Hello fellow readers,

This week is TTY week at nixers.net.

Last summer we did the same challenge and it turned out a pretty enjoyable and a great learning experience. I’m going to add logs in this post and hopefully it’ll render beautifully (because I can’t check my blog from the TTY.)

Day 1

I started the timer clock on my server so that anyone can keep track of how much time is left for the challenge. The script is simple, it kills any graphical session it finds open and updates the counter.
Last summer everyone had their bit of entertainment finding console games, for me it was vitetris. I played it a bit and tried to get back an efficient tty workflow. I’m using dvtm for multiplexing, the framebuffer for images, links -g for browsing the web, and the rest stays the same as in X. Pretty easy when you are a minimalist.

One annoying thing is copying text. I installed gpm which stands for general purpose mouse.

gpm - a cut and paste utility and mouse server for virtual consoles

It’s not exactly a mouse but a cursor that helps copying text around. It fills the most recent selection buffer (middle click).

Day 2

I ssh into my work box, at my job, and do whatever I have to do from my home machine that I brought with me. It’s the simplest way to stick true to the TTY week without the hassle of setting up another box.

It’s fun to be able to work with the love of my life (the first box I bought).

Last year I used my own custom Perl script to check my mails but this time I want to have a go with new programs. Thus, I’ve got alpine setup. The only drawback is that you cannot have multiple accounts.

Using fswebcam and Imagemagick I was able to take a stupid selfie and edit it.

I found out that with my tty workflow, where I’m using multiple TTYs as workspaces, the pam captcha patch I wrote is quite annoying. Most of the time I miss the captcha or the password and I have to redo the procedure all over again. I bet that if an attacker would want to force his way into my box he’ll certainly give up.

Day 3

I didn’t spend that day working on my machine, I simply played music remotely using mpd. Actually, that’s one of the thing I enjoy the most on the TTY, even the music visualizer in ncmpcpp (mpd client) looks great.

• A note on how I take screenshots in the TTY:

sleep 3 && fbdump > myimage.dump
convert myimage.dump myimage.png
# insert command to upload image somewhere

The advantage of adding a sleep before the framebuffer dump is that it gives you enough time to switch between TTYs. This is especially nice because it lets you take screenshots when you normally couldn’t. For example, the login screen, when playing a video with mplayer -vo fbdev2, while having any application open that uses the whole pixmap of the frambuffer, etc..

Day 4

I spent the morning programming for the urnn (Unix Ricing Neural Network) project.
links -g features multiple tabs which is doesn’t clobber browsing multiple pages at the same time. You can switch through them using ALT+num and open them via the ESC main menu.
Multiplexing with dvtm is certainly one of my main key to keep the flow in my TTY. I open the documentation next to my code with a single keybind.

Day 5

The timer I wrote went crazy and told me that the week was already over. By thinking simply I’ve made some huge designs failures. Next time I’ll think of something else.

I’m using fbgs Poor man's PostScript/pdf viewer for the linux framebuffer console. to read pdf books. My current readings are about group dynamics psychology.

Day 6

I didn’t bring my home laptop at work today. When I got back home I started working on a generic Lindenmayer System in Perl.

Day 7

The TTY week is over. It passed faster then I thought.

If you want to have a more in depth discussion I'm always available by email or irc. We can discuss and argue about what you like and dislike, about new ideas to consider, opinions, etc..
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