The season of plum blossoms

The plum trees in the neighbourhood have started blooming.

Soon, it will be cherry blossom season again.

Dual upgrade: Proxmox 7 to 8 and Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 to 6

I had previously installed Proxmox VE 7 on Linux Mint Debian Edition 5. Note that this is not a recommended approach. Proxmox VE is based on Debian, and is best installed directly from its ISO. Or it should be installed on top of a vanilla Debian installation.

 

Anyway, since the time I made this "unrecommended" installation, Proxmox has gone from version 7 to 8, and LMDE from version 5 to 6. However, although there are guides for an in-place upgrade from Proxmox 7 to 8, and there is the mintupgrade tool that allows one to upgrade from LMDE 5 to 6, there is no guide on how to carry out a dual in-place upgrade.

In the end, I decided to venture into uncharted waters using the following two guides.

Upgrade 7 to 8

Developer Workstation (Proxmox-VE 8) with cinnamon (LMDE6)

Based on these two guides, the broad idea seems to be to change the repositories from bullseye to bookworm, and from elsie to faye. This includes all the files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

The apt pref files should already have been set up, and I confirmed it by checking /etc/apt/preferences.d/

So I backed up /etc/apt/sources.list and the files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, and ran the following commands:

sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list

sed -i -e 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-install-repo.list

sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list

sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list

sed -i 's/elsie/faye/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list

 

This updated the repositories.

If there are other repositories, you need to update them to bookworm too by

sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/other-repos.list

 

Debian 12 also added a new non-free-firmware archive separate from the existing non-free, and that needs to be added to if you are using non-free. However, note that Proxmox provides its own copy of the firmware files, and using the packages in the Debian non-free-firmware archive may conflict with the Proxmox version.

 

sed -i 's/non-free/non-free non-free-firmware/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sed -i 's/non-free/non-free non-free-firmware/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list

 

The next step is to log in as root:

su

 

Then update the repository lists.

apt update

 

Finally, run the distribution upgrade.

apt dist-upgrade

 

Remember to read the notes here.

If anything happens and the upgrade fails, you can try to repair by using

apt -f install

Check if /etc/resolv.conf is empty. If so, install systemd-resolved using

apt install systemd-resolved

Then, go to the Proxmox VE web GUI and make a final confirmation that the DNS is set to the correct address. Otherwise, when you reboot, you are going to regret...

All that remains is to reboot the computer.

reboot

Also, Proxmox does not recognise the version codename "Faye" (which is LMDE 6). It causes the error message "unknown Debian code name 'faye' (500)" and so I had to edit /usr/lib/os-release and change

VERSION_CODENAME=faye

to

VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm

 

After rebooting, running neofetch showed this:

Remember, this is not the usual way of upgrading Proxmox or LMDE, so follow this guide at your own risk and responsibility.

NetworkManager and systemd-networkd will always be in conflict with each other, and I have yet to figure out a proper way to satisfy both. If you end up with some network issues, you will have to try and find your answers online. For me, NetworkManager's "wait for network" was activated together with systemd-networkd's "wait for network" service, causing slow bootup. In the end, I disabled NetworkManager's service (using it alone was causing my SAMBA shares not to mount during boot) using

sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online.service

I also changed systemd-networkd's "wait for network" service's timeout by

sudo systemctl edit --full systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

and changing

ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online

to

ExecStart=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd-wait-online --timeout=10

for a timeout of 10s instead of the default 2 minutes.

If icons seems to be missing, refresh the icon cache by executing

sudo update-icon-caches /usr/share/icons/*

in a terminal window.

Dahan 大寒

After Xiaohan, or 小寒, comes Dahan, or 大寒, another of the 二十四节气 24 solar terms. It literally means big cold, signifying that this is coldest time of the year.

 

And a cuter version.

 

This is actually the final set before the cycle restarts with 立春 in February.

Calligraphy piece 人生如夢

Just something to kill time, use some ink, and waste some paper.

人生如夢

Life is like a dream

6th anniversary of Violet Evergarden anime series

Today marks the 6th anniversary since Violet Evergarden anime series aired in Japan.

 

(A bit about dates... the series started showing on 10 January 2018 at 24:00, or 0:00 of 11 January 2018. This means the actual anniversary is 11 January, but in Japan, shows that start at midnight or later are counted based on the previous date, using times like 24:00 for midnight and 25:00 for 1:00 the next day. So depending on who you ask, it can either be 10 January, or 11 January.)

 

Anyway, I just wanted to create a post that has links to my Violet Evergarden-related posts.

My overall thoughts on Violet Evergarden The Movie.

Events:

First cast greeting event for Violet Evergarden the Movie

Violet Evergarden the Movie: Cast greeting event to thank fans

Production staff event at screening of Violet Evergarden the Movie

Letter of appreciation from Violet Evergarden's author Akatsuki Kana

Post on Violet Evergarden Orchestra Concert 2021

 

Translations of short stories:

Gilbert Bougainvillea and the Fleeting Dream (unofficial translation of "ギルベルト・ブーゲンビリアと儚い夢")

Violet Evergarden short stories: "Logbook entry" and "Diary entry" (unofficial translation)

The Starry Night and the Lonely Two (unofficial translation of 星降りの夜とさみしいふたり)

Diethard Bougainvillea's If (unofficial translation of ディートフリート・ブーゲンビリアIf) 

The Tailor and the Auto-Memories Doll (unofficial translation of 仕立て屋と自動手記人形)

 

List of Violet Evergarden publications

List of Violet Evergarden short stories

 

Tellsis (Nunkish) translation:

Decoding the Violet Evergarden postcard

Translating the message card from Violet Evergarden Orchestra Concert 2021

Last line of Violet's final letter to Gilbert

My Tellsis language translator in Flutter that runs on Windows, Linux, and Android

My (old) Python script for translating to and from Tellsis language (Nunkish)

 

Insights on the movie:

Was Ekarte Island based on Folegandros?

Touching scenes in Violet Evergarden the Movie

Violet Evergarden the Movie is a story about guilt

Article about story consistency/inconsistency in Violet Evergarden the Movie

The dog stuffed toy in Violet Evergarden 

 

Audio commentary notes:

Production staff

Voice actors

Music staff

Violet Evergarden TV anime series

 

All posts related to Violet Evergarden.

Xiaohan 小寒

After the winter solstice, or 冬至, comes Xiaohan, or 小寒, another of the 二十四节气 24 solar terms. It literally means small cold, signifying that the weather is going into one of the coldest times of the year.

 

 

 

 

Calligraphy for the new year 迎龍送兎 and 飛龍走兎 (書き初め)

2024 is here, it is the Year of the Dragon in Japan (the upcoming Chinese New Year, though, is technically when the Year of the Dragon starts), and a common practice at the start of a new year is to write a piece of calligraphy. Well, I decided to write two pieces instead.

迎龍送兎

 

飛龍走兎

I will think of something to write again for Chinese New Year, which falls on 10 February 2024.

Poor translations can lead to the wrong impressions

Ministry: Coast Guard plane not given go-ahead before collision

It is poorly translated articles like this that makes it look like Japanese pilots and ATCs are not professional.

 

This is a screenshot of the relevant portion.
 

 

The ATC did not say "no obstruction to landing on runway 34R" or "Please drive on the ground to the runway stop position C5." as stated in the news article above. The transcript given out to reporters at the press conference was in English, with tentative Japanese translations that read "滑走路３４Ｒ着陸支障なし" and "Ｃ５上の滑走路停止位置まで地上走行してください". Instead of using the original English transcript, Asahi Shimbun had to try and translate the tentative Japanese text into English again, and the translation into English was poorly done without using the proper aviation terms.

 

In the end, a person reading this news report would think Japanese pilots and ATCs don't use professional aviation terms and form an image that this lack of professionalism was the cause of miscommunication leading to this accident. Yet the only miscommunication here was the poor and unprofessional work of a newspaper.

On the other hand, NHK probably did a better job quoting from the transcript.

Tokyo airport collision: What's known so far

In the NHK article, the quotes seem to come directly from the transcript. Such as "JAL 516 Runway 34R cleared to land, wind 310/8" and "JA722A Tokyo Tower. Good evening. No.1, taxi to holding point C5."

Based on a copy of the transcript show here (Japan Airlines collision: Transcripts show coast guard plane was not cleared for take-off):

it seems that the NHK article quoted from the actual transcript handed out.

Update 4 January 2024: NHK reported the full text of the transcript.

Full text: Air traffic control communications right before Tokyo Haneda collision