The Music Player Demon (MPD) is a handy piece of software. Together with Cantata as a client, it has served my music-listening needs very well for years. Sadly, I recently ran into a bit of trouble. MPD supports multiple outputs, so instead of just outputting audio to a local pulseaudio server (or pipewire impersonating a pulseaudio server) it can simultaneously output audio as an http stream. As a homeoffice worker, I use this to listen to my music library on my work machine while I am in calls.

However, recently I’ve been running into an issue where the stream would sometimes end when the track is switched.

> mpv http://localhost:8000
● Audio  --aid=1  'Somewhere' (vorbis 2ch 44100 Hz 128 kbps)
File tags:
 Artist: Within Temptation
 Album: The Silent Force
 Album_Artist: Within Temptation
 Composer: Sharon Den Adel
 Date: 2004
 Genre: Hard Rock & Metal
 Title: Somewhere
 Track: 11
AO: [pipewire] 44100Hz stereo 2ch floatp
[ffmpeg] http: Stream ends prematurely at 239048, should be 18446744073709551615
> 

I was unable to find many other people having this issue on the internet (prompting me to write this post) and the references I found offered no solution. There was the classic topic marked as SOLVED without the solution posted and a Github discussion mentioning that nobody except radio stations should use the http output anyway, offering Snapcast as an alternative. Looking at Snapcast, I quickly disregarded this solution as it would require a more involved setup and a specific snapcast client instead of using clients like mpv, VLC or just a plain webbrowser.

At the time, I had been using the following configuration in my mpd.conf without problems for years:

audio_output {
        type            "httpd"
        name            "MPD"
        encoder         "vorbis"          # optional, vorbis or lame
        port            "8000"
        bind_to_address "0.0.0.0"         # optional, IPv4 or IPv6
        max_clients     "1"               # optional 0=no limit
}

The first promising solution came from the Archlinux forums, suggesting to add the always_on "yes" option. Subjectively, this seemed to improve but not solve the problem. Other sources that were not specific to MPD but streams cutting off in general suggested an encoding issue so I changed the encoder "vorbis" to lame. This brought no improvement at all.

As you can see in the comment in the configuration, it mentions to use “vorbis” or lame”, so at first I disregarded this path for a while. While scrolling through the MPD documentation, I noticed that there are many other encoding plugins available though…

The Solution

Changing the encoder to opus with its required configuration finally fixed the problem.

audio_output {
        type            "httpd"
        name            "MPD"
        encoder         "opus"
        port            "8000"
        bind_to_address "0.0.0.0"
        format          "44100:16:1"
        max_clients     "1"
        always_on       "yes"
        opustags        "yes"
}

Following this guide you will setup salt-ssh and get an introduction into configuration management via Saltstack.

Setting up salt-ssh

First you will need to install the required packages on the system from which you will administrate the minions, e.g. your PC or laptop from which you usually connect to them via ssh (the exact name of the packages might differ depending on what distribution you are using):

• salt-master
• salt-ssh
• git

The salt-master is needed even if the agentless salt-ssh method is used because salt-ssh uses the same configuration as the salt-master.

Next, create the ssh key that salt-ssh will use to connect to the systems:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /etc/salt/pki/master/ssh/salt-ssh.rsa

On the minions, add the /etc/salt/pki/master/ssh/salt-ssh.rsa.pub to the authorized_keys file of the root user or a user that has passwordless sudo privileges.
If you use cloud-init, you can use the following user-data example to fully prepare the system to be administrated by salt-ssh:

packages:
  - python3

groups:
  - salt-admin

users:
  - name: salt-admin
    gecos: Salt Admin
    primary_group: salt-admin
    sudo: ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
    lock_passwd: true
    ssh_authorized_keys:
      -  ###publickeyhere###

Normally, salt minions sign up with the salt-master but since the salt-minion is not used in this case, we need to make our local salt environment aware of the systems manually. This is done by creating a roster file at /etc/salt/roster. The roster file can configure for each host individually how a connection should be done but in our case the configuration is quite simple:

yourhost.example.com:
  user: salt-admin
  sudo: true

This tells salt-ssh that it should use the user salt-admin and execute all commands with sudo when managing the host yourhost.example.com.

To see if everything is set up correctly, you can use the test.ping command:

salt-ssh yourhost.example.com test.ping

If this returns True, then congratulations! You can now manage that system via Saltstack!

Terminology

Saltstack uses three main types of data to figure out how exactly to configure a client.:

Salt State

A salt state is a definition for one specific configuration you want the minion to have. This can be a package that is installed or a specific file that should be deployed.

By default, these live in /srv/salt.

Grain

This is information that is gathered from the minion itself. This for example includes the used OS and its version or the amount of CPUs installed. You can see a full list of available grains by executing the grains.ls command and get the content of a specific grains by using the grains.get command:

salt-ssh yourhost.example.com grains.ls
salt-ssh yourhost.example.com grains.get os

Or get the values of all grains:

salt-ssh yourhost.example.com grains.items

Pillar

This is information that is attached to a minion from the master using defined rules. Together with Jinja Templating in the states, this is the core feature that makes Saltstack really powerful and flexible. By default, there is no pillar data (because they are all provided by the user) but they can be looked at similarly as the grains:

salt-ssh yourhost.example.com pillar.ls
salt-ssh yourhost.example.com pillar.get foobar

Or get the values of all pillar data keys::

salt-ssh yourhost.example.com pillar.items

By default, these live in /srv/pillar.

Formula

A salt formula is not really a different type of data but important enough to be part of the Terminology section regardless.

A formula is a collection of salt states that work together to deploy a complex configuration on a system. There is a collection of formulas available on Github. They are almost always written to be used together with pillar data. For example the vim formula creates a vimrc based on the provided pillar data.

The first states

Now that the most common terms are known, the first states can be deployed onto the minion. For this, we will use the vim formula to install and configure vim (because everyone likes to have a common vim configuration in their infrastructure!).

As a first step, we need to add the formula to the master. Since this is the first formula that is added, the directory where they are going to live needs to be created:

mkdir -p /srv/formulas
cd /srv/formulas
git clone https://github.com/saltstack-formulas/vim-formula.git

Then, the salt-master needs to be made aware of the new formula. Create the file /etc/salt/master.d/roots.conf with the following content:

file_roots:
  base:
    - /srv/salt
    - /srv/formulas/vim-formula

This formula could now be applied and many formulas might suit your case with their default values but in this case we want to setup the pillar for the vim formula first. For that reason we create the file /srv/pillar/vim.sls with the following content:

vim:
  managed_vimrc: true
  allow_localrc: true
  config:
    syntax: 'on'
  settings:
    number: ~
    shiftwidth: 4
    tabstop: 4
    softtabstops: 4
    incsearch: ~
    hlsearch: ~

Hint

The pillar data used by the formula can be seen in the pillar.example file in the top directory of the formula repository.

This pillar data is currently not attached to any minion. Create the file /srv/pillar/top.sls with the following content:

base:
  '*':
    - vim

The top file handles which pillar data gets attached to which minion. In this case, the vim pillar data gets attached to all minion (denoted by the ‘*’). For more information about targeting minions in the top file, you can have a look at the top file documentation.

At last, the state can be applied. If you are uncertain about what saltstack will do, you can test the state first:

salt-ssh yourhost.example.com state.apply vim test=true

Saltstack will tell you to the best of its abilities what each state is going to do. This can be not 100% exact because states can depend on other states having actually run first but it usually is a good indicator.

If you are happy with the shown changes, apply them without the test parameter to have salt-ssh actually make the changes:

salt-ssh yourhost.example.com state.apply vim

Congratulations! You made your first actual change with Saltstack!

As a reminder, here is the workflow in short to add a new formula:

1. Download the formula to /srv/formulas
2. Add the directory to the roots.conf file
3. Create a file for the pillar data and attach it to the minions.
4. Apply the state!

Highstate

What if one would like salt to remember which states apply to which minions? That is where the Highstate comes into play. Analogous to the pillar top file, there is also a state top file that you can create at /srv/salt/top.sls:

base:
  '*':
    - vim

If you execute the state.apply without any state as a parameter, then Saltstack will apply the Highstate to that minion, meaning all states that match it in the top.sls in /srv/salt. With intelligent matching, adding new minions to your infrastructure will be a lot easier because Saltstack will automatically use the correct formulas and pillar data!

Next Steps

From this point on you are equipped to add more formulas from the repository and more systems to the roster to get managed by Saltstack.
If you would like to write your own states or formulas, then have a look at the States Tutorial.
If you would like to switch from agentless to the standard master-minion architecture, follow the Install Guide.

However, using the following steps I got it running on a modern Linux again.

For this setup, we are going the use an application called Bottles which is a graphical interface for managing Wine environments (usually called prefixes). The distribution used is Linux Mint 21.2.

Bottles Installation

Bottles is available as a flatpak. To setup Flatpak on your system, use the Flatpak Setup instructions for your distribution.

Afterwards you can install and run Bottles with the following code:

flatpak install flathub com.usebottles.bottles
flatpak run com.usebottles.bottles

Alternatively, head to the Bottles Flathub page, press the Install button and open the downloaded .flatpakref file.

When the installation is completed, press the Launch button.

Setting up a bottle for Earth 2150

It is best practice to setup a new Wine environment for every application. These are called prefixes in Wine, Bottles calls them…bottles.

To setup a new bottle, press the + Button in the top-left corner, enter a name for the bottle, choose Gaming in the Environment list and press the Create button.

This process will a short while, so you can go on a tea or coffee break now. :)

Now open the bottle configuration and disable a feature called DXVK because otherwise the game will crash:

Acquire the required files

Of course, to install the games you need their respective setup files. Personally, I bought the games on GOG. This will give you the following files:

• Earth 2150: “setup_earth_21502.8.7.1(16406).exe”
• The Moon Project: “setup_earth_2150-_the_moon_project_2.1.0.1(16261).exe”
• Lost Souls: “setup_earth_2150-_lost_souls_2.1.0.1(16404).exe”

Additionally, some community patches are needed. You can find these on Inside Earth. They maintain two different patches, one for Single Player and one for Multi Player so download the ones that fits what you want to play.

I am only interested in Single Player, so I’ve downloaded the Single Player patches:

• Earth 2150: “escape_from_the_blue_planet_2.8.7.2.exe”
• The Moon Project: “tmp211_patcher.exe”
• Lost Souls: “ls211_patcher.exe”

Install Earth 2150

Now you are ready to install Earth 2150. In the overview of the bottle, you can click the big blue Run Executable… button to run anything inside the bottle’s environment. So, if you want to play The Moon Project, you’d first need to execute the “setup_earth_2150-_the_moon_project_2.1.0.1(16261).exe” file and after the install is finished the “tmp211_patcher.exe” file.

After the installater and patcher are done, use the Add Shortcuts button and navigate to /home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.var/app/com.usebottles.bottles/bottles/Earth-2150/drive_c/GOG Games/Earth 2150 - The Moon Project and select TheMoonProject.exe. It will now show up in the list of programs for that bottle and you can easily execute it using the Play button besides it.

No more!

I recently stumbled upon a Reddit post where someone had a similar but not quite my issue. Due to the similarities however, I decided to give it a try and it works! Now Firefox always remains on its current virtual desktop!

Go to about:config and set widget.disable-workspace-management to true.

With the recent…controversies around the new CEO of Twitter Inc., I want to turn my back on Twitter and delete my account. There is only one problem: There are a lot of people I still want to follow, artists specifically, but who do not have a presence on alternatives like Mastodon. Platforms like Instagram or Tumblr have their issues as well (with Instagram being owned by Meta and Tumblr disallowing “adult content”). Creating accounts on multiple sites where artists have dispersed to is not something I would want to do either. Twitter itself sadly does not offer a nice way to follow artists without an account such as an RSS feed (they scrapped that feature years ago).

There is a nice free and open-source software that can help though: Nitter

Nitter allows you to view any Twitter account’s posts via its frontend without actually using a Twitter account yourself. The obvious drawback is that all your requests go through Nitter’s servers first which can have a performance impact. In that case you can install Nitter on your own server. This also alleviates some privacy concerns that come with using a third-party server like this. I might write a separate article on how to do this in the future.

But how does Nitter help us to not have to use an account to keep up-to-date with people and organizations on Twitter?

In the top right corner, you will find a few icons. The magnifying glass allows you to search for tweets or users, the Twitter icon will send you to the current page’s equivalent on twitter.com. The icon between those however is the important one and allows you to subscribe to the current visible account as an RSS feed! With the use of an RSS reader, you can keep up-to-date on current tweets by subscribing to its RSS feed!

Even though RSS has fallen out of style recently, there are still many different RSS readers available so you can choose which one suits you best.

Personally, I use Mozilla Thunderbird’s built-in feed reader because I am already using Thunderbird for my e-mail. There is also an extension available for Firefox or Chrome. Some web-based feed readers are around as well such as Inoreader, but they allow only a limited amount of feeds for free accounts.

Obviously, this is a more complicated way to browse Twitter accounts and I do not blame you if you want to stay on Twitter because it is easier or want to interact with other people instead of just being an observer. At the time of writing this article, I have not deleted my account either as a kind of fallback if this method proves to be insufficient for me. But I do hope this provides a viable alternative for those that wish to leave their Twitter accounts but still like to see what some of their followed accounts are up to.

Got any feedback? You can find me on Mastodon.