I’ve had an iPad Pro with the new Magic Keyboard and one of the things I’ve been wondering… Say I am stuck in a datacenter and I need to ssh through wired networking to a server — sure I’ll definitely rather use my Mac laptop, but just in case… But would it actually work?
The answer is… Yes — but…
So plugging it straight into the USB-C port of the keyboard doesn’t do anything. I.e.: the dongle is not recognised, and for what it’s worth the switch doesn’t even light up to say a cable is connected. So that doesn’t work.
But plugging it straight into the iPad works… The network switch lights up, the iPad (under Settings) gets a new option called “Ethernet” (which oddly shows you a selection of connected adapters first — but I don’t know how you can have more than one). Clicking through you see the same options as you would for your WiFi network: IPs, DNS, etc.
Tadaaa!
I used an adapter from work, a Belkin, and I believe it’s the same one that’s being sold on the Apple Store. I don’t know if any dongle will work though (driver-wise and stuff).
Resilio Sync released an update last week and on Synology these package don’t auto update. Time to manually update the packages again.
On my DS1515 (more RAM, more CPU) the manual update goes by fine (stop service, manual update, browse for file, upload, start service) but my DS216j, not so much.
Attempting to upload the file instantly fails with the useful error “Operation Failed”.
I tried to re-download the file (was it corrupt)… Nop. Did I select the right architecture? Yep. Decided to give it a go via via the command line. Perhaps a reboot? Nop.
First, make sure SSH is enabled and you can SSH. Oh and pro tip: add your SSH key.
Something along these lines should get you started:
# Transfer the file to the NAS
scp *.spk NAS-IP:
# Connect to the device
ssh [email protected]
# Install it as root using sudo. It'll ask for your psw
sudo synopkg install *.spk
[password]
# resiliosync_armada38x_DSM6_2.7.0.1366-1.spk install successfully
# All good? Then remove the installer
rm *.spk
Somehow this worked… 🤷♂️ Not sure what caused the error in the first place. I am guessing the device is a bit low on RAM.
Noticed that NextDNS was reporting old hostnames in the logs. For example old device names (devices that changed hostnames), devices that were definitely no longer on the network, or IPs that were matched to the wrong hostnames.
The culprit is how EdgeOS deals with its hosts file. Basically it just keeps all the old hosts added and just adds a new line at the end of the file.
NextDNS searches for the first valid entry in that file, which is always going to be an older record.
So the simplest solution I found was the turn off hostfile-update every so often. This clears the hosts file.
So ssh into the device, run configure, and then run these commands:
set service dhcp-server hostfile-update disable
commit
set service dhcp-server hostfile-update enable
commit
save
I live in Singapore. And haze is a thing. Thanks Indonesia and burning rain forests to create palm plantations. Needless to say, so far 2019 and 2020 haven’t been great.
Anyhow I got myself a Novita air purifier ~2 years ago, and I stole received a Xiaomi purifier from Liyun.
The Novita is pretty dumb (the PM sensor goes randomly nuts and it needs to be quite polluted before it really kicks in. It also needs to be turned off/on again every so often for it to keep on standby — if not it goes into some sleep mode).
The manual says you should consider cleaning (aka remove dust and cat hair) every 3 or so months, and replace the filter every 6 months. It’ll show a warning when the timer hits zero.
Selling new filters is how they make money I guess.
Buy a new filter (or don’t and use the same filter), reset the timer and things are back to normal.
For the Xiaomi it’s a bit harder. The “smart filter” is really just a HEPA filter with an NFC tag. It’ll calculate how often the purifier runs and calculate a % based on that. I’ve now hit 0% left on my filter after a haze season (September 2019) and ~8 months of normal usage (as it’s in the bedroom, it starts filtering around 21h00, and then runs in the quiet night mode until 9am next morning and then shuts off).
While the purifier still runs at 0%, it gives a big red warning both in the app and on the device itself and urges you to replace the filter.
You can tape off the NFC tag with some tinfoil, but that’ll just change the big red warning from “used and old filter, please replace” to “fake filter, please replace”.
Now I am not against replacing HEPA filters when they are used and are not actually filtering the air anymore. But I am also against uselessly replacing things for the sake of handing money to $BigCorp and ruining the planet with it.
Running a few tests with a relatively precise PM sensor (use this assembled kit if you are not into DIY) shows that for both my purifiers, the exhuast air is 0 PM1.0, 0 PM2.5 and 0 PM10. So that shows me that both are still working and cleaning the air just fine (further away in the room, the PM heads up to 10-20 on haze-free days).
Am I missing something here? Why throw away something that still works?
