Dirk-Jan's log

Two in one

I tried to send a mail today, but failed. Evolution was complaining about a certificate issue. It appeared my personal certificate was expired. Then I suddenly realized I had a new Yubikey laying around. Why not put the new certificate on the new Yubikey, so I have my old key

Kobol

My First NAS

At the start of this year I began thinking about a dedicated storage solution for household use. Currently I use a multi purpose server running 24/7 for home storage, but since this one started to reach it's max capacity and read write disk performance is poor it was clear

Networking

Freedom Internet on Cisco modem

This morning I changed to another internet service provider (ISP) known as Freedom. When into tech news in the Netherlands you've must have heard about the XS4ALL story, if not head over to this page. The transition went not as smooth as I hoped for. It took me several hours

Dell

Dell XPS 13 still going strong

For some months now I use a Dell XPS 13 laptop as my daily driver and I am still quite happy with it. The main reason was roaming the office and the ability to use it to work from home when needed. Another nice thing was Dell OEM support on

Fairphone

Fairphone3 Liberation

In the beginning of November last year I received the successor of the Fairphone2, but as explained in the post I wrote, I was a little hesitate to start using it because there was no Google free operating system available at that time. But things have changed recently. My bet

Philips

Fixing LED lighting

Six years ago I had to purchase lighting for a new home. Apparently I chose lamps with integrated LEDs, not so smart, I know. A week ago both broke down at the same time. I examined the lamp and came to the conclusion it was an integrated LED bulb, which

firmware

Firmware overload

On the 9th of december I received a notificaton about new firmware for my laptop. As mentionted on my previous post I would take screenshot to show how it looks like. See the picture below. djvl@antares ~> sudo fwupdmgr get-updates XPS 13 7390 System Firmware has firmware updates: GUID:

firmware

Firmware happiness

I am quite used to install operating system updates on deb and rpm based Linux distros. This is usually a simple update && upgrade. But firmware updates on Linux is a pain in the ass, until now I discovered recently on my new laptop. Thanks to "Linux Vendor Firmware

Fairphone

Hier ben ik.

After some delay my new phone finally arrived today. Normally I'm little excited when a new toy enters the house, but yesterday I discovered there is no Google free version of Fairphone OS available yet. Operating systems (OS) for the Fairphone 3The Fairphone 3 ships with Fairphone OS, a Google

Dell

Linux pre-installed laptop

Yesterday I received my first laptop which had Ubuntu pre-installed. It is a Dell XPS 13 developer edition (7390). The idea is to replace the large workstation under the desk with this system to be more flexible at the workplace. It was a really nice first impression to see most

Containers

Containers everywhere

Today I'm one step closer to my goal to host all services in containers on my home system. I ditched non-containerized Wordpress in favour of Ghost and did so by going for the Ghost Docker image. It took some time to go through the process of exporting all Wordpress posts

Photography

My first super blood wolf moon

Today was the first time I have witnessed this natural phenomenon through the lens of my old and dusty Nikon DSLR camera. Because of the good forecast I decided to go out of bed early to give it a shot. I cannot remember me taking photos of the moon before,

Security

Certificate on Yubikey4

This instruction is primarily intended for my own documentation, but published here it can serve others as well. My personal (client) certificate was generated using the Mozilla Firefox browser. To move the certificate key combination to my Yubikey I had to make a backup of the certificate. In Mozilla you

forum

Forum Shutdown

Due to security concerns and declining usage I decided to shutdown the forum running on my home server. So if you were looking for it, don’t look any further 🙂 I would like to thank anyone who did contribute!

Networking

Baby jumbo frames on VDSL by XS4ALL

Last week I acquired a new modem because the old one supplied by the provider was acting strange and I wanted it. The new modem is a Cisco 887VA router equipped with a VDSL2/ADSL2+ interface so that it could replace the previous Fritz!box. A day after I had

Databases

ADRCI incompatible schema version

This issue arises when migrating from Oracle 12.1 to 12.2. I could not easily find the info how to fix this issue, so I’ll share it in case someone else stumbles upon it. adrci> show log DIA-48494: ADR home is not set, the corresponding operation cannot

Arduino

Securing MySensors network

Some months ago I decided it was time to secure my steadily growing MySensors network. As described on the MySensors website this can be implemented by using a software or hardware solution to sign messages. I chose the hardware solution using the ATSHA204A component. Because the more convenient break-out board

Home automation

MQTT and openHAB adventure

Some people asked me to share my MQTT setup in regard to openHAB and I agreed to do so. In this blog post I will explain and describe in more detail my current setup primarily on the heating subject. But first some background info. A long time ago I installed

Home automation

Fixing runaway setpoint value

It’s not really a fix. It’s better to speak of a workaround to correct the setpoint of the household thermostat which slowly shifts over time (see the graph above). I lack knowledge to fix the source, which is most probably the OTGW software. So I have created a

Security

Install SafeNet eToken PRO on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Since I run Ubuntu on my workstation at work I need a working eToken, so every time I upgrade (follow LTS releases) I have to make sure the eToken works. Because some have reported the installation steps I have described for 14.04 are not working for 16.04 I

Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro - dag zeven

Weer niet kunnen uitslapen. De laatste dag op de berg moest weer vroeg beginnen. Dit in verband met onze pickup om 09.00u beneden aan de gate. K3 kwam ons om 05.00u wakker maken voor het pakken en ontbijt, daarna gingen we direct weer aan de wandel met lampjes

Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro - dag zes

Na ons thee en digestive koekjes kon de ellende beginnen. 6 uur lang naar boven klimmen/ wandelen. We begonnen allemaal heel goed en sterk. Sev kreeg op een gegeven moment echt last van evenwichtsstoornis. Ze is een paar keer gaan wankelen en werd opgevangen door BJ die achter haar liep.

Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro - dag vijf

We zijn vandaag (zaterdag 16 Jan) van Karanga kamp naar Barafu kamp gelopen en zijn daarmee aangekomen op 4700m. Over deze klim hebben we twee uur gedaan. Het was een erg mooie route met bijzondere stenen, soort leisteen. Bram is vandaag in zijn t-shirt omhoog gelopen. Vanmorgen goed zicht gehad

Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro - dag vier

Dag vier van de trek. Vandaag zijn we na een korte loop weer droog aangekomen in het kamp genaamd Karanga. Net na aankomst begon het weer te regenen, dus de regen goden waren ons weer gunstig gestemd. Alhoewel er wel weer kanalen om de tent gegraven moesten worden om het

Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro - dag drie

We hebben goed uitzicht gehad op de top, hij lag er prachtig bij. De hoogte wordt nu pas echt goed voelbaar. We zijn vandaag aangekomen in Baranco camp op 4100m na een pittige 5 en een half uur lopen. De wandeling ging van het Shira camp 2 naar Lava tower