Technical Support

Background

I’ve installed Ubuntu 18.04 on my new laptop.

Problem

The /var partition was too small. The system complained that only 200 MB was left.

Solution

1. Rebooted with my live USB.
2. Opened GParted.
3. Moved /tmp partition to the left and grew it to 6 GB.
4. Grew /var partition to 16 GB
5. Click

Results

Details [TL;DR]

Here’s the GParted generated log.

Goal

To get Julia installed as a normal user on RHEL 6.

Motivation

“Julia talks like Python but walks like C.”

To do statistics more efficiently.

The compiled binaries often contain install scripts which put files to shared folders under /usr. Consequently, they have to be run as sudo privileges. That drove me to start this lengthy Julia compilation.

Installation

Without sudo privileges, I’ve chosen to compile Julia from source. I was too lazy to get the dependencies fixed. I just compiled it without GFortran and pkg-config under the ~/src folder.

Introduction

This article records my errors and difficulties encountered on the first day I came across Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 in my school’s laboratory, as a normal user without sudo privileges.

The login screen was gdm, and the desktop environment was GNOME. IBus was used as the input engine.

Packages installed

The principal goal is to install tools that I usually use on RHEL without sudo permissions. To do so, I’ve downloaded the executable binaries or source code of these packages. As I wanted to focus on my studies, I prefer downloading executable binaries.

Background

While making changes to a theme for a static site generator, I changed files under a Git submodule included in the repo for my blog. (e.g. themes/beautifulhugo) That’s ideal for local testing, but not for version control. As a result, I cloned the repo for the theme to a directory separate from the one for my bloge (say, ~/beautifulhugo), and commit the changes there, then performed a Git submodule update so as to make the workflow clean.

Background

My churches are going green.

Problem

→ I downloaded a PDF from Haute-Garonne’s government site, filled in the form and saved it on a USB key. Then I printed it at a Konica Minolta bizhub photocopier yesterday.

Problem

I would like to submit Flying Grizzly’s form. I filled in every blanks and then I clicked the “submit” button below. I was greeted with a MISSING_REQUIRED_FIELDS error within a second.

{
    "success":false,
    "data":["replying_to"],
    "rawError":{
        "_smErrorCode":"MISSING_REQUIRED_FIELDS",
        "data":["replying_to"]
    },
    "errorCode":"MISSING_REQUIRED_FIELDS"
}

Discussion

The error code suggested that the form fields sent should be inspected.

Goal

To enable Chinese and Japanese input on (X)ubuntu 18.04 laptops .

My choices of input method

On my old Fujitsu laptop running Xubuntu, I’ve chosen Fcitx. This turns out to be a difficult choice when I install Rime.

Japanese input

Thanks to ひゃまだ, I’ve managed to switch between difference modes in Mozc.

Problem

After installing NPM throught Ubuntu’s default apt-get manager, I got permission errors. Though sudo can solve the problem, that’s not the right way in principle because NPM is supposed to hold different versions of Node.js packages for testing. It’s insecure to execute npm with sudo priviledges.

Solutions

1. Install Zsh to improve efficiency

2. Grab Oh My Zsh to instal NVM as its plugin.

    sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
   

3. Use NVM (NPM Version Manager) to manage NPM.

   [Read More]

Background: 🈶 ⛪ → 🌿

→ 📧 In the recent decade, organizations are replacing courrier with email. The reason is two-folded. 🌿 First, the later is more environmentally-friendly. 📨 Second, the later delivers the content to the recipient quick as a flash.

📧 📎 When one sends an email, one sometimes wants to attach a file to an email. If one has to sign a paper document and send it by email, then one will probably need a scanner. (Despite the emergence of scanning apps on mobile devices, the quality of a scanner is normally better since the page is flattened during the scan.)

Main ideas

• – Ideal energy range for storage: 40%–80%
• The biggest enemy of electronic parts is heat .
• Avoid overchanging and unplug AC adapter when charging is complete. In particular, don’t leave a fully charged laptop connected to power supply. This can reduce the lifespan of the battery.
• Avoid deep discharges: recharge the laptop battery when its enery level drops to 40%.
• Reduce unnecessary programs running in background.
• If your hardware vendor supports Linux drivers for batteries, set the charging thershold to 80%.
  • Some Lenovo Thinkpads can benefit from those drivers.
  • Other vendors like Fujitsu offers such drives for M$ Windows only.

External URLs

1. Life Hacker
2. Omg! Ubuntu!