Thanks to techinferno, there are people sharing the modded BIOS and the steps are listed in the following article:

https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/3546-lenovo-y410p-y510p-unlocked-bios-wlan-whitelist-mod-vbios-mod/

Note: In order to downgrade BIOS, people will need to turn on back flash feature in the BIOS setting (press F2 on boot)

Here is the zipped file if you need it.

LENOVO BIOS

I bought a wifi card that has BCM4352 chip on it, the chip is installed on a PCI slot (check via lspci). on Manjaro, you need to install network-broadcom-wl via mhwd:

sudo mhwd -i pci network-broadcom-wl

Now my wifi speed is upgraded from 20Mbps to 500Mbps. Very nice!

Here are the steps I tried with my setup, all commands are executed as root:

1 Install manjaro with proprietary driver (nvidia-drm), not nouveau open source driver.

2 Generate xorg.conf with nvidia-xconfig

3 Write the following content to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia-backlight.conf

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
EndSection

4 Add these kernel parameters to /etc/default/grub:

amdgpu.backlight=0 acpi_backlight=vendor

And run update-grub

5 Reboot into the newly configured kernel.

6 Test if we can adjust the backlight via setting system values:

echo "50" > /sys/class/backlight/nvidia_0/brightness

If it works, we are able to use acpi events to tune the brightness.

7 Enable and start the acpid service.

systemctl enable acpid

then start

systemctl start acpid

and then monitor its logs

journalctl -u acpid -f

8 Press Fn+F5 or Fn+F6 key to toggle brightness up/down, we should see the acpid complain about ACPI group/action undefined: video/brightnessup or brightnessdown. If we do not see this error, then the next thing won’t work.

9 Assuming we can see the undefined error, we can write some scripts to override the brightness value.

cd /etc/acpi
mkdir handlers

cd handlers

vim backlight and paste the following content to it

#!/bin/sh
bl_dev=/sys/class/backlight/nvidia_0
step=6

case $1 in
  -) echo $(($(< $bl_dev/brightness) - $step)) >$bl_dev/brightness;;
  +) echo $(($(< $bl_dev/brightness) + $step)) >$bl_dev/brightness;;
esac

Let’s continue.

chmod +x backlight

cd ../events

vim bl_d and copy the following script to it

 
event=video/brightnessdown
action=/etc/acpi/handlers/backlight -

vim bl_u and copy the following script to it

event=video/brightnessup
action=/etc/acpi/handlers/backlight +

10 Restart acpid service

systemctl restart acpid

11 Use your Fn+F5 or Fn+F6 to adjust brightness, note the value presented on your screen does not reflect the real brightness.

ACPI example usages and docs: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Acpid#Enabling_backlight_control

And I suddenly realized that I need to use a mini PC to replace my 5-year-old Lenovo Y50P laptop running as my side router. I have the following reasons to deprecate my laptop:

1. It was a gaming laptop (from 2015), so power consumption is not low.
2. It was a laptop after all, not suppose to run 24×7 like a router or server.
3. I may need to use the laptop, even boot into a Windows OS for some tasks/tests, then all devices connected to this side router will be disconnected from the Internet.
4. I setup LUKS encrypted disk earlier, every time I need to type password when boot / reboot.
5. Fedora 31 is installed, now deprecated.

Mini PCs are perfect for this task. I know using a Mini PC as a side router is a little overkill, with the new server I am able to run more stuff in our little machine.

The X35G has a 10th generation Intel CPU i3-1005G1.

Let’s take a look at the little thing.

The front and side:

The back:

This little machine is about the size of Mac Mini, the entire chassis is made of aluminium, the hand feel is great!

I am not going to go through the specs, you can find it out on its official website.

The version I got is the cheapest one from Indiegogo, which does not come with a M.2 NVMe disk because I have a left-over NVMe disk from my junk desktop PC. The disassembly process is a little tricky, the NVMe slot is at the back of the motherboard which you need to unscrew all screws to see, but still, it is a good practise for enthusiasts like me.

At work, I have been using CentOS, Amazon Linux, RHEL and Ubuntu the most of the time, I do want to get a taste in ArchLinux. The OS I installed is Manjaro Architect 20.0.3. The boot time is about 10s.

UnixBench mark: 3467.8. I can barely hear the fan on full load. My furnace is even louder than that.

Dhrystone 2 using register variables      133599372.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                    26195.5 MWIPS (9.9 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                              15115.9 lps   (29.8 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks       1207122.0 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks          337511.7 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks       3982041.8 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                             4874841.9 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                 752660.2 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              31625.7 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                  10665.2 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   1553.2 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                        4602072.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0  133599372.3  11448.1
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0      26195.5   4762.8
Execl Throughput                                 43.0      15115.9   3515.3
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0    1207122.0   3048.3
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0     337511.7   2039.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0    3982041.8   6865.6
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0    4874841.9   3918.7
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0     752660.2   1881.7
Process Creation                                126.0      31625.7   2510.0
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4      10665.2   2515.4
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       1553.2   2588.7
System Call Overhead                          15000.0    4602072.3   3068.0
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                        3467.8

The memory used with all the existing customized service is: 269MB / 15.4GB. I have a lot to explore!

When I reboot into the new kernel and want to start one of my KVM boxes, this error appears:

Host CPU does not provide required features: spec-ctrl

After a bit of Googling, I understand this is related to kernel updates, the guest CPU model name of the VM’s XML setting does not match. The resolution is very quick also.

Find out what model your host machine is:

My model is IvyBridge

Edit the VM’s XML configuration

virsh edit --domain vm1

The model of the VM is IvyBridge-IBRS, so I deleted the -IBRS part.

Start VM

virsh start vm1

Done!

As I am using Linux, the command line clipboard program is xclip. For mac users you need to use pbcopy.

Add those lines to your ~/.tmux.conf

bind-key -Tcopy-mode-vi 'v' send -X begin-selection
bind-key -Tcopy-mode-vi 'y' send -X copy-pipe-and-cancel "xclip -i -sel c"

Now when you are on the select mode (prefix+[), hit v or space to start selecting. After, press y to yank lines to clipboard. You can paste it anywhere else.

I had an idea long ago to convert currency on bash.

So first you need a live currency conversion API in order to get a most up-to-date conversion rate data, preferably free. After searching through the internet, this one is a good API. I’ve been using it for some time and normally it is quite stable.

The only dependency you need to install is jq, please use your package manager to install.

Usage:

currency.sh   [quantity]

You currency code must meet ISO 4217 standard.

Script:

#!/bin/bash
jq 2> /dev/null
if [ "$?" != 2 ]; then
  echo "Please install jq"
  exit 1
fi

if [ -z "$1" -o -z "$2" ]; then
  echo "Please provide first and second currency."
  echo "e.g. $0 CAD USD [amount]"
  exit 1
fi

currency1=`echo -n $1 | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'`
currency2=`echo -n $2 | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'`

unit_price_f=$(curl -s "https://free.currencyconverterapi.com/api/v5/convert?q=${currency1}_${currency2}&compact=y" | jq ".${currency1}_${currency2}.val")

unit_price=$(printf "%.8f" $unit_price_f)

echo Unit price buy $1 from $2 is $unit_price.

if [ ! -z "$3" ]; then
  echo
  echo -n "$3 $1 is "
  echo "$3 * $unit_price" | bc -l | tr -d "\n"
  echo " $2"
fi

The error message says:

/opt/kingsoft/wps-office/office6/wpp: error while loading shared libraries: libbz2.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

libbz2 is a common library used by a lot of software, the one I installed on my machine is 1.0.6. If this library is not installed, please execute:

sudo dnf install bzip2-libs

By looking at /usr/lib64, we have libbz2.so.1.0.6. Since the one I installed is also on 1.0 branch, I though I would just do a soft link and try it out.

Execute the following command in /usr/lib64

ln -s libbz2.so.1.0.6 libbz2.so.1.0

Then WPP is then usable again!

The core is to not use pycrypto. The default fish.py script in weechat is limited by pycrypto’s limit of 56 bytes, where blowfish key standard is up to 72 bytes long.

https://github.com/bioboy/FiSH-weechat

The above repository modifies the built-in fish.py to use the original FISH blowfish cipher rather than pycrypto.

1. Clone the repository
2. Run make to build the binary
3. Run make install to install it to your home .weechat/python directory.
4. If you want to autoload it, move the fish.py and blowfish.so files to ~/.weechat/python/autoload directory.

Now you’ll be able to use 72 bytes key size to decrypt blowfish messages!

I want to write a script that can take arguments to add user to my Django app. This problem was encountered:

django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Requested setting DEFAULT_INDEX_TABLESPACE, but settings are not configured.

When I added

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'mysite.settings'

to the file, this error happend:

django.core.exceptions.AppRegistryNotReady: Apps aren't loaded yet.

So in the end, I used this:

import sys, os
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'mysite.settings'
import django
django.setup()

sys is needed for my snippet. You may remove it if you want.

The solution is simple. According to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vinux-support/qfaog4LF_PM we only need to unset 2 binds in muttrc.

Code below:

#bind editor  complete-query
#bind editor ^T complete

Then you’ll be able to use tab key again.