Last night I deployed a https://writefreely.org based blog and secured it with systemd by adding DynamicUser=yes. But the service itself could not write to the sqlite database.

Feb 28 21:37:52 kushaldas.se writefreely[1652088]: ERROR: 2024/02/28 21:37:52 database.go:3000: Couldn't insert into posts: attempt to write a readonly database

Today morning I realized that the settings blocked writing to all paths except few temporary ones. I had to add a StateDirectory and used the same in WorkingDirectory so that the service works correctly.

While I am learning about WebAssembly slowly, I was also trying to figure out where all I can use it. That is the way I general learn all new things. So, as a start, I thought of compiling my static blogging tool khata into WASM and then run it under WASI.

While trying to do that, the first thing I noticed that I can not just create a subprocess (I was doing it to call rsync internally), so that was top priority thing to fix in the list. First, I tried to use rusync crate, but then it failed at runtime as it is using threads internally. After asking around a bit more in various discord channels, I understood that the easiest way would be to just write that part of the code myself.

Which is now done, means this blog post is actually rendered using wasmtime.

wasmtime --dir=. khata.wasm

I am very slowly learning about the SPEC, and the limitations. But, this is very interesting and exciting learning journey so far.

Last year I wrote only a few blog posts, 19 exactly. That also reduced the views, to around 370k from 700k year before (iirc).

The post about Getting TLS certificates for Onion services was the highest read post in this year, 9506 views.

A major part of the year went to thinking if we can survive the year, India's medical system broke down completely (the doctors and staff did some amazing job using whatever was available). Everyone I know lost someone in COVID, including in our family. All 3 of us were down in COVID from the end of April & the recovery was long. For a few days in between I could not remember any name.

After the COVID issues came down in brain (that is after getting the vaccines), next we were also waiting for our move to Sweden.

At the beginning of 2022, things look a bit settled for us. In the last few weeks of 2021, I managed to start writing again. I am hoping to continue this. You can also read about the 2018 or 2017, 2016 reviews.

For the last few weeks, my blog feed was not showing up in the Fedora Planet. While trying to figure out what is wrong, Nirik pointed me to the 4 errors in the feed according to the W3C validator. If you don't know, I use a self developed Rust application called khata for my static blog. This means I had to fix these errors.

• Missing guid, just adding the guid to the feed items solved this.
• Relative URLs, this had to be fixed via the pulldown_cmark parser.
• Datetime error as error said "not RFC822" value. I am using chrono library, and was using to_rfc2822 call. Now, creating by hand with format RFC822 value.
• There is still one open issue dependent on the upstream fix.

The changes are in the git. I am using a build from there. I will make a release after the final remaining issue is fixed.

Oh, I also noticed how bad the code looks now as I can understand Rust better :)

Also, the other Planets, like Python and Tor, are still working for my feed.

Tomorrow at 17:00UTC, Tor Project is hosting the next session of PrivChat, titled "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Censorship Circumvention". You can watch it live on Youtube.

This 2nd edition of PrivChat is about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly that is happening in the front lines of censorship circumvention. Cory Doctorow will be the host for the evening, and the following people will be participating:

• Felicia Anthonio (Access Now),
• Vrinda Bhandari (Internet Freedom Foundation ),
• Cecylia Bocovich (Tor Project ),
• Arturo Filastò (OONI )

Don't miss your chance to listen to them. You can ask questions via the Youtube chat.