June 2026

Proxmox VE upgrade from 7 to 8 and the networking.service/start hang issue

16.06.2026 0, ? Software and Hardware Usage

Recently I noticed that the Proxmox VE 7 management page started showing red text about support expiration (officially ending July 2024). So I upgraded to version 8. Before starting I carefully read the official upgrade guide: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Upgrade_from_7_to_8. It describes two methods:

One is a fresh install of 8, then migrating disks and VMs via backup/restore. The other is an in‑place upgrade using apt update/upgrade. The first is safer but requires two servers or identical disk setups. The second carries more risk, since any problem interrupts VM services and may require reinstall and restore. For me, only the in‑place upgrade was possible due to limited hardware.

Despite preparation, the upgrade process was bumpy. The biggest issue was the networking.service/start hang. After the upgrade completed, rebooting the system resulted in a freeze at this state:

At first I waited, but the disk activity light stayed off, so I realized something was wrong. Searching online showed many people with similar problems. This post explained the underlying issue: “Job networking.service/start running”

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OpenSSL EVP API MD5 implementation in C++

12.06.2026 0, ? Design & Development

Most examples found online use the old API. The newer versions of OpenSSL recommend using the EVP family of interfaces, so here I am recording MD5 hash implementation code using EVP.

#include "openssl/conf.h"
#include "openssl/evp.h"
#include "openssl/err.h"
#include "openssl/engine.h"

void handle_errors()
{
	ERR_print_errors_fp(stderr);
	abort();
}

std::string md5_str(const std::string & str)
{
	const auto * md = EVP_get_digestbyname("MD5");
	if (nullptr == md)
	{
		std::cerr << "Failed to EVP_get_digestbyname MD5!" << std::endl;
		return "";
	}

	unsigned char buf[EVP_MAX_MD_SIZE] = {};
	unsigned int olen = EVP_MAX_MD_SIZE;

	EVP_MD_CTX * ctx = EVP_MD_CTX_new();
	if (nullptr == ctx)
	{
		std::cerr << "Failed to EVP_MD_CTX_new!" << std::endl;
		return "";
	}
	if (1 != EVP_DigestInit(ctx, md))
	{
		handle_errors();
		return "";
	}
	if (1 != EVP_DigestUpdate(ctx, str.data(), str.length()))
	{
		handle_errors();
		return "";
	}
	if (1 != EVP_DigestFinal(ctx, buf, &olen))
	{
		handle_errors();
		return "";
	}
	EVP_MD_CTX_free(ctx);

	return { reinterpret_cast<char*>(buf), olen };
}

int main()
{
	OpenSSL_add_all_digests();
	const std::string plain = "test1234";
	const std::string hash = md5_str(plain);
	std::cout << "plain: " << plain << " md5 hash: " << hash << std::endl;
	return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

I will add EVP implementations for AES and others later when I have time.

Perforce (P4) server Unicode mode setup to fix Chinese filename/folder garbled text

11.06.2026 0, ? Software and Hardware Usage

Perforce (P4) server Unicode mode setup to fix Chinese filename/folder garbled text

Problem environment: p4d running on a Linux server, P4ROOT created with default settings, Unicode not enabled. Clients: Windows P4V and Mac P4V. In P4Admin, Server Info showed Unicode support: disabled. When a Windows client added files/folders with Chinese names and submitted them, the Mac client displayed garbled text in the Depot. After Get, filenames were saved with %20 style encoding.

Checking further: with Unicode disabled, in P4V the Connections → Choose Character Encoding… menu was grayed out. In Preferences → Display → Set encoding for all connections to:, Windows default was CP936 GBK, Mac default was UTF‑8. This mismatch caused Chinese names uploaded from Windows to appear garbled on Mac. Forcing P4CHARSET to UTF‑8 or using p4 set produced the error: ‘Unicode clients require a unicode enabled server‘.

Solution: enable Unicode mode on the server.

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[Repost] Running MovableType under FastCGI (Apache)

10.06.2026 0, ? Logs

Previously I ran MovableType on my own machine (Windows + Apache). After moving to a new server, FastCGI required some changes. Following a guide, I modified .htaccess
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MovableType 3.34 update (Jan 17):

  • Fixed a critical XSS vulnerability.
  • Improved FastCGI usability, with performance up to 15× faster.
  • MT 3.34 automatically enables FastCGI depending on server environment, requiring only simple mt-config.cgi settings.
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Modding a Chinese ST‑LINK V2 clone to add SWO support

09.06.2026 0, ? Software and Hardware Usage

Recently a colleague mentioned that Luatos Mall was running a promotion for the AIR32F103 BluePill development boardhttps://wiki.luatos.com/_static/bom/BluePill.html). At 9.9 RMB you get a board plus an extra AIR32F103CCT6 chip. I had never used STM32 MCUs before, so I picked one up to study, at least as a collectible.

After receiving it, I quickly learned from Luatos documentation and searched for STM32 beginner guides online. I discovered various ways to upload programs. Since I had previously bought an ST‑LINK V2 (originally intended for flashing firmware to a WY815P soldering station), I chose to test using ST‑LINK SWD. After soldering headers and wiring according to the silkscreen, the PC recognized the debugger with STM32 ST‑LINK Utility. I then installed the research version of Keil (v5.23 from the netdisk bundled with the ST‑LINK), added the AIR32 software library per Luatos wiki, learned GPIO basics, and successfully lit the onboard LED. At this point I realized how much simpler Arduino is 😂. Breakpoint debugging in Keil also worked. But then I hit a problem: unlike Arduino Nano, which can easily use the IDE serial monitor for logs and command‑line interaction, this setup had no simple way to view printf output. So I spent time researching.

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Lenovo ThinkBook 14+ 2024 shutdown battery drain issue – one possible cause

08.06.2026 0, ? Software and Hardware Usage

Around February 2024 I traded in my ten‑year‑old MacBook Air 2013 for a Lenovo ThinkBook 14+ 2024 U7 version (certified model: ThinkBook 14 G6+ IMH). After using it for some time, aside from slightly rough build quality (uneven screen hinge, keyboard not perfectly level on the C‑side), the functionality and performance were quite good. Since I mainly use a desktop at home, this laptop spends most of its time in standby. Recently, however, I noticed that in shutdown state the battery drains rather quickly, on average 1%–3% per day. Searching online, I found many reports of similar issues from other laptop users, for example: https://learn.microsoft.com/zh-cn/answers/questions/5562378/win11，https://tieba.baidu.com/p/7795883672 and many more. These laptops show continuous battery drain after shutdown, and in Windows 11 battery usage records the screen is shown as being on for nearly 24 hours during shutdown periods.

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A record of handling abnormally large Proxmox VE VM disk backup size

07.06.2026 0, ? Software and Hardware Usage

First, a brief description of this PVE server’s disk setup: there are two 2T mechanical hard drives. One is used to install the PVE system and allocate virtual disks to VMs. The other 2T drive is dedicated to periodic automatic VM backups (stored with ZSTD compression, keeping the last 3 backups). One VM, vm-100 (KVM mode, though the issue should be independent of virtualization type), has two virtual disks: a 200G /dev/sda1 and a 1T /dev/sdb1. The 200G disk is used to install the OS (Debian 10), and the 1T disk is used for service data storage.

Initially, one service’s data was stored on the main system partition on the 200G virtual disk. Since I did not anticipate how fast the service data would grow, the 200G system disk quickly filled up. So I scheduled some time to migrate that service’s data directory to the 1T disk mount point. After a series of operations (I even messed up once by using cp without preserving file permissions, causing the service to fail to start after migration, and had to redo it with cp -a), the service resumed normal operation.

However, during subsequent PVE automatic backup tasks, backup failures started to occur. Checking the PVE logs, I saw errors like this (from the automatic backup notification email):

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Solution to stuttering and dropped frames when watching high‑resolution 60fps YouTube videos in Chrome

07.06.2026 0, ? Software and Hardware Usage

Solution to stuttering and dropped frames when watching high‑resolution 60fps YouTube videos in Chrome

On my old Core 2 Duo machine, watching high‑resolution 60fps YouTube videos in Chrome resulted in obvious frame drops. Using the video stats (Stats for nerds), I could see that at 1080p 60fps the dropped frames counter kept increasing. At the same time, both CPU cores were maxed out. Clearly, the HTML5 video player was not using hardware decoding.

At first I thought it was a Chrome settings issue. I toggled the hardware acceleration option and restarted Chrome, but the problem remained. After searching online, I found that due to some behavior in Chrome (many people reported that Firefox and newer versions of IE do not have this issue), YouTube sends VP8/VP9 encoded video streams (also visible in the stats panel). These formats do not support hardware decoding on older hardware, so the CPU becomes fully loaded and frames are dropped constantly.

Therefore, the solution is to force YouTube to send a hardware‑decodable format. Fortunately, someone created a Chrome extension that does exactly this: h264ify: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal, After installing it, YouTube starts sending AVC‑encoded video instead. CPU usage drops significantly, and the frame‑drop issue improves noticeably.

About the Si4735 SSB Patch (pu2clr open source project)

04.06.2026 0, ? Design & Development Software and Hardware Usage

Recently I have been experimenting with building a digital radio using Arduino + Si4735 + pu2clr/SI4735. The FM functionality is basically working fine. Thanks to Ricardo Lima Caratti, the author of the pu2clr open source project, for providing such a convenient library. With correct circuit connections, the features can be implemented almost instantly.

After some simple testing, I decided to challenge the so‑called SSB single sideband patch. I ran into a small pitfall. Using the pu2clr example code: https://github.com/pu2clr/SI4735/blob/master/examples/TOOLS/SI47XX_09_SAVE_SSB_PATCH_EEPROM/SI47XX_09_SAVE_SSB_PATCH_EEPROM.ino, I attempted to write the SSB patch into an AT24C256 EEPROM. However, after executing the code, the data written was incorrect. All verification reads returned 0xFF. The patch name displayed in Arduino IDE Serial Monitor was garbled, and the size showed as 65535, corresponding to FF error data.

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The source file is different from when the module was built.

04.06.2026 0, ? Design & Development

*******************************

Source file: D:\Projects\StereoMatch\stereomatcher.cpp

Module: D:\Projects\StereoMatch\Debug\StereoMatch.exe

Process: [4024] StereoMatch.exe

The source file is different from when the module was built. Would you like the debugger to use it anyway?

*******************************

***********************************

At StereoMatcher.cpp, line 166 (‘ComputeCorrespondence()’, line 128)

The breakpoint will not currently be hit. The source code is different from the original version.

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