Tootfinder

The Python library "YFinance" decided to force an upgrade. They did this by making the old version report a rate-limit error on every request.
Confusing.
Would have been better if they reported a "old version not supported" error or something instead. So that wasted some time.
That upgrade had dependencies which have dependencies upon a newer version of Python, so needed a whole OS upgrade really.
Which failed. Bricking the Rasp PI it was running on.
Oh well, complete rebuild of the whole machine and software it runs from scratch then.
That took all day yesterday. At the end I notice that the touch-screen doesn't touch. Needs drivers.
The drivers haven't been upgraded in six years. They brick the machine again when trying to install them on Debian Trixie.
Luckily, I kept good notes and could rebuild it all again much faster with no mistakes and knowing what to do and all the required custom software changes already made and saved.
So now I spent a whole day on annoying upgrade work because a single Python library decided to break the old version, and my Rasp Pi has no touch-screen. Which isn't ideal for a machine mostly operating as a fancy light switch for all the LED strips in the house.
This happens all the time in software. Millions of man hours wasted, so much hardware dumped because the drivers get abandoned.

In other news: Microsoft abandons Windows 10 any day now. Good luck to everyone faced with doing that lap on the upgrade treadmill.
I still have more work to do to bring up this RaspPi's software to where it was, but it'll have to wait, other things to do. At least it's back to sending me the nightly finance report and controlling the LED strips. If without a touch screen now.
#software #upgradeTredmil #python #microsoft

#selfhost v4.4.1 upgrade complete! Phew that was a long one. But I think I found the root of the issue in the zombie pixelfed install. Maybe it had a memory leak (it wasn’t a current version) or maybe it was just too much for #footiMac.. but it was definitely slowing things down. Things are much more responsive now in general. I guess that brings the pixelfed testing to an end for now. But I'll probably bring it back up elsewhere if I get a chance.
#Pixelfed #Mastodon #upgrade #Debian

i think my pixelfed install has been slowing down #footiMac! I stopped it temporarily just to see if it would help and things sped up and responded immediately. So I may keep my pixelfed instance offline for the foreseeable future. I don't use it anyway. Maybe i'll test it out on my external host rather #footiMac just to take away any multi-hosted issues.
I'm now at 4.4.0 and am now moving to 4.4.1. Should be done shortly!
#Pixelfed #Mastodon #upgrade #Debian

When I wrote my last post above I got an error from my instance that the post was over the 500 character limit. Which is odd, since I have the limit set to 2000 on my instance.
Sure enough, it looks like somewhere along the line I blew away the config files that had been edited to enable the longer posts.
So consider this a test to see if I have correctly re-applied the hack, which is what it is, and completely unnecessarily, in the code for mastodon when this should be a simple switch/option in the admin panel!
(edit: confirmed: 2000 character limit restored)
#selfhost #footiMac #Pixelfed #Mastodon #upgrade #Debian

proud of little #footiMac. 2008 Core2 Duo iMac with 16GB RAM and a 1.5TB SSD
She's done excellent work in her space under the stairs. nearly a full year of uptime and chugging away doing Mastodon, Pixelfed (until just now), weewx Weather server, homebridge, streaming relay point, and general web server.
My next trick will be to see if I can move mastodon from using local storage for media to using cloud storage. I'm at about 70% usage now, so it's time.
Your old computers always have a purpose friends! Don't throw them away!
#selfhost #footiMac #Pixelfed #Mastodon #upgrade #Debian