Some new DNS-related tools

I've recently written some DNS-related tools you might find useful.

Everything I know about the YK-1000H NTP Server

Back in October I bought a GPS-based YK-1000H NTP server from an international seller on eBay[1]. I finally got around to hooking it up. Since I can find effectively no documentation online, this blog post documents everything I've learned (which is not much). Networking The unit does …

Cloning Raspberry Pi SD cards

Occasionally I need to set up a new Raspberry Pi that's extremely similar to an existing Pi, typically for a monitoring application like collecting UPS statistics. The hard way to do this is to set up the new Pi from scratch and install and configure your application. The …

Faking the fan rotor lock signal in a Tripp Lite SU1000RTXLCD2U UPS

For Reasons[1], I needed[2] to connect my refrigerator to a double-conversion UPS so it receives good, clean power regardless of what’s coming from the wall outlet. In my case, this power could be from the local electric utility or from an onsite natural gas generator. I found …

Letter of Recommendation: Quality Binoculars

Over the past year I have tested a bunch of different binoculars; in this post I share recommendations for *good* binoculars at three different price points.

Freeing disk space on GitHub Actions runners

Recently the GitHub Actions-based build process for my driveway-monitor software started to fail due to lack of disk space on the GitHub Actions runner machine. This manifested through the clear-enough failure message, System.IO.IOException: No space left on device. This job is using the ubuntu-latest runner, which currently == ubuntu-22. …

Improved low-battery shutoff for my DIY Ego-powered 12V supply

I fixed an issue with the low-battery shutoff circuit in my DIY Ego 12v power supply by replacing discrete logic with latching logic in an Arduino.

Fixing Ego batteries in a low-voltage "defective" state

This is a bad idea, but it did seem to work.

Making a Docker container depend on a disk being properly mounted

Quick and easy way to a Docker container depend on an external disk being connected and mounted.

Moving fake-hwclock to a separate partition on a read-only Raspberry Pi

My guide to running a Raspberry Pi with a read-only root filesystem has one hacky caveat: it still allows fake-hwclock to write to the filesystem every hour. I don't love this solution, and this post presents a fix.

Raspberry Pi Use Cases

I consider Pis as the tool to use when a moderate amount of Linux compute power needs to be in a specific physical location and/or interface with specific hardware.

Letter of Recommendation: Where to start with Alastair Reynolds

A friend asked me for a recommendation on where to start with Alastair Reynolds' books. With the caveat that I haven't (yet!) read his Merlin or Poseidon's Children series, I have three suggestions. Pick the one that most resonates with you: Revelation Space series: classic …

Keeping a SMB share mounted on macOS (version 2)

A more robust version of my original persistent-SMB-mount maintenance script.

Monitoring for NAS data corruption on ext4 with cshatag

Two open-source programs, cshatag and runner, make it easy to monitor an ext4 filesystem for data corruption.

Photographing an unusual aurora in southeastern Michigan

Last weekend, a strong geomagnetic storm resulted in an aurora being somewhat visible where I live in southeastern Michigan. This is unusual! I didn't have that much time to prepare for it, but I wanted to share my photos (the Flickr album is embedded above) and note what …