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2020 and gaming

I was looking at the game release list of last year. You know January is the month of lists and I was wondering what game I played the most.

I found it strange that for me the games that topped my list are games that are pretty old and just received a bump, in being remastered or being extended with more DLC in some form.

Yes, I am a very big Skyrim fan. So Skyrim was on top of my list. I played it on my OneXplayer and it is perfect to play it on. Playing on a small screen and easily switching to my dock so that I can play it on my ultrawide screen.

And the second game I really enjoyed was Mass Effect the remaster trilogy.

I really hope that after Cyberpunk in 2019 a new game can really catch my attention. I have big hope for Starfield. Yes it is Bethesda again :)

Honorable mention is btw for Forza Horizon 5.

Morning Glories: Volume 1

I have to be honest, this comic has been om my list for a very long time. You could say i'm late for the party with it's first release in 2011.

It is about six teenagers that go to a prestigious boarding school. It feels a bit like Lost meets teenage drama with some flavor or horror mixed into it. There are flashbacks with every character so you get a bit more background information while they are struggeling with their new environment.

I really like the artwork and the story line. Volume 1 is all about the introduction of the characters. Cannot wait to start with Volume 2.

What happened to 2021Q1 and 2021Q2 smartos images?

If you do a imgadm avail you will see that the latest LTS image of smartos is :

800db35c-5408-11eb-9792-872f658e7911  minimal-64-lts   20.4.0 smartos zone-dataset  2021-01-11
1d05e788-5409-11eb-b12f-037bd7fee4ee  base-64-lts   20.4.0 smartos zone-dataset  2021-01-11
188ee9ce-540a-11eb-9cc1-2748cd10e5e2  pkgbuild-lts   20.4.0 smartos zone-dataset  2021-01-11

I was wondering what happened to the rest of the images? We used to see them every quarter. Jonathan Perkin answered the question on the mailinglist (https://smartos.topicbox.com/groups/smartos-discuss/Tf17bc027dd6f9cba-M7dedf357e2bb4ca48d8065a5):

I stopped producing the non-LTS quarterly releases.  They weren't all 
that useful (in my opinion), as users are better served running either 
LTS if they want a static set of packages with the occasional security 
fix, or trunk if they just want the latest and most secure software.  

It's also hard to justify spending time and resources on them now that 
JPC is no more (so my available hardware is significantly reduced) and 
I'm no longer working on pkgsrc full-time.

Simply change your pkgin repo to the trunk version if you want the latest and greatest:

edit /opt/local/etc/pkgin/repositories.conf and replace the :

/packages/SmartOS/2020Q4/x86_64/All -> /packages/SmartOS/trunk/x86_64/All

and run a pkgin upgrade

Nocterra, Vol. 1: Full Throttle Dark

In the Pitch Dark Post-Apocalpyse, it's the truckers who will save us...

In Nocterra the sun has stopped and people have to life in the dark. If you stay to long in the dark you will transform into an evil animal.

A group of truck drivers drive between different settlements with goods. The story focuses on Valentina “Val” Riggs, a female truck driver.

I really enjoyed the art work and the story. It's feels like a typical Netflix type of story, perfect for a sunday afternoon with some tea or coffee. Highly recommended.

SmartOS: hash mismatch

Last week I had a small power outage and I was able to properly shutdown my smartos server.I thought when the power returns, it would be nice to have an upgraded smartos image running. So I downloaded the latest release from /Joyent_Dev/public/SmartOS/20210128T022709Z and did the normal “dd” writing as described on the wiki page. (which I also have been doing for the last couple of years)

Now as soon as it boots, it is loading the image and it will do a hash check on the archive. Everytime I get a hash mismatch and the server reboots.

Loading unix...seconds. [Space] to pause        Loading

/platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive...       Loading

/platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive.hash... hash mismatch

and boom, it reboots

I tried loading with UEFI and normal. I also tried to go into the boot -s mode, but I cannot even get a prompt. It loads the kernel and than I get the hash check failure and reboots. I reverted to use my older image, the joyent_20200729T205408Z image and it boots without issues.

Dan mcDonald helped me out on the maillinglist with given me the following tip:

If you can mount the USB key with the bad archive somewhere else, you should be able to:
1.) Find the boot_archive file
2.) Find the boot_archive.hash file
3.) Run a SHA1 checksum (e.g. `digest -a sha1 boot_archive` or `openssl sha1 boot_archive`) and compare it to what's there.

I should have known better, the sdcard failed on me. Looks like some bits are broken :) everytime I get a different hash.

[root@master /tmp/mnt/platform/i86pc/amd64]# digest -a sha1 boot_archive f1cf6e1673a8ee251a1389308c1df6f6b8a57b43

[root@master /tmp/mnt/platform/i86pc/amd64]# digest -a sha1 boot_archive bc45c7a15d56bc607533aa3750372050d290cbea

As you can see, everytime something different, so lesson learned. Never trust an sd card. Always do a hash check. dd isn't safe enough

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