Technical Journal

This journal documents some of the technical problems I've faced in implementing Linux and BSD systems over the years. The older material is taken from notes, supplemented by my imperfect memory in some cases.

You can search for specific terms in the journal.

2025

04 Apr

Modifying emacs awk-mode

24 Feb

Migrating from mbox to Maildir

13 Feb

Installing Debian on a PC-Engines APU1D4

12 Feb

Virtual Domains with Exim3/Dovecot (again)

07 Feb

Virtual Domains with Exim4

05 Feb

Symbolic Addressing with Exim4

01 Feb

Using Plusnet email server as a smarthost (reprise)

2024

20 Sep

Setting up a Wireguard VPN

14 Jun

MIDI keyboard on Debian 12

30 May

Installing AsciiDoctor on FreeBSD

10 May

Migrating DocBook to AsciiDoc

22 Feb

Running FreeBSD as a VM guest on Debian 12, using qemu

11 Jan

Using Plusnet email server as a smarthost

2023

27 Jun

Outlook 2016 fails to connect to gmail

03 Jun

CVS to git migration

03 Jun

Installing Debian 11 on a Protectli VP2410 (Part 2)

31 May

Installing Debian 11 on a Protectli VP2410 (Part 1)

18 Mar

Sendmail - prevent authentication on port 25

05 Feb

Thinkpad X1C - laggy touchpad after display lock screen

2022

04 Sep

Replacing grub by systemd-boot on Arch Linux (efi boot)

03 May

OpenBSD as backup hydrus server

06 Apr

Upgrading FreeBSD via freebsd-update

21 Mar

pCloud playlists

2021

05 Nov

Moving from MBR to GPT and UEFI

03 Oct

Raspberry PI upgrade to Debian 11 (bullseye)

21 Aug

Upgrading to Debian 11 (bullseye)

17 May

Installing Arch Linux on a Macbook Pro (mid-2009)

08 May

UnEXCELlent jumplists on Windows 10

02 Apr

Samba share visibility in Windows 10

10 Feb

FreeBSD source repository moves to Git

2020

21 Nov

Mail failure due to Cloudflare DNS

18 Nov

Experiences with the WPF TreeView control

02 Jul

ar deterministic mode breaks make

17 Jun

Raspberry Pi sound

15 Jun

Rebuilding mirrored disks on FreeBSD

13 Jun

Migrating from XHTML to HTML5

25 Apr

Hyper-V internal network switch

21 Feb

Groove music player - playlist limits

15 Feb

Debian on a Macbook Pro

13 Feb

A bigger drive for Windows 10

2019

30 Sep

Revised handling of CSV files from financial institutions

07 Sep

Upgrade to Windows 10 1903

16 Jun

OpenBSD 6.5 and https

16 Jun

Migrating to Python 3

2018

17 Aug

Amber BIOS Upgrade

21 May

Amber CPU Upgrade

30 Mar

mg bug under WSL?

24 Mar

Windows Subsystem for Linux

02 Mar

OSX, emacs and python mode

2017

13 Sep

Writing emacs commands

11 Jul

Upgrading to Debian Stretch

2016

20 Dec

Handling CSV files from financial institutions

20 Dec

Upgrading opal (APU1D4) to Freebsd 11.0

15 Oct

A Resurrection in VMWare

01 May

Upgrading to Windows 10, version 1511

30 Apr

Building a wireless hub

2015

21 Nov

Re-organising amber

01 Nov

Upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 10

15 Sep

Crimson Refresh

30 Aug

Xfce4 multiple monitors (again)

25 Aug

OpenBSD support for Netgear WNA1000Mv2 USB wireless adapter

08 Aug

Setting up httpd on OpenBSD 5.7

04 Aug

Installing OpenBSD 5.7 on a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop

26 Jul

Installing OpenBSD 5.7 on a Toshiba Satellite 4060XCDT laptop

19 Jul

Macbook Pro - Upgrading disk and memory

18 Jul

Working through a Microsoft Proxy Server (reprise)

26 May

Upgrading Debian wheezy to jessie

23 Mar

GRML on a Dell Latitude E6500

22 Mar

How I broke the BBC

2014

30 Nov

X startup errors after "pkg upgrade" in FreeBSD

30 Jul

Debian Wheezy - UTC or LOCAL hardware clock?

22 Jun

ADSL Router Monitoring

03 May

FreeBSD Build Process

03 May

Moving to Sky Broadband

11 Jan

FreeBSD 10 ispell port

10 Jan

Off-site backups using tarsnap

2013

31 Dec

Clojure development - migrate to cider on Debian

30 Dec

Clojure development - migrate to cider on Mac OS X

30 Dec

Building emacs on Mac OS X Mavericks

28 Dec

OS X Mavericks is driving me mad

27 Dec

Building ispell on OSX Mavericks

27 Dec

rpi-update ate my SD card

19 Dec

Extending disk space on LVM

11 Oct

Migrating to FreeBSD 10

24 Apr

Installing Debian Wheezy (Testing)

01 Apr

Adding an SSD

2012

18 Dec

OpenSMTPD and OpenBSD 5.2

07 Sep

Upgrading to FreeBSD 9.1

30 Aug

SOAP Client in Clojure

19 Aug

Setting up a Wireless Repeater

19 Jun

psgml-mode and emacs 24

18 Jun

Migrating from Thunderbird to Outlook email

25 Mar

Emacs startup delay on Windows 7

10 Mar

Migrating to a mirror raid on Debian

20 Feb

Upgrading to OpenBSD-current

19 Feb

Funny foreign characters

2011

22 Dec

Migrating Clojure to 1.3

03 Dec

Associating files with Emacs on Windows 7

03 Dec

Deleting locked folders in Windows 7

27 Nov

Sendmail on OpenBSD

25 Nov

Installing and setting up OpenBSD

24 Nov

Deleting attachments in Thunderbird

02 Apr

Dual monitors under Debian

14 Feb

Upgrading to Debian squeeze

2010

19 Dec

Samba printing problems after upgrade

16 Jun

Crimson Motherboard Death

09 May

Getting Wake On Lan (WOL) working

11 Apr

Dealing with Unicode in filenames

04 Feb

FreeBSD partition resizing required

02 Jan

New Year, New Hard Drives

2009

28 Dec

My First Little Macbook

29 Oct

Another PC Fatality

10 Jun

Too many sound cards

02 May

Crimson is dead; long live Crimson

29 Mar

Booting linux in single-user mode

01 Mar

The hydrus standard Debian install

28 Feb

Upgrading to FreeBSD 7.1

27 Feb

Upgrading to Debian Lenny

2008

26 Oct

Inaccessible Windows Workgroup

13 Aug

Windows IDE controller drops into PIO mode

02 May

Netgear MA401 Wireless Drivers on Debian

27 Apr

Creating FreeBSD packages from ports

16 Apr

Secure SMTP and POP access on FreeBSD

20 Mar

Using iptables on Debian Linux

14 Mar

Installing FreeBSD 7.0 on a Lenovo Thinkpad Z61p

02 Mar

Sendmail configuration to support rDNS change

09 Feb

Building a Shoutcast Server

29 Jan

Upgrading packages for FreeBSD 6.3

2007

20 Nov

Installing Debian Etch on a Thinkpad Z61p

09 Nov

Symbolic links on Windows

04 Nov

Building man pages with Docbook

13 Oct

Hi-jack! Take this domain name to Spain

04 Jun

Working through a Microsoft Proxy Server

26 May

Virtual Terminal problem with XOrg 7.2 on FreeBSD

19 May

NFS from an unreliable server

29 Apr

Upgrading Debian sarge to etch

27 Apr

Weird Scenes inside the Local Area Network

26 Feb

Gray Listing with Sendmail

15 Feb

SMTP client authentication for Sendmail

08 Feb

Building FreeBSD for multiple machines

2006

29 Oct

Crimson's Near Death Experience

17 Aug

Xorg nv driver problems after etch upgrade

22 Jul

FreeBSD iwi support in 6-STABLE

23 Jun

Automatic Removal of Attachments in Outlook Folders

14 Jun

Tracking spam

10 Apr

Installing FreeBSD on a Toshiba Portege P3500

02 Apr

Dual booting, dynamic DNS and DHCP

02 Apr

Dual booting and Daylight Saving Time (reprise)

17 Mar

Installing Rails on Solaris 9

14 Mar

Configuring DNS and a DHCP server

04 Mar

CVS and a bad memory

26 Feb

Debian apt-get - no public key?

23 Feb

X problems across OpenSSH

02 Jan

Upgrading FreeBSD 5.4 to 6.0

2005

30 Dec

Google - Where did my pages go?

28 Oct

Yet another FreeBSD 4.x to 5.x upgrade

02 Oct

Improved Web Publishing

22 Sep

Website Validation

22 Sep

Docbook and XHTML

09 Aug

Upgrading Debian Stable to Sarge

18 Jun

SSH and DNS

07 Jun

Sound problems with Windows 2000

12 Mar

Modifying the FreeBSD base system sendmail

10 Mar

Upgrading to FreeBSD 5.3

19 Jan

Deleting spam from a POP3 server

01 Jan

Ugly fonts in X

01 Jan

Netgear FA331 on Debian Linux

2004

31 Oct

Portupgrade for binary upgrades on FreeBSD

10 Oct

UNIX printing to a CUPS server

17 Jul

Dual booting and Daylight Saving Time

17 Jul

Thumbnail production with the Gimp

15 Jun

Web Publishing using make

07 Jun

J2SE on Debian

03 Jun

Docbook Stylesheets

12 Apr

Re-configuring Sendmail

10 Apr

Duplicate FreeBSD Server

02 Apr

Configuring Exim

02 Apr

Server Backup and Disaster Recovery

15 Mar

Validating XHTML

24 Jan

Mozilla and TrueType fonts on FreeBSD

06 Jan

Moving from Redhat 7.3 to Debian

2003

07 Dec

Upgrading Debian from stable to testing

27 Nov

Another Debian Install

08 Nov

Installing Debian

24 Oct

Handling Spam

08 Oct

Rotating Apache Log Files

28 Sep

DHCP and a wireless card (reprise)

28 Sep

Upgrading FreeBSD via cvsup

21 Sep

Keeping FreeBSD ports updated

21 Sep

Disk Error Diagnosis

03 Sep

Swapping hard drive boot disks between machines

14 May

Java on FreeBSD

01 May

FreeBSD on a Thinkpad

14 Apr

SSH and X forwarding on FreeBSD

13 Apr

XML for documentation

09 Apr

DHCP and a wireless PCMCIA card

03 Apr

Adding a CD recorder to Linux

27 Mar

Sendmail Saga [V] Loose Ends

27 Mar

Sendmail Saga [IV] DHCP and resolv.conf

27 Mar

Sendmail Saga [III] Meddling

27 Mar

Sendmail Saga [II] Sendmail Configuration

27 Mar

Sendmail Saga [I] Building the Server

27 Mar

The Sendmail Saga [Intro]

2002

01 Dec

X Mouse Acceleration settings

21 Oct

Installing Grub

15 Oct

FreeBSD - Post Installation Tweaks

14 Oct

Installing FreeBSD on a Laptop

21 Sep

Installing FreeBSD

22 Jun

Linux printing to Windows printer

31 Mar

Going broadband

2001

31 Jul

First Linux defect encountered

10 May

Upgrading to Redhat 7.1

1999

05 Sep

Fun with X

04 Sep

Enlarging the disk space

21 Aug

Going LAN

14 Aug

Initial Linux install

12 Aug

Linux test platform