Play the pain away

0839

Most of the time I've had on the computer in the last few weeks has been spent playing through UFO again. It can be very entertaining, but it can also be quite tedious, hence the cheating to increase the pace of progress. Maybe I should try playing it completely vanilla again sometime.

 

I also had a playthrough of Dawn of War! Wine had no trouble running a copy of the collectors’\definitive\remastered\whatever version and it was great fun.

 

It did leave me a bit flat afterwards though, possibly because it wasn't really a challenge. I don't think I like being challenged, but the feeling after playing an easy game isn't very satisfying. I suspect I mainly play computer games to take my mind off the crushing awfulness of reality, and a boringly easy game is just enough of a distraction that my brain can stop its incessant thinking for a few hours. Crucially, the lack of challenge means there's no stress-inducement, so it's just a flat, nothing experience.

 

What to play next to keep the brain turned off…?

 

Oh yeah, Red Alert 2! Good old Rah 2.

 

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I suspect it'll run great. Wine is proving to be a truly fantastic program and means the transition to Linux is going very smoothly. Ok, sure, Memory Map was a busy, but that didn't work in Win1x either, so that's not a step backwards.

 

Soundtrack to this writing session: Bleach by Nirvana. They really blasted out of the blocks with that album.

On paying attention to pop-ups

1542

Dawn of War (I can’t be bothered with italics anymore) is slightly on hold… I can’t get my old copy to play nicely, so I’m looking around for another version.

 

…but I did stumble upon a copy of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness!! There’s a game I haven’t played in a long time, so it was a joy to find that it installed and ran easily through Wine. That should keep me going for a while.

 

Had a revelatory/amateurish moment this afternoon(using the Win11 telly computer). I was trying to copy a 11GB file onto a USB stick and Windows KEPT saying it was too large, despite it having 28GB of capacity. Well, I thought it was saying it was too large, but I wasn’t actually reading the error message, I was just parsing what I thought it said; when I eventually read it, I realised it was saying the file was too large for the file system. The stick was formatted to FAT32 (which still seems to be the default when formatting in Windows, even 11…) which can’t handle files that large. I reformatted to exFAT and it copied fine.

 

So, yeah, actually read the error messages I guess; sometimes they’re actually useful!

The whining is back while the winning in Wine is erstwhile.

1134
I don't remember the last time I woke up feeling this excited for a project! Unfortunately, other life things have interrupted working on it this morning, but soon…

Apart from excitement, I also realised that I need to temper my expectations slightly; sure, MM is working in Linux, but it will all be for nought if the most vital piece of the system doesn't work: the connection to the Garmin Geko 201.

I've been using the same GPS device for more than 20 years, and it has taken me on many adventures. When I first bought it, it used a serial cable to connect to the serial port that computers had in those days. Eventually I found a serial-to-USB cable made specifically for it (for the wonderfully-named company, GPSBITZ) which meant it could connect to many more devices.

…it wasn't totally USB though. The GPS still used a COM port, the number of which had to be correctly-selected in MM. This was achieved by looking up the serial device in Windows’s Device Manager, finding out the number of the COM port, and telling MM which number it was using (this needed doing each time because a different COM number would appear for each USB port, and I never seemed to plug the serial-to-USB cable into the same port on consecutive occasions).

It doesn’t seem to have a Device Manager, so I have no way of finding out the COM port number. Does Wine even have COM ports? 

1300
Still haven't found my way back to the computer; I want to get on with this this fascinating new project, but is part of me scared to continue with it, in case it all falls apart…?


1647
The fires of desire have been quenched; the excitement has been tempered; the (low) expectations have been met:
The Memory Map dream is over.

It runs in Wine, but, as feared, the GPS won’t talk to the computer.

BELIEVE ME when I say I went searching for a solution, and found several people who’d faced a similar scenario, but my ancient & frequent LInux nemesis then popped up: presumed knowledge. People write all these helpful forum posts about how to solve stuff, but every time, there’s something in them that I’m not familiar with, which necessitates a fresh search for the answer to that.


And then, guess what? Same again! Sometimes there will be multiple “possible” solutions, some of which are distro-dependent. Occasionally, I’ll stumble upon a useful post (like those yesterday) where people write the actual Terminal commands they used, but even those will often include a step featuring presumed knowledge. I don’t know how to do (whatever) in Linux, so back to searching…

This leads to a branching chain of searching and forum posts, which is a very easy thing to get lost in.

So, I gave up.

The T60 still works, and I have a Windows 7 installation on a harddrive I can slot into a T410 as a backup, so the situation isn’t critical.

It was a pipe-dream anyway; I was high on the exuberance of working out how to run MM in Linux.

1944
Let’s focus on the positives: Wacup runs in Linux with Wine! And, just for shizzles ‘n’ giggles, I put Winamp 5.666 in there too.

One oddity has arisen… To run Windows programs in Linux, the executable file (e.g. winamp.exe) needs to be right-clicked and opened-with Wine (after adding it to the context menu). Or, in the Wine configuration program, you can add individual .exes that should then, theoretically, run when the files are double-clicked in File Mangler.

This doesn’t seem to work today, i.e. double-clicking the .exes does nothing, but right-clicking and opening-with Wine works (maybe it was working yesterday…?) but this is where it gets weird: I added Wacup to Favourites, which makes the .exe appear on the Start menu. Clicking it there then works and the program runs. Lolwut.

Anyway, I’m going to take what wins I can from these two days. I have not one, but TWO non-rubbish music players working in Linux!

Time to try the games…?

2034
Wellllll, that didn’t go great… but I have learned something: xkill.

I tried to run UFO by right-clicking etc. and it launched a fullscreen program, but locked at just black. Wine popped up asking if I wanted to wait or close it, but neither button did anything.

Fine, I’ll just ctrl-alt-del.

Oh right.

I could alt-tab, but it wouldn’t shift the focus to those windows properly (black was still on top), and I couldn’t Win-arrow keys to move the Terminal to another monitor.

Some frantic googling later led to someone suggesting alt-F2 to bring up a command box (very handy) to run xkill, which allows you to click on an offending program to kill it right off. LUCKILY I have a second monitor on the go, which allowed this command box to appear. Without that monitor, I reckon it would’ve been a hard power-off.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=231314

2111
Quite a lot has happened in a very short amount of time!

In probably literally decades I’ve never really questioned why I was running UFO in Windows. Sure, whenever I tried to run it in DOSBox, it would error and say “This program cannot be run in DOS mode” (oh, remember ‘DOS mode’?? Such nostalgia for those weird transition years…) but I never thought to ask why a game that was thoroughly from the era of running games in DOS would say that. I’d just run it in Windows, with various fudges and the helpful readme.txt files I would leave for my future self to get me through.

Those fudges and wonderful readmes were of no use today; no previous experience had prepared me for trying to run a DOS program in Windows in Linux. The game ran, but it wasn’t happy; there were resolution and cropping issues which would have become very annoying.

I recently stumbled upon a cache of DOS games (hence the DOS-gaming of late) and thought maybe I’d find UFO in there - yup. 

Yeah, I should have thought of that sooner…

So, UFO is back working where it should: in DOS.

Even better, and only slightly shamefully, the old game editing (cheating…) program was simple to add and works too. Interestingly, whilst looking for the cheats, I found one of those readme files I’d written to myself. It described the origin of the GAMESNOT folder name (i.e. the folder containing all the non-DOS games) which was purely to run the UFO game editor; I had to get the folder name down to eight characters for it to appear properly in DOS (avoiding tildes). Even more fascinatingly, it seems I started that readme file the day after a somewhat traumatic breakup (cross-referenced with lifelog). Perhaps I was playing UFO to take my mind off things and really cement my new single-life. (Further cross-referencing was possible with photos to reveal that on that same day I bought a pair of bongos. Really leaping into distractions…)

Hmmm, it seems yesterday’s early Wine wins indeed got my hopes up: we’re fifty-fifty on wins-losses so far, with the only wins being two almost-identical music players.

Which way will Dawn of War fall…?

Actually, don’t answer that.

No whining today: things just... worked!?

1154
Everything seems to be humming along fine, for the most part. Linux continues to be… different. I still haven’t found a program that is anything like as good as Winamp/Wacup, which is sad.

But mostly, I’ve been playing games to distract myself from the horrors of the world.

So far, this has been exclusively in DOSBox (not Staging - that was a deadend) and it’s been mostly fine (apart from perpetually forgetting to open File Mangler first to force Linux to mount the drives containing the games) but there are a couple of games that need Windows, so Wine is next.

I had a very small go at trying Wine, downloading it from the Software Manager, but it was quite daunting (i.e. utterly unintuitive to me) so I scurried back to DOS games.

So today I’m following this:
https://techyorker.com/how-to-install-wine-on-linux-mint-a-step-by-step-guide-for-beginners/
https://archive.ph/d1gq2

Lots of Terminal commands, which I suppose I should get used to. I’m feeling pessimistic because the last time I followed lots of Terminal commands (see May 2024…) it did not go well.

Gotta admit: I’m being rather lazy and copypasting the longer commands.

I’m not, thankfully, the first person to face the first problem I encountered:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/984844/e-unable-to-locate-package-winehq-stable
https://archive.ph/puxyF

Substituting “wine” instead of “winehq” is important for later steps too.


So far, I’ve successfully reached the Wine configuration window, which is all the time I have now, but it’s promising!

1955
Still not quite back at the computer, but just thought I should add the names of the games I want to play, in case I search this ramble later: 
UFO: Enemy Unknown
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

Literally days of life thrown away (but not nearly as many as I've chucked at Civilization…)

Best not to think about it!

Stretch goal that’s just occurred to me, and seems obvious when I reread this entry: will Winamp run in Wine…? That’d be a dream!

2059
HOLY ZARKING POO; I just ran a Windows program in Linux! It was almost convenient, and it almost completely worked.

This got me some of the way:
https://suay.site/?p=1853
https://archive.ph/H7XXw

Wine creates a little pocket of Windows in /home/bananaworld/.wine/ with a C: drive and everything. Oh, such sweet nostalgia.

Then I used a Terminal command to install Wacup!!

wine /home/bananaworld/Downloads/wacup.exe
(I renamed the installation file from Wacupblahblahblahversionblahblah to something simpler)

I can’t use the same trick to run the program because spaces mean something in the Terminal, so running a command with a space in (between “Program” and “Files”) just confuzzles Linux:

wine /home/bananaworld/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/WACUP/wacup.exe
wine: failed to open "/home/bananaworld/.wine/drive_c/Program": c0000135

At the moment, Wine is missing from the the Linux context menu, so I followed the instructions on that page a little further, and to the letter… and whaddya know? It worked!

2223
Ok, I may be getting a little ahead of myself here, but shizzle is getting rizzle: I just installed and ran Memory Map. This is a monumental moment. I have an ancient Lenovo (but still badged “IBM”) T60 (which has previously featured in these pages as a comic book reader) running Windows 7 that I keep around for the sole purpose of running Memory Map (well, ok, and for reading comic books). The reason for that was that MM won’t run in Windows 10, so to have it running in an emulator (sorry, not an emulator, but I don’t fully understand how Wine works) is incredible.

But that’s enough for today. Such amazing successes!

(Though it won’t last…)

It's the little differences that make all the difference...

1034

Oh, Linux, you hilarious construction!

Just stumbled upon the solution to directing DOSBox to the correct directory when mounting in Linux. I was googling around trying to find out how to mount a directory located on a harddrive other than the main, boot drive and utterly chanced upon the solution. My filepath was completely correct (which I’m a little bit proud of) but the MAJOR difference from Windows isn’t (just) that drives have different designations, it’s that CASE MATTERS.

I had used a capital letter as part of the name of one of the extra harddrives; using the ‘wrong’ case wouldn’t have mattered under Windows when writing a filepath (and drives have letters, rather than names). That one letter being the wrong case was enough for DOSBox (under Linux) to throw up a ‘unknown file or directory’ error…

Today has been a sharpening of the learning curve.

Anyway, now to figure out how to modify the DOSBox conf file in Linux (again, this was a doddle in Windows…)

1211

A sidequest appears!

I booted up the old Dell laptop to see if I had a dosbox conf file on there (I did not) but when moving it around, noticed it rattled, which is never a good sound for a laptop to make… Inside, I found a screw, completely out of the threaded hole where it should be, and I have no idea how it came loose; it’s not one I ever would have touched (the only other work I’ve done inside this laptop is securing the loose m.2 drive, whose screw is literally at the very opposite corner of the machine).

Hmm, actually, thinking about that previous repair, maybe this second fault is indicative of generally shoddy construction: the wrong-headed bolt for the harddrive, and this other bolt loosening over time.

Oh well, keeps me busy.

1349

…but back to DOSBox!

The conf file is located here:

/home/bananaworld/.dosbox

This goes near the beginning:

fullresolution=1501x1126

windowresolution=1501x1126

output=opengl

(Resolution extrapolated from 640x480 using: https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/resolution-scale)

This goes right at the end:

mount c /media/bananaworld/2Store465/games

mount d /media/bananaworld/2Store465/gamesnot

C:

(NOTICE THE CAPITAL LETTER IN THE PATH!!!1!)

I played Transport Tycoon the other day in that ‘DOS Browser’ thing, but couldn’t save the game, so that was useless. Next came today: trying it in DOSBox, which worked fine (after I’d downloaded the original DOS version rather than the Windows version) but it was the older TTD.

Some googling reminded me of the existence of OpenTTD, and I had a look for a Linux version; of course it exists (nerds!) which led me to looking for it in the software centre; of course it’s in there! 

Oh, Linux: equally confounding & astounding.

1612

Just when I thought I was done swearing for the day, Linux brings me another ‘joy’...

For more than twenty years, I’ve had the same printout attached to many different computer desks and/or monitors; it’s a list of Alt codes for quick reference. It allows you quickly see which numbers to type in, while holding down the Alt key, to get a whole variety of special characters. It’s been my only consistent piece of  computer equipment (which is quite a cool thought) because it has been persistently useful, and, crucially, unchanging.

Until now.

Those super-useful shortcuts for putting in accented letters, symbols, powers, copyrights, etc are now all completely useless, thanks to it not working at all in Linux.

I couldn’t believe that my ancient scrap of parchment was now defunct, but I wasn’t about to give up; there must be a way to insert Alt codes in Linux using a simple set of keystrokes.

Ha ha ha.

Not only is there not a method that would allow me to use the combos I’ve memorised over decades, there just isn’t an easy way to do it at all… unless you want to go down a massive faffabout-hole. How can something so fundamental & useful in Windows be completely absent in Linux…?

Ok, that’s not strictly true; what I’m using is what’s available: the Character Map. Yup, go find the character you want in a completely separate program and zarking  copy ‘n’ paste it over to where you need it.

How deeply irritating.

Cool, kicking back in your lawn chair...

1131
What's getting me through battling Linux is listening to the O.G. who inspired a series of Weezer EPs: 

 

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Harrison_with_the_Wichita_State_University_Chamber_Players/The_Four_Seasons_Vivaldi

 

(Thanks to: https://www.reddit.com/r/weezer/comments/zykzk9/i_found_the_exact_versions_of_vivaldi_sampled_on/) 

 

 

Dear Google, noöne with a brain wants your "AI" summary. And more Linux headaches...

 

1905

Let’s just have a slight tangent where we remove the pointless, useless, and cluttersome “aRTiFiCiAL inTElliGEnCe” results when using Google search in Firefox.

The key steps are to go to Settings -> Search, scroll down to Search Shortcuts, click Add button. In URL box, paste in:

 https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14&tbs=li:1

 Name the ‘new’ search engine (I used GoogleOld), click Save Engine button; scroll back up the page and select your search engine. Much better results.

Source:
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/google-search-no-ai-overview.html

https://archive.ph/88Smi

2053

Things are a little better than yesterday, possibly helped by having been for a little bike ride in the sunshine. 

The short version:

• The shared folders on PavNAS are now appearing in Linux Mint’s file explorer! I’ve no idea what changed. I discovered this by firing up the T410 running LM and it had the shares available on there; I went back to the HPAIO and there they were!

• Weirdness #1: WiFi is OFF by default on booting the T410; it must be turned on manually before any shares appear (or I’m able to do any online stuff). Absolutely no idea why this is. Hopefully it won’t affect my use-case too badly as this it’s supposed to be a Kitchen MCM which will have a network cable attached at all times.

• Weirdness #2: still can’t access OMV configurator via browser on the HPAIO. I can use it in a browser on the T410, so I don’t think Linux is the issue. Absolutely no idea why this is (again).

• Haven’t got around to trying DOSBox (or DOSBox Staging (a seemingly newer/better version)) yet, but I have started copying all the games over. I’m not looking forward to mounting those directories as drives in DOSBox because I STILL have no idea how file structures work in Linux…

2127

Zark’s’ake, I don't know why I bother: obviously, trying to mount a drive in DOSBox resulted in absolutely no success. I think my error was having the games on a different harddrive to the main drive, which just introduces one extra possible point of confusion for the whole process.

When I can be zarked, I'll try it one more time; after that I'll move the games to the main disk (THE C: DRIVE!) and follow the how-tos to the letter.

Linux, ugh.

Linux roadblocks for DOSBox and, somehow, OpenMediaVault

1711

Today has been a bit of a mixed bag and I’m not sure I’m having a good time in Linux. I mean, it’s fine, but it’s not great. It’s possible that it’s just different to Windows, and I’m just not used to that, which is tainting the experience, but it has many annoying quirks.

I’ve been working through the list of programs I’d written down from the Windows PC, trying to install them, or alternatives, in Linux Mint. It’s quite annoying not having the programs I know & love, especially having found SumatraPDF to be great, and having only just discovered Wacup, neither of which are available for Linux…

On a more positive note, one of the programs that’s just available to easily install from the Software Manager (a lovely utility) is DOS Browser, which has been fun, but I haven’t worked out how to save games yet (vital for DOS games). Think I’ll just use DOSBOX like the old days, if I can figure out how drives & directories work in Linux (another major stumbling block for my migration to an utterly alien OS).

The biggest problem I’ve hit so far is not being able to access OMV; both the shared directories and the web interface are unreachable from this computer now. I booted up the old Dell laptop (the one used to make a ‘clone’ of all my browser tabs) and I can still do everything from there, so I’m stumped as to why I can’t access it.

Feeling a bit despondent about the whole thing.

I’m sure there are people who would relish such a situation and enjoy finding work-arounds to these niggles, but I can’t be zarked with it. This may present as lazy, but I don’t think that’s it (I wish I could detail the hours I’ve spent over the past few weeks attempting (and eventually succeeding!) to fit 104mm & 64mm BCD rings (plus a double bashguard (which I made)) onto a pair of SRAM Rival cranks in a way never intended by the manufacturer - this was not a lazy endeavour…!) I ust don’t enjoy it when computer stuff that absolutely should work… just doesn’t, when there’s no good reason for the failure to launch. It’s silly & annoying.

The most consequential Linux installation so far!!

1536

SD card storage space via Dell laptop = success! And it can be accessed from another PC.

So here we go with the HP AIO mega-move to Linux…

Just starting the process, and not much to report other than some tiny notes for future reference:

Esc: Startup menu

F9: Boot menu

F10: BIOS

Booting from Linux Mint (LM) installation USB: UEFI, not Legacy.

1607

LM is installed! That was straightforward. 

Now to install all the software I need, and then comes the ultra-fun of making LM look & feel like something familiar to me. Luckily, (I think) I’ve written down most of what I need somewhere in these notes…

Cabbage, cabbage, tabbage; and beginning the REAL move to Linux...

2048

Going on a slight tangent before trying out that SD-card-as-extra-storage operation: the slightly more pressing matter of Windows 10 and its End-of-Life…

My ‘main’ computer (a quite old but still capable HP AIO) is, unbelievably, still running Windows 10 Pro, which is over five months out-of-date and no longer receiving security updates from Microsoft. Despite having a good processor, and plenty of RAM, Microsaft have arbitrarily decided that it’s not good enough for Windows 11 and should be scrapped.

I’ve written before about installing Windows 10 & 11 IoT on various PCs, and this would certainly be a viable option for this computer, but I’ve also written about installing Linux (Mint) on a couple of PCs in an attempt to move away from my dependence on Microsaft. Even if I switch to an IoT version of Windows, that option won’t last forever; eventually they too will be out-of-support and by then we’ll be staring at Windows 12 (though Microsaft’s OS almost certainly just be called CoPilot by then; Windows is dead) and it’ll be 100% subscription-based with no wiggle room to wrangle a blessedly-lightweight IoT onto old hardware.

ANYWAY…

To head-off this inevitable dead-end, I am, as I said, trying out Linux, but I haven’t committed to Linux yet.

This is where the ‘main’ computer comes in: if I divest myself of Windows on there, and install Linux, I’ll have to use Linux!

Will it be annoying? Zark yes! But not as annoying as trying to hurriedly learn Linux in five-to-ten years’ time when the IoT gravy train finally hits the buffers and I have to scrabble around in a panic (and as an older person…) to learn a new OS.

Yes, it’s the right decision.

…but I’m not just jumping off a cliff. 

Time to admit to something rather embarrassing: one of the reasons it’s taken me this long to get around to updating the OS on my main PC is the sheer volume of ‘tabbage’ going on; across three different browsers, in seven windows, I have just over 40 tabs on the go. This isn’t a huge number really (I often have more than that in just one browser on my phone) but they are carefully laid out across the three browsers for different purposes.

Honestly, I couldn’t face shutting down all those tabs in order to replace the OS, so I did nothing about it for months & months…

About that not jumping off a cliff: so what I’ve done this evening is set up my laptop next to the (allegedly) out-of-date desktop and go through all the browsers, windows, & tabs, and recreate the exact layout on the other PC.

Wot a cop-out.

But you have to pick your battles.

And now I have no excuse!

I’m going ahead with that idea using the SD card as a storage drive in the PavNAS, but I’m going to attempt to do it from the laptop; if that works, I know I can still do everything I need to, even if the old AIO doesn’t survive its trip down the Linux-hole.

See you on the other side.

YET ANOTHER post about copying speeds, but it's really mainly about an SD card

1826

Today I’ve been copying all the music from the EHDD attached to PavNAS over the network to the old AIO (with the intention of not only listening to it (which is the whole point), but also finally getting around to sorting it - a massive job…)

It's (obviously) thousands of small files so it made an interesting* test of transfer speed: seemed to proceed at around 10MB\s. Is that good or bad? I should just be glad that it works, really!

In other news, I was helping someone else with their laptop and they were once again bemoaning the lack of storage space; 100GB just isn't enough in 2026, and buying a larger M.2 drive would be quite expensive these days. Why did laptops have to get so thin…? Remember when we could dump out the optical drive and put in a huge, cheap spinning rust HDD as a secondary drive for storage? Obviously optical drives are deprecated these days, but they could have left room for a little 2.5” drive… Or am I just stuck in the past with my 2.5” drives? (And the aforementioned literal stack of 3.5” drives!)

Anyway, I've previously faced the identical problem myself with a modern** laptop and wangled my way around it by using a 128GB card in the SD slot to store extra files (comics in my case; have I written about this before? It was when the laptop that's now PavNAS was temporarily the comic-reading computer).

I don't know why it was only on this occasion that the idea of an SD card hit me, but I popped to the shop*** and bought myself a (pricey) 256GB card; I'll pass on the 128GB card to more than double their laptop's storage.

Anyway (and I don't know why I'm writing about this before trying it), my plan is to put an SD card back into PavNAS and see if I can mount it as a storage device in OMV! I'm everso pleased with myself for thinking this up****. If it works, it should be quite quick to send & receive files to & from. I wanted to try it out today but was terrified of interrupting the music copying; I've previously found that changing anything on the OMV web interface makes copying hiccup, even if what one does has nothing to do with the drive in use. Best let the copying finish.

* subjective

** relative

*** almost; as previously recounted, Curry's barely meets the definition of a shop, carrying nearly no stock, and hardly staffed.

**** jinxed it now

Always copy FROM TreeSize!!

1202 (alarm) I'm having my first go at updating the backups. This consists of copying the latest load of downloads from the Living Room PC (LRPC) (where I do most downloading) to an external HDD; an important next step is sorting the load of downloads into folders which match the sorted folders in the backup locations.

Then, this ExtHDD gets plugged into various other locations and the new data gets copied across to the relevant folders in the backup locations.

I've copied to a couple of locations so far, but have made a bit of a mistake: I've been using File Mangler to do the copying…

As previously detailed, FM (Windows Explorer) doesn't like copying folders it hasn't got permission to access, even though I can give it access without a check or a thought. It's extremely stupid.

What I should be doing is using TreeSize to do the copying, which just needs UAC permission once when the program is started.

I shall use it from the next location onwards.

…or should I go back and redo the places I've already done…?

Can I be zarked to do it?

Maybe I'll just try looking at the properties in FM & TS and see if they agree. The easy way.

An electronic, virtual appendectomy.

1001 The (much) older Lenovo AIO which is in use as my workbench computer has always been a bit dodgy; drivers just aren't available for many of its devices under newer Windowses.

One particular annoyance has been the trying-to-work-but-definitely-doesn’t-work touchscreen. Any touch on the screen is read as a touch in a tiny portion on the lower left side, and sometimes it keeps thinking touches are happening there and the mouse can't be used.

Yesterday, I was finally bothered enough by it to do something about it (N.B. not bothered enough to try to make the touchscreen work - that would be a painful & pointless exercise).

I went into Device Manager - Human Input Devices and simply disabled the two entries which mentioned touchscreen.

There I go again, putting the pro in I.T. professional.

No progress, but good intentions paving the road...

1549 Haven’t done much on the data/NAS/back-up front lately. Actually, what have I been doing?

I really should check it’s all still working and much more importantly, organise an off-site back-up…

OMV IP address troubles haven't gone away; OMV + external HDD = not a quick in 'n' out

1437 I'm attempting to reinstate the ‘missing’ IP addresses using OMV-FIRSTAID.

It seems to have worked for ethernet (eno1) by simply answering ‘yes’ to all the questions it asks; I think previously I had said no, out of fear & uncertainty, so it didn't work (i.e. lost all the IP address stuff).

Trying it again for WiFi (wlo1) which has the extra steps of inputting the wireless network’s name & password) but not only has no IP address appeared, it also seems to have vanquished the eno1 IP address… zark.

Let's try the process for eno1 again.

Ok, that's back, and I can access it remotely with the new IP address. 192.168.1.223

Let's try some mad gibble: configuring wlo1 with the ethernet cable unplugged!!!1!

…nothing; still no IP address. Looks like we'll just have to continue with ethernet. Luckily I have all the cables everywhere.

…although replugging in the network cable and running ipaddr shows no IP address for eno1. Let's run OMV-FIRSTAID again.

Ok, that restores the IP address and I can access folders remotely again.

Tried configuring WiFi access via the web UI: still doesn't set an IP address. I think I can choose one manually, but it also asks for ‘netmask’ and I'm like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Next challenge: external HDD.

Just plugging it back in doesn't work (it shows up remotely (because it never left) but cannot be accessed). A system restart seems to sort it.