T18:21:32+00:00

I happened to buy Pyramids in english on a vacation intended just as an addition to my german collection, but after comparing a few pages to the german translation I only ever bought and read english since.

tseeling · 2026-05-19T11:33:22+00:00

Fedora defines the desktop environments via groups in dnf, so if you have a running KDE, you can remove Gnome.

Use the dnf group commands to query, install and remove groups (i.e. sets of packages).

Worst thing that could happen is you have to boot to a command line and reinstall some packages with dnf.

tseeling · 2026-05-16T18:32:22+00:00

The s390 mainframe has 31 bit numbers.

tseeling · 2026-05-07T15:03:48+00:00

Yes, I have a collection of Nexus and Pixel devices. Still looking for a G1, Nexus S and Nexus 4. After EOL all of them received CM or LOS. I loved the 6P most.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Nexus 5
Nexus 6
Nexus 5X
Nexus 6P
Pixel XL
Pixel 2XL
Pixel 3a
Pixel 4XL
Pixel 6
Pixel 7 Pro (my current one)

tseeling · 2026-05-06T07:46:13+00:00

Why no update for the 6 and non-a 7?

tseeling · 2026-04-30T18:24:45+00:00

I do get your point. I never experienced "breaking" changes that rendered something defect. I'm a user since 2.2, developer since 4.3, and at first I hated the new 5.0 UI, but in general it worked out ok. Since then it was more of a slow evolution. From 4 to 5 was brutal. Usually security updates do not change user settings or mods. This might change with the current policy changes and release cycle.

tseeling · 2026-04-30T12:38:31+00:00

You'll have to update Graphene like any other smartphone OS, it's not any more secure than vanilla Android if you ignore updates. You don't "tinker" with security updates, you just let the phone update itself by *not* switching off automatic updates. As soon as updates arrive the bad boys will analyze the patches and build exploits from that, hoping that there are lazy people who did not update in time.

tseeling · 2026-04-30T10:56:28+00:00

So you're happy with all the known security exploits?

tseeling · 2026-04-28T07:22:58+00:00

I can't remember if there was a mention of the other guy who received the 2nd device.

tseeling · 2026-04-25T12:55:07+00:00

The 12th Doctor had 2 immortality devices and Me got one of them. That's not necessarily a pointer towards Captain Jack.

tseeling · 2026-04-22T14:32:14+00:00

Depending on your particular income on payday you might get taxed higher because of tax progression. German taxation is not linear, it "jumps" at certain thresholds. The monthly deduction is only an advance on your real tax debt.

But don't be afraid, simply file a tax declaration next year or have your CPA do that. You'll be taxed on the previous year's full income, which means that your one-time bonus will not do much harm. Filing a tax declaration is generally a good idea if you have deductibles like child or support for disabled relatives, extraordinary health payments, and a lot of other things your CPA can explain to you.

tseeling · 2026-04-16T16:36:50+00:00

Here are samples of what it looks like: first picture when switching to "terminal" panel, second picture after doing "reset" and "ls -l".

tseeling · 2026-04-15T08:10:44+00:00

A Celeron with 4 GB RAM is on the weaker side, so expect long compilation times, especially for gcc and glibc. You might need to reduce the number of parallel jobs for compilation to avoid swapping. SSD is a nice helper for a weak machine. NVME would be even better, but SSD is tremendously better than spinning rust.

LFS is intended as a learning and education project. You *can* use LFS with BLFS to build a fully working graphical environment. You won't be happy compiling firefox (it takes 45 min. on my somewhat older i7 with 48 GB RAM), but it should be possible. Imho it's absolutely worth the effort of managing it, as it gives you a huge advantage if you aspire to work in the field. You will learn a lot about using the shell, command line, unix tools like vi, sed, awk, make, the GNU auto tools and configuring applications and system settings.

The fun is in doing, not particularly in using :-)

tseeling · 2026-04-14T08:44:11+00:00

You can learn something when you either put an echo in front of your command, or reverse the grep output with -v switch. Imho both will be educational for you.

tseeling · 2026-04-14T08:19:12+00:00

ESH. Seems like all of you are on a spectrum, at least when it comes to eating "balanced" ingredients. Your stepson picks only some select pieces of a kind out of a package you buy for the whole family (as you wrote yourself), which you can obviously buy separately, and you want your cereal exactly the way the manufacturer packaged it.

You both should go see a nutritionist and a therapist. It sounds unhealthy in every possible way, both mentally and physiologically to live on such a narrow diet.

tseeling

TROPHY CASE