John's Blog

After getting a pair of Airpods Pro and connecting them to Fedora 38 computer I found that I could use them as "headphones" but not as a "handset". Pairing was easy using the utility bluetoothctl - put the airpods in pairing mode, run bluetoothctl and then issue the "pair" command giving the proper hex string e.g. as in  https://meroupatate.github.io/posts/airpods/ . Once this is done, the "headphone" device as well as the "handsfree" device shows up in the Sound section of "Settings" and can be selected but the this doesn't result in the airpods being able to do anything useful in handsfree mode. In theory, the problem could be in the Linux Software Sound stack (some combination of  Pipewire, Pulse Audio, Alsa),  or with the various codecs installed on the system.  Most of the resources on the internet focus here. Since I'm on Fedora 38 Pipewire is well established. One other wrinkle about this is that somewhere in ...

I've been using Zwift for years now. The one problem that I've been plagued with and have up until now failed to find a soution for is this - When in Erg Mode aka Workout Mode, very often the power setting gets "stuck". This means that despite the Zwift platform raising the power setting as the workout progresses the trainer remains stuck on some particular power setting. When this happens the whole point of Erg Mode is completely defeated. I've faced this situation literally dozens of times and like all "first world problems" it can be very annoying! Online forums suggest that you toggle Erg Mode when this happens either by stopping/resuming pedaling or by using the companion app on your phone. Other more extreme measures include disconnecting the trainer from power and plugging it back in or worst case just starting the workout completely over. Recently I've hit upon a theory and a fix that seem to be holding up. Time will tell if this is indeed th...

Settings Apps & Notifications See All Apps Pixel Launcher Advanced Additional Settings in the App Display Google app (To the left of the main Home Screen)

Very much like a previous blog post . In that case the bootchart package borked the F21 to F22 upgrade. Here to make a long story short in going from F25 to F26 this time it was infinality. How did I figure it out? Most of the init sequence would execute but couldn't get to gdm so startup only got so far. Booted into single user mode and then did     init 4 Did a dnf distro-sync but that didn't help. But when I looked in /var/log/messages I saw the error message regarding libharfbuzz mentioned here . /usr/lib/libharfbuzz.so.0: undefined reference to 'FT_Get_Var_Blend_Coordinates' That link mentioned infinality.  dnf remove infinality-repo dnf remove freetype-infinality  did the trick. Then I could do     init 5 So infinality seemed to break F25 to F26 upgrade.

This was puzzling me for awhile. Found the answer on the arch linux wiki which is to do a reboot. Apparently if there is skew between the latest kernel and the running kernel, things won't work. After a reboot it moutned find using MTD stuff.

In Gnome Shell 3 (3.18 actually) if I chose DarkGlass as my Shell theme and I clicked on the date at the top the calendar that "pops down" would be cut off at the right side. Actually it was there but the background color was missing. The fix is to find either the file /usr/share/themes/Dark-Glass/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css or ~/.themes/Dark-Glass/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css and change width: to min-width like so: /* Calendar popup */                                                                                                                                                           ...

Synergy  is a very useful piece of software that allows two (or I suppose more) computers to share a keyboard and a mouse. One computer is configured as a server, one as a client, and the client computer can be then controlled with the server computer's input devices. In my typical setup at work I have two Ubuntu computers (although I'm a Fedora user at home) - a desktop and a laptop with a dock. The desktop is configured as the server and the client is the laptop. Everything basically would work until such time as I undocked and redocked the laptop . Without thinking too much about what I was doing or why - when it came time to go to a meeting I would simply undock the laptop and go. Usually undocking wasn't too much of an issue but when I returned to my desk on redocking the laptop it would sometimes (but not always) behave incorrectly. The laptop would act as if some modifier key were permanently pressed. And up-arrow press might show "3A" on the termi...