iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

iiinova is part of the Atmosphere — an open, public network where you own your identity.

Jonathan Perkin

@jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy

7 followers 0 following 95 posts

Senior Software Engineer at EdgeCast. :illumos: :pkgsrc: I provide pkgsrc.smartos.org, a cross-platform package manager with binary packages for macOS […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ federate.me.uk/@jperkin, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

Posts Replies Media

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

If you are using my macOS packages available from pkgsrc.smartos.org/install-on-macos then note that due to newer compiler and SDK requirements, the 14.5 package set will no longer be updated, and there is a newer 15.5 SDK target now available. Upgrade instructions are available here […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

"Signing in using your GitHub account without a pre-existing account in gitlab.gnome.org is not allowed. " I'm so tired of people making it difficult to report bugs and submit patches, and then people complaining that I don't upstream my patches from pkgsrc.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

I was already a little annoyed that Apple replaced rsync with openrsync, as it broke some of my own personal ways of working (e.g. listing remote directories), but now the version in macOS 27 is also breaking "bob publish" because it has an incompatible --delete-excluded implementation. #pkgsrc […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Bit disappointing. Upgraded pkgsrc macOS build host from 14.x to 27.0.1, and MacFUSE to latest. First run is showing consistently slower builds. bindfs CPU usage seems higher, but I don't have accurate numbers on that. Also there is still the 2 minute delay to unmount /System. Maybe next […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

Initial experience with Octopus Plug-In Solar let down quite a bit by Fox ESS incompetence. 1. Setting up wifi overwrote login password 2. Link to reset password doesn't work 3. Find password reset page, doesn't work 4. Have to email them like it's 1997

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026

@timfoster ugh, thought nonsense like that was a thing of the past. reminds me of having to run oracle linux many years ago, and how much less productive I was as a result...

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Anyone else getting false-positive redundant_field_names warnings with the new 0.1.99 clippy? #rustlang

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Fulfilled a dream today, that was so much fun! #avgeek

Photograph of the inside of a Cessna 152 about to taxi.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

@Unsightly3055 We don't decide on which software to port to pkgsrc or not, it's just around 100 of us, plus contributors, who spend time creating and updating packages for things that we use. We love it when people get involved and help out packaging up the software that they like and need, and […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

@timfoster tomorrow: tim reads AI-generated code comments and explodes

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

@timfoster first uni experience for us this past weekend, it's a little weird! though with 4 kids a little less feeling emptier and a bit more like having some room to breathe ;-)

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

Upgraded the home iMac to macOS 27. Disappointed, as I thought I'd read they were going to tone down the whole Liquid Glass nonsense, but it appears all I can do is reduce the transparency, and not get rid of the ridiculously oversized bubbles. Guess I will be holding out on Sequoia for a lot […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

@stefano thanks for keeping us up-to-date! some interesting stuff..

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

25 years ago, at BBC Kingswood Warren, we were trying to keep bbc.co.uk up and running. www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/200…

Screenshot of inet34.rd.bbc.co.uk (Sun Ultra 10, Solaris 9) viewing the News Online homepage on Sept 12 2001 using Netscape, during my WindowMaker phase. A lot of the day was spent answering phone calls from concerned BBC Online staff wondering why parts of the site weren't working, and hearing Damion's "Well there were these two planes..." response. Many news sites went completely under. We were able to keep a lot of things running.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

Today's rabbit hole: * gitea broken due to sqlite.go update * sqlite.go blocked by libsqlite3.go * libsqlite3.go blocked by libc.go * fix libc.go * libsqlite3.go now blocked by upstream sqlite bug * caused by "-Wl,-R" in shell scripts getting brace expanded when converted to tcl array Turtles […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

The fun I had trying to get gpt-5.6-luna to perform a trivial task moving some functions from one file to another. The kind of mind-numbing, tedious work that computers should be perfectly capable of doing, freeing up our precious time for more human and creative endeavours. I should have just […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 04/09/2026

While I am a firm believer in using all available tools to improve the software I work on, I do really like that NetBSD's firm and unequivocal anti-LLM stance is proving popular, and helping it to gain traction. To all the new users I'm seeing over the past few weeks, welcome! Hope we can help […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

First home workout since cancelling gym membership and getting a cheap set of adjustable dumbbells and a bench. Really quite happy with them. I'll miss having access to the cable machines, but can already feel e.g. skullcrushers hitting muscles I don't think […] [Original post on federate.me.uk]

Photograph of a workout bench, flanked by a set of adjustable dumbbells (up to 24kg, more than enough for me!)

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

@abs0 ah I've not been on regional-london@ for a long time, miss those days in Chiswick! can't make this one but would be interested at some point.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

@BenjaminHan I'm not very knowledgeable at all around electronics, so mostly going on intuition. I think the above diagnosis proves that it's at least not an issue with either the cable or the upper console, and I would expect a simple two-pin 12V fan to work if the 12V supply was reliable […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

@BenjaminHan the upper console does not turn on at all. when plugged in the green led on the power board is dim and blinking when it should be bright and always on. I've verified that 12V is on the pins going to the upper console, but I also plugged a fan into those 12V rails and got the same […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

Continuing treadmill debugging. Am now satisfied the scary capacitors are discharged, and testing the 12V rails with a spare CPU fan exhibits the same issue (voltage drops, LED goes dim and starts flashing). My intuition is suspecting the 2 x 25V capacitors […] [Original post on federate.me.uk]

Photograph of a pair of pliers, a Sole F63 power control board, a multimeter, and a flat white with some not great latte art.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 30/08/2026

@BenjaminHan F63

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 30/08/2026

Have been really enjoying MinuteCryptic since discovering it, despite not ever being interested in cryptic crosswords. Thought I'd take a fresh look at The Times. Read the example. Big "nope" after the first clue! Just completely different. It would take me centuries to complete one.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

Today's fun: trying to fix my treadmill. I think I've narrowed it down to three options: * Take a punt on a new power board (~£200) * Buy a new treadmill * Diagnose possibly faulty 25V capacitors on a board containing scary 400V capacitors I'm not sure I like any of those options. #diy #running

Photograph of my treadmill's power circuitry.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

@sborrill run to parkrun, run parkrun, run home #parkrun

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

First parkrun sandwich for a few months, and I felt it. 2 minutes slower than last week. So long fitness, it was nice knowing you. That's my lowest VO2Max since getting my Garmin 4 years ago. (First post with Buffer. Nice to see a healthy amount of parkrun content on BlueSky.) #parkrun #fitness

Screenshot of my VO2Max over the past 6 months. Got injured last month and it has dropped like a lead balloon since.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

Keep hearing good things about Octopus Energy. Not quite ready to switch supplier to them yet (mostly because OVO will almost certainly mess up our credit balance). I have however just ordered one of the plug-in solar kits that they've just announced. I think with the baseline draw that we […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 22/08/2026

Have been trying to get my youngest daughter along to parkrun for ages, including the offer of some pretty substantial bribes. Nothing appeared to be working. On the drive home from her football training last night, her friends had created a running group […] [Original post on federate.me.uk]

My heart rate graph for this mornings parkrun

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

I spent a bunch of time with Codex cleaning things up, removing loads of old statuses, rewriting my hashtag-fetch script, and disabling my tag relays. Seems to have settled things down, and Mastodon's newer polling for replies looks like it's sufficient to keep threads populated. Hopefully […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2026

Go to "Live Feeds" on my server, click "All", there's one single post in the last hour. In that time "tootctl media usage" has gone up from 17.3GB to 18.2GB, and is on track to fill up the disk while I'm asleep. That single post is just a couple of small jpegs. Somebody make it make sense […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 18/08/2026

Another 15GB gobbled up in a couple of hours, filling the disk and killing the instance. WTAF? This is ridiculous, all I need are the few hashtags that I follow to be retrieved from other servers. Why is running a personal instance that does this so unbelievably difficult? Going to start […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 17/08/2026

Ok, what's changed very recently in Mastodon land? Suddenly my instance is constantly filling up with stupid amounts of data in system/cache/media_attachments. My daily cron jobs to clean up appear to no longer be enough. Previously it was very static, with almost always around 20GB free […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

Our hotel wifi sucks, so for today's Geoguessr game I thought I'd try no steps for the first time. As predicted, did absolutely terribly for the first 4 rounds, but then finished with a 5K! Tempted to give up and stop playing, I'm never going to improve on that. #geoguessr

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 11/08/2026

Excited to try this, have wanted a Rust alternative to ShellCheck for a long time now. github.com/ewhauser/shuck The main issue with ShellCheck is that the Haskell infrastructure in pkgsrc is sub-optimal, and it currently pulls in the full ghc as well as lots of hs-* dependencies […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 08/08/2026

I've been working on some optimisations to bob's dynamic scheduler, which has resulted in a huge new personal best for a from-scratch pkgsrc bulk build: Built 26943 in 17h 40m 23s (22688 succeeded, 0 cached, 2577 failed, 1678 skipped) Not quite an apples-to-apples comparison as I've been using […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 01/08/2026

If you're running the SmartOS trunk package set, then ensure you have the latest pkg tools installed: $ pkg_add -U pkg_install pkgin This will help avoid a potential issue I discovered when upgrading a host that hadn't been updated for a long time […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 01/08/2026

It all started so well today, before going downhill and finishing badly on my nemesis continent. #geoguessr

Screenshot of Geoguessr scores for today: 5000, 5000, 4856, 4305, 202

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

Alternate patterns work too: $ ./target/debug/bob history -o pkgname,outcome,duration 'mariadb-{client,server}>10<11' PKGNAME OUTCOME DURATION mariadb-server-10.5.29nb7 success 9m04s mariadb-server-10.11.14nb4 success 9m02s mariadb-server-10.6.25nb2 success 8m21s mariadb-client-10.5.29nb5 […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2026

A nice little usability improvement coming in the next version of bob: you can specify a dewey pattern for commands that accepts a package match, e.g.: $ ../target/debug/bob history -o pkgname,duration 'nodejs>22<24' PKGNAME DURATION nodejs-22.22.2 53m39s nodejs-22.22.2 51m55s nodejs-22.22.2 […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 30/07/2026

Ok, that's by far the best jobs page I've ever seen. ssh superlogical.jobs

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2026

Early next week I'll be updating the SmartOS trunk package sets to be built on 20250612, as per announcement to smartos-discuss: smartos.topicbox.com/groups/smartos… This also […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 21/07/2026

Decided to dig into what I initially suspected was hardware issues on a host performing "pkgin upgrade" very slowly. No, turns out it's legitimate requests hammering the disks, with pkg_delete performing an MD5 check on every file it is about to forcibly remove anyway. Eventually it'd be nice […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 14/07/2026

Almost watertight now, will be a lot less stressful once the rubber roof is on and given a chance to relax a bit, don't want wet OSB! Hopefully the rain will hold off for another couple of days. Managed to fit most of the roof from inside, up a step ladder […] [Original post on federate.me.uk]

Photograph of an over-engineered shed I'm building. Basically up to garden room specs.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 08/07/2026

Fable dishing out the compliments that those of us running these systems for decades have always known and advocated for. "That DTrace trace was the whole game, by the way — owner identity from mdb plus lock/unlock pairing found one orphaned acquisition in 55k events and its exact stack. Nice […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 02/07/2026

First half of new shed floor built. Starting to regret not buying a first fix nail gun, hammering 100mm nails by hand isn't much fun, especially at the start when there's nothing to drive against. #woodworking #diy

Half of a shed floor frame, built out of 3x2 timber.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2026

A hydration break 2 minutes after a lengthy stoppage where all the players had a drink. America, you absolute joke.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2026

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing^W^Worder a few tonnes of timber that needs transporting to the back garden. We're currently experiencing a heatwave in the UK. I'm sure many of you would laugh at the "that sounds like a normal Tuesday to […] [Original post on federate.me.uk]

Photograph of a few tonnes of timber on a front garden lawn.

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 12/06/2026

Delighted to announce the first 1.0.0 release of bob, and import it into pkgsrc for general use in time for pkgsrc-2026Q2. mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-change… One of the reasons for the name is in honour of my dad, who has later stage dementia. I've poured a […]

Original post on federate.me.uk

Jonathan Perkin @jperkin.federate.me.uk.ap.brid.gy · 12/06/2026

TIL the --locked argument to 'cargo install', necessary to workaround upstream breakage in the time crate causing bob to fail, and looks like lots of others: github.com/time-rs/time/issues/783 Doesn't seem great that a broken publish of an indirect dependency can break so much software […]

Original post on federate.me.uk