Framework Laptop 13 USB not working (solved)

The far left USB-C expansion card of my Framework Laptop 13 with AMD AI 300 suddenly stopped working after wake from suspend. Keyboard stopped working and couldn’t charge through that port. I took out the expansion card and plugged in to the near left USB-C expansion card (so two expansion cards) then plugged in my keyboard, that worked just fine so that expansion card was still functional. Then, I tried charging through the far left port directly without a USB-C expansion card, but the charging indicator light didn’t light up.

I searched around the web and tried this suggestion. I powered it off and unplugged charger, waited around 2 minutes and switched back on. Keyboard and charging then started to work on the far left port with expansion card again. I didn’t have to disconnect the battery

*.cdn.cloudflare.net CNAME is not available for NS record

Cloudflare offers a nifty shortcut for split DNS situation. Company may share the same domain name for their public and internal domain. In the internal domain, some subdomains can point to internal IP address that are not available on public DNS records. Due to separation of DNS nameserver, DNS admin often need to replicate any creation of public subdomains into internal nameserver including subsequent update of values.

Instead of replicating every public DNS records (A/AAAA/CNAME/MX/TXT/etc) of a subdomain, simply create a CNAME record that point to <fqdn>.cdn.cloudflare.net in the internal nameserver. This works with subdomains that have proxy mode enabled and also those without.

Internal nameserver:

DomainTypeValue
a.example.comCNAMEa.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net

However, this CNAME shortcut does not support subdomain that NS to third-party DNS provider, even with CNAME flattening enabled. In the following examples, b.example.com.cdn.cloudflare.net does not return any record.

Cloudflare DNS:

DomainTypeValue
b.example.comNSns-xx.awsdns-xx.com
DomainTypeValue
b.example.comCNAMEb.z.example.com
z.example.comNSb1.example.com
b1.example.comAx.x.x.x

Using Cloudflare Origin certificate on Salesforce

As certificate validity is now reducing to 200 days in 2026, Salesforce administrators must find a practical way to manage certificate renewal. Ideally, Salesforce should support ACME protocol to automate renewal.

For those utilising Cloudflare CDN, it is possible to install Cloudflare Origin certificate with 15-year validity on Salesforce. Although Salesforce documentation mentions the certificate must be CA-signed, self-signed certificate including Cloudflare Origin certificate (which is not public CA-signed) is actually acceptable.

  1. In Cloudflare, change the encryption mode to “Full (strict)”.
  2. Enable True-Client-IP if on Enterprise plan.
  3. Add CNAME record (if not exist) that points to the Salesforce site, e.g. custom-domain.com.xxx.live.siteforce.com. Ensure the CNAME record is in Proxied/orange-clouded mode.
  4. In Salesforce, generate and download certificate signing request (CSR).
  5. In Cloudflare, create a new origin certificate, choose “Use my private key and CSR”, paste the CSR value, update hostname and Create it.
  6. Copy the PEM value then append Origin CA root certificate and save it with “.pem” extension. The file should have both leaf and root certificates.
  7. Upload the “.pem” file to Salesforce.
  8. Select the new certificate in Salesforce domain configuration.

In the last step, do not select the “Use a third-party service or CDN” option despite Cloudflare being a CDN service. That option will configure the Salesforce site to serve over HTTP, requiring “Flexible” encryption mode in Cloudflare which is not ideal.

Change M365 Bookings calendar sender address

TL;DR Update UPN and wait at least 24 hours.

During setup of M365 Bookings shared calendar, a company account is created with user principal name (UPN) in the format of [email protected]. This UPN is used as the sender address when sending out booking notifications. The issue is that *.onmicrosoft.com email domain is often abused for spams and many email providers (notably iCloud) are starting to reject any incoming email with that domain. Microsoft meanwhile has started to throttle usage of that domain for sending email.

There are two ways to update the sender address:

  1. OWA mailbox policy
  2. Change UPN

Method (1) is the Microsoft’s recommended method, but I prefer Method (2) due to visibility on Entra ID; anyone with read-only account within the tenant can view the updated UPN in Entra ID whereas only M365 admin can view mailbox policy. If a subdomain (e.g. [email protected]) is preferred over the company’s email domain (example.com), the subdomain will need to be added to M365 with MX (booking-example-com.mail.protection.outlook.com), SPF ("v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all") and DKIM DNS records, regardless of method (1) or (2).

If the booking calendar is embedded in the company website, the iframe link https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/[email protected]/bookings/ needs to be updated to https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/<new-upn>/bookings/.

Once UPN is updated, it may take at least a day for the change to apply. In my experience, the new UPN is applied to new appointment’s notification within hours, but it only applied to cancellation notification after 24 hours (or longer).

Opening a web browser from Java apps in WSL

Linux CLI tools typically rely on xdg-open or fallback to $BROWSER environment variable to open the default browser, usually for OAuth authentication to authorise the CLI tool without using a permanent credential. Java apps behave differently by trying common browser executables in $PATH if the default browser could not be located. To launch a web browser from a Java app in WSL, simply add a symlink in “/usr/bin/“ that points to the browser executable in Windows, this way you don’t have to install a web browser in WSL.

# Examples, just choose one.
sudo ln -s "/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Edge/Application/msedge.exe" "/usr/bin/msedge"
sudo ln -s "/mnt/c/Program Files/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe" "/usr/bin/chrome"
sudo ln -s "/mnt/c/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe" /usr/bin/firefox"

Programs that rely on OAuth authentication typically listens on a random port to receive credential during the last step of authorisation. Since WSL enables IPv6 by default, the program may listen on IPv6 only. I noticed this behaviour when I check for listening ports netstat -aon | findstr ":port-number" on Windows and the output was [::1]:port-number without any 127.0.0.1. This can cause the program to unable to receive credential and fail authorisation if the Windows host has IPv6 disabled. A workaround for this issue is to also disable IPv6 on WSL to force the program to listen on IPv4. Append this line to “$home\.wslconfig” in Windows and restart WSL wsl --shutdown,

[wsl2]
kernelCommandLine=ipv6.disable=1

Credit

Importing intermediate certificate into Chromium/Cromite

Some websites only serve leaf/server certificate instead of the usual certificate chain (leaf + intermediate). If a browser doesn’t have the corresponding intermediate certificate (that signs the leaf certificate) cached beforehand, this can cause certificate error.

To download the missing intermediate certificate, click on “Not secure” > “Certificate details” > Details tab > “Authority Information Access”, there should be a link next to “CA Issuers”.

The easiest way is to import the downloaded certificate in Chromium/Cromite is to use the built-in Certificate Manager (chrome://certificate-manager/localcerts/usercerts). If you use p11-kit (trust anchor --store interCA.crt) to import, Cromite may not necessarily trust it; in that case, in Certificate Manager (chrome://certificate-manager/localcerts), enable “Use imported local certificates…”.

Extending LVM partition after disk expansion

  1. Boot GParted Live as this is best done offline.
  2. GParted may prompt to fix the GPT header due to metadata mismatch about the disk size, select “Fix”.
  3. Using GParted program, deactivate the LVM partition.
  4. Resize the LVM partition by dragging the right-arrow to the end.
  5. Click tick ✓ to apply. Resizing should take only a few seconds, if it’s not finished within a minute, reboot GParted Live and repeat; this may happen if Steps 2-3 are skipped.
  6. Reactivate the LVM partition.
  7. Launch Terminal,
sudo -s
vgs
lvs
  1. vgs may show non-zero VFree value meaning the volume group contains unallocated space. lvs lists the volume group and logical volume, the values are used in lvresize; Ubuntu defaults to ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv, the slash is not an OR, both values with a slash are required.
lvresize -l +100%FREE --resizefs VG-name/LV-name
vgs
  1. lvresize may fail due to corrupted filesystem, skip this step if no error.
e2fsck -f /dev/VG-name/LV-name
resize2fs /dev/VG-name/LV-name
  1. vgs should now show zero VFree value.
  2. Reboot.

GnuPG 2.5 for Windows is now 64-bit only

After updating GnuPG to 2.5.16 using Chocolatey, I wasn’t able to sign commit in WSL with pinentry error. The “$HOME/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf” was previously configured with pinentry-program "/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/gnupg/bin/pinentry-basic.exe" which is now an invalid path. I updated it to:

pinentry-program "/mnt/c/Program Files/GnuPG/bin/pinentry-basic.exe"

Then run systemctl --user restart gpg-agent.service.

If Git and GnuPG are used in Windows, the gpg config in “$HOME\.gitconfig” should be updated to:

[gpg]
  program = C:\\Program Files\\GnuPG\\bin\\gpg.exe

GRUB 2.14rc1 supports LUKS2 + Argon2 disk encryption

I had always used grub-improved-luks2-git AUR package to boot up my LUKS2+Argon2-encrypted disk. Now that GRUB 2.14rc1 supports it, it’s time to switch to the default package.

$ sudo pacman -S grub

pacman detected it conflicts with grub-improved-luks2-git and prompted for removal which is expected. Then, this is the most important part, “/etc/default/grub” config has been restored to the default during installation, so I had to replace it with my config. Thankfully, pacman made a backup at “/etc/default/grub.pacsave”, so I just need to move it back.

$ sudo mv /etc/default/grub.pacsave /etc/default/grub

Reinstall and regenerate the GRUB configuration.

sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id="Arch Linux" --recheck
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

booloader-id value can be anything. The whole line of grub-mkconfig can be replaced with just update-grub (without any option) if the command is available.

Importing FreeTube subscriptions to NewPipe/Tubular

In FreeTube, navigate to Settings > Data > Export Subscriptions > Export YouTube (.csv).

Transfer the csv file to your mobile device.

In NewPipe/Tubular, navigate to Subscriptions > upper-left triple-dot > Import from > YouTube > Import File > choose the csv file.

The import will run in the background with notification. The app’s notification will clear once the import is complete.