2015-12-28

HOWTO: preventing aptitude from breaking the APT package setup

Initial conditions:
  • usually, you use apt-get (from the apt package) for Debian package maintenance (installing, removing, upgrading etc.);
  • sometimes you launch aptitude (aptitude package) to do some work;
  • after doing some work with apt-get, you notice that aptitude hasn't caught up with the current package state (i. e., it wants to install / remove some package(s) just from the start).
Solution: hide (or delete) the outdated package states file from aptitude (note: it'll overwrite an old backup, "/var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates.old", if present):
$ cd /var/lib/aptitude
# mv pkgstates pkgstates.old
P. S. This should also work for Debian derivatives (e. g. Ubuntu).

2015-12-04

Hardware accident: Chinese LED lantern turned into a firework

Device brand / model: Yajia YJ-6812
Description: a Chinese lantern with 32 LEDs (quite bright really; 2 levels of brightness); rechargeable (no information on battery currently); without any external power adapters (plugged directly into AC socket by a simple 2-wire cable). Bought on a local Ukrainian (Vinnytsia city) market. The design somewhat reminds of a kind of grater.