Tag: gpg

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Maintenance: Pacman and Power Supply

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I am working on my Upstairs Workstaion. Let’s get started!

Twin Issues Both Alike in Annoyance

Over Black Friday this last November, I picked up a time travel sandbox game called No Time where our main character takes his totally-not-a-DeLorian with a totally-not-a-flux-capacitor on a journey through the history of Pine Island. My Upstairs Workstation struggled to keep up with rendering time portals when I drive [or fly] fast enough, but I made it through the main story [to date] without issue. Fun game, I can recommend it.

While hunting down a few more Steam achievements –however– I started getting sudden power cutoffs followed by the motherboard booting to an warning after a few seconds. It explained how an anti-surge mechanism tripped from a potentially faulty Power Supply Unit (PSU). I dusted it, and the problem went away for a couple weeks, but now it’s back.

While I have at least a couple projects I’ve actively worked on this week, it’s always bad news and top priority when the package manager breaks. I ignored the first issues over Mickey’s Public Domain Day release celebration post, but the second would otherwise get priority 1.

Pacman PGP Key Lockout

I want to install a power diagnostic tool for the PSU, but can’t with Pacman crippled. It took a couple sessions on different days, but I circled back around to a near-perfect description of my problem (but with a different list of keys), which you can read about on the EndeavourOS community forum. Link in Works Cited section [1]. I suspected at first that the keys expired over New Year’s – including one important to re-installing the keyring system, but I’m not curious or annoyed enough yet to find out for sure.

The solution that worked for me was found in a linked FAQ on another thread on the same forum: basically move Pacman’s keys to a backup in root’s home directory and follow a few steps for repopulating them.

Motherboard Crash

Having repaired Pacman, I installed Powertop, but couldn’t figure it out on my own. When I looked it up, I just got more confused. One source even recommended using some other laptop battery utility instead.

My suspect PSU is 650 Watts. Derpy has a PSU rated at 1,000 Watts, so an initial plan was to move that one over, but I also have a 500 Watt PSU that shipped with my sister’s computer, but wasn’t good enough for her system. The big power draws are CPU and GPU. My father and I looked up the ones I’m using, and they totaled in the 300 Watt range, so we installed my sister’s old supply.

A power supply transplant is the single most invasive procedure without needing to change thermal paste. Given the motherboard geometry with the heat sync towering over the CPU, the CPU power connector is tightly wedged into the corner of the case. I used a pair of needle nose pliers to extract it. Installing the new CPU power cord was even more of a hassle. The power cord barely reached as it was and the replacement PSU is a fraction of an inch shorter. Consequently, it took a shortcut across the top of the RAM on its way to the case’s cable management area.

While the PSU was out though, we took the opportunity to re-attach a plastic foot. Originally, it snapped into place, but we installed a screw/washer/nut to match another foot which had similarly undergone repair. At some point, I’d like to get a PSU tester to see what exactly it’s doing that trips my motherboard’s protection.

The new PSU solved the problem. Otherwise, I suspected we’d be looking at a dying graphics card or the possibility of the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) giving an unstable voltage. Worst of all would have been the motherboard frying. All that was left was to refresh some encryption keys from Caddy, as I got that working again, but I still don’t have it fully figured out.

Takeaway

I’m thankful I had that spare part around. Otherwise, I’d be down a machine. In any case, I’ve already got a my month lined up. Hopefully we don’t get any more priority 1 side projects until those are cleared out.

Final Question

What side topics could you get excited about this year?

I look forward to discussing them in the comments below or on my Socials!

Work Cited

[1] points, et. al, “Cannot update due to key errors,” endeavouros.com, Feb. 14, 2023. [Online]. Available:https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/cannot-update-due-to-key-errors/37286 [Accessed Jan. 8, 2024].

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GPG is Still Beyond Me

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shdadow_8472, with a side project. Let’s get started!

While downloading a new-to-me distro this week, I again was wall-of-text’ed to a halt by GPG. GNU Privacy Gurad is a technology no new and serious Linux enthusiast user can go six months without slamming into. The specifics of how it works are in about every tutorial that shows you the basics – which invariably never includes an instruction set I can understand regarding file verification, and I make it a point to attempt concepts I find difficult, but important whenever they come up.

I’m still not yet successful, but here is what I’ve learned: web of trust. I trust Dan. Dan trusts Stella. Stella trusts George. I don’t know George, but he has a file I want to ensure is authentic after downloading. Through the chain of trust I’ve established, I can trust George’s cryptographic signature based of his private key, and the file I’ve downloaded from him when I use George’s matching public key to verify it.

My understanding of GPG this week has gone from “clear as swamp water” to “clear as stained glass.”

Final Question

On a previous GPG attempt, I learned about centralized key servers, but I’m still clueless about their practical use. How in the world does one enter one of these “webs of trust?”

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I Installed Android (Again, Pi 400)

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!

Free, but not Free

Mobile computers are decades to years behind desktops, and usable free (as in freedom) and open source experiences lag behind accordingly. Android may be branded as open source, but Google did not build their Play Store into the platform’s primary draw by allowing a “free” experience. OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) making Android devices must play by the search giant’s rules or be prepared to start from scratch.

That iron grip on Android –tight as it may be– still affords room for hobbyist level projects. LineageOS will get compatible devices booted to Android without the need to compile AOSP (Android Open Source Project) yourself. Another project, the difficult-to-search-for /e/, takes the concept farther by removing many of the lingering hooks back to Google infrastructure and making an attempt at a cohesive end-user experience.

Raspberry Pi 400 (Tablet Edition)

A while back, I installed an unofficial build of LineageOS on my Raspberry Pi 400 as a precursor to installing a custom AOSP ROM on a phone. This first attempt was accidentally AndroidTV edition, leading to confusion and sadness. I re-installed it for last week’s blog, but even seeing it ask more phone/tablet-type questions than before didn’t feel like enough to base even a short blog on.

I hesitated when sideloading the F-Droid appstore last week. I couldn’t find their GPG keys to verify the download against, but I learned something in the process. Additional research this week still hasn’t yielded their keys, but I’ve learned that it might involve adding a key repository – sort of like how I couldn’t just start downloading images when I installed Podman on my laptop. However, I want to end up with /e/ instead, so I don’t feel the need to be as careful learning how to add a trusted key repository. Instead, I’ll just keep it offline.

About the only large challenge I solved was getting F-Droid’s install file onto LineageOS. Normally, I would just mount it and drop a file where it needs to go. That wasn’t an option here because I didn’t know where it belonged and the directories above it had locked down permissions. The simplest solution was to just move it over with a USB drive. It installed cleanly from there, and I ran out of time from working on long-term projects and shorter projects bloating beyond this week’s scope.

Takeaway

If you ever hit a road block learning to a safety measure, listen to it. Take reasonable alternate actions to remain safe and try to learn a bit about how to pass it correctly each time.

Final Question

What subjects have you had to conquer a chip at a time?

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Happy 4th of July, 2022!

Happy Birthday, America from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and my side project for this week would have involved installing F-Droid, but it hit a last minute dead end.

I stubborned gpg long enough to [re]learn how to verify the F-Droid .apk download. In short: private key, download, and (optionally) detached signature. While searching for F-Droid’s public key, I found multiple places talking about their public key expiring some time during or before 2019. I expect my larger writeup will instead involve a section where I weigh different alternative app stores against each other.

Between last week’s marathon project and starting this month’s larger project, I’m a bit burned out. Praise God for affording us a measure of freedom here on Earth in the form of America – and that only a wavering flicker of the freedom in the world to come He’s planning for us.

Happy 4th of July and God Bless!

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