Author: Yeri Tiete

Categories
Misc

Macbook Air M1 issues

Macbook Air M1

I recently got my mom a Macbook Air M1, upgrading from a 2010 Macbook Pro (High Sierra).

When migrating over from High Sierra to Big Sur, using Migration Assistant (my Synology TimeMachine kept on failing — but besides that, migration went smoothly) two issues came up that required calling Apple.

But first off I noticed that when migrating, for some reason FileVault was turned off (more on that later). I, obviously, turned it on.

Problem A: when rebooting the Mac, I noticed the keyboard layout changed from Belgian (Azerty) to ABC (which is US English?) and it didn’t accept the password to unlock the Mac. You can manually select another keyboard layout which accepts the password, but at every reboot that resets and requires going back through the layout picker.

Solution A: M1 no longer supports the usual SMC or NVRAM reset. But this problem could be solved by turning off the mac, closing the lid (?!) and waiting 30+ seconds before turning it back on. According to the person on the phone, that’s the M1 SMC reset.

Problem B: I disabled guest mode in System Preferences > Users & Groups — but it was still showing alongside the regular/admin user. I don’t want guest mode.

Note that the guest mode only showed at the disk unlock (i.e.: after a reboot) and not when logged out (i.e.: Apple logo > Log Out from the regular user).

Solution B: Tried several things with Apple support:

  • Turning off screen sharing and print sharing (sure — didn’t care too much about these)
  • Turn guest mode on/off and reboot/force quite System preferences
  • Turn off Find My in iCloud settings (not acceptable)
  • Turn off FileVault (not acceptable)
  • Manually running:
    • sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleFileServer guestAccess -bool NO\n
    • sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.smb.server AllowGuestAccess -bool NO\n
  • and a few other things I now forgot

This is what actually did help:

  • Turning off FileVault actually turns off Guest mode; so when the Mac was not encrypted, it only showered one user (instead of the user + Guest) at the login prompt.
    • Obviously, that’s not acceptable and I turned it back on
  • Supposedly turning off Find My in iCloud settings is needed (according to Apple this requires Guest mode)
    • I later turned it back on and Guest mode did not reappear. So, what Apple was saying was incorrect, and it does not make the Guest user show up.
  • Running sudo fdesetup list in Terminal shows the list of users. This may be helpful for debugging.
  • Running dscl . list /Users shows many users and included Guest in my mom’s case. Not entirely sure what I am looking at here.
  • Running sudo dscl . delete /Users/Guest solved the problem. This deletes the Guest user (?).

Categories
Apple Errors Software

Apple Watch OS7 stopped showing the date

Apple Watch

I’ve been running the Apple WatchOS 7 beta for a while now, and when updating, my watch face lost the “date”: it was no longer showing the date and day of the week (i.e. Fri).

Quite annoying — but it’s a beta after all. I shouldn’t complain. I did what every good beta tester would do: I filed a bug (it’s still unanswered from what I can see).

Beta updates came and went but the date did not come back. Would I be unable to use my watch to figure out the date?! It’s when you lose a feature that you see how often a day you use it.

And then, out of the blue, the big stable release. Apple Watch OS 7 is released to the general public. Surely, I thought, they must’ve fixed it now.

But alas, I was to be disappointed.

I updated Shan‘s watch (that never ran the beta) to see if she had the same issue — but her watch was fine. Sooooo… What was I doing wrong? Why me, Apple Overlord?

I started fiddling around with my language and regional settings (nope, not it), and was contemplating a factory reset (argh, re-adding all my cards to Apple Pay)…

And then…

An epiphany.

They wouldn’t?!?! Would they??

Something only Apple would dare to do.

I deleted the Apple Calendar app (on my iPhone) — as I use the Google Calendar app. Would that somehow be related?

And guess what… Installing the Apple Calendar app via the App Store resolved it:

Check Apple Watch and the option is back!

That’s one way of forcing people to use your apps.

Categories
Hardware Linux Software

Making Bluetooth work on RPi4

I rarely use Bluetooth on my RPis. I’m already facing enough issues with my iMac and Mac Mini (it lags, it randomly disconnects in meetings, etc).

My pwnagotchi on the other hand is counting on a BLE network to connect to the internet: for now I am using my iPad, and while that works, it causes my iPad to disconnect from WiFi (because of course, it can only do tethering from a mobile network, not from its WiFi network).

I wanted to explore if I could set up bluetooth tethering/internet sharing from my RPi4 server… But for that BLE had to work! And for some reason BLE was not working on Liana.

[bluetooth]# power on
No default controller available

For some reason no controller was available. The drivers were definitely installed… 

apt install bluetooth pi-bluetooth bluez raspberrypi-sys-mods

but hcitool dev ; hciconfig -a weren’t returning anything.

After quite some extensive Googling I found the solution…

Check if this returns something:

# ls -l /dev | grep ttyAMA0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root           7 Sep  1 15:08 serial1 -> ttyAMA0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 204,  64 Sep  1 15:08 ttyAMA0

As opposed to:

# ls -l /dev | grep ttyS0
# (no output)

Then continue to do the following:

# make a backup
cp /boot/cmdline.txt /boot/cmdline.txt.bak
# edit the file
nano -w /boot/cmdline.txt
# edit the first part from
# console=ttySerial0 to console=ttyAMA0
# the line should be something similar to but do NOT blindly copy paste it as you won't be able to boot due to your PARTUUID being different
console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=6c586e13-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait
reboot

After rebooting … it works!

liana ~ # hcitool dev ; hciconfig -a
Devices:
	hci0	DC:A6:32:B1:0E:79
hci0:	Type: Primary  Bus: UART
	BD Address: DC:A6:32:B1:0E:79  ACL MTU: 1021:8  SCO MTU: 64:1
	UP RUNNING 
	RX bytes:2397 acl:0 sco:0 events:118 errors:0
	TX bytes:2603 acl:0 sco:0 commands:99 errors:0
	Features: 0xbf 0xfe 0xcf 0xfe 0xdb 0xff 0x7b 0x87
	Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3 
	Link policy: RSWITCH SNIFF 
	Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT 
	Name: 'liana'
	Class: 0x000000
	Service Classes: Unspecified
	Device Class: Miscellaneous, 
	HCI Version: 5.0 (0x9)  Revision: 0x13b
	LMP Version: 5.0 (0x9)  Subversion: 0x6119
	Manufacturer: Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (305)

liana ~ # bluetoothctl 
Agent registered
[bluetooth]# scan on
Discovery started
[CHG] Controller DC:A6:32:B1:0E:79 Discovering: yes
[NEW] Device 7F:A9:BC:8D:E4:14 7F-A9-BC-8D-E4-14
[NEW] Device 58:EB:19:D8:D4:23 58-EB-19-D8-D4-23
[NEW] Device A4:83:E7:42:79:F6 A4-83-E7-42-79-F6
[NEW] Device 58:7B:24:1B:CC:5C 58-7B-24-1B-CC-5C
[NEW] Device D9:05:9F:DB:55:19 N0163
[NEW] Device 5F:DA:90:34:82:68 5F-DA-90-34-82-68
[NEW] Device 77:2A:1B:11:54:7D 77-2A-1B-11-54-7D
[NEW] Device 42:BF:0B:38:F3:20 42-BF-0B-38-F3-20

Next step is trying to get tethering to work…

Categories
Misc

Shan Wong launches new website

Shan has launched a new website (and a new domain)!

Logo by Christa.

Categories
Misc

Beyond Beef Lasagna

Beyond Beef Lasagna
Beyond Beef Lasagna

The last (and only time) I posted a recipe here, was 7 years ago. Wow.

As we’re trying to eat less meat in general, we‘ve (Shan and I) been experimenting with vegetarian dishes.

This lasagna has been eaten by a few people now and every time the reviews are pretty damn good. 🙂 It comes rather close to the original taste while being entirely vegetarian.

First off — we’re mostly just swapping out the regular minced pork/beef mix with Beyond Meat. There are other brands out there (i.e.: Omnimeat), each with their own taste — try to see what works for you.

The Beyond Beef is also slightly sweeter in taste — keep this in mind as I know some people (i.e.: my dad) wouldn’t like it that sweet.

This dish feeds 3 to 4 people.

Ingredients

  • Good olive oil
  • Lasagna pasta sheets (whatever suits you, we often use the wholewheat ones)
  • Tomato sauce (1 to 1.5 can). Can use fresh tomato of course
  • 80g of butter
  • 0.5L milk
  • 80g plain flour
  • Fresh basil leaves
  • 1 (red) onion
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic
  • Beyond Beef
  • You’ll need a pinch of (sea) salt, some pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, nutmeg and whatever else you’ll want to spice it up with
  • I add some extra veggies: I use (1-2) fresh carrots, but these can easily be swapped out or mixed with peas, mushrooms, aubergine (eggplant), corn, etc.
  • Cheese! I usually use grated mozzarella cheese, but Emmental and sorts works as well

Prep work

  • Dice/chop up an onion
  • Slice the carrots (or whatever vegetable you’re adding)
  • slice up the garlic
  • Wash and chop up the basil
  • Prepare 2 pots and an oven dish
  • You can let the Beyond Beef defrost, or add it as a frozen block and just let it simmer a bit longer (until entirely melted and broken down into small bits)

Pot 1: the sauce

  • Add olive oil to a big pot and heat up
  • Once hot, add in the onion and carrots and let it stir-fry for a moment. I like my carrots a bit crunchy but you could technically boil or steam them until entirely soft. Whatever you do, don’t burn the onion
For this one I had some carrots, peas and corn.
  • Once the onion gets translucent add the garlic, Beyond Beef, tomato sauce and basil
  • I usually add a tiny bit of milk (especially in case the tomato is a bit sour)
  • Stir and let it simmer on low heat. Make sure the “meat” breaks down in small bits
  • Spice it up (paprika, cayenne pepper, pinch of salt, (black) ground pepper)
  • Take a spoon and taste it. It should already be damn good. 🙂

Pot 2: béchamel sauce

This one is easy to mess up so pay attention. Clumps are bad!

Stir and whisk and stir.
  • Add the butter in a pot on a low heat and let melt. Do not burn the butter.
  • Slowly add the flour while whisking
  • Once the butter and flour is nicely mixed up, slowly add the milk while whisking. I usually turn off the heat at this point
  • Whisk, whisk and whisk
  • Finish it off with a bit of white pepper and nutmeg

Don’t worry if you have no nutmeg — it tastes perfect without as well.

In case it’s too watery, just add a bit of flour — but do that extremely slowly, as adding it at this stage will easily clump up.

Dish it up!

Now we’ll create the actual lasagna. You can also pre-heat the oven now (200°).

Your dish and the lasagna will definitely not be the same size… And we don’t want to have two lasagna sheets on top of each other… So gently break them off into smaller pieces, and nicely fit them together. It’s puzzle time.

puzzling is hard, yo.
  • Add a thin layer of olive oil at the bottom of the pot. This prevents the lasagna sheet from sticking.
  • Add the lasagna sheets (see puzzle note above)
  • Add a layer of tomato/Beyond sauce
  • Add a layer of béchamel sauce
  • Layer up with lasagna sheets again
  • Rince and repeat

Most dishes fit about three layers. End with the béchamel layer. So [lasagna, tomato, béchamel] x 3.

And the last, top layer, would be the grated cheese. Don’t over do it, create a nice thin layer.

Oven

The oven should be hot (200°) at this point. The total cooking time is roughly 25 minutes.

If your oven allows to choose the baking mode, use the top and bottom heat (without fan).

  • Put the lasagna on top of a grill/wire mesh tray.
  • Set timer for ~15 minutes
  • Once timer is over, use a fork or skewer/satay stick to feel the pasta sheets: you want them to be soft.
    At this stage they should still be a bit hard, so set timer again for 5 minutes and check again.
    Take this opportunity to make sure the top layer of cheese is not burning.
  • Optionally: you can use the grill mode at the end of brown up the cheese, but this shouldn’t be needed.

After roughly 25 minutes, the lasagna should be done.

Beyond Beef Lasagna
Beyond Beef Lasagna

Let it cool down a bit, cut it up and serve.

Nom nom nom. This was a picture from the previous lasagna and the cheese could have been slightly less grilled.