Kev's Development Toolbox

February 4, 2026February 4, 2026

Running Direwolf on Mac vs Raspberry Pi – using a FTX-1 for Packet

I’ve been taking a look at running Direwolf on my Mac to use my new FTX-1 for some Packet Radio. I’m currently stuck trying to diagnose whether Direwolf is getting any audio or not – it’s not decoding anything so I’m suspecting it’s not. The FTX-1 over USB is working flawlessly with WSJT-X so I know audio over USB is reaching the Mac, I’m just not sure what’s going on with Direwolf yet, despite configuring it to use the same “USB Audio Device” as input and output.

I’ve spent a lot of time using Direwolf on the Raspberry Pi – it’s interesting that my previous summary of steps to build and install Direwolf from source still work perfectly.

January 26, 2026January 26, 2026

That’s not a problem that needed solving

This is a re-post of something I’ve shared before, but it comes up so often in software development that it’s worth mentioning again.

It’s important to be aware of the relative importance of everything you’re working on. If something doesn’t add value, why are you working on it? If you’re working on trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixing, why are you spending some looking for a solution?

Don’t waste time trying to fix things that are not broken.

January 1, 2026December 31, 2025

GitLab CI gitlab-runer with docker executor “usr/bin/bash: line 149: docker: command not found”

Rather simple fix for this, need to make sure the CI job is using an image that contains the docker cli executable. Edit your .gitlab-ci.yml and make sure you have:

image: docker:latest

From this post.

January 1, 2026January 1, 2026

GitLab Runner with Docker executor: “client version 1.43 is too old”

Setting up a Docker image build in my GitLab ci I got this error:

ERROR: Error response from daemon: client version 1.43 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.44, please upgrade your client to a newer version: driver not connecting

Docker version on the VM running the GitLab Runner:

$ docker --version
Docker version 29.1.3, build f52814d

Versions in my .gitlab-ci.yml:

image: docker:24.0.5-cli
services:
  - docker:24.0.5-dind

Updated both to match the Docker version on the VM resolved the issue.