YetI

As already stated in a previous post, there are a couple of reasons why you may want to compress the data you receive from the Internet. The main reason is the cost associated with mobile data transfers.

Unfortunately, the previous post only dealt with HTTP, whereas more and more web sites force HTTPS on us, starting with Google. This post exposes another solution, that is suitable for both protocols.

For a whole week (from the 2^nd to the 8^th of December), when visiting my web site, you got this message instead:

Due to a disk failure, the yeti.selfip.net domain is currently running on a back-up server, and some features are not fully functional.

I will try to restore this site to its normal state as soon as possible. Please excuse the delay.

Here are some explanations.

Cet article est aussi disponible en français.

I had much difficulty changing the default file manager for the “Quick browser” and the “Shortcuts” applets from Cairo-dock. The Internet was no help for once, but find and grep were ;)

So, to change the file-manager, you have to edit the ~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list file, locate the line starting with “x-scheme-handler/file=” (although it cannot be bad to also change the line starting with “inode/directory=”), and change the application to the one you want.

Most available applications can be found in /usr/share/applications under most Linux distributions. If the application you want does not have its own desktop file, you can create one in ~/.local/share/applications/, or simply use the exo system from the XFCE project : choose you favourite application with the exo-preferred-applications command, then choose “exo-file-manager.desktop” in the fore-mentioned file.

I found the solution here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1241596#p1241596.

So I appended “dhcp=dhcpcd” to /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf, the full content of which is now:

[main]
plugins=keyfile
dhcp=dhcpcd

As far as I understand, different command-line interpreters (the Linux console, the bash shell, busybox…) translate these keys (Insert, Delete, Home, End) to key-codes in different ways, and then the underlying programs (aterm, urxvt…) interpret these key-codes with some variations. All of this makes for a rather fragile process. If the terminfo database is up-to-date on your system, this shouldn’t be an issue. However, TinyCore Linux doesn’t seem to even have a terminfo database.

That is why “bash”, or rather the “readline” library that “bash” is using, fails to correctly handle the said keys. But “readline” can be taught.

I intend to transfer family films from VHS to DVD, and VHS tapes that I bought, too. I previously recorded a big video file from the VHS. For a more general view of the process, instead of a family film, I will consider a bought VHS, with a legal warning, an advertisement, and so on. My task now is to split the big video file into parts that will become introductions, menus, and chapters.

I want to use the French time zone on any computer I log onto using TinyCore Linux. Of course, this is not set up by default. The information is sparse and sometimes contradicting on this topic, but I seem to have achieved a working configuration. Here it is.

TinyCore Linux is an awesome tiny Linux distribution. Better yet, TinyCore is made to be built on, and that’s just what I decided to do, build on it in order to match my exact needs:

• I want to be able to install TinyCore Linux on an NTFS partition, and all NTFS partition should open with NTFS-3G by default.
• I want a more modular startup, with a list of packages to load for firmware, another list for filesystems support, yet another for desktop applications, and so on.

This blog post is part of a small series, with the aim of configuring a bootable USB flash drive for portable use on any PC. The main target is a full portable Linux OS, but I will also address the Windows OS, for those times when you have no choice ;-)

This third part is about the portable Linux operating system.