For a few months now my main system would momentarily freeze or stall (usually about 20-30 seconds) and then continue working. It was something that started after one system update and wasn’t fixed with any further updates. I opened a bug with Debian without much luck. The system would notify…
Ubuntu/Linux: systemd-resolved[2344]: Server returned error NXDOMAIN, mitigating potential DNS violation DVE-2018-0001, retrying transaction with reduced feature level UDP.
In one of my systems the system log was reporting every 2-3 minutes the following error message: This was caused by a mismatch between the systemd configuration and /etc/resolv.conf. /etc/resolv.conf should be a symbolic link pointing to the systemd DNS configuration in /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf You can check if this is in…
Ubuntu/GRUB: Error: invalid environment block
After a recent system update I got the following error message: Luckily the system would boot up but ignoring errors isn’t best practice. This error is caused by a faulty GRUB2 environment block. This is a file located in /boot/grub/grubenv. You can easily regenerate it with the following commands. It…
Ubuntu 20.04: Install Ubuntu with ZFS and encryption
Ubuntu 20.04 offers installing ZFS as the default filesystem. This has lots of advantages. My favourite is being able to revert the system and home partitions (simultaneously or individually) to a previous state through the boot menu. One major drawback for me is the lack of an option to encrypt…
Ubuntu/Debian: Not enough free space on disk ‘/boot’ when updating the OS
My /boot partition is only 512MB and I get this error message every now and then when updating: Not enough free space The upgrade needs a total of xx.x M free space on disk ‘/boot’. Please free at least an additional xx.x M of disk space on ‘/boot’. You can…
Linux: Configure locale and keyboard layout when remotely accessing from a Mac
At work I have to remote into several different Linux systems from a Mac and there is always the pain of having to handle different keyboard layouts if using Synergy or VMs. The conversion from a Mac keyboard layout doesn’t translate correctly when the Linux system has the keyboard configured…
Linux: Adding a GUI to headless/server installs
Server and minimal installs are normally headless and have no graphical interface. If needed you can add a GUI manually. The process is slightly different depending on the distro. RedHat / CentOS 7.x RedHat / CentOS 8.x Ubuntu 18.04.x LTS Debian 9.x Debian 10.x All the above distros use systemd…
Ubuntu: Change default language/dictionary in Firefox
If you install Firefox via repositories it might not install with your preferred language/settings. If your distro is in English it will default to American English as the main language and other English variations as additional spelling dictionaries. You can change this from the CLI. The below examples will leave…
Ubuntu: Installing/fixing TP-Link AC1200 (T4UH 1.0) drivers in Ubuntu
[Updated instructions for Ubuntu 20.04 here] I have had this USB wireless adapter working fine on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for a while. A system update stopped it from working. Re-installing the OS provided drivers (Software & Updates / Additional Drivers) made no difference. I tested the adapter in other operating…
Ubuntu: Fixing the “error: no video mode activated” message on boot
During boot of your system and just after the BIOS messages Ubuntu might display a black screen with an error: no video mode activated message. The system boots normally but it is annoying. GRUB by default hides the boot menu and this message can show up if there is no…
