Bradford Morgan White

Linux Kernel Huge Config for 7.1

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 15:12:15 -0400

As usual, I have another kernel configuration that has no need for bootloader, for an initrd, or anything like that. It's a massive kernel, but it works for me on all of my machines. cd /usr/src wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v7.x/li

Linux Kernel Huge Config for 6.18.5

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:12:15 -0500

Zero to Hosted, Part 3

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 15:12:15 -0500

So, by now, if you've followed Part 1 and Part 2, you should have a website that is

Zero to Hosted, Part 2

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 15:12:15 -0500

In Part 1, we looked at just getting a site up on a local network. How do you get the site online? First, you need a domain name. There are plenty of registrars from who

Zero to Hosted, Part 1

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 15:12:15 -0500

Getting a website online isn't difficult, and it doesn't require much. What you need: - a computer - a Linux/UNIX operating system - a webserver - HTML files - a language if you want interaction To get going, on say a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian, you ca

Huge Kernel 6.17.x

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 15:12:15 -0500

I have been neglectful in posting here as life and ARF have gotten in the way. I do plan to have a script available soon that should automate this process. Yet, I promised an up to date huge kernel, and one is finally here. cd /usr/src wget http

Coding with a Local AI Model

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:12:15 -0400

First, a confession. Ever since parting out my Threadripper 1950X system during the Covid times, I've been switching machines at a fast rate. Largely, I was completely unsatisfied with the performance and capabilities of the subsequent machines, and I lik

A Small Update

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 15:12:15 -0400

For the curious, I know that I haven't published a huge kernel config for 6.14, but one will come. Additionally, I am working on a Zero to Hosted series that will cover all the details of selfhosting that you never really cared to learn about. Absurd ha

Linux Kernel 6.13 Huge Config

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 15:12:15 -0500

Linux Kernel 6.13 has hit rc2. I now have a config available for those wanting a huge kernel that supports all the things. cd /usr/src wget https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/t/linux-6.13-rc2.tar.gz tar xf linux-6.13-rc2.tar.gz && rm -fv linux-6.

Linux Kernel 6.12 Huge Config

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 15:12:15 -0400

Linux Kernel 6.12 is on the verge of release having just hit RC3. As usual, I have new huge style configuration available. cd /usr/src wget https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/t/linux-6.12-rc3.tar.gz tar xf linux-6.12-rc3.tar.gz && rm -fv linux-

Linux Kernel 6.11, Huge Config

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 15:12:15 -0400

In Slackware Current, the team has removed the huge kernel. That's fine, but I have not given up on that style of kernel. If you want to recreate that config for yourself, here's how. Create a root shell session and change directory to /usr/src. Then,

A Notepad in a Browser Tab

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 15:12:15 -0400

For some reason, I've always really enjoyed having a tiny non-persistent scratchpad in a browser tab. Just seems useful. This is despite having a clipboard tool, text editors, and a bunch of other tools available in KDE at all times. This is an easy thing

Creating a Linux VM in HyperV

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 15:12:15 -0500

While I typically prefer to run Linux, I do find myself needing to run Windows on occasion, and while WSL is great, it often isn't entirely adequate. In such situations, Microsoft's Hyper-V is available. To install Hyper-V, you need only go to _Contro

Running an LLM locally

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:12:15 -0500

So, if you want to run an LLM locally for whatever reason, it's not too hard to do. Essentially, you first need to grab Llama.cpp, compile it, then grab a model (and possibly convert it), and then run it. Before starting, make sure you have a C/C++ compil

How to Block LLM bots

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 15:12:15 -0500

With all of the various LLMs and LLM-using-services springing up all over the web without any regard at all to copyright, morality, or consent, I wanted to find a way of blocking these things from using any of my content. Normally, we would use `robots.tx

Setting Up a Debian Portainer Server

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 15:12:15 -0400

Recently I had cause to setup two Debian 12 servers on AMD EPYC. Initially, I was reaching for Slackware as I always do. Ultimately, I chose Debian. This was due to a concern for the next engineer who will one day take my place. Debian is nearly universal

New Releases

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 15:12:15 -0400

I have recently worked on some of my old software, and there are new versions of both WPM and BashBlog. WPM Git BashBlog Git WPM was primarily a bugfix release, but the def

Kernel 6.5

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 15:12:15 -0400

It will come as little surprise to long time readers of either of my sites that I use Slackware. Currently, I am running Slackware64 15, and I have been on and off since its release. I recently decided to try the PF kernel with version 6.5 and it seems to

An Introduction to Linux

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 15:12:15 -0500

In the 1990s, Linux was available on store shelves in big boxes. These were complete with thick manuals covering a wide variety of the software included in a given Linux distribution. After the dot com bust, this practice largely stopped. Many Linux distr

Cool News

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 15:12:15 -0500

There's a new fab company! Sam Zeloof is a rather amazing guy. At 17, he built a small fab in his parents’ garage. This resulted in the first (that anyone is aware of) homemade lithographically fabricated microchip, the Z1, in 2018. A follow up chip, the

Vaultwarden on an RPi

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 15:12:15 -0400

So, there are plenty of reasons to self-host your password manager, and very few reasons not to do so. In my own case, there were essentially zero reasons not to run my own password manager as I had the hardware available, and I have a domain over at Clou

KDE3 on Slackware 15

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 15:12:15 -0400

Slackware 7, in the second half of 1999, shipped with KDE1. For KDE’s part, KDE 1 was released in July of 1998. The UNIX landscape at this time was still largely proprietary, and CDE was dominant. Linux is, and has been from day one, a mix of different so

An Introduction to GNU Screen

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 15:12:15 -0400

Terminal multiplexers allow you to have multiple fake TTYs on a single TTY. This is like a window manager for the UNIX/Linux shell. In my case, the shell is bash, and most of the applications I actually use are applications for the CUI (character user

RISC-V Toolchain for M1 Macintosh

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 15:12:15 -0400

In the Spring of 2017, I built a very impressive workstation that saw active use until 2022. This machine was a Ryzen ThreadRipper 1950X (16 cores, 32 threads), 32GB of DDR4 RAM, a Vega 64 GPU, 500GB NVMe SSD (later another 1TB was added), 802.11 AC W

Review of the ClockworkPi DevTerm R01

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 15:12:15 -0400

To most people, the thought of a small slab with an under-powered CPU, limited RAM, no dedicated GPU, abnormal keyboard layout, slow storage, zero USB 3, and a small ultra-wide display is horrifying. Who would want such a computer? For sure, it’s a strang

Hosting @ 127.0.0.1 with Argo Tunnels

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 15:12:15 -0400

I have in the past covered both setting up and hosting WordPress on your own, and I have covered hosting from home. Now, let's do something a little more interesting. Hosting at home can be a less than pleasing experience. You may need a DynDNS service. Y

The Coming Crisis in Home Computers

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 15:12:15 -0400

On June 19th of 1983, the New York Times ran an article by this title. The article opened with a bit about Texas Instrusment

DevTerm R-01

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:12:15 -0400

So, for those who are not aware, ClockworkPi has been making a retro-styled mobile computer. It will remind older readers of the TRS-80 100 and other similar machines. It even has an expansion port to which a small thermal printer attaches. The DevTerm ha

Setting up a blog at home

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 15:12:15 -0500

So, you have a Raspberry Pi or an extra computer, and you're thinking you'd like to setup a blog on it. Then you realize, that your broadband connection may not have a static IP address. It's okay. You can do it all. It is important to note that while you

Truly Modular Computing

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:12:15 -0500

A very interesting project, of which until today I'd had no prior knowledge, released a status update on the 8th. What is shown is a small SBC in a casing with some custom circuitry. The back of this casing has magnetic connectors allowing the attachment

Apple is getting silly

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 15:12:15 -0500

There was a time where Apple was truly ahead of the pack in almost everyway. They had a state of the art UNIX operating system, awesome PPC chips, fresh new product designs, and they were inventing new markets. Those days are dead. Apple has an amazing ch

Apple ID is Complete Garbage

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:12:15 -0500

I have been using Apple products a long time. Long enough that my Apple ID didn't actually start that way, and was originally a MobileMe account. I did, however, have an issue with one Apple ID where the required second email address was inaccessible and

Scalable on Bare Metal?

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 15:12:15 -0400

So, how do you actually setup a web service that isn't bound by the performance of single machine? Like... how do you really do it? Not with docker, not with the cloud, not with automation. How do you actually setup a webserver? It starts with knowing wha

LetsEncrypt Root Certificate

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 15:12:15 -0400

If you're currently using any Ubuntu 16.04 machines, you shouldn't be, but that aside you may not be able to curl a good number of servers around the world due to SSL/TLS failures. This is due to [LetsEncrypt's root certificate having expired](https://com

Of Ephemera and Nostalgia

Sat, 25 Sep 2021 15:12:15 -0400

When I was a kid, I played outside often. Eventually, this meant that I would ride my bike all over the city. The exceptions were rainy days. On rainy days, I would build little boats out of popsicle sticks and tin foil, and I would "sail" them down the g

Apple Sucks

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 15:12:15 -0400

Two days ago the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said this in regards to Apple: "End-to-end encrypted messaging presents a big challenge to public safety, and this is not just

The Confession of an Older Technologist

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 15:12:15 -0400

I know that every young hot head out there thinks himself/herself a genius. He/she thinks that the older people don't know anything. The older people are out of touch. The older people just don't like change. I know this because I once thought the exact s

Slackware 15 Beta

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 15:12:15 -0400

Patrick Volkerding announced the following yesterday: _I'm going to go ahead and call this a beta even though there's still no fix for the illegal instruction issue with 32-bit MariaDB. But there should be soon. No build regressions noted with the officia

Slackware 15 Alpha

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 15:12:15 -0500

Two days ago, alienbob (Eric Hameleers) announced the release of Slackware 15 Alpha after nearly 5 years since Slackware 14.2. It's a big big day. The most recent upgrade was to glibc-2.33 which then required a rebuild of all of the packages to be include

The First PC

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 15:12:15 -0500

What is a personal computer? When we say that compound word, we all know what we mean. They are multipurpose general computing devices that are generally cheap enough for people to realistically afford to purchase, they are usually pre-assembled by a comp

CentOS is Dead

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 15:12:15 -0500

In 2004, the CentOS project started. The idea of the distribution was to be binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This worked well for quite sometime. The Linux community was able to offer up a stable and useful distribution that rivaled corpor

Chips and Soda

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 15:12:15 -0500

_There's been a new Apple CPU, new Intel and AMD CPUs, and more in the months since I wrote this article. There's now evidence that I was very wrong. Apple's newest A series CPU (frpm which the M1 was built) is not much faster than its predecessor in any

Apple and the M1

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 15:12:15 -0500

Apple has announced the use of its own ARM processors and its own GPU architecture in the new Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and Mac Mini. Apple also stated its intent to use future iterations of this technology in all of its other Macintosh models. The M1 (t

Multi-account Mutt

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 15:12:15 -0500

Mutt is a mail user agent. It's an old one. It doesn't have a GUI. The configuration of Mutt is the thing that normall turns people off about it. This is completely understandable. If you are not radically familiar with email in general, many of the optio

Slackware Current

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 15:12:15 -0400

Slackware Current usage isn't really explained anywhere, but it's somewhat necessary if you have hardware with which Slackware 14.2 doesn't work. Given that most hardware made within the last year or two isn't going to work much on 14.2, I will attempt to

MySQL and its 'open_files_limit'

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 15:12:16 -0400

So, very often, I come across a super annoying aspect of MySQL on so-called "modern" Linux (so-called because systemd doesn't render something suddenly up to date) where MySQL will not obey configuration variables set in its cnf file. The most annoying of

Open Source Fatigue

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:12:16 -0400

Traditional models of software development are largely dead. Even Microsoft no longer makes actual releases of software products. Instead, there is just release churn. Software is released, the release breaks a bunch of stuff, changes the behavior of the

Waste and Wasters Who Make It

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 15:12:16 -0400

There's a rather large issue in the technology industry that no one within the industry seems to care to talk about or to admit exists. The lone voices have been the grey beards who are largely ignored with “okay boomer” or similar epithets whether or not

Setup WordPress Yourself

Mon, 04 May 2020 15:12:16 -0400

This article assumes the reader has some basic familiarity with the Linux operating system, and it assumes that either Linux or Windows with WSL is in use on the reader's computer. These days, everything is online. If you want to create your own site, a

Linux Kernel 4.19

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 15:12:16 -0500

For those individuals using Linux distributions that ship with older kernels, they may find themselves needing a newer kernel for hardware support, and not having a package available. Never fear. In this document, I will be using 4.19.21, but you will wan

An Introduction to C, XIII

Sun, 23 Aug 2015 15:12:16 -0400

We've covered a lot of ground with C so far. The big problem here is that we've not yet covered one of the most common tasks on a UNIX system. We have not covered files. So, let's look at files. For file I/O in C, you need a file pointer. We declare a fi

An Introduction to C, XII

Sun, 05 Jul 2015 15:12:16 -0400

So, in this part of the C Intro, I would like to say a bit about memory management. VARIABLES In C, there are really only two ways that you can allocate memory. The first and most common way is by declaring a variable. The second way is to explicitly

An Introduction to C, XI

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 15:12:16 -0400

Some time has passed since I last did anything with my C tutorial. This is largely due to work and having several different projects going at any one time (learning Chinese, developing a hobby OS, a gaming community, etc...). However, I felt that I ought

An Introduction to C, X

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:12:16 -0500

It's time for a cake walk. Here's an array of integers. int values[10]; int i; for (i = 0;i < 10;i++) { values[i] = 2 * (i + 2); printf("The value at i %d is %d\n", i, values[i]); } That's it. Floats and other data types work p

An Introduction to C, IX

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:12:16 -0400

In the last post, I briefly introduced arrays and strings. Let's look a little more closely. #include #include int main(void) { char name1[5] = "Ford"; char name2[4] = "Jim"; char name3[8] = ""; if

An Introduction to C, VIII

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:12:16 -0400

So far, we have already covered the use of the character data type, but what happens when you want to print more than one character to screen? This was strings are for. A string is a series of characters terminated as with a null character. That is, a str

An Introduction to C, VII

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:12:16 -0400

So far, I have thrown a lot of information at you very quickly. Let's recap with completely useless programs. The character variable type uses 8 bits of memory (one byte). This type is declared with the 'char' keyword. While the character type is used to

An Introduction to C, VI

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 15:12:16 -0400

Now for something odd. a = (x > 3 ? 2 : 10); The above means: "if x is greater than 3 then a is equal to 2, otherwise a is equal to 10. Written in a form with which you are already familiar, the above is exactly equivalent to the following: if (x

An Introduction to C, V

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:12:16 -0400

As you might imagine, a large series of conditional statements could get really tedious. Imagine a series of 20 if statements... and imagine typing that out. Very quickly, it would become very annoying. For this reason, C has the switch-break. switch

An Introduction to C, IV

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 15:12:16 -0400

Programs are a lot more useful if users can interact with them. It is equally useful to be able to perform specific operations depending upon what input is gained from said users. That's the topic for this entry. There are several methods that can be used

An Introduction to C, III

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 15:12:16 -0400

So, in this installment, let's talk about loops. So far, all you have had is sequences. Programs only consist of sequence, loop, selection, and data. Looking at it this way, you're nearly ready to call yourself a programmer. So, don't get discouraged. A l

An Introduction to C, II

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:12:16 -0400

Last time, we got into the absolute basics. This time, let's cover something more useful. A variable is like a letter in algebra. You can make it something other than what it appears to be, and this can be quite useful. Unlike algebra, a variable can be A

An Introduction to C, I

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:12:16 -0400

C is a computer programming language that was designed for the purpose of implementing system software. Today, it is still used for that task but is also used for implementing application software. C is insanely widely used. C is the bedrock of UNIX, Linu

An Introduction to Slackware Linux

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:12:16 -0400

People often look at Slackware with a certain amount of trepidation. It appears complicated, difficult, or tedious. If you ever felt like trying Slackware but didn't because of those fears, this is an article for you. I am going to cover installation ste

It's Not the End of the OS

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:12:16 -0400

In a recent article over at MyBroadband, Alastair Otter says that the end of the OS is nigh. I couldn't disagree more. His argument is that cloud applications along with browser innovations will replace our normal applications. He argues that cross platfo

An Introduction to Find

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:12:16 -0400

Learning find can seem daunting at first, but it is worth learning. There is no single more useful search tool for UNIX like systems. You could almost consider find a very primitive scripting language in itself as find can find the files you request and t

An Introduction to VIm

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:12:16 -0400

A long time ago, in a college far far away, some nerds were playing with UNIX. At that time, UNIX shipped with ed. Some rather clever programmers made a replacement for ed called em. Em became en. En became ex. Ex is Vi. Why is this important? Understandi

An Introduction to Mutt

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:12:16 -0500

It seems as though every time someone sees me at my desk reading my mail, they ask what it is I am doing. I tell them I am reading my mail, and they're shocked. They see me pull up image attachments, and office and all this, and they think I am some kind

Manual Backups with dd

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:12:16 -0400

There are several different ways to make backups of data for any operating system. In the "glory days" of UNIX people would usually write a cron job that would create a Tape ARchive of their system and write that TAR to a tape drive. Well, those days are

OpenSource Operating Systems

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:12:16 -0500

Well, I figured that I should take an opportunity to introduce a few opensource OSs that really haven't been in the lime light much. We all know about Linux and many of us also know about Darwin and BSD. Still some know about OpenSolaris. Which ever ones

Clouds Eventually Burst

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:12:16 -0500

So often lately, I hear of the cloud and the wonderful things it will do for the world. I increasingly hear that any software effort that is not directed toward the cloud is going to fail. So much, I hear that desktops and laptops are antiquated due to th

Building your own Slackware Distribution

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:12:16 -0400

Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and SuSE have system for making respins. Slackware's package manager has an easy to use makepkg script, and the installer is wickedly easy to customize to meet your needs. So, let's go through making a Slackware-based distribution.