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my ports \distfiles directory had grown to over 30Gb in the 4 years since I last did a complete clean fresh build and as its something of a test rig for trying stuff out, it had grown rather large.
by running the following commands I regained c22Gb of disc space, ready for which ever pet project I choose to tinker with next.
sudo portmaster --check-depends
sudo portmaster --check-port-dbdir
sudo portmaster -s
sudo portmaster -y --clean-distfiles
One of the most useful features I use the Freebsd box for is to cache a copy of my MS OneDrive that is only periodically synced, so that is MS has a problem I have a full offline copy or if I manage delete a file from the cloud that I really didn’t want to do and hopefully I still have a copy in the unsynced cache.
All was fine until the OneDrive port for FreeBSD insisted on reinstalling the long deprecated Python27 libraries. No matter how much cleaning and checking dependencies prevented Python27 being rebuilt from ports each time.
I managed to spend some time today looking at each of the OneDrive dependencies and found that LLVM70 and LLVM10 are both listed. Oddly LLVM10 supersedes LLVM70 and calls in the more modern Python37. So by building LLVM10 first so the dependency is met, when I rebuild OneDrive I no longer get the obsolete version installed.
The Metaport of LLVM is not clear which version is built, I already have LLVM90 installed but does not seem to satisfy the OneDrive dependencies. Not sure if this is OneDrive maintenance issue, or a LLVM issue. but thankfully now resolved and the box can get back to doing what it should. –
Update – LLVM was not the issue, but LDC which calls in LLVM. When the next port update to OneDrive came out, LDC rebuilt LLVM70. So now looking at LDC as the culprit.
The OneDrive CLI client is not unique to BSD and the default GitHub page for Linux version can be found here.
Alexa and her sister Echo have developed an annoying habit at the moment of grouping all the objects in a room and turning then all on or off, even when just want to command one object.
“Alexa, turn on the lounge light” now turns of the Xbox, the lounge lamp and the lounge TV, Trying to turn on the “night lights” she informs me that the garden lights do not support that function and which lights do I mean.
I have gone back thru Kasa and Tapo settings, renamed a few devices and even swapped their rooms but group mode seems to be all Alexa can handle at the mo. I assume this an Amazon issue, but continue to look for a resolution.
Been rather busy with work, and when I am done, not wanted to sit in front of a different laptop and while away even more hours. Therefore updates to the site and various tech around the house has been rather slow.
I guess biggest success was retrieving the old Atari 800XL from the loft with the 1050 5.25″ Floppy Drive and seeing the thing boot up 1st time in over 10 years. Almost 25 year old tech… Been meaning to dig out the old games and play, but both joysticks seem worse for wear and not survived the many years of inaction.
might not be full lockdown, but the vaccines are here so time to rebuild both the virtual and IRL world.. Updated FreeBSD to 12.2 which had probably been one of the simplest OS updates. I usually get caught out with merging the updated config files but guess the second point update to 12.x probably was not a major change to get wrong. Also made easier by stripping off MATE and most of the desktop apps that I occassionally dabbled with as its back to running as as Headless Server with all access over SSH or Web Interface.
Have been working on other projects so not much time to update the server or other things lately. But have been looking at Fing as another option for network security.
Was lucky enough to order and take delivery of the new Apple Watch 6 on launch day, but joy slightly tempered by ongoing issues to transfer my 4G data plan from the old Series 3 to the new device.
Various calls to EE, my network provider so far have been unable to resolve, despite various resetting of the watch and phone settings to get it working.
Only really a pain when out running, as I don’t take my phone so missed SMS and other alerts. Apparentlty a known issue, but not helping me much….
Sorting out the house over the summer I came across an old AppleTV Gen 2 box. Its long since gave up getting updates and logging into the damn things proved a trial as its too old to recognize 2FA logins.
Some googling threw up the fact you can still do this, but have to append the generate 2FA code to your password in the password field.
This unlocked my iCloud so I could bring up my Camera Roll and finally accessed all the photos I have taken over the years from my phone. Too many don’t make it into proper albums or printed, but watching them back brings back happy memories of holidays and days out.
A bonus byproduct of this trial of viewing old photos, which I had hooked into the AV AMP under the telly, was the music quality that was being pumped out alongside the pictures. Being a Gen2 AppleTv, though the pictures although good did not match the audio quality, being a max of 720 lines.. not even full HD.
A quick trawl of Amazon turned up the AppleTV 4K 64Gb model on a next day delivery with payments spread over 5 months.. Not quite an impulse purchase, but now I have access to all of the Apple content and HQ music and easy access to all the family photos for not much more that a good quality digital photo frames of not so long ago.
the TvOS has come along way since the original device, so will probably penlty of playing with the new apps and settings to get things just right.
PHPipam is an IP Address Management utility written in PHP. Slightly overkill for managing a home network with just one subnet and just a possible 255 different IP addresses for me to manage, but hey, its free and we use it at work so being able to hack about with it in the safety of my own home is quite nice.
However, FreeBSD is not first choice for PHPipam average users so the default locations for Ping and FPing are not where a standard Linux install would expect to find them. For FreeBSD you have to log into your PHPipam landing page and head to the Administration section and amend the path for :
/bin/ping to /sbin/ping note the extra s
and
/bin/fping to /usr/local/sbin/fping
and then network discovery scans should work for you
Finding I had a couple of spare Gen 1 Echo devices (the nice solid ones with the rotary volume dial atop) I thought I would try and pair for proper Stereo effects in the Kitchen. Sadly there are distinct pairing combinations you can use. and two Gen 1 Echos don’t cut the mustard. I wasn’t too worried as the reason for the spares is that I have slowly been upgrading Echo’s so they all support the HD quality stream so suspect I will be buying some more!
This chart from Amazon details what you can actually pair together.
| Echo Device | Pairable Devices |
|---|---|
| Echo (1st Generation) | Echo Sub |
| Echo (2nd Generation) | Echo (2nd Generation)Echo Sub |
| Echo (3rd Generation) | Echo (3rd Generation)Echo Plus (2nd Generation)Echo Sub |
| Echo Dot (3rd Generation) | Echo Dot (3rd Generation)Echo Dot with clockEcho Sub |
| Echo Dot with clock | Echo Dot with ClockEcho Dot (3rd Generation)Echo Sub |
| Echo Plus (1st Generation) | Echo Plus (1st Generation)Echo Sub |
| Echo Plus (2nd Generation) | Echo Plus (2nd Generation)Echo (3rd Generation)Echo Sub |
| Echo Show (1st Generation) | Echo Sub |
| Echo Show (2nd Generation) | Echo Sub |
| Echo Show 5 | Echo Show 5Echo Sub |
| Echo Show 8 | Echo Sub |
| Echo Studio | Echo StudioEcho Sub |