Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_i965.so

Some packages have been giving me these and similar messages, irking me for a while now.

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_i965.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I think I found a solution, which is not really a solution as I don't understand why vdpau should be called for i965.

Install the following packages:

libva-intel-driver
libvdpau-va-gl

Set the following environment variable:

VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl

Alternatively, you could create a symlink instead of the environment variable.

# cd /usr/lib/vdpau/
# ln -s libvdpau_va_gl.so.1 libvdpau_i965.so.1

But this litters the system. I would rather set the environment variables for all users, if so required.

Firefox Quantum upgrade lost Profile data

Today, my voidlinux received an upgrade to firefox-esr v52 to v60. I backed up my firefox profile in ~/.mozilla, before starting the new upgraded firefox. In hindsight, this saved my ass.

I noticed firefox upgraded my profile, and certain bits got lost. My major concern was losing all my uMatrix rules. I had this same issue with Gentoo last year when they canned firefox-52.

When asking for help on voidlinux irc, the first response told me to build it myself. That first suggestion had me thinking of going back to gentoo, as my void box is runtime only with no development tools. That led to searching for the pkg build files, and I arrived here.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.0esr/linux-i686/en-GB/

Voila! Problem solved :)

Download the tar file, extract into /tmp. Re/move upgraded firefox profile, and restore ~/.mozilla from backup. Now I could simply run /tmp/firefox/firefox and it loaded up with my old profile. I could successfully export all my bookmarks, rules, and other required data.

Hopefully, this helps someone in similar situation.

Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro

Santa gave me a nice gift for this Christmas… a brand new shiny smartphone! I haven't had a new device in many many years. I have always used older discarded technology, if I may add, to great effect. My friends continuously chasing the latest gadgets are a boon to me, as I get their not so new devices which I can then put to good use.

All my current in-use Android devices are stock Eclair or Gingerbread. Subsequently, the manufacturer abandoned any software updates for those models. Custom ROMs have saved those devices from the scrapyard and given them a much longer life. I learned how to DIY. It was an exciting ride, though a bit scary on occasion as I was playing with my daily driver. Many a weekend has been ruined pulling out my hair. Thankfully, I survived along with all those devices.

For now I am still keeping my trusty old smartphone

environment

Perhaps time to revise/update my environment list… This is what I use right now.

*nix file system btrfs kernel linux-4.9 init runit window manager i3 firewall nftables shell tmux irc weechat media player mpv terminal st email client sylpheed browser firefox-esr-52

android Flavours KitKat, GingerBread, Eclair Home TinyLaunch 31k Keyboard Multiling O Keyboard 540k Browser Naked Browser 120k Email K-9 Mail 4.6m Maps RMaps 703k Text Editor Editor 100k SatNav OsmAnd 76m Messaging Messenger Lite 7.7m

Have I missed anything?

shell in colours

Sometimes it feels nice to see a bit of colour. One of the most common places is the shell prompt. The concept and usage is the same, whether you want some colour in your prompt or elsewhere.

Typing an Ellipsis or other Special Characters

Sometimes I have a need to type special characters. Some of them aren't obviously represented on my keyboard. Indeed, no physical keyboard can realistically show all Unicode characters.

One of my often used special characters is the ellipsis (…) which is Unicode character U+2026.

spidark queries nftables

I had some kernel config issues re nftables. While helping me, spidark says

I have no idea (yet) what im doing.
But this works ( crippled i think but it works)
Can't remember where i got it from :( Sorry original author, and thanks )
However it does timeout my eix-sync and dhclient complains about ipv6 not permitted because of the drop state ( working on that )
Maybe you can figure it out.

delete blank lines

I had a need to delete blank lines from the output. And I tried this from my previous post^[1].
sed '/^$/d'

The above sed works fine, if the lines are truly empty.

nftables base ruleset

I have migrated to nftables. The iptables base ruleset^[1] was incredibly useful, each time I needed to setup from scratch. Following on from that, I wanted to bed down my nftables base ruleset too.

I picked up my iptables base ruleset^[1], and applied the migration techniques from the nftables wiki^[2]

git quick reference

More often than not, we want to work with others on open-source projects hosted on one or more online repositories. We and others, primarily make changes to various forks and branches. This allows for a very efficient distributed Change Management strategy.

Linus Torvalds apology

So, this was a surprise announcement: Linus Torvalds takes a break from Linux!

The last time he took a break, Linus came back with a little tool called "git"! Perhaps he needs to take breaks more often :) and we might get more toys.

It is always productive to "look yourself in the mirror" as often as we can, and reflect on all the Ws. Here's hoping Linus comes out better at the end of all this. We wish him well!

sed quick reference

Continuing on this idea of quick references^[1] to aid my memory, the next one is
sed: stream editor for filtering and transforming text

My favourite busybox toolkit contains sed too.

iptables base ruleset

I remember very well how lost I encountered iptables for the first few times. It was so bad that I gave up completely… many times over! Every attempt had major starting troubles.

If only I had a holding hand or helpful reference like this one

vi quick reference

I have a need to refer to some vi commands that I keep forgetting every now and then. My favourite is busybox vi

Say NO to HTTPS

Say NO to HTTPS, unless there is a very specific requirement like logging in to secure sites.

Most of the World Wide Web is open public information accessible to everyone… Just like you can drive wherever you want on any roads, except some restricted or controlled ones. Trying to make every website secure is like trying to put tollbooths or entry/exit restrictions on every road, and centrally controlling them. Unnecessary overheads become bottlenecks to efficiency, transparency and openness. Somebody somewhere wants to grind an axe. Kinda sorta like this rent-extracting economy masquerading as a free market.

environment

desktop | laptop	phone | tablet
gentoo | debian | devuan arch | void | alpine | openbsd	android v2.x ubuntu? | linux?? | windows???
runit | openrc? busybox tmux lynx elinks i3wm jwm, wpa_gui, volumeicon sylpheed mpv sgt-puzzles qupzilla | firefox	k9 mail Search based launcher Tiny Home Draweroid X-plore QuickPic f-droid Rmaps MapFactor Navigator Train Scout Hanzovy Sachy Puzzles 250+ Solitaire And Bible Lectio Divina Lit Jango Radio Spotify

 

though practical issues have me often irregularly using many others not listed above.

what consists your environment, and why?

gentoo intel-ucode microcode

gentoo provides a package for intel microcode updates to safely update cpu firmwares. this is how i adapted the gentoo way.

suckless st - simple terminal

continuing down the path of simplifying & downsizing.. i have migrated to st^[1] and removed bloatware terminals. i had been using urxvt till now, wasting so much time to configure it. i have no further need for bloatware terminals, particularly when i almost never open up more than one terminal window. for such a small package, st^[1] does everything i need out of the box and more.. suckless rocks!

tb termbin pastebin wgetpaste

just one to rule them all -- termbin!

i discovered this today on irc

kerframil: my go-to 'vanilla' pastebin is termbin.com, which can be used with nc (busybox has an nc implementation)

i am a huge busybox fan, and i'm always looking for ways to use it more. i replace whatever pkgs i can with busybox.

voidlinux remove old kernels & modules

I noticed while updating my void that kernels were being updated, but old ones weren't being removed. Removing orphan packages didn't remove those old files either. I looked for those packages, but they weren't even listed in either the local or the remote repository. It seems kernel packages seem to be a one-way install, and the old package disappears when a new update appears. No wonder I couldn't remove them.