Category Archives: troubleshooting

Fixing "Use of undefined constant jq_syntax_htmlentities"

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I upgraded the PHP version backing my WordPress setup to PHP7.3. Of course, something had to go wrong:

Warning: Use of undefined constant jq_syntax_htmlentities - assumed 'jq_syntax_htmlentities' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in ...... wp-content/plugins/jquery-syntax/jquery-syntax.php on line 37

There’s no updates for jquery-syntax plugin that I’m using. Let’s assume that the author will fix this if they ever release an update.

For the time being, opening jquery-syntax.php manually and editing jq_syntax_quote to replace passing what looks like a function object (is it in PHP? I can’t be bothered to check) with a string when invoking preg_replace_callback() does the trick:

function jq_syntax_quote($content) {
        $content = preg_replace_callback('/<(pre)(.*?)>(.*?)<\/pre>/imsu','jq_syntax_htmlentities', $content);
        $content = preg_replace_callback('/<(code)(.*?)>(.*?)<\/code>/imsu','jq_syntax_htmlentities', $content);

        return $content;
}

Note how jq_syntax_htmlentities received single-quotes around it.

Anno 1404 crashing when clicking on Quickstart

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Regional Settings on Windows 10

Regional Settings on Windows 10. Making the countries match fixes Anno 1404.

I finally found the solution to the issue on the GOG.com forums. Nothing obvious like setting admin privileges helped.

No, it’s more insidious.

Apparently when you go to regional settings, both the “Country or Region” and the “Regional Format” values must match the country.

I’ve had these set to “Ireland” + “English (Europe)”. Before this, I likely had it set to “Ireland” + “Croatian (Croatia)”.

Changing the values to “Ireland” + “English (Ireland)” resolved the issue.

I can finally play the game years after buying it. This was done on Windows 10 1903 (build 18362.10012).

Enabling zoom 'key' and spell key on Microsoft Natural® Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

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The procedure is not best described elsewhere on the web. This article is a mess, too, but it works for me.

Keys need to be remapped to something under keycode 256 in order to work under X11.

  • Try using evtest and pressing keys to see what the keys map to right now.
    • evtest can will also tell you what are all the events supported by the device.
    • evtest will show two devices; you are interested in the second one (which exposes all the extended keys, such as new, reply, open, send, etc.
  • Use xev to see whether the keys are recognized, and as what are they recognized, in X11.

Now for the juicy part:

# put this into: /etc/udev/hwdb.d/61-keyboard-custom.hwdb

# then to update:
#  sudo udevadm hwdb --update && sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm control --reload
# and:
#  sudo udevadm trigger
# or:
#  for i in /sys/class/input/* ; do if [[ -e "$i"/id/vendor ]] && [[ -e "$i"/id/product ]] && [[ "$(cat "$i"/id/vendor)" == 045e ]] && [[ "$(cat "$i"/id/product)" == 00db ]] ;  then echo $i ; echo change | sudo tee $i/uevent ; fi ; done

# Natural Keyboard 4000
# formerly:
#keyboard:usb:v045Ep00DB*
# now:
evdev:input:b0003v045Ep00DB*
 KEYBOARD_KEY_0c01ab=finance             # KEY_SPELLCHECK    to KEY_FINANCE
 KEYBOARD_KEY_c022d=up
 KEYBOARD_KEY_c022e=down

We’re naming it 61-keyboard-custom.hwdb in order to have it come after /lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb.

Instead of finance, up and down keys, try taking something from this list: quirk-keymap-list.txt — however, I am not certain how to determine which ones are under 256 except by looking at evtest‘s output.

You can map to keycode 255 and use xmodmap -e "keycode 255 = XF86ZoomIn" to map to a ‘proper’ zoom in key.

On a related note: If you want to remap scancodes to keycodes, you can do it on the fly using setkeycodes(8)

Some sources:

EDIT 2021-01-27:

  • Another useful resource is Arch Linux wiki’s article on mapping the scancodes.
  • Config files mapping from scancodes to X keycodes can be found in /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes. For instance, scancodes generated by evdev are in the file evdev in that directory.
  • Scancodes can be found using showkey — which only works from the virtual console, not from within X11.

AppArmor on Ubuntu and MySQL in custom directories

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AppArmor profile on Ubuntu is (rightly) restrictive and prevents the daemon binary mysqld from writing to unexpected locations.

So here’s another one in my series of ‘stupid notes to self’ — things that may help a reader, things that will help me, but things that are not proper or full guides to solving a problem.

Starting an already initialized datadir:

normal-user$ /usr/sbin/mysqld --defaults-file=/tmp/barproject-mysql-my.cnf
2018-01-09T21:24:28.090896Z 0 [ERROR] InnoDB: The innodb_system data file 'ibdata1' must be writable
2018-01-09T21:24:28.090907Z 0 [ERROR] InnoDB: The innodb_system data file 'ibdata1' must be writable

Initializing a new one:

normal-user$ /usr/sbin/mysqld --defaults-file=/tmp/barproject-mysql-my.cnf --datadir="$(pwd)/mysql" --log-level-verbosity=VERBOSE --initialize-insecure
mysqld: Can't create directory '/home/foo/projects/bar/_dev/mysql/' (Errcode: 13 -     Permission denied)
2016-10-10T16:23:29.515470Z 0 [Warning] TIMESTAMP with implicit DEFAULT value is deprecated. Please use --explicit_defaults_for_timestamp server option (see documentation for more details).
2016-10-10T16:23:29.519420Z 0 [ERROR] Aborting

(Note that /tmp/barproject-mysql-my.cnf has been created from a template prior to running either of these. It specifies many values including datadir.)

First, I worked under the assumption the daemon was running under the wrong user or that the directory has wrong permissions. However, changing settings to any reasonable value did not get rid of errors with either initialization step or run step.

AppArmor has profiles that may block accesses atypical for the program executed. One such profile is for /usr/sbin/mysqld and is located in /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld.

I tried symlinking it to /etc/apparmor.d/disable directory and restarting apparmor with systemctl restart apparmor. This didn’t change anything. I also tried whitelisting the directory by adding a local configuration change to /etc/apparmor.d/local/usr.sbin.mysqld:

/home/foo/projects/bar/_dev/mysql/** rwk,

systemctl restart apparmor — i.e. restarting through systemd — did not help.

However telling apparmor to tear itself down using the service command, as well as telling it to reload its profile cache, did:

service apparmor stop
service apparmor teardown
service apparmor recache
service apparmor start

There’s probably a smarter way, but this is good enough for me.

Getting sound and other panels in gnome-control-center outside GNOME

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Missing some panels in gnome-control-center? No “Online Accounts”? No “Sound”?

Apparently, panels are defined through .desktop files in /usr/share/applications (!), and they mostly have the setting of OnlyShowIn=GNOME; or OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;.

To trigger them appearing in, say, i3, xfce or similar, you need to pretend you’re actually running GNOME by exporting the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP variable with the value of GNOME.

#!/bin/sh
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME gnome-control-center

Vidalia crashing on Ubuntu 14.04 due to incorrect AppArmor profile

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This has been going unfixed for years now.

For me, the fix involved adding the following into /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.vidalia.

/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/ r,
/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/** r,

Then, I reloaded AppArmor /etc/init.d/apparmor reload and the contraption worked. If you get asked about your Tor control password, restart tor /etc/init.d/tor restart.