friendica.eskimo.com

Your Most Frustrating Configuration Experience?

What software have you found particularly frustrating or difficult to configure on Linux?
57 2 1
Trying to configure Sway in NixOS. I gave up and just use KDE Plasma. I do miss using Sway from when I used Arch, though.
4 1
Wild. I used sway for the first time with Nix since I could rollback a misconfiguration.
1 1
Yeah, I got stuck on secrets management. I just could not get network manager to keep my WiFi passwords. I'll probably go back and try again at some point.
1
I use i3 - Sway is supposed to be 100% compatible with i3 - and I find the configuration file very straightforward. What's different in the version in NixOS?
1 1
It used to be button 10 (also counting 4 scrollwheel directions and click) of my Elecom trackball. I had written a small C program reading the device node and writing the events just of that to stdout, then piping that to a tclsh script (so I could change it easily and it's still super fast for gaming) which did something in X. Horrible.
But then they added support for more buttons to everything (kernel, X) and now I can just map it in games, like any other.
3 1
Xserver... Somehow trying to find the magic string of letters and numbers that made your screen work.
12 1 1
The initramfs subsystem seems to be one of the most common things to break. Either it fails to assemble an mdadm raid randomly upon boot or if you have to restore a partition from backup, the UUID in the initramfs system ends up not matching that in the /etc/fstab and THEN you can't get the system into a sane state to fix it. I really wish there were a better way.

Just recently XDG Portals to get video sharing working. It just kept using the GTK fallbacks instead of KDE as I configured it, but it used the correct ones when starting from the terminal.

Eventually I figured out I had set an env override for XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="sway" in my user systemd environment, because that's what I used previously.

4 1
Cloud-init. The config yaml is rather straight forward, but I can't convince my VM to execute it, and it's driving me nuts.
2 1
It was definitely a headache for me as well, but you need a guest agent (like vmwaretools or qemu-guest-agent), a cloud init ready template for the distro of your choice, a cloud init config file (network/user/vendor) and a custom SCSI/ide cloudinit cdrom mounted at boot on your VM.
You also can find cloudinit logs on your VM to try and figure out what's missing or what went wrong.
3 1
XDG portal filechooser for Firefox: the KDE implementation uses Dolphin, which is full of features and I use most of them; the default GTK one is mildly infuriating to use and looks ugly too, but getting the browser to use the portal I want was a nightmare - especially since GTK discontinued the GTK_USE_PORTAL envvar.
The related Firefox config entries make no sense either.
4 1
Can you explain a bit more about this and how to configure it? When I use FF on gnome, the save dialogue just looks like other dialogues?
1

I think GNOME's filechooser is the GTK one (never used it so I'm not sure), mine looks like this:

Image/photo

It's entirely possible that Firefox changed and now uses XDG portals by default, I configured it like this a long time ago.

As for how to configure it, I honestly don't know.
It was a combination of messing with widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal on about:config, and changing XDG envvars and dotfiles; both by following several conflicting Reddit and bbs.archlinux.org posts.

1
Yeah I definitely have the default GTK chooser. Guess I have some config playing to do later.
1 1
widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker=1 in about:config should be the only thing you need. @projectmoon@lemm.ee
3 1
Seems to be the only necessary thing in my case! Thanks.
1 1
Setting up Alpine or Mutt with multiple SMTP accounts is an exercise in frustration.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
2 1
hyprland but I'm a noob
3 1

Motion on my RPI. I didn't want it to save videos or photos, so I turned it off in the config. But it still saved them. So I tried a few other places in the config to turn it off, but nothing worked and I'd run out of space within a day. So I changed the save directory to /dev/null.

Then I tried to upgrade the pi, and the new version of motion has a different config, incompatible with the old one. So I'm running the old one.

1 1
Suspend with an Nvidia gpu
9 1
it's embarrassing but for me it's thinkfan. Instead I wrote my own solution in bash.
1 1
Do VLANs with multiple wireless and wired clients using OPNSense and OpenWRT dummy APs count? Still haven’t quite figured it out.
5 1
Me neither lol
2 1
hostapd. I have no idea how you’re supposed to figure out the 50 or so options OpenWrt outputs for an AX card that I just ended up copying. And why doesn’t it detect those on its own?
2 1

Skyrim mods.

Btw, anyone got the new reshade working on wine?

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
1 1
For skyrim, I'm using vortex in lutris, and install the mods this way. This requires a more bit of actions but works fine.
2 1
Wabbajack still doesn't work in wine?
1 1

Caddy. The config and docs suck.

Eg. I thought I configured it to limit some sites to an allowlist of IPs. Turns out (months later) the config did nothing, but ran anyway.

1 1
Huh, I found it to be so much easier to set up than nginx that I wrote the devs a little thank you message
5 1
xorg.conf. The (wrong) example from Arch Wiki works but following the official documentation doesn't.
1 1

Installing Fedora. I had almost nothing to configure, it worked out of the box. How frustrating! I had the whole day planned and now what? Enjoy my free time like a pleb !?!

(/s just in case anyone was wondering)

11 1 1
Trying to disable the lid close sensor on my laptop. My issue is twofold. It's a convertible (pavilion x360) and I'm using bunsenlabs Linux.
3 1

Setting up a matrix server was a god damn nightmare for me. I eventually got it working but I hit pretty much every conceivable obstacle along the way. Getting the config file just right, the networking, the federation, the coturn server, getting end users to understand they need to backup their keys....

I'm sure it'd be easier for a Linux pro but I was in way over my head. Only got it working through stubbornness and help from the community.

7 1

Matrix is pain...

With the more recent updates it is a lot more stable

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
4 1
Selinux on arch linux
4 1
I thought this was pretty solid talk on SElinux
2 1
@rotopenguin @IceFoxX SELinux comes pre-installed on all Redhat derived systems and is an option in all Debian based systems, though I prefer AppArmor, it is just easier to configure and breaks fewer things.
1

This.

I tried it some time ago and I had to format the SSD because the operating system became unusable.

1
Nextcloud requiring me to set the actual domain when I just want to run it locally was pretty frustrating
2 1

Getting Keycloak and Headscale working together.

But I did it after three weeks.

I captured my efforts in a set of interdependent Ansible roles so I never have to do it again.

2 1
Isn't it always postfix? Not because of the software, but because of other clients and other servers.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
6 1
@delirious_owl @gwilikers I've been trying to setup a store and forward server with postfix and not having a lot of luck.
1

xkcd.com/963/

Fortunately I haven't had to open it in a very long time.

19 1 1
Why did we have to learn what modelines were to get a picture on screen?
3 1
Similar here. I used to have 2 screens that if they turned off for powersaving only 1 of them would wake up. So I had a script on the desktop to do a reset and move them correctly.
\#!/bin/bash
xrandr --output HDMI2 --off
xrandr --output HDMI2 --auto --same-as HDMI1
xrandr --output HDMI1 --right-of HDMI2
exit
3 1
Jellyseer in docker. It won’t accept my jellyfin login. It just spins and spins. But I plan to use it locally. And everyone says you have to sign in initially not local? I don’t know. I’m annoyed with it and gave up for now.
2 1
I think this means it can't actually see your jellyfin instance, you need to use your computer's local network ip instead of localhost if the two containers aren't in the same pod via a docket compose file. I've had this issue before.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
1 1
Nah. It’s on the same docker compose file through portainer. And I’ve been using the local ip. I never use local host for some reason lol
2 1
You probably need to use localhost lol or the name of container set in the docker compose file. Both might work, I forget
1
I’ll try name of container. I have tried localhost in my troubleshooting. It loads the login screen fine. But just spins for 3 minutes then errors out at some point just like the IP lol I’ll be working on it when I get home later after this flight and I’ll let you know if I solve my struggles lol
1
Wishing you luck, it's so worth it once it works
1
Container IP sorted me. Out. Woo. Thank you 🙏
1
Arch based distro (yes, even Manjaro).
1 1
  1. Setting up Nvidia runtime for rootless Docker containers in Linux.
  2. Resolving port :53 conflict between AdGuardHome (rootless) docker container and Systemd-Resolved.
3 1

I've had to grapple with pipewire. My old pulseaudio config didn't seem to work and I wanted to migrate to the pw config file format anyway, but I found the pw docs to be highly opaque. You get a thousand solutions for commands online, or tools you can do it visually in, but to apply that config you need to start the tool...

I'm a noob, granted, but there seemed to be a lot of assumed common knowledge that I just don't have. And if I don't even know what I'm missing, it's hard to google for it.

5 1

I still cannot connect to captive portals for public WiFis, eg on train or hotel and I have no idea where the config comes from.

DNS? Resolve.conf? Systemd network manager? WTF?

(Probably for the best though, so I use my phone 5G and not these suss open networks )

5 1

If you connect to the network and open firefox, it will display a toast to open the corresponding captive portals page. You can then login through that. Given that your VPN isn't blocking unencrypted connections etc.

Extrapolation of partial knowledge warning


I assume the network advertises a captive portals url and identifies you based on your MAC address.

The config is server-side (router).

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
1 1

I get "limited connection" I think when I try connect or "no internet".

I don't make it to load the portal page...

so maybe I'm not recieving at IP from the network?

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
1
I do construction work and travel every week. I've had this problem pop up in the last month when I connect to the hotel wifi. I just open Firefox and type in the default gateway IP and then it takes me to the login page. For whatever reason it stopped opening the page for me.
1

I use this project (github.com/FiloSottile/captive…) which works most of the time.

Most captive portals work by answering the DNS requests with the captive portal ip. This works only if the correct dns servers are configured and a lot of security features like dnssec, DOH, ... are disabled.

More info from the project author: words.filippo.io/captive-brows…

So you run this to sign into the portal, is that right?
Thanks

Edit: OK had a read, I will look into this. I don't have chrome on my machine but will see if it works with chromium swapped in instead. :)

This entry was edited (1 month ago)

Configuring captive portal wifi without network manager or any aids beyond what's provided by wpa-supplicant. Eventually I gave up, since it wasn't really that important.

Adjusting freetype so that it works more-or-less the way I want it to, because the maintainers hate anyone who disagrees with their current hinting algorithm and make the setting as opaque as possible. I would prefer it if they allowed me to have hinting on some fonts and exclude only the ones that were designed to be pixel-aligned, but unless something's changed recently, that option isn't even offered.

6 1
I was trying to get wine to run something the other day and couldn't figure it out.
1
X11. Luckily those days are over thanks to Wayland but, Jesus, are X.org config files a fucking, fiddly PITA to configure!
1 1
I use sway, and for the life of me can not get steam link to display my games. I have tried so many things. If I use flatpak steam it works, but it breaks remote play together, which works fine not flatpak! I can get them both to work with KDE Wayland as well. It's frustrating but also not a huge deal.
3 1
Newb here who can't seem to fully grasp how permissions work and sometimes carelessly runs services as root. Help...
1
Pretty much everything is frustrating to configure at first. Then I learn it and it's not so bad. Then I don't use it for a few years, and completely forget how! Back to step 1.
4 1

I learned this lesson pretty quick when working in IT.

It's not always feasible to document everything as it happens, but I definitely learned to do so if I had the time and means to while I was doing the thing.

Just started at a new company with 0 documentation, they're super psyched that I've actually been writing down all their processes/procedures/configurations etc. as they explain them to me/as I work with them.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
2 1
I really should learn this habit.
2 1

If you want to get into doing it, I found searching through a lot of note taking applications until I found something I really liked helped me remember to go do it regularly.

For FOSS stuff a lot of people like Joplin, and I could certainly recommend it. Personally though, I really like Obsidian for its backlinking and graph view features, but it's not open source.

Furthermore, just carrying around a notebook and a pen everywhere you go as a habit helps a lot. I got into the habit of doing this by maintaining a personal journal for some time. For writing effective notation on paper which can easily be digitized, I would recommend looking into "bullet journaling" methods, and again, finding a notebook and pen that you really quite like, helps a lot to make the experience enjoyable and develop it as a skill.

3 1
Thanks very much. I'll take a look at your suggestions.
1 1

I've been on arch for years, but have recently started pc gaming. Lutris has been surprisingly easy to get working. I have a nintendo switch already and decided I want to try to use the joycons for the computer, don't want to buy gamepads but it gives and alternative to keyboard and mouse. Getting them consistently recognized by bluetooth has been a massive pain, but after searching I've figured out a package that I can install that fixes the issues. In fact, I couldn't find anyone who found a solution to this issue without installing this specific package.

That package is pulseaudio-bluetooth, even though the nintendo joycons do not have an audio jack or capability to receive audio. I've had my audio set up and configured with alsa, and alsa does everything (relating to audio) that I need it to, but pulseaudio-bluetooth requires me to install pulseaudio (duh) and will not work unless I enable the pulseaudio service, which fucks up my alsa config. I've spent a while dicking around trying to get pulseaudio to pretend it doesn't exist except for connecting joycons, but there's always some nuisance popping up. I also tried using a different usb bluetooth controller and plugging them into different usb ports. Given up for the moment and will probably just buy another gamepad and hope it works better without needing pulseaudio-bluetooth.

In all honesty I still don't really know what the hell I'm doing on arch, I originally installed it to learn this stuff better but all I've really learned is how to read documentation well enough to get things working by trial-and-error. I've had a stable system for like ten years now though and I'm too comfortable with it to warrant switching to a friendlier distro, but this specific issue is a pain in the ass.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
3 1
The hell that was configuring XFree86
2 1

I still don’t properly grok Selinux at a fundamental and instinctual level. I understand the need for it, and I work with it to the best of my ability, but I wish there was a resource that could explain it from several different positions.

Irony: my main Linux workstation is OpenSuse

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
5 1