Trying to get devuan updates, I see:

Err:5 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 2001:878:346::116 80]
Err:6 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii-security Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 2001:878:346::116 80]
Err:7 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 2001:878:346::116 80]

While nl.mirror.devuan.org has no shortage of IPv6 and IPv4 addresses:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
nl.mirror.devuan.org.   78083   IN      CNAME   deb.devuan.org.
deb.devuan.org.         78083   IN      CNAME   deb.roundr.devuan.org.
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2001:638:a000:1021:21::1
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2a01:4f8:140:1102:2b76:955d:b48f:bdf3
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2001:878:346::116
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2a01:4f8:162:7293::14
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2800:a8:c001::a
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2a01:4f9:2a:fa9::2
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2001:590:3803::31:151
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2001:4ca0:4300::1:19
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2a02:2a38:1:400:422a:422a:422a:422a
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  845     IN      AAAA    2a0a:e5c0:2:2:400:c8ff:fe68:bef3

;; ANSWER SECTION:
nl.mirror.devuan.org.   78063   IN      CNAME   deb.devuan.org.
deb.devuan.org.         78063   IN      CNAME   deb.roundr.devuan.org.
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       46.4.50.2
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       130.225.254.116
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       190.64.49.124
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       31.220.0.151
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       200.236.31.1
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       131.188.12.211
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       141.84.43.19
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       37.187.111.86
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       5.196.38.18
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       95.216.15.86
deb.roundr.devuan.org.  824     IN      A       185.38.15.81

I always get the error for 2001:878:346::116 when connecting. This site seems to have a problem with the devuan mirror at the moment, so I'd like to use another one, but apt keeps going back to the same source. This has to do with IPv6 address destination selection (RFC 3484 / RFC 6724).

A good explanation at IPv6 Destination Address Selection – what, why, how - Karl Auer with:

Rule 9, “use longest matching prefix“, will prefer the candidate destination address that shares the greatest number of contiguous leading bits with the source address that would be chosen for it. Such an address is likely to be topologically closer to the source address.

Indeed that address is close to my home network addresses:

2001:0878:0346:0000:0000:0000:0000:0116
2001:0980:14ca:0001::/64

So the "roundr" round robin isn't very round for IPv6 users.

Workaround: reject the address that is giving me problems:

# ip -6 route add unreachable 2001:878:346::116
# apt update
Get:1 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii InRelease [25.6 kB]
Get:2 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii-security InRelease [25.6 kB]
Get:3 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates InRelease [25.6 kB]
Get:5 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii-security/main Sources [185 kB]
Hit:4 http://packages.roundr.devuan.org/merged ascii InRelease
Get:6 http://nl.mirror.devuan.org/merged ascii-security/main amd64 Packages [480 kB]

Suricata is running and detecting attacks, but it was causing a 100% cpu load after a restart of the ppp connection (the DSL here uses PPP over Ethernet).

The errors point at the problem starting when the ppp connection restarts:

21/1/2020 -- 00:59:36 - <Error> - [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_AFP_READ(191)] - Error reading data from iface 'ppp0': (100u) Network is down
21/1/2020 -- 00:59:37 - <Error> - [ERRCODE: SC_ERR_AFP_CREATE(190)] - Couldn't set fanout mode, error Invalid argument

Which also starts to fill the system log with:

Jan 21 00:59:42 xxxxxxxx kernel: [11347441.726755] device ppp0 left promiscuous mode
Jan 21 01:00:13 xxxxxxxx kernel: [11347472.055712] device ppp0 entered promiscuous mode
Jan 21 01:00:13 xxxxxxxx kernel: [11347472.071533] device ppp0 left promiscuous mode
Jan 21 01:00:13 xxxxxxxx kernel: [11347472.091653] device ppp0 entered promiscuous mode

The interesting part is that this causes higher power usage about five and a half hours later.

Solution: restart suricata in an /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ script.

With very little javascript programming experience I managed to program a version of the IPv6 inline test that is what I wanted for a while: a simple IPv6 check in the right hand column of my homepage. With credit to the IPv6 test by Iljitsch van Beijnum. A needed test, because we really ran out of IPv4 addresses.

It took a lot of tries and debugging because I have absolutely zero javascript experience. But I learned slowly and managed to get what I want.

This is where I like having test environments. There were a lot of broken versions of the test on a separate minimal test page, then I implemented it on the developer version of my homepage and fixed the last errors in that combination and after that I committed the change to the versioning system and updated the production version which showed the update without problems in one go.

Like in previous years I participated in the UBA PSK63 Prefix Contest in the weekend.

Overall it was a nice contest, with 111 contacts in total which makes this a good contest score. I started in the 20 meter band on Saturday, moved to the 40 meter band after propagation died down due to the sun going down.

On Sunday morning I started on the 40 meter band but soon gave up, there was a lot of interference on that band. I switched to 20 meters and made some more contacts. In the end: 38 contacts in the 20 meter band and 73 in the 40 meter band.

I turned on the remote radio today and saw in the DX cluster that the ZC4UW dxpedition was still active although 7 January was the last day.

The signals were never good enough to make the contact, but this made me rethink the DX alerting options I have. I used 'DX Alert' on Android before, but this program had some difficulties and I can't find it anymore on the google play store which suggests it's really going out of support.

The new suggestion is HamAlert which processes data from the DX Cluster network, PSKreporter, Reverse Beacon network and Sotawatch, allows the user to set triggers and report via push notification to a Android/Iphone when the HamAlert android app or equivalent iPhone app is installed.

I created an account, installed the app and set up my first triggers: countries in and around Europe I don't yet have confirmed in bands/modes that I can use. It's a lot easier in HamAlert to set these up compared to DX Alert because it can all be done on the HamAlert website and can be customized more easily.

Update 2020-01-12: First score: I activated the alerts today because I had some time to get on the radio between other things. I saw alerts for E44RU which is in Palestine on a non-standard FT8 frequency. I spun the dial, adjusted a bit and made the contact. And that's a new country for me.

This weekend was the ARRL RTTY Roundup edition 2020 and I participated. Late Saturday evening I saw a few US stations come up on 40 meters. Sunday afternoon I made a lot of contacts to mostly European stations on 20 meters. In the evening after dark the contacts from Europe seemed to stop after the first 24 hours were over but when I checked again late in the evening more US and some Canadian stations were decoded on my end and I worked them.

In the end 110 contacts, a nice score for this contest. Claimed score: 110 qso points * 33 multipliers = 3630.

The one that got away: I saw a station from California calling and giving state 'CA' in contacts, but he never heard me. That's the first time I heard or saw anything from one of the western US states.

Today I needed blocks of random letters to practise sending morse. What better tool to create those blocks than good old pwgen with the right settings:

$ pwgen -0 -A 5 12
ahhud eizaa kuoku ahyoo aequi epiis eiwei eimap sohsh papai ikeit oucho

And the trick for generating groups of five digits is a bit longer:

$ pwgen -r abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz -A 5 12
97228 85996 98876 38451 06091 98556 53369 73632 29509 29032 89601 16078

Use better parameters with pwgen to generate actual passwords.

I received a message from amazon that The Virtual Bookcase no longer qualifies as an amazon.com associate. That was no big surprise as I haven't done a lot of maintenance on the site and haven't added a lot of content in the last years.

The only serious maintenance was for the migration to the new web server where php 7.0 is the standard version. I wish to some day migrate to perl but haven't found time yet.

So I removed all amazon affiliate links I could find. This also means I can't use the amazon.com API anymore.

Time for a new plot of the number of radio contacts. Months with contests are quite visible. After the peak in number of contacts in July there was first a holday and after that no big peaks in number of contacts. December 2019 jumps out a bit again due to the FT8 roundup on 8/9 December in which I made 66 contacts and later in the month the troposperic ducting allowing contacts over interesting distances in the 70 centimeter and 2 meter band added to a sprint at the end. In 2019 I made a few more contacts than in the previous record year 2017.

Looking back at my amateur radio resolutions for 2019 I think most came true.

If I look at them one by one:

• Keep learning morse! - I'm still working on my morse, but there is measurable improvement. I have learned the full set for the Belgian CW exam and I'm working on accuracy and speed.
• Get more countries on more HF bands in the log - More countries and more slots on HF are in the log. I also use the club station to achieve that goal. The ARRL DXCC Award shows that I'm getting somewhere.
• Moonbounce on 2 meter - I've listened on the right frequencies to the moon on 2 meter. Nothing heard.
• Those digimode contests, and maybe a few phone contests - I participated in two phone contests and a number of digimode contests. No serious improvement in scores.
• Operate HF outside - I operated HF outside. Not as much as I would like.
• At least one satellite contact - Multiple satellite contacts have been made!

Now I have to think about 2020, but the year is still young.

I saw reports of special propagation on the 2 meter band and even on 70 centimeters today. Normally I can get something further than line of sight on 2 meter and line of sight is the hard limit on 70 centimeter. But with some propagation types it's different and signals can get further. So I tried FT8 on both bands and got Belgium, France, Germany and England in the log on 70cm and new callsigns on both bands.

Denmark still got away, I had an almost-contact with a Danish station on 70 centimeters but it stopped after the initial exchange.

This is all with the vertical antenna on the roof. I wonder what a beam or big wheel antenna for 70cm or 2meter could do.

At the same time I spun the dial on the remote HF radio so I also got some calls in the log on 20 meters.

Update: Current distance record on the 70 cm band is 803 kilometers to F8DBF in France and the first contact with Denmark has been made.

The main unit of the Kenwood TS-480SAT radio is now at a different location and the frontpanel is at home. With an OpenVPN connection between them so it's not exposed to the big bad internet.

And it's working! I currently have access to a 10/15/17/20 meter antenna and I have already heard stations I wouldn't dream of receiving at home. And the first country in SSB in the log that I only had in digital modes before: Ceuta and Melilla, the Spain enclaves in Africa.

Lag is minimal, audio is less delayed than listening to the utwente websdr to the same signal. Control works fine, so I can control the radio like I'm sitting behind it, including menu settings.

Comparing received signals on the local radio with the attic dipole and the remote radio is hell and heaven: local noise is S9+ and the remote location has almost no local noise (while still being in an urban environment) so I can hear even weak stations fine. I leave the noise blanker off most of the time because it's not needed to hear signals fine.

Not making loads and loads of contacts yet, propagation isn't cooperating very well and there aren't many people calling CQ. But when a somewhat special station calls CQ there are a lot of answers so there are numerous amateurs active. Or I guess they go to their set when they see an interesting callsign on the DX-cluster.

I also got morse keying by paddle working beforehand. Hearing the sidetone from the radio with just a bit of lag got annoying fast when doing morse at a bit of speed so the sidetone is now from the control unit and the sidetone in the radio is silent. It's still set to the same audio frequency as the sidetone in the control unit to allow for finding the zero beat frequency.