Filezilla TLS errors

When using Filezilla on Linux Mint at work, connecting to an FTP server, after logging in, I get some errors like the following:

Command: LIST
Response: 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection.
Error: GnuTLS error -110: The TLS connection was non-properly terminated.

Some file transfers go through, while some get 550 errors - when I close Filezilla and open it again, the transfer succeeds.

 

Later, when using Windows and downloading using a domestic BSNL fiber line, there were no errors.

 

According to this set of posts on serverfault, it may have been due to either the firewall gateway blocking passive mode FTP or it may have been something to do with implicit/explicit TLS.

methods to download from Amazon S3 bucket (if we own/manage the bucket)

Some ways are mentioned at 

https://bobbyhadz.com/blog/aws-s3-download-folder

 

Cyberduck can provide a UI for Windows or Mac - "Cyberduck is a libre server and cloud storage browser for Mac and Windows with support for FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure & OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox."

workflow_dispatch only from default branch

I like to set Github Actions to only run when manually triggered, that is, using workflow_dispatch

As that page says,  "To trigger the workflow_dispatch event, your workflow must be in the default branch."

But we can change the default branch - like we may want to do for forks etc - Repository --> Settings --> Default branch (choose by clicking the "choose another branch" button which has two opposing arrows as an icon)

comparing the contents of two directories on Windows

 How to Compare Two Folders on Windows 11 and 10 (howtogeek.com)

robocopy "C:\first" "C:\second" /L /NJH /NJS /NP /NS

reminder to take a break - using cron

Wanted to create a pop-up message or reminder (and was later requested an audio reminder) for N to take periodic breaks from the computer. Since his usage was mostly passive, workrave did not work for this purpose - workrave's timer only progresses when the keyboard or mouse are active.

 Looking for solutions, reminder apps on Mint/Ubuntu seemed to have only flatpak versions which I did not want to install.

Finally thought it would be simpler to use cron.

But, to pop up messages on the screen with cron, we need some special handling.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/307772/pop-up-a-message-on-the-gui-from-cron
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/111188/using-notify-send-with-cron

And for audio, we would need another line to be added to the script. Working script - 

#!/bin/bash
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/1000/bus
export DISPLAY=:0
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000
# this last line above is for sound to work
notify-send -u critical "this is the reminder to take a walk"
# the -u critical is supposed to show over full screen apps, but doesn't always work
/usr/bin/mpg123 /home/username/Downloads/Walk.mp3 > /dev/null 2>&1

For help with setting up cron, cron.help is useful. Eg.

*/30 * * * * /home/username/walkremind.sh

for every half an hour.

For getting the environment variables' values, used

printenv

And for installing notify-send, 

sudo apt install libnotify-bin

using a laptop as a secondary monitor using Miracast

Apparently Windows now has built-in support for Miracast, so we can use a Windows laptop as a secondary display for a Windows desktop, for example.

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/use-laptop-as-monitor-for-another-pc
that is if both run Windows.

Miracast client for Linux - miraclecast - to use as sink,
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1254998/how-do-i-launch-miraclecast-after-installation

https://alternativeto.net/software/miraclecast/
https://letsview.com/screen-mirroring
(but not on linux)

https://github.com/albfan/miraclecast

 

RAM usage - Edge and Firefox browsers on Linux Mint

I've installed 'Graphical Hardware monitor' to show RAM, Disk read and Disk write on the panel of the old Macbook Pro running Linux, which has only 4 GB of RAM including VRAM. Curious to see RAM usage, tried opening Gmail + GDrive + a spreadsheet on Firefox and Edge browsers separately. With Firefox, total RAM used was 1.92 GB. With Edge, it was 1.63 GB. So, Firefox was using around 300 MB more than Edge in this (not too rigourous) test.

image sequence support for OCVWarp

Prompted by this feature-request for command-line support, OCVWarp version 4.00 now has basic support for image sequences, too. The documentation in the wiki has been updated with caveats. And here is a link to all posts about OCVWarp.

PS. And in December, a test build with MacOS X succeeded on github actions using homebrew to install OpenCV.

using blender online

As noted at https://digitalarthub.net/3d/how-to-use-blender-online-without-downloading/

"Do note that most of these apps run outdated versions of Blender and they’re pretty laggy",

• OffiDocs (Requires no account) - seems to be ver. 2.8 or so.
  
• Turbo.net (Requires account)
• RollApp (Requires account)

Since Blender doesn't run any more on the old Macbook running Linux - https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/ - I can use the online versions for quick screenshots and so on.

 

Windows defender finding a Trojan in build from Github actions - false positive

Artifacts from some builds of OCVWarp were being flagged by Windows Defender as having a trojan, Wacatac. As mentioned in this page, https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3/issues/15309 this is probably a false alarm, as some other builds with minimal changes were not flagged. So, tried Add an exclusion to Windows Security - Microsoft Support - that worked well. 

Start --> Settings --> Privacy & security --> Virus & threat protection -->  Manage settings --> Exclusions --> Add or remove exclusions.

shifting a blogger blog to Google Analytics 4

There was an email from Google, "All Universal Analytics services cease to function starting July 1, 2024"

Googling "use analytics with blogger", found this support article - and found that this blog was not automatically transferred from the earlier Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4. Copy-pasted the "Measurement ID" as mentioned in that support article, finding the "Measurement ID" via this article. Now let's wait for a couple of days and see if it works.