Fixing failure of software upload to µController

December 5, 2019 Reading time: ~1 minute

If uploading software from the Arduino IDE or the commandline via avrdude to a microcontroller like an Arduino or an ESP8266 fails due to missing access rights ("Permission denied"), what helps is either

sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB0

or adding the user to the group "dialout":

sudo usermod -a -G dialout theuser

See: https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=495039.0

Repairing the file system of Debian after hard shutdown

October 14, 2019 Reading time: ~1 minute

Sometimes after a hard shutdown the file system of my laptop is corrupted and Debian starts in maintenance mode.

What helps is repairing the file system using the command

fsck -y /dev/sda1

See: https://serverfault.com/questions/348315/debian-system-wont-boot-due-to-corrupt-file-system