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  • Ubuntu 25.10 Remote Desktop with Fixed Password and Full Screen Window (VNC alternative)

    Stop: This doesn’t work. Unfortunately on further testing, the keyring doesn’t unlock without interacting via monitor/keyboard.


    This feels unnecessarily difficult. While ideally you interact most servers via CLI the reality is there will be some visual interaction needed for some systms and currently Ubuntu 25.10 does not seem to have easy headless management with x11 gone. Sure you might be able to rip out the keyring but that doesn’t feel good. Annoying. Will keep testing and following up.


    Starting from a reinstall of Ubuntu 25.10 on the N100 Mini PC, more on this interesting little PC later, the script that resets the password works a treat though I don’t have it running automatically.

    There are 2 options in 25.10 Remote Desktop and Remote Login. Now it seems like Remote Login should be what we need, it’s password does not change, but as of this post that login is not working for me whether I have it enabled with Remote Desktop or not. Will dig into that and see if there’s a bug report already.

    Remote Desktop Password Reset Script

    Again credit to LarkinZero for the password updating script. For now, running this on connect. This system will be mobile so having a secure password is a good idea. Just running this via SSH works well.

    #!/bin/bash
    
    SCHEMA="org.gnome.RemoteDesktop.RdpCredentials"
    LABEL="GNOME Remote Desktop RDP credentials"
    USERNAME="abc"
    PASSWORD="123456"
    EXPECTED_VALUE="{'username': <'$USERNAME'>, 'password': <'$PASSWORD'>}"
    
    echo "Step 1: Clearing old credentials..."
    secret-tool clear xdg:schema "$SCHEMA"
    
    echo "Step 2: Storing new credentials..."
    echo -n "$EXPECTED_VALUE" | secret-tool store --label="$LABEL" xdg:schema "$SCHEMA"
    
    echo "Step 3: Verifying stored credentials..."
    RESULT=$(secret-tool lookup xdg:schema "$SCHEMA")
    
    if [ "$RESULT" == "$EXPECTED_VALUE" ]; then
        echo "Success: Stored credentials match the expected value."
        exit 0
    else
        echo "Error: Stored credentials do not match the expected value."
        exit 1
    fi

    Full Screen

    At first, I over-complicated this thinking there needed to be virtual monitor or a dummy plug but really, one setting.

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.remote-desktop.rdp screen-share-mode extend

    Not sure why that’s not set out-of-the-box. Without that setting, the RDP connects, is blank, and disconnects. With that setting, all works as expected.

    Updated and Retried on 25.10 11/21/25

  • Hide the TimeMachine SMB to avoid more permissions issues

    Pointing out a key element in the SMB code posted before.

    [smb-name-for-timemachine]
      ...
      valid users = timemachinename00, timemachinename01
      ...

    For the valid users, be sure to:

    1. Create SMB users for each separate system.
    2. Don’t include wider SMB users. If you accidentally click into that share in Finder on OSX, you’ll end up messing up the permissions for any other SMB you have loaded.
    3. If you change users or shares you’ll probably have to delete the old timemachine file and start again. You might be able to fix permissions but probably not worth going down that path.

    So far the setup is working (along with so many other services from the same N150 powered Ubuntu) really well and well worth the 2-3 hours of setup and refining times.

    Updated and Retried with Ubuntu 25.04 and MacOS Tahoe 26.0.1: 11/19/25

  • RPi 4, Lineage OS, and Victron Connect for Remote Control

    RPi 4, Lineage OS, and Victron Connect for Remote Control

    Recently had a problem with a Victron Controller and voltage spikes and it would have been really helpful to either alter the voltage settings or just disable the charge controller remotely for a temporary fix. Now, Home Assistant works as a monitor perfectly but, so far as I know, you can’t alter values via HA. (Will look into that more.)

    Turns out Lineage OS, via KonstaKangs excellent page, works a treat. You do need GApps to install repos like Litime’s battery monitoring, but the Victron Connect APK is available from their site.

    The setup isn’t perfect. The VNC connection is a little temperamental, the Victron App doesn’t display right, so on. But Bluetooth works and connects for all apps.

    Definitely will refine and revisit but great to have the backup connection to controllers and batteries.

    Updated and Retried on LineageOS 23 11/18/25

  • Kasa/Tapo Issues with Home Assistant (and in general)

    Kasa and/or Tapo are not showing devices in Home Assistant and sometimes they aren’t staying connected to the iOS apps.

    So far Kasa devices have stayed out of the way and occasionally being able to start the switches remotely is helpful. With Home Assistant I’ve started to set timing to the switches for waking up or turning off lights but one of the power strips just refuses to authenticate in Home Assistant. (Even though other items in the same account auth?)

    At the moment don’t have an answer. Tried the Tapo app, which is kinda worse than the Kasa app, tried removing and readding, all the standard items.

    Updated 2025/11/13

  • MacOS and “unreleased” disk space weirdness

    MacOS and “unreleased” disk space weirdness

    Mac Studio with 512 GB of space and yet somehow almost 300 GB was unaccounted for? Often I leave the system running (it sips power at idle and is mostly solar powered) and mostly don’t install apps just run various terminal and text apps, nothing terribly heavy. Well, maybe local AI plays a part? Also apparently Time Machine can sometimes unnecessarily lock up space. There are a few variables to pin down here. Time Machine, Xcode, half dozen Terminal windows, Affinity? There are few different processes that could be causing a disk leak? (As opposed to a memory leak.)

    Anyway, needs some testing but for now if you have a MacOS drive that has a huge disparity in free space, even using a breakdown app like Disk Inventory X, restart or shutdown and startup. It will take a moment after restarting for the drive to clear out but that should do the trick.

    Updated and Retried on MacOS 26.0.1 11/12/25

  • MemTest PSA, Run MemTest before NAS OS Setup

    Pretty much the title. TrueNAS installed, ran, and mostly worked on RAM that threw so many errors in MemTest I’m surprised the system posted at all. TrueNAS, being ZFS based, uses RAM heavily for caching, reading, and writing so data was getting corrupted in weird ways with confusing errors. What made it hard to pin down was that the system ran, created pools, and overall worked unexpectedly well where another OS probably would have failing during install; in a way, the simplicity of TrueNAS hid hardware instability. The errors only showed up when starting to work with data.

    Even if you experience issues with a long running, otherwise issue free system, memtest as a first troubleshooting step. RAM can go bad over time (though that happens less often.)

    Updated 2025/11/11