Fix for Lenovo Legion 5P losing FreeSync compatibility in hybrid mode after updating AMD drivers

Upgrading the AMD drivers to an updated version is a Good Idea - see this post on The Register for an example - as the ones released by Lenovo are at least a year old. However, doing the regular upgrade wipes out the ability to use FreeSync with the built-in 144Hz screen, because it does a full settings reset and wipes the OEM customisations.

After some trial and error, the way to fix this is as follows:

1. If you've already upgraded the drivers and lost FreeSync, use the AMD Cleanup Utility to delete any sign of existing AMD drivers.
2. Reinstall the original drivers from the Lenovo support page for your laptop.
3. Get the latest AMD Adrenalin software.
4. Install it - but UNTICK the box that specifies "do factory reset". That's what breaks the existing configuration for FreeSync.

Successful results:

Hanging pip install in a WSL terminal for no apparent reason

Just spent an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't install anything via pip in my WSL terminal. First I thought it was a keyring problem that was making it hang on the command line. Couldn't figure out via strace what was going on, only that it was suck at a "read(3,". Increasing verbosity on the command line didn't help at all, still got nothing. I eventually cursed, reinstalled my Ubuntu WSL environment... and got exactly the same problem.

The culprit? My DISPLAY variable, pointing at my local X server (using VcXsrv) - which wasn't running in the background for some reason, it's normally in my startup. Started that, problem disappeared.

Oops. I've seen this before with other command line programs. Bit of an oddity... what threw me is the fact it didn't time out at all.

Viglen Ultrabook 360 BIOS password lockout after setting

Another tidbit that hopefully will help other people. I acquired a Viglen Ultrabook 360 for the boss, and was going through standard setup - encrypt the SSD, set it all up, and then finally password the BIOS. Nothing out of the ordinary, until I tried to boot up and it refused to accept the password I'd set. I was incredibly confused (and rather concerned that I'd just bricked a brand new laptop!). Logged a support ticket, and prepared for an RMA, then took one last look out of curiosity.

I finally figured out some of the keypresses weren't being registered when I held down shift. Turns out that the default was to have numlock on on boot. On a laptop, with no number pad. Turning it off allowed me to enter the password correctly. Once disabled on startup in the BIOS, the problem naturally went away.

Hope this saves someone pulling out their hair like I did... I haven't got that much left to pull out! ;-)

Danfoss 102E5 heater controller not powering up boiler, and refusing to engage "on" position

A lesson was learned yesterday. My boiler decided it was no longer going to fire up, so I had a few rather cold evenings in the winter. Ordered a replacement controller on eBay, plugged it in, and it still did the same. I was rather confused.

Turns out, there's a fused switch next to the boiler. The fuse had gone, so there was no power at all to the controller. But the controller has a built-in battery, which continued to make it look like it was still working. Useful!

If your Randall Danfoss controller decides it's no longer going to start your boiler heating up, check the fuse first. Looks like it's supposed to be a 3A. Whoops. Still, I'm keeping the spare controller just in case of other winter trouble, until I replace the boiler with a proper combi!

Edit: Turns out it was a good idea to keep the spare controller. It just popped again.

Samsung Galaxy S5 / S5 Neo with Lineage OS 16 bootlooping on install

Today I learned that if you install the opengapps package for Android 9 (Pie), it'll bootloop to recovery instead of loading up. Apparently same goes for the S4 too. They just don't like the recent opengapps packages. Use MindTheGapps, they work fine.

Edit: Turns out there was a bug in opengapps when I tried to install. Figures... works fine now.

DD-WRT allowing setting of initial username and password then locking out, and unable to TFTP new firmware

Seems it's the day for discovering things. I upgraded to the latest Brainslayer DD-WRT release on an R7000 at work. So far, so good, fairly standard stuff. I'd wiped it beforehand, set my PC IP to 192.168.1.2, got to the web interface, set the username and password as previous, clicked on setup, waited, and then watched myself repeatedly get a "connection reset" message. I figured it was a bad flash. Tried to TFTP a new copy of the image in, it wouldn't take - turns out it works better if you use the .CHK format for that. Got out a USB-TTL interface and flashed it manually, wiped it, rebooted.

Same problem.

After much head scratching, it turned out the problem was in fact a combination of my browser and saved credentials (in this case, provided by Kee and KeePass). Because I had previously saved HTTP credentials for 192.168.1.1 on an unrelated router, it tried to repeatedly automatically submit them to the HTTP auth request, and it looks like I triggered anti-lockout rules.

Whoops!

Suffice to say opening the router was unnecessary, but at least I had the kit handy and ready.