Daniel Lange's blog

Installing a laptop with the shiny new Debian Bookworm release finds a few interesting things broken that I probably had fixed in the past already on the old laptop.

One, that was increadibly unintuitive to fix, was lots of applications (like xfce4-terminal or Telegram) opening links in Chromium despite Firefox being set as the preferred webbrowser everywhere.

update-alternatives --config x-www-browser was pointing at Firefox already, of course.
The Xfce4 preferred application from settings was Firefox, of course.
xdg-mime query default text/html delivered firefox-esr.desktop, of course.

Still nearly every link opens in ███████ Chromium...

As usually the answer is out there. In this case in a xfce4-terminal bug report from 2015.

The friendly "runkharr" has debugged the issue and provides the fix as well. As usually, all very easy once you know where to look. And why to hate GTK again a bit more:

The GTK function gtk_show_uri() uses glib's g_app_info_launch_default_for_uri() and that - of course - cannot respect the usual mimetype setting.

So quoting "runkharr" verbatim:

1. Create a file `exo-launch.desktop´ in your `~/.local/share/applications´ directory with something like the following content:

    [Desktop Entry]
    Name=Exo Launcher
    Type=Application
    Icon=gtk-open
    Categories=Desktop;
    Comment=A try to force 'xfce4-terminal' to use the preferred application(s)
    GenericName=Exo Launcher
    Exec=exo-open %u
    MimeType=text/html;application/xhtml+xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;application/x-mimearchive;
    Terminal=false
    OnlyShowIn=XFCE;

2. Create (if not already existing) a local `defaults.list´ file, again in your `~/.local/share/applications´ directory. This file must start with a "group header" of

    [Default Applications]

3. Insert the following three lines somewhere below this `[Default Applications]´ group header [..]:

    x-scheme-handler/http=exo-launch.desktop;
    x-scheme-handler/https=exo-launch.desktop;
    x-scheme-handler/ftp=exo-launch.desktop;

And ... links open in Firefox again. Thank you "runkharr"!

The company got me a Chromebook for times when I want to ignore email and not get dragged into code reviews but still be available on IRC and chat. Nifty devices at great price points. I really like them.

These things are meant to be very consumer-style end-user devices. You log in with your Google account and everything works. Until it doesn't.

Just setting it up caused the first issue:

I was always thrown back to a black screen and then another login-screen despite having successfully logged in initially to create the "owner" user of the Chromebook. No error message, not useful UI feedback. Just logging in again and again and again.

The issue is ... not having a GMail account associated with my Google account. Duh! So add a GMail.com address as the primary to your Google account and the initial setup completes. Of course you cannot delete that GMail.com association again because the owner user is linked to the email and not the account. Well, you can delete it but then you cannot configure "owner" items of your Chromebook any more. Great job, Google. Not. Identity management 101 fail.

Kudos to Anurag Chawake for blogging about the issue. The Google support forum thead claims this is solved now. But it didn't work for me, so this may be needing to trickle down through ChromeOS releases or be deployed on more Google infra. Or whatever. We can't tell from outside the Googleplex as - of course - "Rebecca" sheds no light on what the identified "root cause" was:

Once I was able to login to the new Chromebook all worked fine until I started to use ssh sessions. These always hung for 30 seconds to 10 minutes and then resumed with lots of packets lost in between and the last minute or so coming in from buffering in a burst.

This was easy to see in ping as well. The connection essentially dropped dead while the WiFi icon was continuing to show full signal strength. The logs did not show anything useful. These are really hard to access on ChromeOS (JSON format and no useful UI on the Chromebook itself, Google provides a viewer on Google Apps Toolbox but that requires uploading the logs). Better than no logs at all but not really nice.

The ChromeOS bug tracker and its Google corporate counterpart are also not useful at this time.

For reference:
Google ... Device users randomly disconnect from Wi-Fi network
Chromium ... Device users randomly disconnect from Wi-Fi network
Google ... Constant connect and disconnect from WiFi source post-update
Chromium ... Constant connect and disconnect from WiFi source post-update

Playing around with the device on the network showed that it reduced sending power beyond being able to reach the access point any more. This is why disconnecting and re-connecting the WiFi fixes the issue for a few minutes, typically.

Still, there is a better way:

In crosh (the ChromeOS shell available when pressing Alt+Ctrl+T) type:

wifi_power_save disable

This unfortunately only lasts until the next reboot but it does persist over suspend cycles (aka closing the lid).

Firefox on Linux can develop the habit to (rather randomly) ask again and again to be made the default browser. E.g. when started from Thunderbird by clicking a link it asks but when starting from a shell all is fine.

The reason to this is often two (or more) .desktop entries competing with each other.

So, walkthrough: (GOTO 10 in case you are sure to have all the basics right)

should both show firefox for you. If not

the entry to fix the preference on /usr/bin/firefox.

Check (where available)

that the "Internet Browser" is "Firefox".

Check (where available)

that anything containing "html" points to Firefox (or is left at a non-user set default).

Check (where available)

that you get firefox.desktop. If not run

If you are running Gnome, check

and the same for https.

LABEL 10:

Run

and remove all entries that contain something like userapp-Firefox-<random>.desktop.

Run

and delete these files or move them away.

Done.

Once you have it working again consider disabling the option for Firefox to check whether it is the default browser. Because it will otherwise create those pesky userapp-Firefox-<random>.desktop files again.

Configuring Linux is easy, innit?

The key on my girlfriend's MINI had to be replaced as the remote control parts of it decided to cease functioning.

The key is an interesting piece of engineering as it communicates with the car wirelessly, charges via electromagnetic induction and has a standard key quite elegantly hidden inside.

When the replacement key arrived it was already bruised on the chrome ring. So I went "duh, another two weeks wait on the next key" but the dealer just smiled, removed the chrome ring and replaced it with a new one.

Playing around with the key it had not occurred to me that the (quite easily scratched and bruised) chrome ring can simply be replaced.

So I figured, I'd document it: Using (strong enough) fingernails or a plastic or wooden spatula you can carefully remove the chrome ring from you MINI key and replace / refurbish / re-paint it. Work from one side. Push up as the chrome ring is open only on one side. There are four 8mm wide notches at 55° measured from the longitudinal axes of the key below the chrome ring. If you get your spatula locked in there you can easily leverage the chrome ring off the black plastic body of the key. Before you break things ask somebody with more manual skill to help you or pay a visit to your car dealer's spare parts desk.

The chrome ring as a spare part should be somewhat affordable as well. But I think being able to grind the ring and paint it matching the color of your MINI is a much cooler option. Please leave a comment / send a picture if you do this.

The engineer in me demanded to take the broken key apart. The inner shell is quite sturdy and the halves are tightly molded into each other, so removing the electronics will quite likely break the thing. Don't do it. But my girlfriend's was broken already, so this is what it looks inside.