Frederick Robinson

SNCF Error

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I tried to buy a ticket on and was presented with the following error:

“No retrieval options available for this journey. Seats on this train cannot be reserved. Select another journey.”

Which doesn’t really tell you anything. A bit more searching

{
  "title": "CART_NO_DELIVERY_MODE_AVAILABLE",
  "type": "/booking/no-delivery-mode-available",
  "behaviour": "UNRECOVERABLE",
  "details": "No retrieval options available for this journey. Seats on this train cannot be reserved. Select another journey.",
  "description": {
    "message": "No retrieval options available for this journey. Seats on this train cannot be reserved. Select another journey."
  },
  "cause": {
    "title": "Reservation error",
    "type": "/errors/reservation/reservation-error",
    "status": 400
  }
}

turns up this page: https://www.sncf-connect.com/en-be/help/eticket-not-offered

which is a bit more helpful:

if you have a few different journey legs included in your booking, it could be that the various ticket collection types might not be compatible with each other. in this case, we can offer you home delivery, which is the most common collection method for all carriers. depending on the date of your journey, however, sometimes the time frame for receiving your tickets may be too short, meaning it’s impossible to reserve your trip.

don’t panic! here are some tips ;)

you just need to make a separate booking for each section of your journey, and if the journey is eligible for an e-ticket, this option will be offered.

Migrating data to a new ZFS Pool

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I recently had to migrate my data to a new ZFS pool. There was lots of great info in this serverfault post. I’m writing this to bring it all together in one place for the next time I need to remember how to do this.

First, create a snapshot on the source pool, and send it to the new pool. You can leave your source pool online while the snapshot is being sent.

sudo zfs snapshot -r sourcepool@moving1

# Maybe do this next bit a screen. It can take a while.
sudo zfs send -R sourcepool@moving1 | mbuffer \
    | sudo zfs receive -F destpool

Since that step probably took a while, there are probably difference between the snapshot and what’s on your new pool. Take a new snapshot and send it. You can do an incremental send which should be much faster than the first send.

sudo zfs snapshot -r sourcepool@moving2

sudo zfs send -Ri sourcepool@moving1 sourcepool@moving2 | mbuffer \
    | sudo zfs receive -F destpool

Now, we’ll have some downtime. Stop everything that’s currently accessing the old pool. You can check what’s using your pool with:

sudo lsof | grep /my/mountpoint

Now that nothing is using the original pool we no longer have a moving target to copy over. Do one last snapshot and send.

sudo zfs snapshot -r sourcepool@moving3

sudo zfs send -Ri sourcepool@moving2 sourcepool@moving3 | mbuffer \
    | sudo zfs receive -F destpool

At this point, both pools should have exactly the same data. All that’s left is to mount the new pool where the old one was.

Before changing how things are mounted, you can double check your current mountpoint with.

sudo zfs get mountpoint sourcepool

Now, rearrange

zfs set mountpoint=/backup/mountpoint sourcepool
zfs set mountpoint=/original/mountpoint destpool

After you’re satisfied that everything worked, you can destroy the snapshots you used to migrate.

sudo zfs destroy destpool@moving1
sudo zfs destroy destpool@moving2
sudo zfs destroy destpool@moving3

Optionally, destroy the old pool.

sudo zfs destroy sourcepool

Previewing Jekyll on Chrome OS

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It’s nice to be able to preview how Jekyll will render my GitHub Pages site before merging a new post. There is a minor wrinkle in Chrome OS which means that the default Jekyll serve does not work.

At first I tired to install Jekyll deps as per the docs

sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential zlib1g-dev

Then I tried to install as root. The docs advise against this, but I don’t want go to the trouble of setting up a bunch of stuff in my .zshrc for ruby which I don’t plan to use except for Jekyll. When I tried to sudo gem install jekyll bundler I got the following error:

ERROR:  Error installing jekyll:
        jekyll-sass-converter requires Ruby version >= 2.4.0.
Successfully installed bundler-2.0.2
Parsing documentation for bundler-2.0.2
Done installing documentation for bundler after 28 seconds
1 gem installed

Fortunately, I noticed that there’s a version of Jekyll available via apt so a quick sudo apt install jekyll is all that’s required to install.

To run, use jekyll serve -P 4200. It defaults to trying to use port 4000 which is blocked by the default crostini port forwarding configuration. This reddit post has a more complete list of what ports work.

Installing Mizar

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Mizar is a system for formalizing mathematical proofs.

It can be downloaded here. The server with the binaries wasn’t up one of the times I tried to download it.

Nevertheless, I did eventually manage to get a copy with

FILE=mizar-8.1.09_5.57.1355-i386-linux.tar
wget -c http://mizar.uwb.edu.pl/~softadm/current/${FILE}

(it stalled a few times, thus the -c)

Extract and install with

tar xvf $FILE
sudo ./install.sh --default

Finally, verify that $PATH contains the install path and setup a MIZFILES var

echo $PATH | grep usr/local/bin
CONFIG=~/.zshrc
echo 'export MIZFILES=/usr/local/share/mizar' >> $CONFIG
source $CONFIG
echo $MIZFILES

After setup is complete you can verify your installation by checking the smallest legal proof

mkdir dict text
touch dict/my_mizar.voc
echo "environ\nbegin\n" > text/my_mizar.miz 
mizf text/my_mizar.miz 

If all goes well output should look like this

Make Environment, Mizar Ver. 8.1.09 (Linux/FPC)
Copyright (c) 1990-2019 Association of Mizar Users

-Vocabularies  [   1]
-Constructors  [   1]
-Requirements  [   1]
-Registrations [   1]
-Notations     [   1]

Verifier based on More Strict Mizar Processor, Mizar Ver. 8.1.09 (Linux/FPC)
Copyright (c) 1990-2019 Association of Mizar Users
Processing: text/my_mizar.miz

Parser   [   3]   0:00
MSM      [   2]   0:00
Analyzer   0:00
Checker  [   1]
Time of mizaring: 0:00

Google Fi with Google Voice

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Google Fi does some magical VOIP type things with your phone service, but it doesn’t play nice with Google Voice. You can’t have both Google Voice and Fi on the same Google account. (Here’s a Google Fi help article about the issue.) You also can’t forward your Google Voice number to a Fi number as you would with a normal carrier phone number. (I think there may be some workarounds for this, but don’t remember the specifics).

There are a few options:

Get Fi and transfer your Google Voice number to it

This is actually not a terrible option if you are going to use Fi long term as it has some of the nice features of Google Voice baked in. However, one of the things I like the most about Google Voice is the flexibility of being able to change plans which this option reduces. You can transfer your number back to Google Voice after leaving Fi, but it’s not the magical seamless process of not changing anything.

Get Fi on a different Google account with a different number

You can have two accounts on your phone and all the texting features of Google Voice will still work. To make phone calls you can use the Hangouts Dialer App to make them over data with your Google Voice number or use the native dialer to make them over non-data with your Fi number. This is a sort of ugly split-brain setup, but is fine especially if you are just using Fi short term for i.e. the amazing international coverage

Don’t use Fi at all. (This is the one I would choose.)

It’s actually not a super great plan apart from the international coverage. Plus all the hassle with Google Voice is not great.

You can find much better value/ $ plans. For instance I currently have the “AT&T Prepaid $50/month plan”. It’s actually $40/month if you sign up for auto pay and you get 8G, so as long as you use >2G and <8G/month it beats the Fi plan.

If you don’t think you’ll use that much data you can find MVNO plans that are “pay for what you use” in the same way as Fi, but for less. (“Ting” is the one that sticks in my head, but I haven’t really researched these plans. They tend to be relatively expensive per usage and only make sense if you think you won’t use much)

In general, check out r/NoContract for probably better phone plan recommendations.

ChromeOS Terminal Keybindings

Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

By default Alt - Backspace doesn’t work in ChromeOS terminal.

To fix, access the settings by hitting Control+Shift+P or use this link.

Then you can change the settings in the Keyboard section. The one to fix Alt+Backspace is Alt+Backspace is Meta-Backspace.

Python SQLite3 Versions

Tue, 09 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The version of sqlite you get when you do import sqlite3 in python is is determined by the version of libsqlite3 installed on your system, not the version of the binary.

To check what version of sqlite you are using you can check the sqlite_version string like this

user@penguin$ python3
Python 3.5.3 (default, Sep 27 2018, 17:25:39) 
[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sqlite3
>>> sqlite3.sqlite_version
'3.16.2'
>>> 

To upgrade to a more recent version in Debian Stretch it may be necessary to get the package from backports.

echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -t stretch-backports install "libsqlite3-dev"

Garuda Indonesia Fraud Email

Mon, 04 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Update: got seemingly Garuda-related fraud on this card a while after doing this

Just got the follwing email from GarudaVerification <GarudaVerification@garuda-indonesia.com>. It seems pretty sketchy but discussion on this facebook post seems to indicate that it is real.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please be informed that your transactions with Garuda Indonesia has been
confirmed. For fraud prevention purposes on Credit Card transaction, we would
like to validate your recent transaction with Garuda Indonesia by providing
information, as follow:

Passenger(s) name :
Route :
Date of Travel :
Cardholder name :

Please kindly provide only scanned/image of front side credit card used for
buying the ticket for validation purposes.

Please reply this email in 24 hours after received this email to secure your
flight.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Best Regards,
Verification Data Management
PT. GARUDA INDONESIA (Persero) Tbk
Management Building Garuda City 1st Floor, Soekarno-Hatta International
Airport, CGK 19120, Indonesia

Called Garuda in Indonesia at +622123519999. They confirmed that this is indeed a legitimate email.

Tor eBook of the Month Club

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Last Update: June 2017

Tor offers an eBook of the month club. In return for signing up for a moderate amount of (unsubscribable) spam they send you a DRM free ebook every month. They offer both .epub and .mobi formats. So far the books have been very good too.

Here’s the list so far:

Month	Year	Title	Author
July	2016	The Three-Body Problem	Cixin Liu
August	2016	The Just City	Jo Walton
September	2016	Gardens of the Moon	Steven Erikson
October	2016	Range of Ghosts	Elizabeth Bear
November	2016	Spin	Robert Charles Wilson
December	2016	The Towers of the Sunset	L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
January	2017	Off Armageddon Reef	David Weber
February	2017	The Bloodline Feud	Charles Stross
March	2017	Shadow & Claw	Gene Wolfe
April	2017	Deathless	Catherynne M. Valente
May	2017	A Fire Upon the Deep	Vernor Vinge
June	2017	Old Man’s War	John Scalzi
July	2017	Kushiel’s Dart	Jacqueline Carey

Retrieving Saved Wifi Passwords on ChromeOS

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I was trying to retrieve the stored passwords from my chromebook. I came across this blogpost but their instructions had a few unnecessary steps.

Here’s the ugly one-line version:

echo '(grep "Name=" /home/root/*/shill/shill.profile | cut -c 6- |'\
'sed "s/\(^.*$\)/id:   \1/" | nl && grep Passphrase /home/root/*/shill/shill.profile|'\
'tr "!-~" "P-~!-O" | cut -c 18-| sed "s/\(^.*$\)/pass: \1/" | nl ) | sort -n |'\
'sed "s/\(.*pass:.*\)/\1\n/"' | sudo sh

Just paste it into crosh shell. It should produce output like this:

id:   home
pass: mypassw0rd

id:   my_network
pass: xtrasecure!

id:   coffee_shop_wifi
pass: cleverPassw0rd