• I was using the Internet (“The Internet”) and ads started appearing on some apps and sites where I didn’t recall seeing them before. I thought the folks had gotten more clever. Later in the day I looked at pihole, realized it was out of date, updated it, and the ads disappeared. Lesson learned, and most likely not the last time. Some mistakes are easy to do multiple times as I don’t really waste the bandwidth on remembering everything. I believe remaining curious instead of furious (or annoyed) makes it easier to detect and fix problems.

  • I run self hosted WordPress sites, like this one, and was performing the update to 6.4.2 and the first site went fine and all the remaining sites failed a manual update.

    The error message was:
    “Could not copy file.: wordpress/wp-admin/includes/update-core.php
    Installation failed.”

    I vaguely recalled that occasionally problems happened and downloads are partially stuck and the files need to be cleaned out. Yup, found the wp-content/upgrade folder and cleaned out the partial upgrade file and each site upgraded fine.

    I would imagine somehow the file and/or its check failed and stored in a queue somewhere and by the time I got it again, I was getting a clean copy. No idea if it was on my machine or the WordPress server. Oh well

  • Overlook the sizeable lack of blog entries. Entries for social media purposes require require snappier titles and editing. Neither of those are worth my time at present. This is my log, if it helps anyone, great, and it really doesn’t matter, as logging helps me.

    I went to upgrade to Moodle 4.2 back in March, I am running Fedora 36. I had to install Python 8.0.x as Moodle doesn’t support anything greater as of yet and Fedora 36 is LTS support and so I stand on that for a bit. This gave me a problem upgrading to Moodle 4.2 as it requires mariadb version 10.6 and Fedora 36 has 10.5 .

    When I installed the older version of Python it required a bunch of hacks. The instructions from mariadb on installing ahead were a bit cumbersome and I looked around quickly. Fedora documentation now explains that dnf and repositories support modular packaging. Read https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/installing-mysql-mariadb/ , specifically the section of Fedora Modular Repository and follow the steps selecting the Server option and that is all there is to it.

    I now have Moodle 4.2.1+ running on mariadb 10.6.11 with minimal effort. ymmv

  • Well, that didn’t go well. I skipped reading the ReadMe on upgrading to Fedora 36 on Moodle.org and after upgrading I realized I was on PHP 8.1 and Moodle doesn’t run on that version. I followed these instructions https://computingforgeeks.com/how-to-install-php-on-fedora/ to install the REMI repository and then PHP 8.0. I did get into some particulars with ensuring that the zip library was installed as different versions report back different entities. In the end it all sorted out and while I don’t have a lovable generic Fedora install I at least have Moodle 4.0 back up and running in time for the school year.

  • I use a Raspberry Pi as a WiFi Bridge to allow me to login to XFinity WiFi which is closer to my garage than my WiFi router (which is also XFinity – benefits of being a customer). Then all of a sudden I noticed that I had difficulty accessing a network. It appeared that I could not access a 2.4GHz band, just the 5GHz band and that stumped me.

    What I found solved my problem is modifying the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf file to include all the frequencies on both channels and POOF problem solved.

    freq_list=2412 2417 2422 2427 2432 2437 2442 2447 2452 2457 2462 2467 2472 5170 5180 5190 5200 5210 5220 5230 5240 5260 5280 5300 5320 5500 5520 5540 5560 5580 5600 5620 5640 5660 5680 5700

    I also added a neighbors WiFi who kindly allowed me access to facilitate my Zwift training sessions especially in the winter. Fun challenge.