Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
The backup scripts running on Mary’s folks’ PC kvetched on each backup:
WARNING: Some files and/or directories in /home/ only transferred partially during rsync operation
WARNING: /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily: completed, but with some warnings
Poking around showed that the problem came from the .gvfs “directory” tucked into each home directory, which produced this unenlightening ls -al result:
d????????? ? ? ? ? ? .gvfs
Come to find out that it’s an old problem with mysterious causes that should be fixed by now; evidently I triggered it by installing basic Ubuntu-with-Unity and then installing the Xbubuntu desktop. Or something like that.
Anyhow, the solution workaround involves an rsnapshot configuration entry that bypasses that directory:
For years this bottle of DeoxIT has been covered with a very thin layer of red juice, despite having the lid screwed firmly in place and a cap (removed here) pushed over the tube:
Caig DeoxIT bottle – lid crack repair
Turns out that there’s a minute crack in the cap. Every time I use the bottle, I refresh the oil layer on the inside of the bottle, which then gets pumped outside through capillary action. I’d been keeping the bottle in a tall ziploc baggie, specifically to contain the oil, and always assumed it was a simple leak.
The bottle still contains a lifetime supply of DeoxIT that may become a cherished family heirloom, one to be handed down through the generations. I can’t think of a better applicator, either, so I’m kind of stuck with that cap.
The cap is, of course, un-bondable polyethylene covered with thin oil, so there’s no possible way to repair it. I wiped it down with alcohol and acetone, then quick-like-a-bunny dabbed on a blob of Duco cement (which is the irregular shape on the cap) and worked it into the crack, in the hope it would stick well enough to reduce the pumping.
The plastic faceplate over the display cracked quite a while ago:
FC1002 Frequency Counter – cracked plastic
I don’t recall dropping the poor thing. Given the interesting pattern, it could be inherent stress that finally let loose as the plastic aged.
While I have it apart to rebuild the battery pack (more on that later), I’ve been easing acetone/MEK into those cracks by capillary attraction in the hopes of dissolving just enough plastic to rejoin them, without slobbering solvent all over the faceplate and scarring it.
If all else fails, I suppose I can mill out a replacement from thin acrylic sheet, but those nicely rounded cast / molded edges lie well beyond my abilities…
The springs balancing the dishwasher door started twanging again, which I now know is the diagnostic sign that an asphalt sound deadening sheet has slipped off the tub. A sheet on the right side almost perpetrated a clean escape, but the flap drooping over the spring gave it away:
Dishwasher sound deadener – slipped away
Another sheet on the left side was inching away, but hadn’t quite gotten over the fence:
Dishwasher sound deadener – slipping away
They’re pretty much a rigid solid at room temperature:
It puts one in mind of the pitch drop experiments now running in various labs. In this case, we now know it takes about four years for an asphalt sheet to slide completely off the tub; those two sheets were definitely in place when I buttoned it up after the previous one broke free.
I applied a heat gun to soften the sheets, then smoothed them around the tub again. This time I applied long strips of Gorilla Tape from one side to the other, rather than short strips of ordinary duct tape along the edges, and maybe this fix will outlast either the dishwasher or our tenure here, whichever comes first…
The new-to-me Optiplex 980 has a tool-free clamp securing the PCI card brackets to the chassis, with a nice plastic dress cover that really finishes off that side of the case. Alas, it’s secured by five small heat-staked plastic pegs that I managed to shear off as part of a finger fumble that you’ll recognize when it happens to you and which I need not further discuss:
Optiplex 980 PCI Clamp Cover – disassembled
So I drilled two slightly undersized holes for the tiniest screws in the Little Box o’ Tiny Screws:
Optiplex 980 PCI Clamp Cover – drilling
The two end plates sticking up are the only square parts of the cover, so that thing is actually clamped by the right-side plate and sheer will power. I ran the drill down 3 mm from the top of the post at the slowest manual jog speed from the Joggy Thing and I did not break through the top and did not hit that lathe bit under the cover.
The screw threads and a dab of epoxy hold them in place:
Optiplex 980 PCI Clamp Cover – tiny screws
I’d like to say the finished repair looked like this:
Optiplex 980 PCI Clamp Cover – in place
But, alas, the eagle-eyed reader will note that the screws are gone, replaced by two dabs of clear acrylic caulk; those faint threads and epoxy were no match for the snap of that latching lever and the slight distortion caused by the spring fingers applying force to the brackets.
Although automobile batteries have “standard” sizes designated by BCI Group numbers, this Group 34R Sears Diehard battery was about an inch shorter than the previous one:
Toyota Sienna – short Group 34 battery
It arrived with a plastic grid embossed with the helpful notation “Use this height adapter under battery if necessary”, but I figured lower was better. A little bending, two snippets of mouse pad (remember mouse pads?), and a section of white plastic rod faced off / drilled on the lathe anchored it flat on the platform with no wiggle room at all.
With any luck, that’s the last battery the van will ever need…
Quick summary: the current Linux startup machinery Runs All The Things! in parallel, leaving you to figure out all the interdependencies and update all the script files to match your requirements. Mostly, the distro maintainers figure all that, but if you have essential files mounted as NFS shares, then you can will reach a login screen before the mount process completes.
Having wrestled with this problem for a while, I think I’ve doped out the right way to coerce the Upstart Pachinko Machine to converge on a workable login.
The solution is to fire off a unique signal after the NFS mount command, then force the display manager to wait until it receives that signal, rather than depend on happenstance as I did before. The mounts occur in /etc/init/local.conf, which now looks like this:
description "Stuff that should be in /etc/rc.local"
author "Ed Nisley - KE4ZNU"
start on (local-filesystems and net-device-up IFACE=em1)
stop on shutdown
emits nfs-mounted
script
logger Starting local init...
logger Mounting NFS filesystems
mount /mnt/bulkdata
mount /mnt/userfiles
mount /mnt/diskimages
mount /mnt/music
initctl emit nfs-mounted
logger Ending local init
end script
The start condition ensures that this code won’t run until the wired LAN is up; note that what was once eth0 is now em1. Then, after the mounts happen, initctl fires the nfs-mounted signal.
The modification to /etc/init/lightdm.conf script consists of one additional line to wait for that signal:
start on ((filesystem
and runlevel [!06]
and started dbus
and plymouth-ready
and nfs-mounted)
or runlevel PREVLEVEL=S)
stop on runlevel [016]
emits login-session-start
emits desktop-session-start
emits desktop-shutdown
I’m not convinced lightdm.conf is the right spot to jam a stick in the gears, but it seems to be the least-awful alternative. The login-session-start signal doesn’t appear in any file in that subdirectory and I have no idea where else to look.
Anyhow, the greeter screen now shows a desktop background from the NFS mount, which I regard as A Good Sign:
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 