mrgrouse's blog

Hardware Issues (old)

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 22:49:16 -0500

Yes, you read that right, hardware issues.

As you can read in my last blog post, I installed artix linux on my main server, for stability purposes, but I guess software could not fix my hardware issue. This server runs on a goofy little desktop computer that I built and converted into a server by first installing ubuntu server (I was a linux beginner at the time) and messing around with it. I then upgraded the memory, and worked on adding more services to the server. It got to the point where I could rely on it pretty well, so I took out the graphics card (yes I had a graphics card in it because sometimes I would mess up the ssh server when I was trying to configure it with something like 2fa, I was a beginner at the time please don’t crucify me) as it was using a somewhat noticable amount of power. It was only a GTX 1050 Ti with no PCIe cable, so a significantly smaller power draw than that of a modern day power-devourer behemoth card. Okay, side tangent, but do people actually use (and I mean fully utilize 90-100% capacity of) these insane wattage destroyer graphics cards??? I have a 3060 on my desktop computer and I have never used it past something around 70%. I only get it to that playing games like Half-Life: Alyx and my favorite game of all time BONEWORKS!!!!! Back on topic here: after removing the graphics card, my goofy little brain told me to remove the network card too, because I figured the motherboard’s native ethernet port is already doing everything related to networking, and the removing the little wifi network card wouldn’t do anything but help simplify the whole computer. WRONG! After I had removed the network card, the server kept shutting off all network connections after around 1-2 days. I couldn’t ssh into the server, I couldn’t even get a connection to any port on the machine. All network connections were down. For some reason, the ethernet port kept blinking in the way it normally does, indicating that it is sending packets and whatnot, but the router it was connected to claimed it was offline, and I figured it was a dhcp issue. I use dhcpcd as my dhcp client, even though I don’t really need one, as I use a static route for my server connected to that router. I would remove dhcpcd and just use iproute2 because it is minimal and I already have it installed on the system and is likely even in my initramfs, but I don’t like messing with my initramfs, as it is working, and I don’t feel like potentially breaking my system that is finally working. Back on topic here (can you tell I have ADHD?): After removing my network card, this problem kept occurring nearly every single day for several months, and I had no clue as to why it was happening. Sometimes the server would stay up for more than 2 days (!!!) but these instances happened few and far between, leaving me to literally walk over and flip the power supply switch off and on again to force restart the server (I messed up the front panel power button motherboard connector cables from the case and haven’t had the motivation to reconnect them to the motherboard lolz). For a long time I had believed that this was caused by a DDoS attack on my server, which left it unable to connect to the internet, but for some reason I didn’t think to check dmesg for any info about the missing network card. I continued trying to find software fixes to prevent DDoS attacks, but none of them worked and I thought it was just gonna be impossible to stop without being doomed to using something sucky like the unfortunate cloudflare tunnel. I thought I had finally came to my senses after all this time and realized it was a DHCP error, as I was using dhcpcd, which tried to request a dynamic ip from my router, which only gave it a static ip, which then led to it not being able to connect, as it may have had no addressed ip, but this still wasn’t the issue. I configured dhcpcd to use a static route instead of a dynamic route, but the issue still persisted. At this point, it felt as if I had exhausted nearly every possible way of defeating this problem, other than reinstalling the network card, which I thought had to be an absolutely stupid idea. I researched how many watts a network card used, and realized it only uses about 5. :| After realizing this I reinstalled it, hoping that this minor change would fix the issue, and for some reason, it did. I checked dmesg, hoping it would tell me something I could understand, but it did not and just waited it out until I could see visible results. For some reason this worked, and I’m not questioning it.

Happy new year I guess

mrgrouse out 🫡

5-31-2025 Edit: Turns out that it was either amd’s c-states that don’t work on linux and cause freezing that leaves the system basically inaccessible as it isn’t a desktop and cannot easily be sent back to a regular c-state. This, along with a faulty networking program that I’ve been using are most likely the sources of all of these problems, so I guess i was just hallucinating the rest. 🤷 Happy debugging to all of you who feel like idiots from your tech problems too :)

mrgrouse.com Reloaded

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 23:26:33 -0500

(Almost) New Year, New Server!

I started my journey with this server on Ubuntu Server 22.04, and after a long struggle with SystemD (EWWWWW!) and other goofy absolute monstrosities of programs, I decided that I would finally leave my little old Ubuntu box in the past and switch to something simpler, so after lots of debating, I chose Alpine Linux. Under any other circumstances I would 100% recommend Alpine Linux, but in my use case, a certain closed source java program just would not cooperate with musl libc. Very unfortunate. FYI, there is a lot of information out there saying that musl libc is unusable, but for non-gui things like coreutils and init systems, musl libc provides a lot more security, stability and minimalism, allowing for static binaries and the like. If you’re compiling minimal programs from source, please use musl libc. It’s amazing. Back to what I was saying. After having to quadruple check if I backed everything up correctly, I made the final distro switch to Artix Linux! I’ve loved using Artix Linux on my desktop and laptop computers for the past 6 or so months, and its been very enjoyable. I’ve hopped between the different init systems that Artix offers, and I’ve always ended up using s6. Its simplicity and parralelism allow for incredible speed. I’ve also began to compile static binaries for my linux systems, and am planning to basically do a linux from scratch except without the guide and just doing whatever I think will work and if I manage to miss something I’ll just teach myself about it and hack away at it until it works. Yes, a dumb idea but thats just how I learn dawg 🤷. It’s probably not the best way to learn but its how I’ve learned as much as I have and I’ve enjoyed it. In general, Artix Linux has served as a great learning tool for my linux journey, and finally implementing it as my server distro of choice is what I believe will finally make this goofy, dimly lit (metaphorically and maybe literally) corner of the internet have the lights out less (metaphorically). Anyways, I’d totally recommend Artix Linux for a desktop distro, but make sure you know what you’re doing if you’re using it as a server distro, because it is rolling release after all (which doesn’t change too much but could still pose security threats). Happy rolling to all of you arch/artix/anyrollingdistro users.

Arch Linux One Year Review

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 01:39:06 -0400

My one year review of using Arch Linux!

I have been using Arch Linux for around one year, and I’ve finally made the decision to switch to Artix Linux.
My journey with Arch Linux has made me orders of magnitudes more educated in systems administration, and the overall architecture of a linux system. I have definitely had my fair share of reinstalls over the past year, probably somewhere between 3-8 reinstalls, between my desktop and laptop computer. I think that’s pretty good considering the fact that I learn through trial and error the best and the fact that I am somewhat quickly decisive. ADHD also plays into this as I have felt an urge to just rip everything from the roots and start over, no clue why this occurs in those with ADHD but hey, its pretty fun to reinstall Arch Linux if I’m being honest. Most of my problems that I encountered on Arch Linux were user error, if not all of them 🤡. But in all seriousness this approach to learning has been one of my most successful in many facets of education, and life in general. Obviously this theory/mentality isn’t bulletproof, far from it, but it has been very successful in my personal education.
My experience of using Arch Linux across my two systems was very fun throughout, and the knowledge it gave me about linux systems and computing in general are absolutely incredible, and personally I don’t think I could’ve learned it any other way than hands on usage of a personal system.
I would recommend Arch Linux to anyone who wants to learn more about linux systems and is ready to mess their system up a couple times if you’re like me.(!) But in all seriousness I would recommend this distro to anyone who has a passion for learning, software and computing and the like, as it helps you really understand it better.
Arch Linux also just flat out worked better than most other distros, as it seemed to just work once I installed and knew what I was doing. If you aren’t afraid of the command line and ttys and the like, then I would totally recommend it to anyone who wants to learn and is definitely ready to reinstall their system a few times (maybe) and backup their important files regularly.

Why did i switch to Artix? I switched because I wanted a new challenge and I was interested in alternatives to the bloated systemd. I switched to Artix base with OpenRC as the init system, because it seemed the most appealing to me in terms of features. Looking back at it, I think I probably should’ve used the Artix base iso with s6-rc as the init system, as it is the most lightweight and has the most advantages, and little did I realize how little of an effect the extra features OpenRC shipped with had for me. I’m not sure if I will switch from OpenRC to s6-rc, as the procedure of switching does seem a little difficult, as the Artix Wiki page for it seems very inconclusive about the errors that you may find. I understand that the errors you may get depend on so many variables that differ from system to system, so this inconclusiveness is understandable, but I personally wouldn’t risk my functioning desktop systems just to switch to a different init system.
If either of my desktop systems fail or just stop working someday and I cannot fix them, I probably will go to install Artix with s6-rc, but other than that I don’t have too much of a reason to switch other than that and just buying a new computer. Even if I bought a new computer I probably would just keep the same hard drive with my current install, so the odds of me switching are more unlikely.
Even so, I am interested in switching to s6-rc in the future, as I am currently having problems with DBus on my desktop computer, mostly concerning the XDG-Document-Portal.
Edit: I solved the problem I was having with the document portal by using ly as my desktop manager. Using its builtin setup scripts. I believe the environment variables it sets for X11 fixed my problem.
All in all, I would totally recommend Arch linux to anyone who fits the criteria I listed above. To those that think they’ve learned all they can from it and want something new to learn, I’d recommend starting with Artix Linux or if you enough time to compile kernels until the heat death of the universe in 10^100 years, then go for Gentoo.
That’s about it, have an amazing day.

(now that I think about it due to thermodynamics and whatnot people that use gentoo and/or compile absolutely everything from source actually make the lifespan of the universe shorter due to all of the cpu usage…)

Rust

Sun, 19 May 2024 22:01:29 -0400

I’m beginning to learn rust!

So basically, I thought that I had already tried and learned enough of C and I thought I was ready to try a new language with more quality of life and security. So obviously I chose rust. I liked that it was statically linked, and whilst not comparable to C, its speed is far far higher than that of PYTHON. 🤡 🤡 I most definitely do not like its OOP abilities, and that part of Rust is something I definitely do not like, but the community is great and there is far easier to find documentation on cargo crates and the like as compared to libraries in C. Finding and using libraries in C was just a pain and a massive confusion for me; So therefore I was interested in Rust with its cargo package manager. All in all, Rust is a good language, but it is just my second option for now, as I still do intend on learning C much better than I understand now, but I would love to continue learning Rust, as it seems great for things that I am interested in. That’s about it, have a nice day.

Gzip

Mon, 06 May 2024 16:50:02 -0400

I have no idea why Gzip isn’t just enabled by default in nginx. On my nginx server it was commented in nginx.conf but I had no idea what it meant because I was new to everything so i just ignored it. Later on, I found this site on suckless’ short critical page of the modern web. I read that page and the first page mentioned and saw that page mentioning gzip, but I thought it was negligable and didn’t make much of a different. Yeah I was wrong. It turns out Gzip was exactly what I needed, as my connection is pretty slow and sometimes it takes a while for clients to connect to my server, especially my web server. So way later along the line, probably a month or two later (today), I researched what Gzip is, and I fiddled with it for a while and enabled it, trying to enable it on every available filetype. It makes loading pages so much faster on slower connections and over anonymity networks such as tor or any vpn. But that is about it, I love Gzip, and I’m purposefully being blind to any problems that it may cause me to enable it on every filetype, so if it does actually cause more harm than it does good when used on certain filetypes, please contact me. My contact information is listed at blog.mrgrouse.com/about.
That’s about it. Have a nice day.

Webrings

Sun, 05 May 2024 01:52:39 -0400

Recently I have found one of the most captivating things on the internet in my opinion. Webrings!
Webrings, as described in the link above, are “a system that grouped and linked web sites of similar content together.”
This brought to my attention sites that I otherwise never would have seen or even known of.
I find scrolling through these sites to be so much more fun than scrolling through any form of social media.
There are many older websites that I came across that are miraculously still online, and have so much relics from the old internet.
My favorite of all is libre.town, and has such incredible theming and great information about this part of the web.
Libre.town promotes the “web revival” movement, which is a movement to reject social media and use the web to find friends and socialize through maintaining our own sites.
These sites that I’ve found by exploring these webrings are probably some of the most fun I’ve had exploring websites.
Thats about it, have a great day!

Classless CSS

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have been reworking everything on this server due to the corruption, and as I did the unfortunate work of learning web development, I came across a great tool that brings the simplicity of code to the (in my opinion) the worst part of computing. Classless CSS makes styling html while keeping the code simple a much easier job. I’m not sure if I’m just dumb or if this is magnificent, probably the former, but it is what it is.
I absolutely love Classless CSS, and it has been helping me a lot to work on this website without absolutely despising it.
Links are below for the Classless CSS I am utilizing:

sakura

I am just using sakura on my main page and others right now, but here’s a github repository containing a list of many Classless CSS themes and frameworks:

classless-css

That’s about it to be honest.
Have a great day.

Server Refactoring

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

So recently my server had some corruption due to a power outage. Clearly I didn’t run any sort of good enough filesystem backups, I just used basic ext4.
I reinstalled ubuntu server 22.04 and restored some services.
I’m still in the process of restoring them, but I am slowly recovering the server’s functionality.
If you have any knowledge of preventative measures for such things, PLEASE TELL ME! I’m begging you. My area has very frequent power outages, and if you could help, please send me an email, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Yeah, thats about it.

Have a nice day.

My Desktop Environment

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As of lately, I’ve realized that my configuration files and suckless utility forks (found here) aren’t very compatible with systems that aren’t exactly mine. So you could clearly see how that would be useless to put online. So as of recently I’ve been creating a new project to put all of the core configs of my linux desktop into one simple repository and package. So i created desuck, my own ‘DE’ (desktop environment) based on my forks of suckless utilities. If you don’t already know what a Desktop Environment is, it is the program on a linux system that is responsible for managing the windows shown on the display, along with desktop widgets, wallpapers, icons and toolbars. Desuck is simpler than a regular desktop environment, due to its base in suckless utilities. It is still a work in progress and I’m still not great at all at any of this so please bear with me. If you have anything to contribute to the project please feel free to contact me or submit a pull request on my gitea.
Yeah, thats about it.

Have a nice day.

About

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 23:31:15 +0000

This is my blog site.
I like self hosting and if you want me to add any services feel free to contact me.
My session address is below if you want to contact me about anything.
I dont care about the topic if you want to talk to anyone at all i guess.

Have a nice day.

email: bdmfegys@duck.com
public pgp key is here!
my session address: 059533446e480a5f09084805d333bc8efd8eacb73c61d2308d842bdc2103cd3672
session qr code:

Roadmap

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Project Roadmap

This site is my personal project, and I encourage anyone to ask me if they would like me to host anything else on this website, as I need more things to do, as I have no life at all. This page is just a TODO list for me, it is in no specific order, and I hope that I add more things along the way. I encourage you to contact me via session or pgp encrypted email if you would lke me to add anything.

TODO:

Add pgp key for email.
Move to high storage VPS or just a faster internet connection.
Add more structure to literally everything.
Make all self-built sites look good (enough), without using any bloated JS nonsense.
Attempt to get better at administration
Possibly add a matrix server.