My digital brain

Change GRUB so you start in the terminal

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Problem: Copmuter is not starting at all anymore

I’m using on one of the computer Manjaro Linux.
Unfortunately it seems I deleted something really important on the last upgrade.
The computer starts, I can decrypt my SSD, and I see the login screen. So far so good.
But if I log in, I then see only a black screen with the mouse. But I can’t move the mouse and also no keyboard is working.
Also the shortcut for going into termimal mode (CTRL + ALT F3 / F4…) is not reacting.

Starting a server for mobile HTML testing

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Problem: how to test on your mobile phone

When I’m building a HTML website with responsive design, I want to test the website on my mobile phone. So I need to start an easy webserver.

Starting the server

As python is installed on my machine, I can start it easily with python:

$ python3 -m http.server 8000
# Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 (http://0.0.0.0:8000/) ...

Now find out the ip from your own computer where you develop:

Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Reasons for migration

There are many reasons, why many of the open source projects are migrating from GitHub to Codeberg.
GitHub Copilot, the AI from GitHub which is owned by Microsoft, gives us the following reasons:

Main reason:
many projects prefer a community‑run, non‑profit, open infrastructure (Codeberg e.V. running Forgejo/Gitea) over GitHub’s proprietary, Microsoft‑controlled platform with increasing commercialization (e.g. AI features, data usage, lock‑in concerns). Privacy, transparency, open governance, and avoiding dependence on a single corporate vendor are the core motivators.

Was ist das Fediverse? - Plastic Bomb Artikel aus #131 02/2025

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article is only available in German, sorry.
Dieser Artikel erschien in einer gekürzten Version in der Plastic Bomb #131 02/2025.
Dies ist die komplette Version. Die Userzahlen der Server sind alle vom Januar 2025.

Foto der Plastic Bomb Ausgabe 131

Einleitung

Na, wo treibt ihr euch noch auf Social Media rum? Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, TikTok oder Youtube? Oder seid ihr MySpace treu geblieben? Oder benutzt ihr gar kein Social Media? Ihr Glücklichen!
Bei mir und auch sicherlich bei vielen von euch geht die Hand nach dem Aufwachen morgens erst einmal zum Handy, die entsprechenden Apps öffnen und nachschauen, was so außerhalb eures Bettes passiert ist. Na, fühlt ihr euch erwischt?
Und wenn man ehrlich ist, macht es immer weniger Spaß, weil die Netzwerke von Leuten geführt werden, die entweder Trump nach der Nase tanzen oder für seine Politik mitverantwortlich sind. Zumindest in meiner Facebook Timeline spülen die Algorithmen immer mehr rechten Müll, obwohl die Freundesliste eigentlich clean von irgendwelchen AfD Trotteln ist. Besonders in den 2-3 Monaten vor der Bundestagswahl wurde es immer mehr und immer unerträglicher.
Facebook, Instagram und Threads gehören zu Meta (dazu gehört auch noch u.a. WhatsApp), also Mark Zuckerberg. Meta hatte schon vor Trumps zweiter Amtszeit angekündigt, sein Faktencheck-Programm in den USA zu beenden und spendete ebenso wie auch Google, Amazon und viele andere Tech Firmen je 1 Million Euro an Trump für dessen Amtseinführung.
Twitter bzw X gehört Elon Musk. Zu diesem Nazi muss man ja nichts mehr schreiben.
Und TikTok gehört ByteDance, einer Firma in China, der man eine „gewissen Nähe“ zur chinesischen Regierung nachsagt.
Viele von euch werden sich schon oft überlegt haben, dass es eigentlich nicht geil ist, weiter diese Social Networks zu benutzen, aber wie soll man sonst alle Kontakte behalten? Wie sollt ihr weiterhin mitbekommen, wo eure Lieblingsband spielen? Und wie bekommt ihr weiterhin eure tägliche Dosis an süßen Katzen- und Hundevideos?

Use many different Git accounts automatically

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Preparing the folder structure for using new setup

At the moment I have different git accounts.
I have one for Github (work & private), Gitlab and two accounts for Codeberg (private and a even more private one).
To get this running I had to prepare my folders a little bit. before I only had everything in two folders, private and work, but it all used the same GitHub account.

/home/joergi/dev/projects/
├─ privat/
│ ├─ codeberg/
│ │ ├─ private/
│ │ │ ├─ project1/
│ │ │ ├─ project2/
│ │ ├─ more-private/
│ │ │ ├─ projectA/
│ │ │ ├─ projectB/
│ ├─ gitlab/
│ │ ├─ projectGL1/
│ │ ├─ projectGL2/
│ ├─ github/
│ │ ├─ projectPrivatGH1/
│ │ ├─ projectPrivatGH2/
├─ work
│ ├─ github

When I only used Github, my .gitconfig looked like this:

Plastic Bomb - Was ist das Fediverse?

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Plastic Bomb - Was ist das Fediverse? #131 2/2025"

The Plastic bomb is a German punk magazine, which is published every three months, with a circulation of 8000 copies.
Those who know me for a long time, know I’m coming not only from a nerd world - but also from the music world. Punk especially!
And, if you followed me along Social Media, you know I’m a big fan of the Fediverse and I’m trying to promote it, as much as possible.
As the Punk music is always into DIY (do it yourself) and anti-corporate, I thought it would be a good idea to write an article about the Fediverse for the Plastic Bomb magazine.

Java aktuell - Automatic dependency updates with GitHub Actions and Dependabot

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Java aktuell - Article “Automatische Dependency-Updates mit GitHub Actions und Dependabot”

My first ever published article was published in the Java aktuell 3/24 (topic: Tools).
It’s about “Automatische Dependency-Updates mit GitHub Actions und Dependabot” (automatic dependency updates with Github Actions and Dependabot).
It’s all in German, if you don’t mind:

The complete magazine can be downloaded for free on the website

Add new Tasmota device to Home Assistant with MQTT

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pre-Requirements

To add a new Tasmota device to the Home Assistant (HA), I assume that:

HA is installed
An MQTT Broker is running and an user in HA is already registered/in use
Already one other Tasmota device is connected to the HA (so you know it’s working)
The new Tasmota device is already connected to the local HA WiFi
Already has upgraded to the newest firmware

Todos:

Give device a better name

Click Configuration -> Configure Other -> and enter at Device Name a name which makes sense

Privacy friendly online alternatives

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Please let me know, if you have some good alternatives

Productivity
- Cryptpad - instead of google docs / google sheets etc… selfhosting is possible
- Jitsi - instead of Google Meet / Zoom and so on. selfhosting is possible
- etherpad - as online collaboration pad selfhosting is possible
Social Networks
- Friendica instead of Facebook selfhosting is possible
- Mastodon instead of Twitter/X selfhosting is possible
- Peertube instead of YouTube selfhosting is possible
- Pixelfed instead of Instagram selfhosting is possible
Others:

GISCUS - You can now add comments to my blog

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When I was researching some stuff for a blog post about Github Actions, I stumbled over the blog from Github user @nicolasiensen.
When I read the post, I saw that people were able to add comments with being logged into Github.
Something like this I have seen a long time ago, but this was so complicated, I just ignored it.

But now as I saw in his blog , it’s super ways, thanks to Giscus
The setup was super easy, the repo must be public, you need to add the all to your repo and enable discussions.
And the best is:

Docker cheat sheet

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Stop all containers - docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)
Debug into running container - docker exec -it container_name /bin/bash
Debug into docker image - docker run --rm -it image_name /bin/bash
Remove all docker dontainers - docker rm -f $(docker ps -a -q)
remove all images you need to download everything again) - docker rmi -f $(docker images -q)
delete all docker network bridges - docker network prune

Install patch for Thinkpad Trackpoint Keyboard II

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

New Thinkpad Trackpoint Keyboard II

(i maybe should have cleaned it, before the picture…)

I got my first Thinkpad Trackpoint keyboard as a farwell gift from a company I worked for (thanks <3 ).
I don’t use any mouse, I just use the red “joystick” (called trackpoint) to navigate. For users which aren’t used to it, it’s a horror if they have to use my keyboard. But if you are used to it, you don’t wanna work without it anymore.
As you can see, the old one is not in a good shape anymore. And as working-from-home is the new normal, the company I work for, offers us the equipment we need, so I ordered a new one.
This is a newer version, which is running without a cable but wirelesse with an USB dongle. So far so good.

Building a raspberry pi streaming cam

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

the setup

This is how my setup looks like:

as webcam I use a Waveshare 10300 RPi Camera (E)
(bought it here, unpaid advertisement)

Install raspberry pi image

Download the images from the raspberry pi website
copy it to your sd card.
on the webpage they recommend to install the rpi-manager via sudo apt install rpi-imager, but for me it wasn’t working because of dependency problems.
So I installed it the classic way:

Pushing container to Docker hub

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

First build an docker container and run it afterwards so you see it with docker ps -a As an example, I use the container for the MagpiDownloader

docker build -f Dockerfile . -t mag-pi-downloader
docker run -v $(pwd)/issues:/app/issues/ mag-pi-downloader -f 131

After that is done, have a look, for all the docker container:

$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
ea901f38e328 mag-pi-downloader "/bin/sh /app/entryp…" About a minute ago Exited (0) About a minute ago exciting_feistel

As you can see the newest has the container id ea901f38e328

Exclude one element from Lombok model-wide setter and getter

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Lets say you have a User model with Lombok modelwide @Getter and @Setter:

@Getter
@Setter
public class User {

 @Id
 private String id;

 private String username;

 private String email;

 private String password;
}

setId(String id) makes no sense.
Normally the id is set by the DB, so it makes no sense to set it.

So you can use @Setter(AccessLevel.NONE) (or @Getter(AccessLevel.NONE)) to exclude it from the Lombok setters (or getters)

@Getter
@Setter
public class User {

 @Id
 @Setter(AccessLevel.NONE)
 private String id;

 private String username;

 private String email;

 private String password;
}

(I found this answer on Stackoverflow by user Michael Piefel for this problem, thanks!

My Firefox Extensions

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Facebook Container from Mozilla
“Facebook Container isolates your Facebook activity from the rest of your web activity in order to prevent Facebook from tracking you outside of the Facebook website via third party cookies.” (from the Github description)
Dark-Reader from Alexander Shutau (also available for other browsers)
so join the dark side for a nicer reading
HTTPS everywhere by EFF and Tor Project (also available for other browsers)
“Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use. For instance, they may default to unencrypted HTTP, or fill encrypted pages with links that go back to the unencrypted site. The HTTPS Everywhere extension fixes these problems by using clever technology to rewrite requests to these sites to HTTPS” (description from the website)

How to play The Curse of Monkey Island on Linux

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As I was always a LucasArts fan in the 90ties, I wanted to use my “free time” (thanks to the Corona lockdown) for playing this old classics.

I bought Monkey Island 1 + 2 on Steam - with the Proton helper, it starts all easy, out of the box.

Monkey Island 3 and 4 I was buying at Gog (it was cheaper) - no help here to get it running for Linux. (it will still run from Steam out of the box, afaik)

How to mount an encrypted volume from a live ISO

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you destroyed somehow your Linux system, which has an encrypted volume, and you want to log into this, but booting is not working, boot from a live ISO, and type:

lsblk -f

you will see sda1 oder sdb1 as your encrypted system

this decrypt it and mount it (for example sda1)

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 crypted_sda1
Enter passphrase for /dev/sda1:

after entering the passphrase you can see that this is now decrypted

Getting a verified user on Github

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When you create a new file directly on Github and push it to your branch, you will see in the commit, that this was done by an verified user.

If you push it from your command line, it normally looks like this:

P.S. if you followed the tutorial, and something went wrong, it will look like this:

But let’s start from the beginning!
First of all: Github gives you a great Readme for this, that’s why I link it here were needed.

Using MongoRepository with more than one sorting with Spring Boot

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes you need a List of the Database to be sorted by more than one column.

If you connect to your database with the org.springframework.data.mongodb.repository.MongoRepository you can only give org.springframework.data.domain.Sort to a search method.

This is how the Repository class looks like:

@Repository
public interface TestRepository extends MongoRepository<Test, Long> {
 List<Score> findAllByTestName(String testName, Sort sort);
}

test has some column “abc” and some column “def” and some “ghi” …. so to add the order do in th calling class something like:

Deutsche Bahn,Docker and Wifi in an ICE and VPN problems

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Deutsche Bahn is providing free wifi for some years now. It works for most of the people pretty well, but if you are a developer you could have some issues. I was suffering a lot with this, this is why I’m posting it, to help some of you

As you can see, the WiFi is running on the IP 172.18.xxx

Using Docker as non-root

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

[UPDATE 2020-04-21] as mentioned in this post it’s not needed anymore:

Good news: the new docker (version 19.03 (currently experimental)) will be able to run rootless negating the problems that can occur using a root user. No more messing with elevated permissions, root and anything that might open up your machine when you did not want to.

Normally you need to run docker as root:

sudo docker run hello-world

If this is going on your nerves, you can add your normal user to the docker-usergroup.
But before you do this, read the warning in this post (where i also got the code from)

Berlin – where to go

Sun, 09 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Berlin has so many cool bars and restaurants to offer… I’m many times asked: what should we do? And no, I don’t want to write always the same stuff again, so I was thinking of making this list!

Vegan food First of all: www.berlin-vegan.de has nearly all vegan stuff covered.. Download the Android app or the iPhone app and you are fine.

My faves:

Bars:

Astra Stube Neukölln Weichselstrasse 63, 12043 Berlin
Milchbar Manteuffelstraße 41, 10997 Berlin
Franken Bar Oranienstraße 19A, 10999 Berlin
Travolta Wiener Straße 14B, 10999 Berlin)a

Concerts:

Stressfaktor (they also list demonstrations)
Steelfeed - List of all concerts, mainly punk + metal, it’s also connected to the Fediverse
SO36 Oranienstr. 190, 10999 Berlin, Old traditional club with cool partys and concerts, directly in Kreuzberg 36
Wild at Heart, Wiener Straße 20, 10999 Berlin, Small famose club, with many great concerts.
Schokoladen, Ackerstrasse 169/170, 10115 Berlin, Small club, concerts are only between 8pm and 10pm
Clash, Gneisenaustraße 2A, 10961 Berlin, cool club, nice shows!
KÖPI, Köpenicker Str. 137, 10179 Berlin, Left squat in Berlin, shows start always really late! Beer is cheap!
Supamolly, Jessner Str. 41, 10247 Berlin, also a formerly squatted house, a nice bar and some cool concerts in the cellar!
Tommy Weissbecker Haus, Wilhelmstraße 9, 10969 Berlin, another (ex) squatted house… good shows, they start always really late

… list is not complete yet

mySQL workbench can't connect via ssh tunnel

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

If you can’t connect with your mysql-workbench to a database via ssh have a look at your logfile:

tail -f -n 100 ~/.mysql/workbench/log/wb.log

and you will see this error:

14:12:58 [ERR][sshtunnel.py:notify_exception_error:233]: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/mysql-workbench/sshtunnel.py", line 265, in _connect_ssh
look_for_keys=has_key, allow_agent=has_key)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/client.py", line 306, in connect
t.start_client()
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/transport.py", line 465, in start_client
raise e
ValueError: CTR mode needs counter parameter, not IV

change your transport.py:

sudo nano /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/transport.py

press CTRL+W for searching for the term

install node.js from binaries

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Source: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2015/10/install-nodejs-npm-linux/

wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v7.4.0/node-v7.4.0-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd /usr/local
tar --strip-components 1 -xzf /path/to/node-v7.4.0-linux-x64.tar.gz

node should be in the newest version:

node -v

Sync folders in Vagrant but exclude some folders from syncing

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe you know this:
you have a huge Java project, maybe the project itself is a sum of many (not even so small) Java projects.
For sharing the complete setting with other developers you normally use a Vagrant box to make it easy.
At work we needed 2 big projects in one Vagrant box, which included over 10 small maven projects.
Normally I would share it like this:

config.vm.synced_folder "my-project1", "/home/vagrant/my-project1"
config.vm.synced_folder "my-project2", "/home/vagrant/my-project2"

You can imagine, the normal start-time of our server with permanently syncing all folders, including all the target folders took much too long.
On a local machine, without a Vagrant box, it normally needs around 2 minutes to start
But with syncing all target folders, it needs between 7-10 minutes to start the server

Using XIOAMI gamepad with Linux

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I have the XIAOMI gamepad, a cheap gamepad which looks like the classical XBOX gamepad. When I used it first with my Fire TV Stick, it worked like a charm. I wanted to try it with my Linux and with Steam.

When i used it in a game it was totally uncalibrated. Pressing the joystick to the top position had no effect at all on my game character. So, i had to calibrate with a small programm, which I install on the shell with:

How to push files from your PC to Amazon Fire TV

Sat, 28 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The easiest way to do it:

settings –> system –> Developer Option
ADB-Debuggin ON
Apps from unknown sources ON

After that, download the actual adb Link

You can now push with one klick: Kodi, FireLauncher and the addons you need for Kodi

Being able to develop on an unknown phone on a Linux computer

Sat, 14 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

When i tried to deploy a Hello World app from my Linux notebook to my THL 5000 notebook i got this result:

So, my phone has API level 1, nice - NOT!

Searching my ass off, I could nowhere find the device id for this phone… So Tobi told me: Brute-Force is the way to go and what should I say: it worked!

Barcelona-tips

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Because I was living in 2011 for 3 month in my favourite city Barcelona, I am asked so many times for Barcelona Tips…
So here we go:

Concerts

Always have a look at THIS FORUM, it’s in catalan, but you can get the informations out of the postings and use your favorite translate website, it will help you too! Best online information for squat shows (but let me tell you: they start really really late… )
Estraperlo Club del Ritme, Club in Badalona (so it’s little bit outside of BCN) where you can watch many cool Bands (I saw Dickies, Dwarves and many more there), Isidre Nonell 9, Badalona, (Metro: L2 Badalona Pompeu Fabra, and walking, there is also some Bus stops, have a look online for more information) P.S. Badalona has a perfect beach - so go there during the day, swim drink some beer and get than to the concert
Sala Razzmatazz, Big concert location, Pamplona 88, 1er piso, 08018, Barcelona, (Metro: L1 Marina or L4 Bogatell)

Bars

Which Linux Version is running

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes you need to know, which Linux distro you are running, and especially, which version:

lsb_release -a

The answer will look like:

No LSB modules are available
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

No HDD space left for ubuntu update, make some space at /boot

Thu, 21 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

your hd is full, make space in /boot aaaa make a

cd /boot ls -la
so you see the `/boot` folder

now delete the stuff you don’t need anymore:

sudo aptitude remove linux-image-3.13.0-49-generic
sudo apt-get remove ...

(ls -la after deleting the linux kernel image)

Finding the biggest folders

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

If you have on a server a folder which is to big, and you want to know, which file is the reason for a problem, use du

du -m | sort -n | tail -n 10

for finding the 10 biggest folders.
(repeat this step in the biggest folder again to find the “problem folders”)

npm throws error /usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory

Fri, 09 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

If the nodejs server was installed via the package manager, it is not in:
/usr/bin/env/node,
it is in:
/usr/bin/env/nodejs

To solve this problem, you should set a symlink

ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

credits for this hint: digitalmediums at github

Use 2 Skype accounts on Linux

Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

If you have more than one Skype account (to seperate private and business) and you want to use them simultaneous, you have to:

press ALT + F2

enter: skype --secondary

Credits: gvscroder at skype forum