Knowledge Base

Red Hat famously removed support for SPICE consoles in RHEL 9. One good conversation about it is over on the Rocky Linux 9 forums.

To find all this info, I started with an Internet search: rocky 9 spice graphics are not supported with this QEMU

But some wonderful and enterprising individual rebuilds the Fedora packages for EL9, and has put them in a copr! So all us EL addicts can get our SPICE kvm guest consoles back so everything works.

The instructions are very simple. To enable the repository, run this dnf command.

# dnf -y copr enable ligenix/enterprise-qemu-spice ; dnf update

And then install qemu-kvm with spice support. Or if it is already installed, just update.

dnf install virt-manager

This information will enable my work for some future blog posts.

I recently found some fascinating little games in f-droid, and I wanted to set them up on my desktop. I've tried virtualizing Android before, but this time I got it going! This is basically going to be ripping off Reference 1 entirely.

Fetch the android-x86 iso: https://www.android-x86.org/.

Use virt-manager to install a new vm and use the downloaded iso. That was basically it. I customized the installation, and installed f-droid and installed the little games I wanted to play!

Screenshot of android x86 running in virt-manager

References

Weblinks

1. How to install Android x86 in Linux?

I discovered a better way to control what my Acer Chromebook C720-ZHN does in reaction to my pressing the power button. I want it to pull up my logout manager, but init/acpi/something (apparently "elogind," frickin' systemd people) really wants to react to it. I previously wrote a very complicated elogind-inhibit script available on one of my previous posts about this topic.

But here is a simpler way which I discovered after I reinstalled and before I got my custom package installed again.

# file: /etc/elogind/logind.conf.d/40-stackrpms.conf
# Startdate: 2025-03-02-1 15:56
# Reference:
#    unix.se 288731
#    /etc/elogind/logind.conf
[Login]
HandlePowerKey=ignore
HandleRebootKey=ignore
HandleSuspendKey=ignore
HandleHibernateKey=ignore
HandleLidSwitch=ignore

And then xev and other developer tools and window managers can react to that keystroke and run the logout manager.

# inside file: /etc/stackrpms-acer-chromebook/fluxbox.keys
124 :Exec logout-manager-gtk

References

1. arch linux - Disable the Power button on a Chromebook - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

For when you want to look as close to Minecraft as possible, you can adapt a texture pack. There's multiple ways to do it. You can read my raw research notes down below. This is the official way I accomplished it to my satisfaction.

Building the texture pack

Adapting Minecraft texture

Download the conversion tool from https://codeberg.org/ostech/craft_to_clonia_textures. I compiled the source but binaries are also provided. Run it once to build a config.json and input directory.

Download the original textures from somewhere. I used https://github.com/Faithful-Pack/Default-Java but the Internet suggests that https://mcversions.net/ is a main place for that too. I placed them in new subdirectory input/, so input/Default-Java.

Here is my config.json.

{
"DefinedInput": false,
"DefinedOutput": true,
"ExportMinetest_Game": false,
"ExportMineclonia": true,
"InputDir": "./input",
"OutputDir": "/home/bgstack15/Downloads/converted4"
}

To use the configured OutputDir, you need to set DefinedOutput=true. Then run it, and place the new directory in ~/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/textures. I called mine mc01 and customized the texture_pack.conf.

For my own systems, I tarballed it as .

References

1. Faithful-Pack/Default-Java: The latest default textures of Minecraft Java Edition
2. Minecraft Texture Pack - Page 2 - Luanti Forums

Research and alternatives

1. get source assets from https://github.com/Faithful-Pack/Default-Java and used mineclonia tools/Texture_Converter.py which got almost everything. Made grass and water gray instead of green/blue.
2. used same source assets, and project https://forum.luanti.org/viewtopic.php?p=443213#p443213

Aside from my boring server-side mod and modifying an existing mod for Mineclonia, I am a published Luanti mod author! I finally published something novel!

If you want fuel-less furnaces in Mineclonia, they are here now! Your wait is over. The source code is of course over here.

Screenshot of ContentDB showing my new mod

I keep searching this so it's time to put it on my blog for myself.

# BEGIN IS-SOURCED
sourced=0
if [ -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ]; then 
   case $ZSH_EVAL_CONTEXT in *:file) sourced=1;; esac
elif [ -n "$KSH_VERSION" ]; then
   [ "$(cd -- "$(dirname -- "$0")" && pwd -P)/$(basename -- "$0")" != "$(cd -- "$(dirname -- "${.sh.file}")" && pwd -P)/$(basename -- "${.sh.file}")" ] && sourced=1
elif [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then
   (return 0 2>/dev/null) && sourced=1 
else # All other shells: examine $0 for known shell binary filenames.
   # Detects `sh` and `dash`; add additional shell filenames as needed.
   case ${0##*/} in sh|-sh|dash|-dash) sourced=1;; esac
fi
# END BEGIN IS-SOURCED

References

Weblinks

1. Ripped directly from bash - How to detect if a script is being sourced - Stack Overflow

The product in question is bluetooth speaker SoundCore 2 A3105 which was $44.99ish before tax.

I am not getting paid or compensated in any way for this information. If you wish to change that, please contact me!

Behavior of button play/pause

Here is some additional info not in the manual about the play/pause button:

• 3 times: restart this track
• 4 times: skip back

Here is what is published in the manual.

• 1 time: play/pause
• 2 times: skip forward

Thoughts

Bass doesn't sound as thorough as JBL Flip 3, but that one was damaged or broken and kept freezing up for no good reason.

Links

• product page from manufacturer
• User guide
• Manual
• Quick start guide

Auxiliary notes

Internet search bluetooth speaker skip backward showed that some bluetooth speakers skip back when you press play/pause 3+ times. My research shows this can work on the Soundcore 2 speaker!

After more time

Sometimes the words sound a little mushy/slurred. Overall I'd say this is a rather disappointing bluetooth speaker. It also suffers from the random freezing as my old device. Maybe I have a jellyfin problem. So I'm still just using the much clearer (when it's working) JBL Flip 3.

I used arandr to set up 2-monitor display after plugging in the HDMI display, and saved the config to ~/.screenlayout/2mon.sh. I then added the pulseaudio command to set the default profile to output audio to the hdmi.

xrandr --output eDP-1 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal --output DP-1 --off --output HDMI-1 --off --output DP-2 --off --output HDMI-2 --mode 1920x1080 --pos 1920x0 --rotate normal
pacmd set-card-profile 0 output:hdmi-stereo

References

1. pacmd interactive terminal