Building bridges towards new social medias

Priya

When I signed up for this class I was thinking of doing something related to this project, an air quality alert system to see if it was realistic to host it locally for less then we were paying for cloud hosting. I would still love to do that later but I'm not feeling up to doing anything high-stakes right now so I think I want to make something that is just a fun way for me and my friends to have a fun old internet communication platform. No point except to prove that we can I think. Maybe a little message board/ social media kind of thing, maybe in a future iteration it also emails people.

goals/ideas/dreams

I hate to be this perosn but im off social media rn not out of political conviction because i was so severely addicted to instagram reels that i couldn't get anything done… it has been very freeing but there are def things i miss and ive been trying to think about things i could build or use to replace little parts of it

want to make a little private message board for my friends to send photos/messages/art ect to. Nothing revolutionary but i am off insta and about to graduate i deeply miss just seeing peoples lives. will be interesting to see if i can get people in my friend group to use it. social experiment. I think it might be as simple as an etherpad — I'm drawing inspiration from how in elemetery school everyone would talk to their friends on google docs. ((( i wonder if i can find a doc….)

In a future iteration id love people to be able to opt in to have thier insta posts automatically sent there.

i also want it to have a confessional section where you can say something and then it'll be hashed beyond recognition and posted that way. I don't know why i just think it would be fun. And maybe I have some things i want to say.

Another thing that I used to use social media was a private twitter that essentially functioned as my diary. Something about the short form was so effective for me as a diary, I think because there wasn't the pressure of the blank page staring at me. I'd like to make myself a little interface that lets me do that, and stores it in a location that won't be lost (i am always losing my physical diaries and it makes me so sad … the personal archives!). I don't want it on google drive and i'm a little nervous about it being stored on yunohost until i'm more comfortable with the matinence. Maybe i could automate yunohost sending it to a proton drive or something?

install log:

Yunohost install log (i have been doing this for a while but i keep getting stuck and giving up so im going to log to stay on track! who knows how long this will last) :

  • Used etcher and got it on my usb stick

  • finally tracked down an ethernet cable AND an adapter

  • boot up my computer w the usb

  • select graphic install

  • select English, united states, and American English

  • select Eastern time zone

  • screen says 'partitioning disks'

  • asks for permisson to force UEFI installation, saying it might be difficult to reboot a different operating system using "BIOS-mode" later. Selecting yes.

  • Partition disks screen. Options

    • guided- use entire disk
    • guided - use entire disk and set up LVM
    • guided - use entire disk and set up encrypted LVM
    • manual

  • selected first option

  • select a disk to partition screen

    • SCSI4(0,0,0) (sda) - 128 GB ATA Samsung SSD PM85 (I'm assuming this is the main storage in the actual computer)
    • SCS15(0,0,0) (sdb) - 15.7 GB VenderC ProductCode (I'm assuming this is my usb stick??)

  • Gives me a screen to edit partitioning. I'm trying no modifications, selecting 'Finish partitioning and write changes to disk'

  • loading for a while "installing the base system, select and install software…"

  • breifly saw some command line stuff i couldnt read then the screen went black. touched keybpard (was that stupid?) and now it says no bootable devices found

  • pressed f5 and im seeing a dell preboot system analysis page.

    • battery has a warning by it.

  • unplugged the usb stick and plugged it back in and back to original yunohost screen

  • did language screens, then got to parittion disks. didnt have to do force installation screen.

  • partition screen, this time wiht use the largest contious free space option as well. choosing use entire disk

  • choosing second disk option

  • selected finish partitioning

  • message telling me partitions and one two have been written on dev/sdb, but 'unable to inform kernal of the change, probably because they are in use. As a result, the old partitions will remain in use, you should reboot now before making an further changes"

  • I think that the problem is that the old operating system is still functioning. I've been booting it from going to the windows menu, choosing advanced startup, and boot from USB. Maybe that is wrong?

  • gonna try following this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywMOgyeEmWQ

    • tried that, failed

  • https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=1a9c224e5a61e56f&q=how+to+boot+new+operating+system+from+a+flash+drive+on+dell+laptop&udm=7&fbs=ABzOT_CWdhQLP1FcmU5B0fn3xuWp6IcynRBrzjy_vjxR0KoDMnbkfvm4jW0eza52i_Pv0GF6PmzFhnk2gehnwH_78gMAKjghD3Vlna8Sh27WwZPesFdYczJAJ4HyDBUbSWVdcnwVSHiKorkBvnDTi9qRtqDFd5PFr9y2YH4W6QPHRvwHiBYitXCkr6QrF-U9Agraau4Lc752XVQQXPGC5R_1cKEmUfplRQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjn9L6mp4WMAxXKK1kFHY4_CUoQtKgLegQIFhAB&biw=1020&bih=613&dpr=2

    • tried these. first me

Okay now we are trying to install debian and do yunohost from there instead of a direct yunohost download. I spent a long time yesterday failing at this but don't know what I was even doing I think I was just bouncing between guides so but I am restarting with proper logging this time.

  • First supposed to check that the partitioning scheme is GPT using the windows terminal. I can't figure out how to get the windows os back but I googled it and it says most dells use GPT

  • next supposed to check that BIOS mode is UEFI. UEFI is currently selected when i go to setup menu > general -Boot sequence → boot list options

  • Next disbaled secure boot. Found it also in the f2 menu. clicked disable, confirm, and apply.

  • Next disable device encryption. I don't see a place to do that so I'm going to hope its fine.

  • flashing the debian image to my USB. I think I flashed the wrong one before so I'm doing it again. I think it should be amd64. Went with this one: debian-12.10.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso

  • etcher wouldn't work on my account bc it isn't an admin, switched to my admin account. Iso wouldn't download bc of storage space. Did not want to deal with that so I just sent the download directly to the usb stick. Hoping that that is fine.

  • Now i should be able to plug in the usb press f12 and get the startup menu but my server laptop is dead and i don't have a charger for it with me so will have to do this tonight :(

  • trying it now moment of truth!

    • did not work
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1jaj0f6/digital_security_for_activists/?rdt=40219
  • Using balea etcher to flash Debian's 12.10.0 -i386-netindt.iso
  • Had soooo much problems with the password on etcher. Gave up for a week but came back and googled it and eventually figures out it was just username and figured out

  • Etcher keeps giving error so now just dragging into onto the disk from finder. Fiek is named untitled instead of vendor c here, hope it's right.

  • that was obviously not fine. called max and realized this after trying to trouble shoot from bios menu for a while. Decided to use dd instead of etcher, max sent me the following steps from deekseek:

    1. Identify your USB device

    First, you need to identify the correct device identifier for your USB drive.

    1. Insert your USB drive
    2. Open Terminal

    3. Run:

      diskutil list
    4. Look for your USB drive in the list (typically something like /dev/disk2)

    2. Unmount the USB drive

    Before writing to it, you must unmount (but not eject) the USB drive.

    diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX

    (Replace X with your actual disk number from the previous step)

    3. Write the Debian image to the USB drive

    Now use dd to write the ISO image to the USB drive.

    sudo dd if=path/to/debian.iso of=/dev/rdiskX bs=1m
    • if= specifies the input file (your Debian ISO)
    • of= specifies the output device (your USB drive)
    • bs=1m sets the block size for faster writing
    • Using rdiskX instead of diskX is generally faster on macOS

    4. Wait for the process to complete

    This may take several minutes. The command won't show progress until it's finished.

    5. Eject the USB drive

    Once complete, safely eject the drive:

    diskutil eject /dev/diskX
  • Did deepseek steps through dd command then got permission denied
    • Switched to admin account
    • Realized i forgot to type sudo
    • Accidentally disrupted process while running with control c.
    • Unmounting and doing it again
    • I think it is running!
    • Worked I think! Got this message but I'm ignoring it bc the terminal said records in records out plugged into ethernet and set domain name as "kiwi". hoping this is fine?
  • set up root user pass and pdalalwhelan acount
  • chose guided partitioning → use entire disk → first option on a question i didn't understand. says its installing now.
  • network mirror → yes
    • deb.debian.org
  • not setting up a proxy
  • selected defaults for what packages to install -
  • debian is all set up yay! i can go on the internet and stuff yay!!!

reflection

  • I was deeply overcomitted during this class and I really regret that. I loved all of the material and i loved the community and i was really into the idea of figuring out my own hosting system
  • installing takes so long and then seems so simple when you're done! I have learned this over and over but it does not get any easier
    • and i feel like the dumbest person in the world ever during the process and also after like why was i in that bios menu so long when it was obviously just not etched correctly
    • outside help helps so much (ty max)
    • i got linux installed! i'm kind of proud of this
  • I really want to do more of this! ( and i probably can — i'm about to graduate and likley be unemployed for a while….)
  • logging reallllyyyy helps me stay sane even tho it takes forever. every time I sat down to work on this without logging i went in circles and it as no good. thank u to my software engineering prof u were always right I never listened.
  • I am never at home!! i hate carrying around two computers wtf
  • this would have been soooo much easier if i got a damn rasberry pi
    • but im kind of into reusing old computers my household has so many
  • good documentation is so hard to come by and so wonderful when you find it. and theres a lot of nuance to wahts good and bad