Mastodawn

#TechiePost
A huge shoutout to https://codeberg.org/MorsMortium/GTK-NoCSD for de-uglyfying the dreadful gtk4 programs I use, especially the python ones, like gajim.
I'd used gtk3-nocsd for years, but gtk4 does what it does, so finding this was a real relief. All applications now look the way I want them, rather than being beaten with someone else's ugly stick

GTK-NoCSD

An LD_PRELOAD library to disable CSD in GTK3/4, LibHandy, and LibAdwaita apps.

Codeberg.org

Stevan Mar 16

#TechiePost
New blog post - Nextcloud, the Talk High Performance Backend and Lighttpd
https://blog.vasten.co.uk/index.php?post/2026/03/16/Nextcloud%2C-the-Talk-High-Performance-Backend-and-Lighttpd

Nextcloud, the Talk High Performance Backend and Lighttpd - The Quibble Locker

Finally getting the reverse proxy settings right I have a fondness for the lighttpd web server. It is, as its name implies, light, and, in general, even a duffer like me can follow

Stevan Mar 12

#TechiePost
That's the second VPS updated to Debian trixie, the second such dist-upgrade on one of them. I'm not sure many other distros would give quite the confidence that such remote upgrades provide.

Stevan Mar 11

#TechiePost Question re podman:
Am I missing something obvious? I want to run a podman run command as a named user. How does one specify that named user in the run command. I see loads of subuids and who knows what else, but little to say exactly what it is.
The container runs, but as user uid 1000 but I want it to run as someone else

Stevan Mar 2

#TechiePost
Whew! That's the first time I've wanted to use snapper rollback on my @opensuse Slowroll laptop, after having installed a desktop for testing, forgetting to note what it installed for later uninstallation. It worked very well indeed, and remarkably simply too.
Now I'm off to make new mistakes.

Stevan Jan 25

#TechiePost
I've written a blog post about the Frankenbash script I've been talking about the last few days. It's about using the changes forced by Debian Trixie's dovecot version to alter our server-based anti-spam defences.
This provides a very light, quick anti-spam layer that accounts for each user's email niceties.
https://blog.vasten.co.uk/index.php?post/2026/01/25/Debian-Trixie-means-changes-to-email-configs%2C-so-let-s-embrace-the-change
I'm aware how useful I have found others' blog posts on this subject, so thought I should add to that for future searches, if that's not too puffed-up.

Debian Trixie means changes to email configs, so let's embrace the change - The Quibble Locker

We've used bogofilter as a final defence against spam since 2017, when the excellent dspam was shuttered. Reluctant to impose the load on the server that rspamd imposes, or the

Stevan Jan 11

#TechiePost
That's the main home server upgraded to Trixie. Spent yesterday setting up a DR environment in case it went pear-shaped, which is why it generally went smoothly.
The biggest issue was my monitoring service, monit. It now has a service file, rather than a sysv init. I configure it to generate email messages on errors. But when I started getting postfix/postdrop filesystem read-only errors, it took an age to find out that it wasn't postfix, but too severe restrictions...
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Stevan Dec 28

#TechiePost
Of course I thought 9.00pm last night was the right time to update the battery shed Pi to trixie. That was.....unwise. I also forgot that qterminal randomly crashes on my laptop, AND forgot to use screen.
Recovered from the remnants anyway, at which point I realised that minimalmodbus module I need for the power management system would need to be re-installed for python3.13. And I could not remember how to do that.
All working now anyway though with some changed characteristics
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