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September 30, 2021September 30, 2021

Fan Speed Control on Dell XPS 15 running Linux

Add dell-smm-hwmon sensors to kernel modules

sudo su
echo "options dell-smm-hwmon restricted=0 force=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/dell-smm-hwmon.conf
echo "dell-smm-hwmon" > /etc/modules
exit
sudo update-initramfs -u

Reboot, and the fans should be visible with:

sensors
dell_smm-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
fan1: 0 RPM
fan2: 0 RPM

Control System i8kutils

Install i8kutils to take control of the fans.

sudo apt install i8kutils
sudo su
echo "i8k" > /etc/modules
echo "options i8k force=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/i8k.conf
exit

Reboot

sudo modprobe i8k force=1

Configure i8kutils

sudo vi /etc/i8kmon.conf

I left the config file at the defaults and the fans stayed under control as did the temps. check the temps and fan speeds at any time with the sensors command

sensors

45 – 50 degrees C and 2500 RPM fan speeds whilst running Brave and Virtual Box

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July 12, 2021July 12, 2021

Enabling Snaps in Linux Mint 20+

Linux MInt has taken the decision to disable the ability to install snapd and subsequently containerised apps (or snaps) from the Ubuntu Snap Store.

Linux Mint users are met with an error when attempting to install snapd or snap store applications

You can disable the block on installing snapd as follows.

sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd

This will allow you to install those specific containerised versions of apps that you want, e.g. Whatsdesk (a containerised Whatsapp client for your Linux desktop).

sudo snap install whatsdesk

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June 4, 2021June 4, 2021

Windows 10 De-Bloat and Customise

Download latest Windows 10 ISO from here and perform a Windows 10 Pro installation to a freshly procured virtual machine. Say No to pretty much everything. Log into your Microsoft account during installation if you have other synchronised Windows devices already.

If using Oracle Virtualbox, insert VirtualBox Guest Additions CD and install, Reboot VM

If using an Sun Microsystems/Oracle Keyboard, change Host Key to Alt Graph on Keyboard since there’s no Right-Ctrl key which is the default.

Search for Windows Updates, Check for Updates, Install Windows Updates, Reboot VM

Open Powershell as Administrator and run the following command taken from here

iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://git.io/JJ8R4'))

Remove components you don’t require by clicking on each button. The script to remove the feature will execute in the PowerShell console behind.

I like to install Rainmeters and I simply stick with the default meters/widgets so I can easily keep track of the VM resource consumption at a glance, if things should slow up..

This is a running list of optimizations I’ve made in the past on problematic Windows 10 desktop systems to speed them up/fix them.

remove avast AV
remove avast VPN
restore windows defender AV
remove windows c++
check startup programs, remove superflouous items
analyze and defrag hard disk
reset windows updates
remove transparency effects
install rainmeter and fix items to desktop
make rainmeters disappear on mouse over
install brave browser
remove immediate access to MS Edge browser
set dark themes in windows and brave
change power settings to optimize for performance
change power settings to not power down or sleep when plugged in
change windows updates to dynamically adjust times when it performs windows updates based on usage
change display effects to remove all special effects apart from drop shadows and show window contents when dragging.
Disabled Windows Search Service (Search Indexing)
Enable restart and notification for restart when Windows Updates needs it
troubleshoot windows updates.
system installed updates on restart
feature update to windows 10 version 2004 being prepared. leave laptop on to complete.
Synced time and set system to sync region automatically
Run cmd as admin, run SFC /scannow to check for missing / damaged system files. Some found and repaired.

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November 22, 2018

Make bootable USB from .iso in Linux

The following command will write a downloaded .iso file of your favourite distro to a USB stick. You can then boot off it and install to hardware.

sudo dd bs=4M if=./manjaro-xfce-18.0-stable-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdb status=progress

Note that in my example, there was no partition on the usb stick to start with. I’d removed it using gparted (not necessary though).

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September 13, 2018

Firefox Bookmarks location (Linux)

At some point you may find yourself wishing you could get your firefox boomarks from another user home directory on your laptop or on backup.

I want to be able to find them, and restore them into Firefox in my new profile.

This is the location in the filesystem where the Firefox bookmarks are kept. Firefox appears to retain backups of the bookmarks on its own, which is very convenient indeed.

/home/matt/.mozilla/firefox/n5ufmg0e.default/bookmarkbackups

Simply copy the most recent file to the same location in your new profile. The filename is fairly cryptic looking, e.g.

‘bookmarks-2018-09-13_15_AWyxn1GRB8WngmWVnMswTg==.jsonlz4’

so my advice would be to not change it at all, just copy it as it is into the same location in your new profile.

You’ll need to restart firefox before you’ll see it as a recoverable item in the Firefox Bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks, Backup and Restore dialog.

In newer versions of Firefox, the menu bar and bookmarks toolbar are missing by default (I hate all this modern minimalism as it smacks of form over function) but you can enable it again by right clicking on a blank bit of GUI and selecting Menu bar and Bookmarks bar (Highly recommended).

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September 13, 2018

Firefox Bookmarks location (Windows)

At some point you may find yourself wishing you could get your firefox boomarks from an old profile still resident on your laptop, but no longer the one that you’re logging into.

For example, I have an old profile here for user matthewbradley, but upon getting my account reactivated, I’m now finding myself logging into matthewbradley.UK – i.e. same human, different local profile on the laptop.

The frustrating thing is that all my bookmarks are in Firefox in my old profile and I want to be able to back them up and restore them into Firefox in my new profile.

This is the location in the filesystem where the Firefox bookmarks are kept. Firefox appears to retain backups of the bookmarks on its own, which is very convenient indeed. You should be able to access it via Explorer or Cmd console.

C:\Users\matthewbradley\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\jrc8wnze.default\bookmarkbackups\

Note that AppData is a hidden folder so if you’re using Explorer, you’ll need to change the View options to show Hidden Items before you’ll see it.

Simply copy the most recent file to the same location in your new profile. The filename is fairly cryptic looking, e.g.

bookmarks-2018-09-13_15_AWyxn1GRB8WngmWVnMswTg==.jsonlz4

so my advice would be to not change it at all, just copy it as it is, into your new profile.

You’ll need to restart firefox before you’ll see it as a recoverable item in the Firefox Bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks, Backup and Restore dialog.

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May 25, 2018May 25, 2018

Installing ExpressVPN on Manjaro

The title of this post is deliberately misleading, but that’s for a good reason. The likelihood is, you are an ExpressVPN subscriber (the worlds most popular VPN service provider and arguably the best) and have just switched from Linux Mint to Manjaro, only to find that Fedora and Debian based distributions are always well catered for, but Arch Linux based distributions like Manjaro, well not so much.

The title is misleading since the solution to this immediate brick wall you’ve come up against, is to not install ExpressVPN at all – but still use it.

Enter OpenVPN. Installed already in Manjaro, and just waiting for you to perform a manual configuration. (Cue the groans)

In fact it is no more taxing that installing the regular fedora or debian pre-compiled packages and then entering your subscription code obtained by logging onto ExpressVPN’s website using your email address and password set up when you originally subscribed.

On the page where you can download the packages for many different devices and operating systems (except Arch Linux), there is a Manual Config option too. You can use this with OpenVPN.

Ensure OpenVPN is selected in the right-hand pane and expand your region at the bottom and choose from a list of ExpressVPN Servers for say, Europe and download the .ovpn file.

Now you can configure OpenVPN to use the ExpressVPN Server of your choice, with the following command…

You will be immediately prompted for your VPN Username and Password which you can copy and paste from the same ExpressVPN Manual Config page shown above.

You should see that a connection has been established. Just be sure to leave the terminal window open (maybe move it to a different workspace to keep it out of harms way if you’re a habitual window-closer like I am).

To close the VPN connection, just CTRL-C it in the Terminal window.

That’s it. But I’m always keen to give that little bit extra value, so I’ll continue, describing how you can also configure it using your Network Manager…

Right-click on your network icon in the bottom right hand corner (or ‘systray’ as the Windows folks would call it) and you’ll see there is an option to Add a VPN connection.

Select Import a saved VPN configuration – not OpenVPN!

Select your preferred .ovpn file downloaded from ExpressVPN’s site.

Copy and Paste the username and password from the ExpressVPN page…

Next, click on the Advanced… button.

Under the General tab, make sure to following boxes are checked:

Use custom gateway port: 1195
Use LZO data compression
Use custom tunnel Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU): 1500
Use custom UDP fragment size: 1300
Restrict tunnel TCP Maximum Segment Size (MSS)
Randomize remote hosts

Under the Security tab…

Under TLS Authentication tab…

Click OK to finish.

You may need to reboot the computer at this point.

To connect to the ExpressVPN Server, simply select it from the Network icon on the bottom right-hand corner…

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March 23, 2018March 23, 2018

Fix Windows 10 Slowness/Lag

Windows 10 Slowness seems to bug most users, with a constant degree of lag when flicking between tasks. It can be stressful and disruptive to your reaching a productive, flow state.

Most modern mid-range laptops are more than capable of running multiple operating systems simultaneously, rocking Intel core i5 processors with vPro technology just like their floor standing, desk based or rack mounted workstation and server brethren so why then, is your laptop slow when all it has to do is run a single instance of Windows 10, – often on a SSD (Solid State Drive) that claims to be faster than it’s mechanical, spinning counterpart?

Many users have reverted to Windows 7 seeing as Windows 8 was such an abomination (Windows 10 is a long way from winning me over too, tbf) and are left wondering what the future holds for them from here on in, in terms of upgrade path and acceptable snappy performance.

Aside from the mammoth processors and supercharged block storage devices inside the modern affordable laptop, there is also the huge amount of RAM too. Large RAM requirements have arisen out of the desire to run multiple applications simultaneously and flick between them, but also as a result of a widespread transition from 32-bit operating systems and applications to 64-bit – a move that in itself warrants double the amount of physical RAM in order to match the performance.

And just look at all that %Idle time? HOW CAN IT BE SO SLOWWW?!!

Back in the 32-bit 1GB RAM days when RAM was expensive, page files were used to write pages of memory to disk, to free up precious, fast volatile RAM (You can still run many light weight distributions of Linux on that spec with very little to no slowness and minimal to no swapping to virtual memory too. Same is true of 64 bit with 2GB RAM.)

The size of the pagefile defaulted to the amount of RAM. This was due to the assumption that if the amount of pagefile needs to be any bigger than that, then you really do need more physical RAM as your system would have undoubtedly ground to a snails pace already.

And that is still the default. The problem with that, is that in a laptop with a single partition, a single 8GB file used for regularly paging the chosen contents of 8GB physical memory out to it, puts a fair bit of strain on the IO subsystem – and it’s unnecessary strain. With 8GB RAM, you’ll not need much if any page file at all, for most tasks.

So with that in mind, change your virtual memory settings from being “system managed”, so a fixed size pagefile set at the “Recommended” size.

In Control Panel, System…

These settings will need a reboot to take effect. You should notice snappier performance as a result.

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January 17, 2018February 8, 2018

Mount USB HDD by UUID in Linux

The danger with USB hard disk drives is that when you have more than one plugged into your workstation, the device name assigned to it by the operating system might not be consistent between reboots. i.e. /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2 might swap places. Potential disaster if you rsync data from one to the other on a periodic basis.

If permanently mounting usb hard disks, it’s much safer to mount according to the UUID of the disk instead of the device name assigned by the OS.

If you change to root using sudo su – and cd into /dev/disk you’ll see that there are multiple links in there, organised into different folders. The unique unit id is written in /dev/disk/by-uuid and links the device name to the unique id.

You can see what device name is mounted where using df -h. Then use the output of ls -al of /dev/dsk/by-uuid to correlate uuid to filesystem mount. There’s probably other ways to match filesystem to uuid but this is quick and easy enough to do.

Note that I’ve also taken the liberty of piping the commands through grep to reduce output, just showing me what I want to know, i.e. the uuid’s mounted to devices named /sda1, /sda2, /sdb1 etc.

Once you’re confident you know what UUID is what disk, then you can permanently mount the disk or disks that are permanent fixtures by creating a mount point in the filesystem and adding a line to /etc/fstab

finally, mount -a will pick up the UUID and mount it into the mount point.

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March 2, 2017

Download the full Firefox stand-alone installer

There’s nothing more frustrating than downloading an installer that assumes that you’re going to have internet access on the machine that you subsequently intend to run the installer on (called a stub installer).

For example, downloading firefox so that you can get to your enterprise storage arrays java based admin interface without the agony presented by internet explorer’s tendency to throw its toys out the pram over the certificate and the settings are locked down by IE policy, this policy, that policy and the other policy that all exist to make the environment so much more “secure” but actually just don’t allow anything, anywhere, ever. It’s secure!, it’s been signed off as being suitably unusable to prevent exposing ourselves to any kind of imaginary threat! Aren’t we clever?. No. Rant over.

It’s secure!, it’s been signed off as being suitably unusable to prevent exposing ourselves to any kind of imaginary threat!

I’ve probably digressed, I can’t tell. I’m too angry. And you are too probably, if you’ve ended up here. Installers that assume an internet connection are completely useless in the enterprise environment (best read in the voice of Clarkson).

Whats even more frustrating is that the stub installer is the only apparent option, judging by mozillas website. Well it isn’t the only option – you can still download the full-fat, stand-alone installer from their ftp site – but ftp is blocked by your firewall!

No bother, just replace ftp:// with http:// at the beginning of the URL, or even better just click here for the 64 bit version (or here for the 32 bit version).

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