tldr; W11 bluetooth doesn't work with multiple cards. It will see devices but will not pair. Same hw pairs under Linux.

hey folks. I posted this to /r/techsupport on reddit and for some reason they say they don't support Windows 11 Enterprise... and it took them a day to tell me instead of using automod. I thought this was both funny and the dumbest thing. Anyway, here's a fun little issue I'm trying to sort out.

Windows 11 Enterprise 22h2 (22621.3810)

About two weeks ago (after a year of having this system) my bluetooth decided not to pair with anything. It will see devices and try to pair, but it never goes through.

I have tried:

• a different wireless card / bt combo (PCIE)
• removing the wireless / bt combo and using a bt dongle
• removing all drivers (show hidden devices etc), rebooting clean, reinstalling
• changing the USB connection to the mobo for the PCIE card
• live boot of latest Ubuntu LTS -- successfully paired DS4 controller and Sony Headphones

The event logs for Bluetooth Policy are all positive (e.g. A connection to a remote device 0xA4538553B7FD was successfully established) -- but nothing is paired.

This happened on a day when I added two HDDs to the box and ran updates etc. I also tried everything above without the drives installed without any luck.

Any ideas?

notes:

• I just finished with a W11 windows-to-go install off a super slow USB and I wasn't able to pair headphones or the DS4, but I did pair some sony TW earbuds. I'm sensing a fresh install in my future.

I currently have a Lenovo N42 Chromebook far past it's EoL, for which Google is no longer supporting it. I have put Chrome OS Flex on it by reflashing the bios, and it's pretty solid, but I have no internal audio. Bluetooth audio and HDMI works fine, but no headphones, and no speakers.

I found this solution for trying to hack in an Alsa configuration from an Ubuntu Live Disk (https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/swzxsy/comment/irk5kqk/) and I was able to follow the instructions and enable development mode, but when I try to run the alsaconfig script, I get this.

crosh> shell
chronos@localhost / $ sudo alsarestore
No state is present for card chtrt5650
/usr/sbin/alsactl: sysfs_init:48: sysfs path '/sys' is invalid

Found hardware: "chtrt5650" "" "" "" ""
Hardware is initialized using a generic method
No state is present for card chtrt5650

It may have something to do with those instructions being for a different build computer, but I am outside my sphere of knowledge, and anything else I could troubleshoot would be appreciated. Internal audio isn't mission critical for me, but it would be appreciated.

As some are aware, my NAS hates me. Anyway, I ran an update just now and it spat out the following:

Setting up linux-firmware (1.187.27) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.13.0-30-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sdb2
I: (UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-27-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sdb2
I: (UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f)

UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f is /swap.

/dev/sdb2: UUID="e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="329487d0-88c7-4d47-ab82-dc4b80bd3bfe"

The full log is below. If I reboot this thing, will it tell me that it cannot find GRUB like the previous installation that shit the bed?

My assumption is that its simply telling me that it's enabled some sort of hibernation and will use the /swap for that.. but I'm totally on edge with this thing. I don't have a lot to set up with the system-side of things, so I put off trying to fix the old installation from the previous post until later.

Anyway, does anything here seem fishy?

edit:

UUID=842ddd01-963f-4cea-b04f-a52b6b719a16 /          ext4  errors=remount-ro 0   1
# /boot was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
UUID=5cfbef39-3eb7-41e6-8223-e6881b4f3286 /boot      ext4  defaults          0   2
# /home was on /dev/sdb3 during installation
UUID=4f30a4a2-9f28-4831-a22c-dc5b969c4f17 /home      ext4  defaults          0   2
# swap was on /dev/sdb2 during installation
UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f none       swap  tf                0   0

A few months ago I got a new to me HP Proliant ML310e Gen8. For the most part it works well, but I went to add some drives to it yesterday and grub / whateverthefuck doesn't like the one and only kernel that is installed.

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04. I looked around saw guides like this. this, and this -- but I'm not sure if this will fix the issue.

After grub I get the ol'

---[end Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) ]---

I think I need to run something with initramfs or something, but I just want to be sure before I go messing around.

The bad kernel listed is 5.11.0-27-generic. I'm a little out of my element with this part of things.

I have a CalDigit TS3+ dock that I switch between my M1 Macbook Pro and a System76 Galago Pro that's currently running Windows 10 (I'm sorry, FOSS gods). The M1 has no problem using the TS3+ when it's connected or disconnected and reconnected. But the Galago Pro will only connect to the dock if it was connected while booting up. Disconnecting and reconnecting leaves the dock in a state where only the pass-through thunderbolt port works. So my monitor that uses the pass-through for DisplayPort can operate after reconnecting the dock, but no other devices plugged into the dock will. My mouse/keyboard for example don't even receive power in this state.

Oddly when setting up the drivers for thunderbolt I found that the only drivers available are for Intel's NUCs. IIRC someone on reddit said that this is actually the software I need to install, so that's what I did.

Any help getting the dock to work better is appreciated! Currently I need to reboot the laptop every time I switch back from the M1 to the Galago Pro.

Edit:

This was resolved by @tomf (cf. this comment).

Google’s account authentication appears to broken for me for some reason.

I have several devices and several Google accounts accumulated over the years.

Accounts:

1. Work Google account (this was set up by IT staff at the company where I work as they are a paying enterprise Google services customer)
2. Undergraduate University account (this was set up when I attended undergrad, where the University is a paying Google services customer)
3. Graduate University account (this was set up when I attended for grad school, where the University is a paying Google services customer)
4. Personal Google account (this was set up a long time ago, it’s just a non-paid, consumer Google account)

Under iOS and iPad OS, Google apparently asks you to download the official Google app in order to sign in and “trust” devices, so that they can send you prompts to acknowledge when you sign in on other devices. There is also the Google Authenticator app that lets you do traditional 2FA.

Further background, I got an iPhone 12 Pro circa October 2020. I gave my old iPhone handset to my dad (after signing out of everything and resetting it according to Apple’s instructions). Ever since, I’ve been having issues with logging into my Google accounts from the new iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac (provided by work). I’m actually afraid to log out of my work Google account on my work Mac, because I’m afraid I won’t be able to log in again, and that would prevent me from being able to get work done.

For example, let me walk through the steps I would normally take to log in to my Undergraduate University Google account on my iPad:

1. Open the Google app
2. Tap user icon in top right corner
3. From the modal menu, tap the downward chevron (circled in red)
4. Tap “Add another account” (circled in red)
5. Tap “Continue” on the confirmation widget when prompted
6. Enter the Gmail address for the account in the provided “Email or phone” input box and tap “Next”
7. At this point, I wait for the progress indicator (the blue bar with the red arrow pointing to it) to indefinitely traverse from left to right over and over again and I cannot progress further.

Virtually the same steps can be reproduced from my iPhone by going to accounts.google.com from any browser (I’ve tried Safari and Chrome).

The same sort of authentication redirect from accounts.google.com happens when trying to add my associated Gmail accounts to my iOS devices from the Settings > Mail > Accounts > Add Account, and similarly stalls at the same point.

I’ve tried logging out of my accounts from my personal Mac where I can still log in from google.com, and also tried going into the security settings for the accounts and disabling, then re-enabling 2FA (I can receive the text message with the code to associate my iPhone as a second factor authenticator, so Google knows my phone number).

Google’s support documents don’t provide any guidance on this situation where the accounts.google.com authentication hangs, and there seems to be no way to contact a human being at Google to provide technical support. I’ve searched their help portal/forums, and found nothing similar to my issue. They point me down a tree that ends here, which is not useful to me.

If Google’s services don’t work for you, it seems to be your problem, not theirs. I get that I’m not paying for their services, so it is totally unreasonable for me to expect any sort of technical support from Google. But, at the same time, it seems very strange that I am alone in my use case of simply trying to log into my accounts that have worked for years in the past without issue.

Anyone have advice on next steps?

Following up on @freddy's query about self-hosting ...

I am trying to set up a self-hosted VPS running Synapse (the server-side component of Matrix), Riot-web, and bundled in Jitsi. I've twice gotten it up and running successfully for internal accounts/users, but federation keeps throwing weird authentication errors when trying to connect with user accounts from other server instances (a week later, my regular Matrix account still has 3 outstanding broken Invites from the new server-account which I can neither accept nor reject ... ).

I'm basically following along with this youtube setup tutorial (except I am using Apache rather than nginx).

Before I start to drill into the nitty-gritty of my issue(s), does anyone here have experience setting this up? Anyone care to dedicate a bit of time and energy to helping me figure out what I'm doing wrong?

Additionally, I saw commentary from @smores that Jitsi isn't performing well for him on his self-hosted server ... any further details you can share?

Edited to add:

Sorry all, I didn't think through the timing. I am still motivated to get a self-hosted Matrix instance up and running; however, right at the moment, I have a couple of other, higher priorities I need to attend to first. If I'd thought about it, I would have held off on starting this thread for a couple of days.

I will get back to this thread ... let's say, Wed or Thurs ... take another crack at the Matrix set-up then, and provide details here, as I do.

Thanks,
EtC

I have a large VirtualBox VM on an external HDD. The HDD fails the S.M.A.R.T. test. The VM still works fine, but any regular attempt to copy the VM files over to a healthy drive fails ... there is clearly already something corrupt in the VM's virtual HDD, although it is not (apparently? yet?) affecting the functionality of the actual VM.

Any suggestions on how to save the VM? Linux Mint Guest OS, Pop_OS (Ubuntu) Host. The VM is nearly 800 GB. Both regular copy and rsync fail.

Thanks,
Eric

PS: (and perhaps I should have led with this, but...) is it okay to ask these kinds of specific, technical, "help me with my tech-stuff" questions here on Tildes?

Update to the update ... moved update info into a comment ... will keep my progress updated in that primary comment.

Danke, y gracias to all