Friday, 1 May 2026

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Spent what time I had today continuing with setting up bde.lemis.com. I wanted to use it in the kitchen, which of course required changing the network configuration: lagg. Once again I have instructions from Google Gemini. Basically it entails loading the lagg.ko module, creating a device and setting a configuration. The twins write:

# Bring the physical ports up without IPs
ifconfig_em0="up"
wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA"

# Create the virtual failover interface
cloned_interfaces="lagg0"
ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport em0 laggport wlan0 DHCP"

Why DHCP? I know the address I want, so I set it. Start lagg. No more net. I cut off the branch I was sitting on. And since bde is dependent on the rest of the network for many files, it hung too.

Restart and set /etc/rc.conf.d/lagg:

cloned_interfaces="lagg0"
ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport em0 laggport wlan0 192.109.197.144

And it still hung. Looking locally, I had:

em0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=800020<JUMBO_MTU,HWSTATS>
        ether 6c:3b:e5:f3:fa:79
        inet 192.109.197.144 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.109.197.255
        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
        status: active
        nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
wlan0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=0
        ether 6c:3b:e5:f3:fa:79
        hwaddr 24:77:03:d1:7c:28
        inet 192.109.197.244 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.109.197.255
        groups: wlan
        ssid L3M15 channel 10 (2457 MHz 11g ht/40-) bssid f4:3e:61:48:6c:b2
        regdomain FCC country US authmode OPEN privacy OFF txpower 30
        bmiss 10 scanvalid 60 protmode CTS ampdulimit 64k ampdudensity 8
        -amsdutx amsdurx shortgi -stbc -ldpc -uapsd wme roaming MANUAL
        parent interface: iwn0
        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet MCS mode 11ng
        status: associated
        nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
lagg0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=0
        ether 6c:3b:e5:f3:fa:79
        hwaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
        inet 192.109.197.244 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.109.197.255
        laggproto failover lagghash l2,l3,l4
        laggport: em0 flags=5<MASTER,ACTIVE>
        laggport: wlan0 flags=0<>
        groups: lagg
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: active
        nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

Where did that 244 in the last address octet come from? It's in the DHCP range. To be investigated, along with the comment in the Gemini configuration that the IP address for the em0 interface should not be set. But there's time for that later.

The other thing that I needed to do with bde was to get camera and microphone to work. I've established that the camera itself works, but can I get it to cooperate with a web browser? Tried it with Zoom, which confirmed that it could see me (in better resolution than pcwview), and it could play a sound better than what I got from Radio Swiss Classic yesterday. But no microphone input. How many causes can there be for that? Where do I start looking? I don't know, but I know something about when to start looking: not before tomorrow.

Saturday, 2 May 2026

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KL Hokkien Mee for breakfast today. It's been nearly two months since I last cooked it, and I had to check some details. Strangely, I missed the broth that goes into the noodles, though the rest of the sauces and cornflour were as normal. And strangely I didn't miss the broth. It didn't even seem too thick. What is right?

Cooking breakfast involved bde.lemis.com for the recipe. Nothing world-shattering, but maybe that was related to the reason why I missed the broth in the KL Hokkien Mee. But it brought a couple of things home: FreeBSD still doesn't install all normal fonts needed for X, so things like 猪油渣 render incorrectly. Once again I'm going to have to use the Linux fonts.

And the other thing? I hate laptop keyboards. Yes, they're an order of magnitude better than mobile phone surfaces, but that's not saying very much.

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