RDP Fail

Remote Desktop in Linux remains elusive. I have tried time and again. I've tried a couple different servers, a couple different clients. I've tried tweaking the firewall rules, did chmod changes. And still nothing. The client prompts me for my login then it just gives up.

Now I'm unable to even smb to my tower. So I'll need to uninstall the firewall I installed per an RDB tutorial. This is all very frustrating. I understand security but this is all within my home network, surely it shouldn't be this difficult. I can SSH into the machine, not sure why I can't get RDP to work.

I'll post an update when I finally succeed.

Neon Arches of Chaos

What a roller coaster ride. I decided to try an Arch Linux install again, in a VirtualBox instance. I got close, but it still wasn't booting correctly. I think my Grub installation wasn't done correctly. But this got me wanting to update my laptop OS. It has been a while. I decided to run Mint with a KDE desktop installed.

I installed it but wasn't able to get to the Grub menu so my laptop kept freezing. I needed to do the Nvidia fix and it wouldn't let me so I was stuck.

On MSI machines (Maybe all machines, I'm not sure) the Shift key, held down after the logo, brings up the Grub menu. This wasn't working on my machine - I don't know why. I was able to hit F11 to get to the boot device selection list. I hit enter to launch my Mint system and immediately hit 'E' a bunch of times. It worked! It brought up the Grub editor. I made my changes and all was copacetic.

Until it wasn't.

I couldn't get the KDE desktop to install, and really wanted a clean start. So I decided to rebuild and just get used to XFCE. But I couldn't get into the Grub editor, not even with my F11 trick.

I decided to edit it via the live image. This was educational! I learned you have to mount certain system drives etc, install Grub and edit the .cfg. However I was doing something wrong, it never worked.

I decided to try KaOS. I grabbed an image and 'dd'd it onto my USB. Nope. It failed to install. I later read that its installer is somewhat unstable.

I did some more searching and came upon KDE neon. I decided to give it a try. It apparently is more up to date than Kubuntu. I downloaded it and installed it. To my surprise it ran without any issues! No need to do the NVDIA fix. I think I have a new favorite distro! So far I've had ZERO issues with it.

Your Python is Old

The other day I decided to update my version of Qutebrowser. I'm really loving it so far, so I wanted to take advantage of any bleeding edge changes to it. I was using apt to install it - mainly just because that's what I usually use. I got stuck on the Python requirements so downloaded a bunch of .debs attempting to get them all.

It was tedious but I was working my way through them. I hit a snag where one package didn't like the version I already had installed so I decided to uninstall my package. Bad. My terminal filled with notices that it was uninstalling core KDE apps. I knew I had just broken my system and sure enough.

I could have troubleshooted the issue, probably, but I just rebuilt it.

I tried installing the latest QB and had the same issue. So I hit IRC. It turns out LinuxMint has some old Python dependencies deep within the system. It was suggested I install QB using tox. The process was very painless, just a few console commands. I made a script to launch it and made a link to it in bin and I was golden.

I still love LinuxMint but beware of its Python issues.

SAMBA, You Sir Are a Scoundrel and a Cad

Ah so much fun.

So I have my desktop running Linux Mint. It has Two 2TB external USB drives on it. I use the internal HDD (1TB) as the master store. My phone backs up to it using SyncMe and my laptop backs up to it using cron. Then it backs up to the externals using cron. And once a week a full mirror is done to clean up any deletes etc. I do this once a week so I have time to save anything that might go away if needed.
Everything was like clockwork UNTIL I decided I should tighten my permissions a little. Maybe I should only allow read and right no nasty executing. Well that put an end to my backup/sync strategy. Everything is dead in the water. I can't connect to my main documents directory on any of my machines, even though I'm using the owner creds. Even when I said Oops and set my permissions back...  x_x
I've tried recreating the share, adding my named user, opening permissions up, recreating the share with a DIFFERENT name.
Nothing.

So much fun.