== 2026-0-11 Friday ==

=== Weeknote ===

I've been mostly faffing about with Linux-related stuff this week.

I have a NAS box (a Netgear ReadyNAS) and also an old Lenovo
Thinkpad laptop with damaged screen and broken/battered case acting
as secondary filestore. The old Lenovo got to the point that it was
physically quite fragile and had spent some months in an unheated
shed in Shetland over a cold damp winter.... and I guessed it was
destined to fail catastrophically sooner rather than later.

So I decided to 

1) keep the ReadyNAS
2) Add a new Raspberry Pi as a secondary NAS
	a) Just using the SDcard as the storage medium
	   rather than adding a separate USB hard-drive
	b) Accept that this isn't ideal, as SDcards aren't 
	   really trustworthy as long-term storage on a R.Pi

I installed a fresh copy of Debian Bookworm on a 128GB sdcard and
got the Pi 3B running - no X, just terminal with the following

	1) SSH Server
	2) Telnet Server
	3) FTP Server
	4) Gopher Server
	5) NFS Server
	6) Finger Server

I made a NFS shared directory to act as a repository for backups of
my "user" laptops etc.

== Serial Terminal Console ==

I added a USB/Serial adaptor and used systemd's easy-peasy method
of getting a serial-getty

	systemctl enable serial-getty@ttyUSB0.service
	systemctl start serial-getty@ttyUSB0.service

I tried initially with minicom and a USB-serial adaptor on the
laptop, with a null-modem cable, to get a console login.

Once this worked I brought home from storage an old Wyse 185 serial
terminal to use in the shack as a login terminal.

And it works!

Orange-phospher, 9600 baud, glowing CRT.... like the good olde
days.

A picture of it [0]

=== Linux laptop window manager ===

After my FreeBSD laptop died I got a Linux Devuan laptop up and
running. 

What window manager to use?

I've been using DMW for a few years, but of course there's always
the temptation to try other window managers. So I had another look
at "sxwm" which I've used before. I cloned the latest repo. and
built a new copy. It works nicely, especially along with Polybar.

But after a few days I decide to revert to DWM, with DMWBLOCKS. I
couldn't see any great benefit in using SXWM over DWM, and there
were a few irritations with SXWM - some clients (eg feh,
lxterminal) don't work in SXWM - just give a transparent, empty
window showing the underlying root window. 

So it's back to DWM and my carefully added patches.



===== Other things =====

I was given a book recommendation by Matto, via email - Piranesi by
Susanna Clarke. I got a copy from the local library yesterday and
am just a few dozen pages in. I'll get to it over the weekend.

Autumn is here in Shetland now, after a disappointing summer. We
had no sign of the prolongued heatwave "enjoyed/suffered" by the
rest of the UK. We had quite a few nice days, but never in a
sequence of more than one or two days in a row. Now it's Autumn and
I feel happier.

Summer is often disappointing. Autumn is always Autumn. It always
does what it's supposed to.... nights get longer, temperatures
drop, winds increase. Winter draws nearer. This is my favourite
part of the year. You know where you are with Autumn and Winter.
They don't promise what they can't deliver.


[0]: gopher://g4slv.cloud/I/media/image_files/IMG_20260912_222543.jpg