Author: Eugene

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Email subscribers

The small handful of email subscribers to this blog might have noticed the lack of email notifications of new posts for the last little while.

I had been running into some weird blog posting issues that I thought might have been due to the Jetpack plugin, so I removed it a while back. The blog posting issues seemed to go away, so I went along on my merry way.

I’d forgotten that email subscriptions were handled by Jetpack until someone asked recently. I’ve reinstalled the Jetpack plugin, and hopefully won’t run into those weird problems I had with it before.

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April garden progress

The potatoes are continuing to grow and expand, although one of them seems to have lost a couple stems worth of leaves for some reason. Overall it seems like they’re doing pretty well though.

Potato plants growing in a raised bed
Potato plants growing in a raised bed

The butternut squash plants have grown quite a bit and have a bunch more leaves now compared to the two little leaves they had a few weeks ago. Some of them seem to have sprouted a lot more leaves than the others.

Butternut squash plants
Butternut squash plants

One of the raspberry plants got really bushy and practically exploded with leaves. No flowers or proto-fruits yet, but it’s really be growing like gangbusters and sending out runners through its half of the bed.

Wildly growing raspberry plant

The blueberry and blackberry plants, on the other hand, have flowers and berries all over them. I think in a month or two, there will be lots of blueberries to sample.

Blackberry and fig plants
Blueberry plants
Pink lemonade blueberry plant

Meanwhile, on the nectarine tree, some of flower blossoms have turned into these little things that look like might become fruits. There was one on the tree last year, but it disappeared and I think it got knocked off during a storm or something.

Little potential fruits on the nectarine tree
Little potential fruits on the nectarine tree
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Seeing the third Saturn V

There are only three Saturn V rockets left in the world. One is at the Apollo/Saturn V Center at the Kennedy Space Center. That one I’ve seen a few times. I never get tired of seeing the Saturn V there.

Another one is at Space Center Houston, which I got to visit a few years ago. There I learned that there were only three left in the world. Since this was the second Saturn V I’d seen, I thought to myself “Well, now I have to see all of them.”

The third, and final Saturn V I got to see is in the Saturn V Hall at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. Outside the Davidson Center where the Saturn V is located is an equally impressive but slightly smaller mockup of the Saturn V. Makes the building easy to find if you’re exploring the Space and Rocket Center.

Saturn V mockup outside the Davidson Center at the US Space and Rocket Center

After going inside the building and up the stairs, you’re greeted with the massive business end of the Saturn V rocket once you turn the corner to enter the exhibit hall.

The base of the Saturn V with the huge F1 rocket engines
The flamy end of the Saturn V rocket

In addition to the Saturn V overhead, there are lots of displays and exhibits telling the history of rocket development and the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.

View from the tip of the Saturn V rocket
Pointy end of the Saturn V rocket

The Saturn V never ceases to amaze me. I don’t think I’d ever get tired of seeing one.

Saturn V rocket with a Mercury training capsule in the foreground
Mercury training module and Mercury capsule with the Saturn V first stage in the background
Between the first and second stages of the Saturn V rocket
Between the first and second stages of the Saturn V
Between the second and third stages of the Saturn V rocket
Between the second and third stages of the Saturn V
View of the Saturn V rocket from the top of the second stage
Third stage section of the Saturn V rocket
Apollo capsule at the top of the Saturn V rocket
Apollo capsule

The US Space and Rocket Center is a great place to visit. There’s lots to see and do there. The Rocket Park (like Kennedy’s Rocket Garden) was having a lot of work being done, but it’s still a fun area to wander around. Check out the Saturn IB and a mockup of part of Skylab (made from pieces that were used for training in the Neutral Bouyancy Simulator) on display in the Rocket Park. Walk around the Shuttle Park where you’ll find a mockup of a Space Shuttle with the external tank and boosters when we were there. Highly recommend going to the US Space and Rocket Center if you’re in the area (or even if you aren’t).

Saturn IB on display in the Rocket Park at the US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL
Saturn IB in the Rocket Park
Military rockets and vehicles in the Rocket Park at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL
Skylab display in the Rocket Park at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL
Skylab on display in the Rocket Park
Shuttle Park at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. There is a large scale model of the space shuttle's external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters, and a space shuttle under construction.
Shuttle Park

Oh, and bring a banana to leave for Miss Baker and Big George.

A stone pillar memorial marker for Miss Baker. The marker reads "Miss Baker. Squirrel Monkey.. Born 1957. Died Nov 29 1984. First U.S. animal to fly in space and return alive. May 28 1959." Several bananas are on top of the pillar.
Memorial marker for Big George. The marker reads "Big George. Husband of Miss Baker". The bottom part of the marker is covered by a banana left as as offering

Next quest: See all the Space Shuttles. on display I’ve already seen the Shuttle Atlantis at KSC. Three more to go.

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Another year of roses

After about 7.5 years, the rose bushes are still going strong. Lots of rose buds to start the year off. These were the first three of the season that I spotted in full bloom.

Hopefully the Japanese beetles aren’t too bad this year. They always chew up the roses pretty badly.

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Recent Fedora installation issues

It seems like getting Fedora going on my trusty but old computer is getting harder these days.

Getting Fedora 39 installed turnedout to be a bit of a chore. After getting Fedora 40 installed in a VM after a bit of wrangling, I thought I’d try the F39-F40 upgrade on the computer. The upgrade worked fine on the laptop, so I thought maybe the desktop would handle it ok.

Nope, not so much. While the upgrade itself went smoothly, all I got when I rebooted was a blank screen with a flashing cursor in the corner. Fortunately Ctrl-Alt-F2 got me to a console login prompt, so the system was running to some extent.

Logging in to check things out showed a ton of 

traps: drkonqi-coredum[1922] trap invalid opcode ip:7f9a6270ea9c sp:7ffc3e6b9dd8 error:0 in libQt6Core.so.6.6.2[7f9a626b0000+3e7000]

messages in the dmesg output. Looked like whatever was going on kept crashing, generating coredumps and restarting ad-nauseum.

In /var/log/messages, there were a bunch of

systemd-coredump[11667]: Process 11641 (drkonqi-coredum) of user 0 dumped core.
Module libcrypt.so.2 from rpm libxcrypt-4.4.36-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libblkid.so.1 from rpm util-linux-2.40-0.9.rc1.fc40.x86_64
Module libsasl2.so.3 from rpm cyrus-sasl-2.1.28-19.fc40.x86_64
Module libevent-2.1.so.7 from rpm libevent-2.1.12-12.fc40.x86_64
Module libunistring.so.5 from rpm libunistring-1.1-7.fc40.x86_64
Module libmount.so.1 from rpm util-linux-2.40-0.9.rc1.fc40.x86_64
Module libgmodule-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.80.0-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libssl.so.3 from rpm openssl-3.2.1-2.fc40.x86_64
Module libpsl.so.5 from rpm libpsl-0.21.5-3.fc40.x86_64
Module libssh.so.4 from rpm libssh-0.10.6-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libidn2.so.0 from rpm libidn2-2.3.7-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libnghttp2.so.14 from rpm nghttp2-1.59.0-2.fc40.x86_64
Module libffi.so.8 from rpm libffi-3.4.4-7.fc40.x86_64
Module libduktape.so.207 from rpm duktape-2.7.0-7.fc40.x86_64
Module libgio-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.80.0-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libcurl.so.4 from rpm curl-8.6.0-7.fc40.x86_64
Module libselinux.so.1 from rpm libselinux-3.6-4.fc40.x86_64
Module libpcre2-8.so.0 from rpm pcre2-10.42-2.fc40.2.x86_64
Module libicudata.so.74 from rpm icu-74.2-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libgobject-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.80.0-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libpxbackend-1.0.so from rpm libproxy-0.5.3-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libbrotlicommon.so.1 from rpm brotli-1.1.0-3.fc40.x86_64
Module libkeyutils.so.1 from rpm keyutils-1.6.3-3.fc40.x86_64
Module libkrb5support.so.0 from rpm krb5-1.21.2-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libcom_err.so.2 from rpm e2fsprogs-1.47.0-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libk5crypto.so.3 from rpm krb5-1.21.2-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libkrb5.so.3 from rpm krb5-1.21.2-5.fc40.x86_64
Module liblzma.so.5 from rpm xz-5.6.0-3.fc40.x86_64
Module liblz4.so.1 from rpm lz4-1.9.4-6.fc40.x86_64
Module libcap.so.2 from rpm libcap-2.69-3.fc40.x86_64
Module libpcre2-16.so.0 from rpm pcre2-10.42-2.fc40.2.x86_64
Module libb2.so.1 from rpm libb2-0.98.1-11.fc40.x86_64
Module libdouble-conversion.so.3 from rpm double-conversion-3.3.0-3.fc40.x86_64
Module libglib-2.0.so.0 from rpm glib2-2.80.0-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libicuuc.so.74 from rpm icu-74.2-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libicui18n.so.74 from rpm icu-74.2-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libcrypto.so.3 from rpm openssl-3.2.1-2.fc40.x86_64
Module libproxy.so.1 from rpm libproxy-0.5.3-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libz.so.1 from rpm zlib-ng-2.1.6-2.fc40.x86_64
Module libbrotlidec.so.1 from rpm brotli-1.1.0-3.fc40.x86_64
Module libgssapi_krb5.so.2 from rpm krb5-1.21.2-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libzstd.so.1 from rpm zstd-1.5.5-5.fc40.x86_64
Module libsystemd.so.0 from rpm systemd-255.4-1.fc40.x86_64
Module libQt6Core.so.6 from rpm qt6-qtbase-6.6.2-6.fc40.x86_64
Module libQt6Network.so.6 from rpm qt6-qtbase-6.6.2-6.fc40.x86_64
Module drkonqi-coredump-processor from rpm plasma-drkonqi-6.0.2-1.fc40.x86_64
Stack trace of thread 11641:
#0 0x00007f2dc4d0ea9c _ZL10aeshash128PKhmmm (libQt6Core.so.6 + 0x10ea9c)
#1 0x00007f2dc4f5e45b _ZN18QCommandLineParser9addOptionERK18QCommandLineOption (libQt6Core.so.6 + 0x35e45b)
#2 0x00007f2dc4f601f3 _ZN18QCommandLineParser13addHelpOptionEv (libQt6Core.so.6 + 0x3601f3)
#3 0x0000555ce386ea43 main (drkonqi-coredump-processor + 0x5a43)
#4 0x00007f2dc463d088 __libc_start_call_main (libc.so.6 + 0x2a088)
#5 0x00007f2dc463d14b __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_2.34 (libc.so.6 + 0x2a14b)
#6 0x0000555ce386fff5 _start (drkonqi-coredump-processor + 0x6ff5)
#ELF object binary architecture: AMD x86-64

messages being dumped there (carriage returns added for clarity) over and over.

There were also a lot of SELinux errors in the message log as well

setroubleshoot[2604]: SELinux is preventing abrt-dump-journ from write access on the sock_file io.systemd.DynamicUser.

*****  Plugin catchall (100. confidence) suggests   **************************

If you believe that abrt-dump-journ should be allowed write access on the io.systemd.DynamicUser sock_file by default.
Then you should report this as a bug.
You can generate a local policy module to allow this access.
Do
allow this access for now by executing:
# ausearch -c 'abrt-dump-journ' --raw | audit2allow -M my-abrtdumpjourn
# semodule -X 300 -i my-abrtdumpjourn.pp

Seems like there’s a lot going on here.

Since Fedora 40 is working fine on my laptop, I’m guessing that there’s something about my desktop that the Fedora binaries don’t like. I haven’t tried another distro yet so I don’t know if it’s just Fedora’s KDE Plasma, or just KDE Plasma in general that my desktop doesn’t like. I also haven’t tried Fedora Workstation yet, so I don’t know if the problem is with Fedora in general or Fedora KDE.

Still a lot of troubleshooting and digging I need to do. One of the problems I’ve run into is that the errors happen so frequently and generated coredumps get deleted so quickly that I can’t really generate useful dumps and bug reporting information.