Right, if you insist: Fedora Kinoite, Thinkpad X1 Carbon 4th Gen, some sysctl tweaks for low-latency audio.

Yesterday I realized my password database (which I sync between computers/phones via Syncthing) was broken, because I had failed to regularly manage upgrades for my Syncthing container, and Syncthing had recently released a v2.0. My monitoring was insufficient and so I hadn’t realized the Syncthing container on my laptop hadn’t been running since ~September. When I realized that, I had already made changes to my password database on all three synced devices, so Syncthing generated a number of password.sync-conflict-<date>-<time>.kdbx files. Normally that’s not a big deal because my password manager has the ability to merge two password databases together, but this time around 400 entries showed issues when merging.

So, armed with a big ol’ mug of mulled wine, I bit the bullet and started checking entries manually. After a trip to the KeePassXC bug tracker and the merger code, I realized the entries only differred in a few seconds in the _LAST_MODIFIED entry, which can happen when my laptop is a) on battery, and b) disconnected from the internet so the NTP client didn’t have a change to sync time correctly. Both happened a lot during the months the time my password database had failed to sync – we had gone to Paris (lovely place, can wholly recommend a visit) and my GF’s daughter is in the habit of watching shows on the computer without plugging in the power.

So I shrugged, merged anyway, ignored the error messages, deleted the sync-conflict files, and called it a day. Maybe the wine played a role in that decision, maybe not.

Thank you for coming to my TED‌ talk.