Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet.
So, as I’m recording this video, it’s currently 5 days before Christmas. When you’re watching this, it will be 2 days before Christmas. 5 - 2 is 3. Therefore, I want to talk about my three favorite Linux commands. These might not be my favorite Linux commands, but they are my most used ones.
The first one is dig, and what that’s useful for is resolving hostnames to IP addresses or looking up specific DNS records. So, in the basic sense, we’ll just do a dig on sideofburritos.comom.
We can see here in the answer section, we have the two IP addresses that correspond to the two A records I have assigned for my domain. If you want a cleaner output to only show the answer section, you can add +short on the end. Now, we only get the two IP addresses instead of everything else.
Another use of this, which I was reminded of yesterday when someone asked me what email provider I use for my site sideofburritos.com domain, is if we do another query and add MX on the end of it—which is short for mail exchange—it will do a query for the mail exchange records associated with my domain. So, if we run that again, here’s the response. We can see it’s mail.protonmail.ch and mx.secprotonmail.ch. Those are the mail servers that ProtonMail uses for custom domains.
Another example: if we do the same query for yellowball.fm, which is the podcast hosting platform I run (if you’re looking for hosting), we can see here mail.tutao.de. Tutanota changed their name to “Tuta” so it’s easier to say, but they haven’t changed their records. Anyways, I use Tutanota for that. But that’s a quick way to see what email provider someone might be using to send emails. You can use this to do some sleuthing and get other information about a domain, but those are the main two ways I use it for queries.
The last way that I use it commonly, and this is mostly for troubleshooting, is adding +trace. If we scroll up to see the output: fun fact—domains actually have a dot or period on the end of them. Let’s just change that to make it a bit more clear. You don’t need to type the dot; it’s just assumed, but in all reality, it is there. Domain names are read from right to left, so that’s why we can see here the first query is for . (dot), which specifies the root. That’s why we get the root name servers back in our response.
Next, we have .com, which is why we see the com. nameservers. That’s the next one that we need to query to get the response for who has cab.bos.com. So once those are queried for cab.bos.com, they reply with the authoritative nameservers for the domain, which we can see here: cab.bos.com.. We have the NS record nameservers, and we have the two authoritative nameservers that I have configured for my domain.
Then lastly, those are queried, and what those reply with are the associated A records for our initial query that was sent. So, before, when we were running a simple dig sideofburritos.comom, all this was happening in the background, but you weren’t seeing it because we didn’t include the +trace. So, you might be wondering why this is useful. Well, first off, I think it’s just cool to see this—I like DNS a lot; I think it’s a very cool protocol.
But it’s also useful for troubleshooting. Let’s say you’re trying to figure out why your domain’s not resolving. If you run +trace and you get to here but get nothing else after that, it means something’s going on with your records that are configured there. That would indicate, “Hey, go look at your nameservers. Do you have the A records configured correctly? Have they propagated?” Different things like that. So, again, you might not use this often, but when you do, it’s invaluable for troubleshooting.
]]>Please excuse any grammatical errors. I used a tool to generate the transcript and haven’t had a chance to read through it yet.
So whenever there’s a new forum post about a new GrapheneOS version, there always seems to be some confusion as to why someone’s device has not received the new update yet. When they run a manual update check, it says their system is up to date, even though there should be a new version available. So today, I want to talk about how releases work and why you do not receive them as soon as they are announced.
If we check out the section about the releases on GrapheneOS.org, which I will link down below, we can see here in the last paragraph: releases are tested by the developers and are then pushed out via the Alpha channel. The release is then pushed out via the Beta channel shortly afterwards. Finally, the release is pushed out via the Stable channel after being tested by some of the users in the Beta channel. In some cases, problems are caught in the Beta channel testing, and a new release is made via the Beta channel to replace the aborted one.
So now let’s talk about what this actually means. First thing, I want to take a look at my device here. If we go into Settings, System, and we go to System Updates, and if we take a look at Release Channel under Settings, we can see here this corresponds to exactly what I just read: there’s the Stable, Beta, and Alpha. So when there’s a new forum post, like I showed earlier, that means that a new release was pushed to the Alpha channel, which is why, if you’re on the Stable channel, you don’t get it. If you’re on Beta, again, you won’t get it because it’s still in the Alpha channel. But then, as stated here, after the testing is done in Alpha and Beta, it then goes to Stable, and your phone now gets it.
So then, if we scroll down to the Devices section, we can see some more details on what I was talking about. I don’t think many people look at this often, but I think it’s useful to know where the information is, so if you need to do some troubleshooting or you need to find the answer for yourself. So if we take a look here at the Pixel 9 Fold, we can see again the three channels. We can see the version that’s in each channel, and then we just have some ways to download it over here. But back to the version—so again, let’s say there was a new version, you’d first see it in Alpha, Beta, and Stable.
So speaking of versions, I just wanted to quickly cover how version numbers are created. So, as an example, if we go down to this version number, it’s the four-digit year followed by a two-digit month, then a two-digit day. Then, for the first release of that single day, it’ll be 00. We can see that on October 17th, 2024, there was another release done on that day, which is why it ends in 01. Under each individual release, you can also see what changes were made. So I like to read this whenever a new release comes out to see what changes I can expect. It’s helpful if there was a bug you were experiencing, and you can now see that it was fixed or something like that, or a new security feature.
So you might be asking yourself: why would you want to use the Beta or Alpha channel? Maybe you want to help out with testing, which I know the team could always use more people to help test. So if you switch to Beta or Alpha, it’d be helpful to go on the forum, and then, once these releases are posted, if you experience any issues, post them there. You can also join the Matrix rooms, where they have dedicated channels for that testing. Again, you can post there. It’s usually most needed when there’s a new major Android release version. So from Android 14 to Android 15, there’s always a lot of changes, always a lot of things that need to be tested.
So there’s a couple more things I want to mention about channels. Typically, with a product, either software or something in the physical world, you might say, “This is the Alpha release” or “the Beta release,” and typically, what that means is it’s not production-ready yet. That is not the case with these releases. So when a build makes it to the Alpha channel, if there’s no problems found, that same exact build goes to the Beta channel. And again, if there’s no issues found, that same exact build goes to the Stable channel. There’s no separate build that is built. Everything is technically production-ready, and that exact same build goes through all three steps. So if you are using the Beta channel, don’t think you’re using a Beta version of GrapheneOS. Yes, the build is in the Beta channel, but if there’s no issues found, again, that’ll get pushed to Stable, and it’ll be the exact same version that you’re using in Beta.
I know that was a lot of information, so if you ever need a break, you can check out my new podcast, which is called In the Shell. It’s stories of malware, hackers, and the people who shape tech. And if you want to find out where you can listen, you can head on over to intheshellpodcast.com.
So the last thing I want to mention is that it can be kind of a pain to have to come here and read the release announcements. It can be annoying to have to come check this web page. Thankfully, they offer an Atom feed. So if you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to this URL in there, and you can easily track the feeds. If you’ve never used an RSS reader before, I talked about how I use one and the brief history of them in my latest email newsletter, which you can sign up for at sideofburritos.com.
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