Hi, it's Barim. on Barim's blog · ابراهيم

Fixing Firefox Error - cairo_xlib_surface_get_display

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Problem

Firefox fails to start with the following error:

/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0: undefined symbol: cairo_xlib_surface_get_display

Cause

Firefox loads libraries from /usr/local/lib instead of /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/. The /usr/local/lib directory contains an outdated version of Cairo that is incompatible with the installed version of libgdk-3.

Displaying Images in lf with Kitty and Tmux

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Problem

When using lf (the terminal file manager) with Kitty and Tmux, image preview display often causes issues: graphical artifacts remain on screen when switching from one preview to another, making the interface unreadable.

CSS Hack: Let Code Blocks Break Free From Container Width

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 10:36:51 +0100

Text prose and code have fundamentally different width requirements.

Prose benefits from restricted width because lines of 50-75 characters are the fastest to read, reduce eye strain and movement, and let you track easily from line end to next line start.

YouTube thumbnails and uBlock Origin

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 11:35:55 +0100

It is possible to modify YouTube’s appearance using uBlock Origin.

For example, to display smaller video thumbnails and get rid of “shorts” and of avatars :

Understanding Svelte Component Lifecycle and Reactivity

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 20:26:21 +0100

Svelte’s component system features a specific approach to reactivity and component initialization. This article explores a common misconception about how props, variables, and component initialization work in Svelte.

Tutorial: Dynamic Svelte Components

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 20:36:32 +0100

Svelte offers remarkable flexibility for creating dynamic components. In this tutorial, we’ll explore how to instantiate components on the fly and pass properties to them in an elegant and efficient manner.

Business web application

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A business web application is a specialized software solution designed to help companies manage their operations effectively. Unlike generic apps such as e-commerce platforms (like Shopify) or booking management tools (like Doctolib), a business web app typically processes client-provided information, applies business-specific logic, and returns a result that helps achieve the companies goals.

Change screen input programatically on Linux

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 16:50:40 +0100

I have a keyboard/mouse/screen switch to connect 2 PCs: one running Linux and one running Windows.

When I connect all the ports, it works, but every time I switch to the Windows laptop, the screen reconfigures, my windows are moved, and it annoys me. The switch behaves as if I had physically unplugged/replugged the screen, and Windows feels compelled to adjust the entire layout!

Use LanguageTool with neovim

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 18:50:26 +0100

I do a lot of mistakes when typing. The use of a spellchecker in neovim is easy but not enough : I mostly do grammar mistakes.

Create tabs in Svelte

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 18:40:02 +0100

I often need to code some way to have multiple pages rendered in the same location : think about a configuration panel with several sub panels. The natural way to code this is using tabs.

Tuto: Password Creation in Svelte

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 08:09:11 +0100

So, a few days ago, I saw a video showing a password creation form.

Each time the user types anything, there is an instant validation with icons indicating which constraint is fulfilled.

Go Learning Resources

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 10:24:43 +0100

This is a list of useful resources you can access freely on the web, to learn Go :

Go Playground : Try Go without installing nothing on your computer.

Tuto: Setup a Svelte project using esbuild

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 13:35:05 +0100

This article will show you how to set up a new Svelte project to develop a custom tag, using esbuild, with live reloading.

Tuto: Tags in Svelte

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 14:36:06 +0100

I want to code a simple tags input component in Svelte like the animation above.

An input text where I can type words.
As soon as I type a comma or Enter, the input turns into a “tag”.
The tag appears next to the input text with a small cross to delete it.

I can retrieve the list of tags in an easy-to-use data structure: for example, an array of string.

Is Go Object Oriented ?

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:17:07 +0100

During a discussion on a Discord channel, a message puzzled me: Go is not an object-oriented language.

I knew Go didn’t have an inheritance mechanism. But, was that enough to disqualify it as an object language ?

Make Microsoft Edge coexist with i386

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 17:37:39 +0100

On my workstation, I manage both amd64 and i386 architecture.

When I try to install Microsoft Edge on my Linux, after the apt update, I have this message:

Firefox tab less

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 10:23:51 +0100

We can customize Firefox interface to hide the tabs bar :

First, we have to tell Firefox that we want to customize its interface.

Sqlite Pure Go

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 03:31:21 +0200

Would it be possible to embed a database to avoid managing a MySQL or Postgres instance?

Even better, can this database be queried in SQL? I don’t want to learn another way to query data.

Experiment Nebula Mesh - Part 2

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 00:59:53 +0200

In my previous post, I used Nebula to setup a secured network between 2 virtual machines.

This time, I’ll try to make a MySQL client and server communicate through a Nebula tunnel. And to make it a little bit more difficult, I’ll use podman to run the client and the server in containers.

Experiment Nebula Mesh - Part 1

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 13:38:36 +0100

Is it possible to use the public network, namely Internet, to make 2 machines communicate securely ? And if possible something easier to install and configure than OpenVpn ?

Udev Webcam

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 11:37:22 +0200

You can change the device link so your webcam will be always accessible at the same location /dev/video99. You can also persist some settings via the v4l-ctl command.

Console Font Size

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 17:50:41 +0200

This days, with 4K monitors, the linux console is unreadable : the font is too small. So how can we scale the font size in the console after boot ?

Git Rebase From Upstream

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 15:59:00 +0000

How to apply new commits in your forked repo from the parent (upstream) repo ?

Big clock in a terminal

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 20:35:00 +0000

How to show a big clock on Linux without using an application or having a browser opened on time.is ?

Change local ownCloud sync directory

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 15:47:33 +0000

To change the name of ownCloud main folder, there is a little trick you can do on Linux (may work as well on other platforms).

Local git

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 08:05:58 +0000

Define a repo somewhere in your file system with a bare init

1mkdir -p /somewhere/repo/test_project
2cd /somewhere/repo/test_project
3git init --bare

Now create a local folder for your work with init only

Mysql prompt tip

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 08:14:27 +0000

You can change the mysql prompt client so you know where you are.
Very usefull when you manage a lot of mysql databases and you forget which one :-)

Disable tabs in Firefox

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 17:30:56 +0000

If you use a tiled window manager like me, Suckless DWM for example, and have Firefox as your browser, you may be interested by not showing the tabs.

Make your ubuntu LTS kernel up to date

Sun, 27 Oct 2019 08:10:02 +0000

Install LTS Hardware Enablement Stack

1sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04

Clean

1sudo apt purge --autoremove

Reboot to load new kernel

Install iso on USB key using #Linux console only

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 13:12:26 +0000

How to flash any iso (think about your favorite distro) on an USB key without graphical IHM ?

1sudo dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sda status=progress

“/path/to/image.iso” is the path to the ISO file
/dev/sda is your USB key device (see below to get yours) : note that it is the whole device, not a partition (e.g. /dev/sda and not /dev/sda1)
status=progress show flashing progression

How to know wich device to use ?

Force #wifi interface name on #Ubuntu 18.04

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 16:31:00 +0000

Using Udev, you can change the wifi interface name.

First, you need to get the mac address.

VS Code loses Go autocompletion on Linux

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 00:15:38 +0000

On my Linux, just after upgrading Go to version 1.9, I lost autompletion functionality in VS Code.

:vscode_completion_not_working

This tip did not work for me.

Docker from scratch, Go and Multipart upload

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:25:23 +0000

To reduce docker container size we can built the image from scratch instead of using bloated images, like debian or worse ubuntu.

Samba public share

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 17:48:35 +0000

How to configure a Debian based Linux distribution to share a folder with anyone on the network, with read and write access ?

Convert PDF to PNG with enough resolution

Tue, 28 Mar 2017 01:06:02 +0000

As ‘man convert’ states :

The convert program is a member of the ImageMagick suite of tools. Use it to convert between image formats as well as resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more.

Don't forget master infos in your MySQL dump

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 18:54:46 +0000

I tried to resync a slave MySQL after it disconnected from the master. But the binary log was already deleted on master, so the only solution was to restore from the last backup. To avoid lock tables on the master and remember the binary log name and position to put them on the slave configuration, there is a tip to take care of all that : the “- master-data” option in mysqldump.

Eve-style clock demo in Red, livecoded!

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 18:56:06 +0000

Red is a next-gen programming language, strongly inspired by REBOL.

Consul 0.7.1 | HashiCorp

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 16:58:37 +0000

Consul is a critical infrastructure service for organizations that rely on it for service discovery, key/value storage, and health checks.

Docker - Build, Ship, and Run Any App, Anywhere

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 16:02:36 +0000

Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications, whether on laptops, data center VMs, or the cloud.

MySQL import from csv

Wed, 12 Oct 2016 14:36:56 +0000

To import a local CSV file into MySQL, use the syntax below :

LOAD DATA LOW_PRIORITY LOCAL INFILE '/path/tofile.csv'
INTO TABLE database.table
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ';' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"' ESCAPED BY '"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' IGNORE 1 LINES
(`field1`,`field2`,...)

MySQL export to csv

Wed, 12 Oct 2016 14:32:05 +0000

To export a mysql results in CSV format, use the syntax below :

SELECT field1, field2, ...
FROM table
WHERE condition
INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/toto.csv'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ';'
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' ;

Cheyenne server and POST size limit

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 15:49:50 +0000

By default, in Cheyenne, the header size limit for a post request is 102'400.
If you want to ajust this limit you can define the post-mem-limit parameter in the global context or in a specific webapp.
For example, to double the initial limit in the httpd.cfg, :

Boot Linux in text console

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 10:41:27 +0000

Get rid of graphic boot on Linux with a few modifications in grub configuration :

1# edit your grub config
2sudo vi /etc/default/grub
3
4# remove splash, quiet, ... from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
5GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"
6
7# save the file and update grub
8sudo update-grub

French Git Log

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:25:33 +0000

Git log in colors.

mysql client : don't show columns names and grid

Mon, 30 May 2016 10:33:23 +0000

Default mysql client behaviour is to show column names and grid when returning results but how to get rid of this decorations ?

Allow invalid date in MySQL

Mon, 23 May 2016 15:55:55 +0000

Just in case you absolutely have to insert a date in MySQL that does’nt exist, eg 2014-02-30, you can run MySQL server in a special mode that authorizes such dates :

screencast with byzance on linux

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 17:28:23 +0000

byzanz-record -c - duration=60 - x=80 - y=310 - width=800 - height=600 out.gif

Not permitted to mount disk ?

Mon, 07 Sep 2015 07:30:59 +0000

A few days ago, I started to have a very disturbing “Not permitted” message when trying to mount a usb disk from Thunar . The only way I found was to pmount the disk : not as intuitive as just clicking the disk on Thunar.

How To Forward Outlook Emails With VB Script

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 07:30:05 +0000

In Windows, create a certificate via Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Digital Certificate for VBA Projects
In Microsoft Outlook, open the VB editor and copy/paste the code below
Replace your@email.here and save
Click on Tools > Digital Signature
Click on [Choose] and select your certificate
Click OK, then save and close the VB editor
Create the Outlook rule with [run a script] as action and select your macro
That’s all folks !

Private Const TO_EMAIL As String = "your@email.here"
Sub ForwardAllEmail(theMail As MailItem)
	On Error GoTo EndSub
	Dim mailObj As Outlook.MailItem
	Dim item As Outlook.MailItem
	Set mailObj = Application.Session.GetItemFromID(theMail.EntryID)
	Set item = mailObj.Forward
	item.Recipients.Add (TO_EMAIL)
	item.Send
	Set item = Nothing      ' Set variables to null to prevent memory leaks
	Set mailObj = Nothing
	Exit Sub
EndSub:
 MsgBox "Error: " & Err.Description
End Sub

Invisible code sticks forever

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 07:30:57 +0000

A few months ago, I read an article about brain training by learning a new language : very interesting story about William Alexander who failed to learn french but strenghten his brain trying to.

Tmux for the impatient

Wed, 08 Jul 2015 13:46:33 +0000

Key shortcuts

Wireless auto configuration with guessnet on Linux

Sun, 17 May 2015 18:52:51 +0000

Assume we have access to the wifi at work and at home. How can I configure my laptop to automatically connect to the right network without using a graphical network manager ? Welcome guessnet !

If ssh client disconnect and freeze

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 18:55:18 +0000

Add in your ~/.ssh/config :

Host *
ServerAliveInterval 240

src = superuser.com

Git delete remote branch/tag

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 10:38:14 +0000

As of Git v1.7.0, you can delete a remote branch using :

git push origin --delete <branchName>

And you can do exactly the same with a tag

Horizontal rule in zsh prompt

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:58:41 +0000

Put in your ~/.zshrc :

1PS1=$'%U${(r:$COLUMNS:: :)}%u'$PS1

_src = superuser.com _

Increase wordpress max file upload size

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 15:42:56 +0000

On Ubuntu/Debian distro, edit the /etc/wordpress/htaccess and add this lines :

1php_value upload_max_filesize 50M
2php_value post_max_size 50M
3php_value memory_limit 50M

Substitute a text only in files where it appears

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 19:12:31 +0000

For example, to substitute foo with bar

for f in `grep -lR foo`; do
 echo -n ">> $f";
 sed 's/foo/bar/g' $f > $f.2;
 mv $f.2 $f;
 echo " done.";
done

for loops on all files containing the text “foo”, grep -l only show the file name with corresponding text inside.
sed replace foo with bar in all file
mv save the modification (delete if you don’t want to overwrite the original files, the modified files is named with .2 at the end)

Convert multiple files to utf8 using vim

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 18:44:07 +0000

The fastest and more efficient way to batch multiple files encoding conversion :

1vim +"argdo se fileencoding=utf-8 | w | bnext" +"q" ` find . -type f -name "*.rsp"

+“argdo” : execute the following vim commands for each file (filencode, save and next buffer)

GIT - stop tracking files

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 11:19:27 +0000

If you have some files that you need to have in your repo but don’t need to have updates, git allows it :

ZSH, nohup and background process that lasts...

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 11:58:55 +0000

When I switched to ZSH, and let BASH behind, I missed some behaviour : one of them was the ability to quit my terminal while some jobs are still alive.

Install minimum php (no apache)

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 14:46:42 +0000

To code with php, no need to install apache and other dependencies, especially as php has a builtin web server.

Get rid of the Desktop icon in Nautilus 3.10 side bar

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 16:59:15 +0000

Add in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

Stretched background with IE8

Thu, 17 Jul 2014 17:43:54 +0000

Side note : Microsoft has dropped support for IE8 last april 2014 :-(

There are still some clients that want their webapp to work perfectly on IE8. They can’t make all their clients move to the newest browsers. But some times, it can drive you nuts to achieve simple things. Our problem was about a background image in a div that doesn’t want to strech. Just some css will do it for all other browsers, but not for IE8. It needs a special “filter” like this :

Speech Tasks : a voice driven todo webapp

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 16:58:25 +0000

With the Go http server. (By the way, I love opensource community !)

Try the demo !

See the code !

usb mount and policykit

Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:41:51 +0000

DWM is my tiled window manager. It’s fast, flexible and fun. My linux desktop is up and running after a few seconds… (ok, thanks also to the ssd :-) ).

Earth viewed from ISS - Zen moment...

Mon, 26 May 2014 13:55:19 +0000

src = NASA

Video background

Tue, 06 May 2014 14:40:21 +0000

Forget large background image for your web site. Now, comes video time.

So you want to put a nice video as background of your site but don’t know how to do ? “Fear you must not” said Yoda as it’s really simple.

2048 Gremlins

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 18:17:07 +0000

2048 : a very famous game where you have to slide the numbered tiles to join same numbers, and cumulate them to obtain 2048 !

Wed, 13 Feb 2002 00:00:00 +0000

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