
When Your Screen Breaks in the Himalayas - tombh
http://tombh.co.uk/when-your-screen-breaks-in-the-himalayas
======
kbaker
Pretty ingenious workaround. Just a note to skip some of the first 'blind'
section (installing openssh server through the desktop environment with no
screen visible):

Ctrl+Alt+F1 still works in many distros to switch VTs to a text-mode terminal
tty1, and likely also works without logging into the desktop. Ctrl-Alt-F7 to
switch back.

From here, you should be able to login blind, then sudo apt install openssh-
server (assuming Internet connectivity,) or kill whatever misbehaving process,
or even restart the whole DE or computer.

~~~
ferbivore
Switching to TTY2 is probably a better idea. I haven't used Linux in a while,
but IIRC modern distributions use TTY1 for the graphical session due to some
sort of limitation with systemd.

~~~
JdeBP
Actually, it dates from a couple of years _before systemd existed_ , and
started with the idea of minimizing monitor flicker during the system
bootstrap in Fedora. The idea was to make the display not switch between text
and graphics modes, as it did when successively switching from graphical
splash screen to textual virtual terminal to graphical X display. Starting the
X server on the default virtual terminal eliminated the middle part.

By the time that systemd came along, this was _already_ established Fedora
behaviour with upstart. The systemd people had to work to replicate existing
semantics.

* [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup)

* [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue150#Moving_X_from_VT7...](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue150#Moving_X_from_VT7_to_VT1)

* [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=614454#c6](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=614454#c6)

* [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=619889#c12](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=619889#c12)

~~~
digi_owl
And now systemd is spreading this behavior to other distros that has adopted
systemd?

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userbinator
There is no mention of what altitude he was at, but it's worth noting that
LCDs are often rated to no higher than 10k-12kft, because tiny pockets of air
at trapped during manufacturing (at sea level) may expand and cause damage.

[http://www.dfrsolutions.com/pdfs/2004_HighAltitude_Hillman-B...](http://www.dfrsolutions.com/pdfs/2004_HighAltitude_Hillman-
Blattau.pdf)

~~~
kpennell
Leh (in Ladakh) is at 10000 ft.

------
unicornporn
When the content of your website only fills 60 percent of your mobile viewport
and you can't zoom.

~~~
tombh
I just removed "maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no", is that better? TBH I
would have just copied that from somewhere assuming it was best practice :/

~~~
kupiakos
On line 402 in css/style.css, change `.wrapper` to

    
    
        .wrapper {
            width: 100%;
            padding: 10px 0;
        }

~~~
tombh
Yes, perfect, thank you. Deployed.

~~~
kupiakos
You could probably also change

    
    
        @media (max-width: 550px) .content { padding: 0 5px; }
    

but at that point it's more of a style preference.

(also, I just signed up for a HN account for this haha)

~~~
tombh
Well I agree with your style preference, deployed.

------
sujay_m
Cool work around. Just adding another cool way to get laptops IP without
ifconfig. AVAHI. install avahi daemon (comes pre installed with most distros)
and your laptop can be referred with a domain name(generally LAPTOPNAME.local,
"local" domain). By using this you won't have to worry about the changing IPs,
you always refer to the laptop with that name. Very handy.

~~~
tombh
Excellent suggestion, especially because it's cross-platform. Thanks, added
and acknowledged on the post.

~~~
sujay_m
Cool, thanks. But there is no need for acknowledgements in open source
community, don't you think.. Anyway, thanks for the post :)

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triplesec
I'm reminded of the section in Cryptonomicon where the protagonist is
imprisoned with his laptop and needs to hack with the screen turned off, for
security reasons

~~~
cowbellemoo
The screen was on, just not private due to tempest snooping. Private strings
were output using Morse flashes from HD activity LED. :)

~~~
triplesec
I haven't reread it since about 2000 so you are now likely to be right. I was
sure there's another bit where he's doing things blind, but memory serves me
badly! I do recall he needed to make sure anyone reading his screen remotely
couldn't read his code. Time to dip in for another look

------
zoom6628
Huge amount of useful information for anybody with a laptop - screens break
anytime, anywhere, and of you are in maker-mode at 0300 you wont be getting it
fixed for a day! VNC definitely a great tool to have on and running all the
time in case this happens. The other tools very useful to know about.

~~~
tombh
Thank you :) So pleased you appreciate it, there's a surprising amount of time
and energy spent in all that. And yes that was exactly my thought, the hacks
could be useful for any number of reasons, not just broken screens in the
Himalayas.

------
niftylettuce
I usually never comment like this, but admire your passion for ingenuity and
glad you shared it.

~~~
tombh
Thank very much :)

------
brokenmachine
Nice hacks. Just wanted to comment that the free version of JuiceSSH is
crippled. I forget in what way but I tried it out a while back because I
wanted to test out mosh support and ended up deleting it because of the
crippling.

Now I'm happily back with ConnectBot (I didn't really need mosh support
anyway), although I do see that screen status bar update screen scrolling
thing happen from time to time, never worked out why or how to fix it, but it
goes away if I start a new session.

------
grecy
Cool hack, though I really doubt it's needed.

I broke the screen on my Dell Mini 9, bought one on eBay for $20 and it
arrived in Guatemala 4 days later. It was easy enough to swap out myself [1]

I'm in West Africa now, and just hard some parts shipped to me - arrived in 4
days from the USA.

Shipping is global, fast, and easy.

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com/laptop-
repaired](http://theroadchoseme.com/laptop-repaired)

~~~
tombh
I definitely considered this, it was just the look on local faces, they said
that stuff does arrive but sometimes goes missing too. My screen is more like
$300 so considering I have a functional setup I decided I was happy enough.
Besides the hackery was worth it in itself :) And I'll be in Delhi next week
now anyway.

------
busyanimal1
When you're a blind web user.

~~~
tombh
It certainly makes me appreciate my eyes.

------
aftbit
What's the mtr command you're using for that pretty color ping?

~~~
deathanatos
After starting mtr, press "d" twice.

------
kowdermeister
> The gist of my hack is to use my phone as a ‘monitor’, by which I don’t mean
> directly streaming video output as in VNC or X-forwarding

Wouldn't that be more simple?

~~~
tombh
I did try for a bit, but the screen update FPS was annoyingly slow. Also the
resolution difference required a lot of pinch zooming. I think it'd be worth
experimenting with reducing the desktop resolution to match my phone cos it
would likely alos increase the FPS. However, I'm productive enough now with
mosh and tmux.

------
digi_owl
Ah, htop.

~~~
tombh
Ha, blurry, but still recognisable.

------
wfeui3
Leh is capital of province in which this happened, it has 30K people. I think
it should be possible to just buy new crappy laptop, which is standard
procedure for DNs.

> There are no easy ways to get crashed computers or laptops repaired in Leh.
> There is a large samsung dealer shop in the Leh Main Market.

[http://wikitravel.org/en/Leh](http://wikitravel.org/en/Leh)

~~~
tombh
I did think of that, also getting a crappy external monitor too. But I didn't
want to reinstall everything again and my laptop is pretty powerful, so I
didn't want to lose out on that. Also, I just like the challenge of a hack.

------
discordance
How's the internet speed in Leh?

~~~
tombh
Well half the time there's no Internet at all. Then the rest of the time it's
mostly high latency and Internet at ~5kbps. Perhaps once a week we get a few
hours of 3G, hitting speeds of 200kbps tops.

~~~
discordance
Have you heard of AirJaldi? - they're a not for profit that have been setting
up long haul 802.11 links throughout the Indian Himalayas.

Not sure if they've reached Leh though.

~~~
tombh
No I hadn't. I just checked and the nearest network is Manali, so they're on
their way :) [1]. I'd heard about such networks before, but wasn't aware they
were so actuvely and successfully implemented, very inspiring. 1\.
[https://airjaldi.com/networks/manali-
network/](https://airjaldi.com/networks/manali-network/)

------
beachstartup
if i were in the mountains writing a book and my laptop broke i would just get
a pencil and paper!

~~~
tombh
In actual fact, I have to use pen and paper more than usual because vanilla
Android can't display 2 apps at once. So for example, one time I wanted to
read something from Wikipedia into a Whatsapp audio message, so I had to write
the salient points down on paper first.

~~~
brokenmachine
Time to buy another phone. :-)

