Re: [Dorset] Scanning did work and half-hour later didn't?

[PeterMerchant]

Can't help with the scanning, but I have a brother wireless printer HL-1210W 
series  and like Terry have it programmed to a fixed IP address, and never have 
any trouble with it.

The manual refers to saving the scanned item to a folder, but is this folder in 
a storage medium in the scanner or on your computer? As Terry suggests, can you 
browse to the printers web page and find any 'stored' scans?


Peter

On 14/01/2022 15:38, Terry Coles wrote:

John,

One or two thoughts which may or may not be helpful.

On Friday, 14 January 2022 15:24:31 GMT JD wrote:

I have a Brother laser printer - DCP1612W.  Yesterday I scanned a couple
of photos and saved them as jpg's.  About a half-hour later I got only
an error message each time I ran xsane, and that is still the case.
Printing continues to work as normal.

Caveat:  I've never used any kind of Brother Device; I've always bought HP.


Details:
Ubuntu 20.04.3
The error message is: "Failed to open device 'brother4:net;dev0':
Invalid argument."

No thoughts on this.
  

It's configured to connect via WLAN.  The IP address appears in the
router list occasionally but usually not.

For various reasons, I've always configured utility devices on my home network
with a static IP Address.  On my HP, I can then browse to it's Home Page to
check its status.  Does you Brother have a web page?


After: scanimage -L
I get "device `brother4:net1;dev0' is a Brother *DCP1610W DCP1612W", so
the correct model is known about.

What did I do in the fateful 30 mins yesterday afternoon!?

I have no idea really, but since it is not always visible in your Router
settings, I would suspect that the WiFi connection isn't all it could be.




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[Dorset] Following on from LUG meeting Tues 4th Jan

[PeterMerchant]

In my Google news I got sent this:

https://opensource.com/article/20/8/kubernetes-raspberry-pi 


Is Google listening to us?

PeterM.


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Re: [Dorset] Cannot Set the Volume Using amixer under bullseye

[PeterMerchant]

On 31/12/2021 16:21, Terry Coles wrote:

I'm beginning to think that upgrading the music and bells Pis to bullseye
might have been a bit premature.  I cannot get amixer to work properly. The
sound card is an Adafruit Speaker Bonnet. The code shown below worked under
buster.

Here is the configuration:

pi@minster-bells:~ $ amixer
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
Capabilities: volume
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: 0 - 255
Front Left: 255 [100%]
Front Right: 255 [100%]

I need the volume to be controllable from my Python program, so I set it once
at the beginning when the program is launched, eg:

amixer -c 0 set PCM 100

(where the value is a variable in reality, but this doesn't work either.)

I get:

amixer: Invalid command!

Any thoughts on what could be wrong? speaker-test and playing an mp3 file works
fine using mpg123. I just can't set the volume.


On my desktop  (Kubuntu 20.04)

Amixer gives:

peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$ amixer
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 31
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 31 [100%]
  Front Right: Playback 31 [100%]
Simple mixer control '3D Control - Switch',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [off]
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 31
  Front Left: Playback 24 [77%] [on] Capture [off]
  Front Right: Playback 24 [77%] [on] Capture [off]
Simple mixer control 'Synth',0
..   and a whole bunch more

I notice that the setup is different.  Does it need to be 'pvolume' in yours?

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] inxi

[PeterMerchant]

On 15/12/2021 11:26, Terry Coles wrote:

I stumbled across this:

https://itsfoss.com/inxi-system-info-linux/

I seems to be able to list anything in a linux system that can be read or
monitored.  A kind on one stop shop for system monitoring.  The man page and
the -h output are both very comprehensive.

I hadn't seen it before and thought it might be useful to someone.


And I was just reading about Zabbix, that does something similar, in Linux 
Format for April 2020.

Peter


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[Dorset] Netgear Wifi Extender discussed at last meeting.

[PeterMerchant]

The Netgear Wifi extender that Terry mentioned and I found on E-bay that night 
has arrived and is installed. It is a H*** of a lot better than that  TP-LINK 
one that I had. From where I am sitting here I have got a lot stronger signal 
than I ever had from the old unit.

Thanks Terry for the suggestion.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Next Meeting - Dec 7 - Comments

[PeterMerchant]

Interesting result. The  card that didn't work in the new computer because of 
the OpenGL problems, worked just fine on the old computer.  This  computer had 
a new installation of Kubuntu 20.04 on it, but aside from the graphics card, 
was the hardware that I used to use.

These things are sent to try us, but now that both computers are working, I 
shall be quiet for awhile.
Peter

On 10/12/2021 10:22, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

Yeah I mean it's mostly just curiosity on my part, I'm wondering cos I haven't 
really had any GPU driver problems in Linux for a very long time at this point.

Hamish

On 10/12/2021 09:02, PeterMerchant wrote:

Interesting thought. I'll stick the card that didn't work with OpenGL in the 
garage computer and see if it works there.  Not too worried as I only need one 
to work.

All this is done on Kubuntu 20.04.
Peter


On 09/12/2021 19:36, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

Hmm,

I wonder if that card is faulty or something. Worth using a different distro on 
the old PC?

What distro are you using btw?

Hamish

On 09/12/2021 16:10, PeterMerchant wrote:

Following on from the discussion about my 'new' computer not liking OpenGL when 
I was trying to run the Cura 3D program, I tried Blender and it had exactly the 
same problem.

Today I went out and tried Cura on the old computer hiding in the garage, and 
it worked, so I swapped out the video cards between the machines and now the 
new computer is happy. Both cards were ASUS cards. The one that works dates 
from about 2009, and the one that didn't supported up to W7,, but I couldn't 
find a date for it.

So I am happy that is sorted.

Now if I can get the mic working. I took out the fancy sound card and plugged 
the speakers in to the motherboard, but the sound is very faint. I need to 
check the manual I think.


Peter














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Re: [Dorset] Next Meeting - Dec 7 - Comments

[PeterMerchant]

Interesting thought. I'll stick the card  that didn't work with OpenGL in the 
garage computer and see if it works there.  Not too worried as I only need one 
to work.

All this is done on Kubuntu 20.04.
Peter


On 09/12/2021 19:36, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

Hmm,

I wonder if that card is faulty or something. Worth using a different distro on 
the old PC?

What distro are you using btw?

Hamish

On 09/12/2021 16:10, PeterMerchant wrote:

Following on from the discussion about my 'new' computer not liking OpenGL when 
I was trying to run the Cura 3D program, I tried Blender and it had exactly the 
same problem.

Today I went out and tried Cura on the old computer hiding in the garage, and 
it worked, so I swapped out the video cards between the machines and now the 
new computer is happy. Both cards were ASUS cards. The one that works dates 
from about 2009, and the one that didn't supported up to W7,, but I couldn't 
find a date for it.

So I am happy that is sorted.

Now if I can get the mic working. I took out the fancy sound card and plugged 
the speakers in to the motherboard, but the sound is very faint. I need to 
check the manual I think.


Peter








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Re: [Dorset] Next Meeting - Dec 7 - Comments

[PeterMerchant]

Following on from the discussion about my 'new' computer not liking OpenGL when 
I was trying to run the Cura 3D program, I tried Blender and it had exactly the 
same problem.

Today I went out and tried Cura on the old computer hiding in the garage, and 
it worked, so I swapped out the video cards between the machines and now the 
new computer is happy. Both cards were ASUS cards. The one that works dates 
from about 2009, and the one that didn't supported up to W7,, but I couldn't 
find a date for it.

So I am happy that is sorted.

Now if I can get the mic working. I took out the fancy sound card and plugged 
the speakers in to the motherboard, but the sound is very faint. I need to 
check the manual I think.


Peter



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Re: [Dorset] removing spaces in file names

[PeterMerchant]

On 02/12/2021 15:22, John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:


find . -name "* "" -type f -delete


Well, that didn't delete the whole disk. It didn't do anything as far as I can 
see.

I think you had a finger problem there.

This worked and did exactly what I wanted:

find . -name "* *" -type f -delete

So Thanks guys for your help.


Good to hear from you again Victor.  Hope that you are well.


Peter


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Re: [Dorset] removing spaces in file names

[PeterMerchant]

On 30/11/2021 15:42, PeterMerchant wrote:

I thought that my backup software Freefilesync was not backing up files with 
spaces in the names, so I found online a solution that changed all the spaces 
to -.

find . -name "* *" -type f | rename 's/ /-/g'^C

Now I have just checked my backup and discovered that files with spaces in them 
were copied, so my backup so contains two copies of many files

'file-1' and 'file 1'.


Can someone advise me of a script like the above that I can run on my backup 
disk to remove the files with spaces in the names?

I expect to hear you shout "NOT A GOOD IDEA"  but I'll take the responsibility 
for the results, even if I have to clean off the backup and start from new.


Thanks,

Peter



I have not got it right.  I tried

 find . -name "* *" -type f | rm *.* -v

and it removed all files with extensions, but not the files without extensions, 
with no concern over whether there were spaces or not..

removed '1841 census Jane burkey.jpg'
removed '1841-census-Jane-burkey.jpg'
removed '1841 census John Burkey (10).pdf'
removed '1841-census-John-Burkey-(10).pdf'

ls gives: (partly)

'1783 Baptism Richard Burkey' 1789-Baptism-Thomas-Burkey-2 '2015 Burkeys in 
Grays 192-com' 'Len Burkey'
 1783-Baptism-Richard-Burkey '1824 Baptism Jane Burkey 2'   
2015-Burkeys-in-Grays-192-com    Len-Burkey
'1783 Baptism Richard Burkey-2'   1824-Baptism-Jane-Burkey-2 'Ancestry Burkey 
trees'   Messages

P.


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Re: [Dorset] ROS (Robot Operating System)

[PeterMerchant]

On 30/11/2021 19:19, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

On 30/11/2021 15:45, PeterMerchant wrote:

Is anybody on here doing anything with ROS? Just wondering it because I might 
try it and need help.

Peter M.


What does it run on? I'm vaguely curious and have a spare Pi 1, so if I can run 
it on that I might give it a try sometime. I don't know anything about it 
though.

Hamish




The Documentation is very poor about how you would run it on a R-Pi. That's one 
of my first problems with it.

Peter


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[Dorset] ROS (Robot Operating System)

[PeterMerchant]

Is anybody on here doing anything with ROS? Just wondering it because I might 
try it and need help.

Peter M.


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[Dorset] removing spaces in file names

[PeterMerchant]

I thought that my backup software Freefilesync was not backing up files with 
spaces in the names, so I found online a solution that changed all the spaces 
to -.

find . -name "* *" -type f | rename 's/ /-/g'^C

Now I have just checked my backup and discovered that files with spaces in them 
were copied, so my backup so contains two copies of many files

'file-1' and 'file 1'.


Can someone advise me of a script like the above that I can run on my backup 
disk to remove the files with spaces in the names?

I expect to hear you shout "NOT A GOOD IDEA"  but I'll take the responsibility 
for the results, even if I have to clean off the backup and start from new.


Thanks,

Peter


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[Dorset] Folding at Home

[PeterMerchant]

Article today in the Telegraph:

How a crowdsourced supercomputer has unlocked the secrets of the world's 
deadliest diseases
The Folding@home project, powered by thousands of ordinary internet users, is 
now helping scientists to understand and fight Covid-19.

Quite a bit of dross, but some interesting bits.


Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Python Problem in MQTT subscriber program

[PeterMerchant]

Patrick, I am most grateful for your comments. You obviously know a lot more 
about MQTT than I.
I think that I'll have a little play with the software that I have working, and 
then start cleaning it up using some of your suggestions.  And perhaps read a 
bit more of the MQTT v5 spec.

Much thanks,
Peter

On 27/08/2021 12:23, Patrick Wigmore wrote:

Hmm. I don't think I'm able to solve this.

Referring to the full MQTT subscriber/car control program you sent me
off-list, this is some of the context I was missing:

It is using paho-mqtt, f.k.a. Mosquitto, and message is a MQTTMessage
object, with message.payload being arbitrary bytes. It looks like this
payload is indeed the unadulterated MQTT payload, as sent over the
network.

So, the payload is bytes, rather than a text string, and there isn't
any intervening code that's not shown and does additional encoding of
the payload.

on_message is run by paho-mqtt as an on_message callback function when
an MQTT PUBLISH message is received in a subscribed topic, which I
believe is what you intend.

The publisher is using the Arduino MQTT Client, which wraps lwmqtt.

This much is probably obvious if you've been immersed in it for a
while.

So, regardless of the payload contents:

* Given that message.payload is a Python Bytes object, which it should
   be, print(message.payload) should always work. Bytes that don't
   encode printable characters print as hexadecimal within an escape
   sequence.

* Testing whether the payload equals some specific bytes should at
   least not cause a crash, even if the test doesn't evaluate to True/
   False as expected.

* The if/elif/else structure looks fine.

So, unless I'm missing a syntax error or typo somewhere, I don't think
there's anything wrong with your non-working on_message!

Just to confirm to myself how Python's print handles unprintable
bytes:
 >>> print(b'\x00\x00hello\xff\x68\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f')
 b'\x00\x00hello\xffhello'

I'll assume that all the functions that do the GPIO (e.g. motorleft)
are correct. That could be a wrong assumption, but I'll assume it
anyway because it seems likely.

Given that you were interpreting the same bytes (b'Pot-left' and
b'Pot-rt') successfully before, all I can think is that the code at
the publishing end must have changed too, to get it to send different
bytes.

Since the subscriber crashes, there must be something about the way
the publishing code was changed that causes it to send messages that
paho-mqtt can't handle.

Because paho-mqtt shouldn't care about the contents of the payload,
this would seem to suggest that there is a mistake in the way the MQTT
packets are being constructed at the publisher.

I'm having a hard time imagining that you would have intentionally
significantly altered the code at the publishing end, though, so it is
probably something quite subtle; perhaps an issue that was already
there but is only tripped up by something else that changed.

But I feel like I'm probably missing something obvious here. Normally
when I try to make these kinds of deductions on the list, someone
comes along and points out a glaring error in my logic, so no doubt I
am making a similar error right now!

Patrick






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Re: [Dorset] Python Problem in MQTT subscriber program

[PeterMerchant]

Problem sorted, though I don't know why.
I took out the hyphens in the Pot-Left & Right strings, and made them Pleft and 
Pright. and it does not crash.

Peter.

On 23/08/2021 18:29, PeterMerchant wrote:

I have three versions of this program, and two work, but the third with the 
differences put together crashes.   Can anybody advise me what is happening.

Here are the relevant bits.

1. Working


def on_message(client, userdata, message):
   if message.payload  == b'forward':
  up_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'slow':
  down_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'stop':
  on()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorleft':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorright':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'backwards':
  mbackwards()
   else:
  print(message.payload)

the stuff in quotes 'forward' etc is the message payload that I act on.

2 Working

def on_message(client, userdata, message):
   if message.payload  == b'forward':
  up_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'slow':
  down_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'stop':
  on()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-left':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-rt':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'backwards':
  mbackwards()
   else:
  print(message.payload)

the left and right have been changed to Potentiometer values

and 3, not working


def on_message(client, userdata, message):
   if message.payload  == b'forward':
  up_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'slow':
  down_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'stop':
  on()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorleft':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorright':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-left':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-rt':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'backwards':
  mbackwards()
   else:
  print(message.payload)

Actually the Pot-rt lines have been commented out. It did work with both the 
Pot-* bits commented out.


Thanks for any thoughts.





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[Dorset] Python Problem in MQTT subscriber program

[PeterMerchant]

I have three versions of this program, and two work, but the third with the 
differences put together crashes.   Can anybody advise me what is happening.

Here are the relevant bits.

1. Working


def on_message(client, userdata, message):
   if message.payload  == b'forward':
  up_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'slow':
  down_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'stop':
  on()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorleft':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorright':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'backwards':
  mbackwards()
   else:
  print(message.payload)

the stuff in quotes 'forward' etc is the message payload that I act on.

2 Working

def on_message(client, userdata, message):
   if message.payload  == b'forward':
  up_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'slow':
  down_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'stop':
  on()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-left':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-rt':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'backwards':
  mbackwards()
   else:
  print(message.payload)

the left and right have been changed to Potentiometer values

and 3, not working


def on_message(client, userdata, message):
   if message.payload  == b'forward':
  up_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'slow':
  down_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'stop':
  on()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorleft':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorright':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-left':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'Pot-rt':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'backwards':
  mbackwards()
   else:
  print(message.payload)

Actually the Pot-rt lines have been commented out. It did work with both the 
Pot-* bits commented out.


Thanks for any thoughts.


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[Dorset] Programming courses for R-Pi

[PeterMerchant]

Has anybody seen this? Is it any good? 
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/these-raspberry-pi-robotics-and-electronics-courses-allow-you-to-learn-at-your-own-pace/


Peter


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[Dorset] MOT time

[PeterMerchant]

I took my car in for the MOT this morning, and in the corner of the office was 
an old Compaq tower. It had been their main computer for their operation for 
years until they had to get a new printer, which the 18 year old computer 
running XP didn't have drivers for. So their supplier sold them a new W10 
computer and it took 4 days to set it up. He told me that most of their stuff 
is an Excel spreadsheet.

And his big moan is that it is so much slower than the old system.

Of course there my be some Windows proprietary software that they needed, but 
he didn't mention it.  This computer had been free-standing, not connected to 
anything. They have a laptop for internet access.

I can't help but think that a linux system would have been faster.


Peter


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[Dorset] Apologies

[PeterMerchant]

Sorry about last night.

I was recently given a PC by a friend who 'needed' to upgrade and I put my 
Kubuntu Disc into it and effectively upgraded my system from 2 core 8GB to 4 
core, 24GB RAM, and had most things working OK that I had tested, after a 
wobbly with his fancy sound card. I obviously hadn't tried teh webcam until I 
needed it and still haven't sorted out the focus on it.

I also missed the beginning of Terry's discussion and didn't realise at first 
that he was talking about Power Showers.  I don't know the problem with his, 
but our Mira Event XS was installed in 2011 and is running fine, and we are in 
an extremely hard water area.

My mind is on CH Pumps, hence the comment about Grundfoss and FSH.  When we had 
a new boiler 2 years ago the installation technicians said that our current 
(grundfoss) pump was wearing out and replaced it with a FSH.  When SWMBO was 
unwell and sleeping in the bedroom across the hall from the airing cupboard, 
the pump starting at 05:30 woke her and disturbed her. It is noisy and can be 
heard through most of the house. I don't remember this noise from the old pump. 
 My question here is - Are your pumps quiet?

Sorry about being off-topic twice.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] WiFi Still Dropping Out at WMT - Yet Again

[PeterMerchant]

On 02/08/2021 10:04, Terry Coles wrote:

On Monday, 2 August 2021 09:57:47 BST PeterMerchant wrote:

It is an interesting question.  On my PC which has a 4M cable to a wifi
dongle hanging in a window, and on the same side of the house as the
router, but diagonal far corner. (Downstairs west of house to upstairs east
of house)

Coo.  That's a bit drastic.  Have you considered installing a WiFI Extender
somewhere between the Router and the PC?


As I mention there is a Wifi Extender in the room below, which of course means 
the signal going through wooden floors.  The Wireless printer beside the PC is 
connected to the Wifi extender.  I used to use a powerline adapter for the PC, 
but the Wifi is faster. Years ago my experiments gave me the best signal in 
this position, so I have never retested, even though I have a different dongle 
now.  I think(?) that my impression is that a direct connection to the router 
is faster than via the Wifi extender - More tests needed.

I guess that I am working on the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' principle.

Peter.

Is there a program that displays Wifi signal strength? - Yeah - iwconfig!

P.


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Re: [Dorset] WiFi Still Dropping Out at WMT - Yet Again

[PeterMerchant]

On 02/08/2021 06:51, Terry Coles wrote:

On Sunday, 1 August 2021 18:53:22 BST Tim wrote:

Has a new Wifi to the area appeared and is swamping music and bells
wifi, thus forcing it off line?

I'm not aware of anything like that.  In any case the five Tiny-TV Pis (which
are all further from the Antenna) would also be affected.  The site is in a
fairly sparsely populated area with a field and cricket ground behind, a few
houses either side and the Minster across the road.


Could you setup a simple ping script to a router or something similar
and i it fails to get a reply then it reboot the PI?

I'm looking into doing something like that at the moment.  The latest
suggestion is to turn off WiFI and then turn it back on again, if the ping
response fails.  I need to be careful; if the script has an error, I may never
get the WiFi back up.  That would need someone on site to fix it.


It is an interesting question.  On my PC which has a 4M cable to a wifi dongle 
hanging in a window, and on the same side of the house as the router, but 
diagonal far corner. (Downstairs west of house to upstairs east of house)  I 
get the following:

wlx000c4300d317  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"Ashmeads-downstairs"
  Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 78:65:59:4C:0F:45
  Bit Rate=21.7 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm
  Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
  Power Management:off
  Link Quality=25/70  Signal level=-85 dBm
  Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
  Tx excessive retries:312  Invalid misc:216   Missed beacon:0

and repeated goes:

  Tx excessive retries:312  Invalid misc:220   Missed beacon:0

  Tx excessive retries:312  Invalid misc:236   Missed beacon:0

The only other difference that I notice in the results is a changing Bit Rate 
from 19.5 to 52 Mb/s.

possibly nothing of interest or help in here, but I do have Wifi freezes 
occasionally. I'll keep an eye on them in future. Note that the Wifi is 
connected to the router and not to the TP-Link Wifi extender directly below.

Net Analyzer shows TP-Link Extender sig strength  -36dBm against

Router @ -62dBm  and three others at -79, -84, -89  though these values keep 
fluctuating.

I think Tp-link extender and router are on Channel 1 and  others on different 
channels, though as I move the device I now have 8 Wifi signals on different 
channels.

Peter





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Re: [Dorset] WiFi Still Dropping Out at WMT

[PeterMerchant]

On 24/06/2021 14:14, PeterMerchant wrote:

On 24/06/2021 13:19, Terry Coles wrote:

On Thursday, 24 June 2021 10:49:42 BST Terry Coles wrote:

Any thoughts on what I could do to diagnose this problem?

Someone on the Raspberry Pi Forums has resurrected the WMM Power suggestion.
Apparently this has been known to cause problems in the past. The thing is
that the suggestion is to turn off power saving, but I'm not sure how to do
this. I know that the Windows Driver has support for the control, but I have
no idea whether the Linux Kernel driver supports it.

How would I find out?


Have found this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=138731

But don't know if it is still relevant in current wifi configs.

Peter



In my current setup the Wifi config is in 
rootfs/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf  which you need root privileges 
to edit.


That file looks like in my config:

peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:/media/peterm/rootfs/etc/wpa_supplicant$ sudo cat 
wpa_supplicant.conf
[sudo] password for peterm:
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

country=GB

network={
ssid="bmth-wireless"
psk="my-key"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

}




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Re: [Dorset] WiFi Still Dropping Out at WMT

[PeterMerchant]

On 24/06/2021 13:19, Terry Coles wrote:

On Thursday, 24 June 2021 10:49:42 BST Terry Coles wrote:

Any thoughts on what I could do to diagnose this problem?

Someone on the Raspberry Pi Forums has resurrected the WMM Power suggestion.
Apparently this has been known to cause problems in the past.  The thing is
that the suggestion is to turn off power saving, but I'm not sure how to do
this. I know that the Windows Driver has support for the control, but I have
no idea whether the Linux Kernel driver supports it.

How would I find out?


Have found this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=138731

But don't know if it is still relevant in current wifi configs.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Chromium no Longer Stores Passwords on Kubuntu

[PeterMerchant]

On 05/06/2021 09:13, Terry Coles wrote:

On Saturday, 5 June 2021 08:41:42 BST Keith Edmunds wrote:

Or use something like Bitwarden. Open Source, runs on Linux, Windows, Mac,
Android, IoS. Automatically syncs. Can be self-hosted if you're
paranoid, but you don't need to. And your passwords belong to you, not
Google or Mozilla. https://bitwarden.com/

Thanks Keith.  I'll look into that.


I like that idea too. I'll have to look into it to see if it works across 
multiple devices.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Android (6) and Tesco shopping app.

[PeterMerchant]

On 26/05/2021 12:20, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:



I bought her a new Lenovo 7" tablet, but it is slightly smaller (New case 
needed - £££) and this one will not stay in landscape mode. That's another problem, 
and Lenovo don't want to know.

Peter


Peter, have you tried disabling auto-rotate? My Android phone has a similar 
problem I think.

Hamish


Autorotate is disabled in the drop down menu, and also in the settings, but 
once you access a program that wants to be in portrait, it doesn't revert to 
landscape. It is necessary to enable autorotate, turn it to landscape and then 
disable it again, and SWMBO is scared of doing anything that technical.

P.


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[Dorset] Android (6) and Tesco shopping app.

[PeterMerchant]

My wife has a 7" Lenovo tablet bought June 2017 and yesterday the Tesco 
shopping App said that it would no longer work on this device due to an out of date 
Operating System. The OS was Android 6.  The tablet still works well, except for 
being particular about which charging cable we use.

So be warned if you use the Tesco shopping app.

I bought her a new Lenovo 7" tablet, but it is slightly smaller (New case 
needed - £££) and this one will not stay in landscape mode. That's another problem, 
and Lenovo don't want to know.

Peter



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Re: [Dorset] Help with sound

[PeterMerchant]

Couldn't find anything in BIOS to disable  sound port, but was able to set BIOS 
to defaults.
The sound works via sound card now, but not by Motherboard port.  It could be 
faulty I suppose.
Then I discovered that Youtube videos played on Chrome were jittery in picture 
and sound, but OK in Firefox/Youtube, so have removed and re-installed Chrome, 
but problem remains. Chrome now gone and Vivaldi installed.  Bah, sound quality 
still poor.

I guess that I'll stick with Firefox.
Peter


On 19/05/2021 16:02, Tim wrote:

Could indicate that the onboard sound card is disabled?? Or the fact that it 
has an external sound card the internal one is broken


Tim H

On 19/05/2021 14:07, PeterMerchant wrote:

Sorted. When I got the computer it had a fancy sound card that I took out. I've 
put it back and I now have sound.
P.

On 18/05/2021 22:16, PeterMerchant wrote:





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Re: [Dorset] Help with sound

[PeterMerchant]

Sorted. When I got the computer it had a fancy sound card that I took out. I've 
put it back and I now have sound.
P.

On 18/05/2021 22:16, PeterMerchant wrote:

I have just been given a computer from a friend who 'needed' to upgrade his to 
a faster one.  I have stuck my Kubuntu disk in it and it basically works except 
for a couple of things.

One of them is that I don't have any sound.

This is hardinfo for the new one:

-Computer-
Processor        : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3330 CPU @ 3.00GHz
Memory        : 24320MB (1525MB used)
Machine Type        : Desktop
Operating System        : Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
User Name        : peterm (Peter Merchant)
Date/Time        : Tue 18 May 2021 19:34:12 BST
-Display-
Resolution        : 1680x1050 pixels
OpenGL Renderer        : (Unknown)
X11 Vendor        : The X.Org Foundation
-Audio Devices-
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
-Input Devices-
 Power Button
 Power Button
 AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
 Video Bus
 2.4G Wireless Optical Mouse
 Eee PC WMI hotkeys
 USB2.0 Camera: USB2.0 Camera
 HDA Intel PCH Front Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Rear Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Line
 HDA Intel PCH Line Out
 HDA Intel PCH Front Headphone
 HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm:3


And this is the old one:


-Computer-  from back in 2020.
Processor        : Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G3420 @ 3.20GHz
Memory        : 8037MB (4978MB used)
Machine Type        : Desktop
Operating System        : Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
User Name        : peterm (Peter Merchant)
Date/Time        : Wed 25 Mar 2020 10:02:24 GMT
-Display-
Resolution        : 1680x1050 pixels
OpenGL Renderer        : (Unknown)
X11 Vendor        : The X.Org Foundation
-Audio Devices-
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDMI
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
-Input Devices-
 Power Button
 Power Button
 AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
 Video Bus
 2.4G Wireless Optical Mouse
 HDA Intel PCH Rear Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Front Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Line
 HDA Intel PCH Line Out
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:3
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:7
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:8
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:9
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:10
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:3
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:7
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:8
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:9

I have tried all sorts of things, but can't get sound out of it.

speaker-test -Dsysdefault:PCH   Doesn't do anything

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Peter.





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[Dorset] Help with sound

[PeterMerchant]

I have just been given a computer from a friend who 'needed' to upgrade his to 
a faster one.  I have stuck my Kubuntu disk in it and it basically works except 
for a couple of things.

One of them is that I don't have any sound.

This is hardinfo for the new one:

-Computer-
Processor        : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3330 CPU @ 3.00GHz
Memory        : 24320MB (1525MB used)
Machine Type        : Desktop
Operating System        : Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
User Name        : peterm (Peter Merchant)
Date/Time        : Tue 18 May 2021 19:34:12 BST
-Display-
Resolution        : 1680x1050 pixels
OpenGL Renderer        : (Unknown)
X11 Vendor        : The X.Org Foundation
-Audio Devices-
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
-Input Devices-
 Power Button
 Power Button
 AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
 Video Bus
 2.4G Wireless Optical Mouse
 Eee PC WMI hotkeys
 USB2.0 Camera: USB2.0 Camera
 HDA Intel PCH Front Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Rear Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Line
 HDA Intel PCH Line Out
 HDA Intel PCH Front Headphone
 HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm:3


And this is the old one:


-Computer-  from back in 2020.
Processor        : Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G3420 @ 3.20GHz
Memory        : 8037MB (4978MB used)
Machine Type        : Desktop
Operating System        : Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
User Name        : peterm (Peter Merchant)
Date/Time        : Wed 25 Mar 2020 10:02:24 GMT
-Display-
Resolution        : 1680x1050 pixels
OpenGL Renderer        : (Unknown)
X11 Vendor        : The X.Org Foundation
-Audio Devices-
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDMI
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
Audio Adapter        : HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
-Input Devices-
 Power Button
 Power Button
 AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
 Video Bus
 2.4G Wireless Optical Mouse
 HDA Intel PCH Rear Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Front Mic
 HDA Intel PCH Line
 HDA Intel PCH Line Out
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:3
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:7
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:8
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:9
 HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm:10
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:3
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:7
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:8
 HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm:9

I have tried all sorts of things, but can't get sound out of it.

speaker-test -Dsysdefault:PCH   Doesn't do anything

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Peter.


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[Dorset] What is Sp** and what isn't?

[PeterMerchant]

This made me smile. Because I am using a Hotmail address I periodically get 
messages from Microsoft  asking me if a referenced email is evil or not and a 
box to tick whether to permit it or stop  them.

Today the tables have been turned because Thunderbird thinks this email from 
Microsoft is evil.  [ I am replacing the forbidden word with 'evil']

Cheers,

Peter


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[Dorset] Program to compare/overlay pictures

[PeterMerchant]

Is there a program to compare or overlay pictures to tell the differences.

I have a retaining wall that is gradually spreading, and a few years ago I put 
in two screws, one on each side, and have been taking photos in three 
dimensions ever since. It is difficult to compare these photos manually, even 
though I have tried to take them from the same distance each time.

Thanks for any advice.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Failure of wireless connections again.

[PeterMerchant]

On 11/03/2021 17:52, Keith Edmunds wrote:

On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 17:48:20 +, ci...@cewland.uk said:


Thinking of reporting this to Talktalk if it happens in 2 weeks time
again; or am I wrong in thinking it's their fault?

I think you're wrong in thinking that TalkTalk will care in the sligtest,
to be honest. TalkTalk have a deserved poor reputation; my advice (harsh,
but I'd like to think fair): either put up with it or change ISP.


I haven't had any problems since I stopped using the SagemCom router and 
reverted to  the D-link one. I can't see any difference between them in terms 
of performance except for this problem with the Sagemcom one.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] [OT] 12v Power supply replacement

[PeterMerchant]

On 06/03/2021 19:25, Tim wrote:

My apologies as this is very much not linux and not even computer based. Just 
trying to tap in to the collective electrical knowledge of the group.

I have 2 LED light on my Fish tank and one of the power supplies is dead. 
Getting a replacement power supply from the supplier is not an option, no 
longer available.

The only technical detail I can tell you about the power supply is that it is 
DC 12v 47watt output, there are two switches on the Power supply which operate 
two modes on the light. I normally leave both switches on so the light in full 
on mode and is permanently switched on and is controlled via a time switch (one 
for each light), so having the two switches in not that important (to my 
thinking below).

The output plug is a small round three pin affair which makes me think that 
there are two live cable and one neutral cable. On the assumption that this is 
correct, would getting a replacement power supply like a DC 12v 60w then 
cutting the supplied output plug off (which in most case is the two cable round 
push in plug.), then having cut the old output lead off the old power supply, 
solder the two lives to the single live on the new power supply and then the 
neutral to neutral. Would this work? I realise there is a bit of investigation 
to do first but just trying to think of possible options in getting a 
replacement (I have tried ebay).

Any thoughts


Tim


Just my thoughts: It sounds like a lot of power for LED lights.

It is one power supply driving two lights/bulbs.

Can you swap the bulbs round to check that it is not the light that has gone?

Assuming that you can open it up (Unplugged of course)  can you check that 
there is not a fault in one wire, or in the switch?  Of course, as it is for 
use near water it could be a potted power supply and inaccessible inside.

I found this at 'lightinthebox.com It might be a cheaper overall option? 
Aquarium Light LED Light Fish Tank Light White With Switch(es) Plastic 3 W 220 V

Peter M.



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Re: [Dorset] connecting a HP printer to my wi-fi network

[PeterMerchant]

You may find it useful to give the printer a static IP Address in your  Router. 
[WILL] not may!

Are you commenting on my grammar or making a statement of fact?


Not worried about your grammar, mine isn't always the best.

In all of my networking life since TCP/IP came in, printers have had fixed IP 
addresses. In other establishments people may not have done that, but it has 
been easier to manage networks if they are fixed.


I have a Brother wifi connected printer, and I I remember correctly, I had
to connect it via USB to the computer in order to initially configure it. I
have never used the USB since. It has a cobweb across it.

HPLIP mentions using USB to make a direct connection to the printer from the
computer (eg not via a site-wide WiFi Network).  However, only some models
support this anyway and connecting to my home WiFi has always worked fine for
me.


The Brother manual says to connect via USB to configure the device, whether for 
USB use or wireless use. Now that it has been configured, I use wireless 
exclusively and the web interface if I have to do anything on it.  But of 
course this discussion is about HP printers.

Cheers,

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] connecting a HP printer to my wi-fi network

[PeterMerchant]

On 26/02/2021 12:29, Terry Coles wrote:

On Friday, 26 February 2021 11:55:36 GMT John Palmer wrote:

I have (perhaps unwisely) bought a Hewlett multifunction printer
MFP179fnw. How on earth do I connect it to my home wifi network ?
At present it's a nice stand-alone photocopier, but that's the least
useful part !


You may find it useful to give the printer a static IP Address in your Router.  
[WILL] not may!


I have a Brother wifi connected printer, and I I remember correctly, I had to 
connect it via USB to the computer in order to initially configure it. I have 
never used the USB since. It has a cobweb across it.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] display not occupying full screen

[PeterMerchant]

On 20/02/2021 14:54, PeterMerchant wrote:

This morning all of a sudden my display magnified a lot and I could only see a 
bit of it on my screen. I haev been trying to get it right and now I have 
something about the right size, but with black bars across both bottom and top 
of the screen, and as I move up and down the display I lose the edges of it 
into the black.

I booted off a disk of the same OS, Kubuntu 20.04 and that said the display 
should be 1680x 1050

I tried to set this, and xrandr now gives me:

peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 connected primary 1680x945+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 
474mm x 296mm panning 1680x1050+0+0
   1680x1050 59.88*+  59.95
   1440x900  74.98    59.89
   1280x1024 75.02    60.02
   1280x960  60.00
   1152x864  75.00
   1024x768  75.03    60.00
   800x600   75.00    60.32    56.25
   640x480   75.00    59.94
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$

but I still have the black bits. The Menu control for adjusting the screen 
doesn't help, it just moves the display on the screen.

it is a Flatron L225WS  VGA screen.

I have tried setting it in the kubuntu settings and the N-Vidia settings, but 
not got anywhere.


Any suggestions?

Peter



After much fooling around, deleted /etc/X11/xorg.conf  and screen is up to full 
size again. Hooray, except that the print size is too small on the tabs on the 
status line and in terminal.

Peter


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[Dorset] display not occupying full screen

[PeterMerchant]

This morning all of a sudden my display magnified a lot and I could only see a 
bit of it on my screen. I haev been trying to get it right and now I have 
something about the right size, but with black bars across both bottom and top 
of the screen, and as I move up and down the display I lose the edges of it 
into the black.

I booted off a disk of the same OS, Kubuntu 20.04 and that said the display 
should be 1680x 1050

I tried to set this, and xrandr now gives me:

peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1680 x 1050, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 connected primary 1680x945+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 
474mm x 296mm panning 1680x1050+0+0
   1680x1050 59.88*+  59.95
   1440x900  74.98    59.89
   1280x1024 75.02    60.02
   1280x960  60.00
   1152x864  75.00
   1024x768  75.03    60.00
   800x600   75.00    60.32    56.25
   640x480   75.00    59.94
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$

but I still have the black bits. The Menu control for adjusting the screen 
doesn't help, it just moves the display on the screen.

it is a Flatron L225WS  VGA screen.

I have tried setting it in the kubuntu settings and the N-Vidia settings, but 
not got anywhere.


Any suggestions?

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Wireless dropping out

[PeterMerchant]

On 20/02/2021 13:01, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

I haven't been following this, but have you checked for a firmware
update for the router that might fix the issue?

Hamish

On 20/02/2021 12:56, CA Wills wrote:

Started a new email on this subject due to delays in replying. We have
been relaying our patio during the week between rain showers, so have
not had a clear time slot to 'play'.

Update today.  1200hrs.

Removed all connections from the TT Super(?) Router and replaced using
the very old previous Huawei HG633 router.

After reconnecting to old HG633 router and checking I had wireless set
up, it showed that Lily's Tablet had connected automatically via
wireless.

Then set up my laptop (wireless) and it connected OK; moved into the
Living room and still connected; proved that the _laptop_ wireless is
OK.  Checked speed and appears no loss in speed.

Conclusion is that something on the 'new' router has upset 'my' link.
As we need the wireless connection for tomorrow morning, I'm staying
with the 'old' router till after lunch.

Next stage is to reconnect the 'new' router after setting it back to
default, will then check if wireless is OK again.  Hoping that may
clear whatever upset my wireless.

If all goes well then end of problem.  If I still can't connect the
laptop but all else is OK will get onto TT, report the problem and ask
for a replacement router (can but hope!).  As Peter reported a while
back he had a similar problem with one item being rejected connection,
I believe that was also with a TT router.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help, will email when done
reconnecting tomorrow.



My problem was with the TT Sagemcom 'super'-router, and the one wired computer 
not connecting. This was after I think TT had upgraded the firmware and reset 
it to factory defaults.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Wireless dropping out

[PeterMerchant]

On 13/02/2021 14:00, Terry Coles wrote:

On Saturday, 13 February 2021 13:50:55 GMT PeterMerchant wrote:

Powerline adapters might be a solution for Clive, Argos?

If he's going to have to spend money then it's probably cheaper to by a USB
WiFi Adaptor or a WiFi Extender:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/1286627?
clickSR=slp:term:plug%20in%20wifi%20booster:1:15:1


True, This upstairs PC now connects via the downstairs extender that I got in 
order to give us coverage in the Kitchen instead of directly to the router, and 
the powerline adapters are only used for when I connect a R-Pi  to the router 
to update it or get software.  [I mentioned once before that the Wifi 
connection was faster than the Powerline link].

I had been about to suggest that if he got powerline adapters, to get one with 
a passthrough mains so that you don't lose a socket.

I have a TP-Link 305 Wifi extender and it was not easy to set up, as a matter 
of fact the 'remote' wifi connection I was unable to change the SSID, though I 
could change the security Key.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Wireless dropping out

[PeterMerchant]

On 13/02/2021 13:46, PeterMerchant wrote:

On 13/02/2021 13:06, Terry Coles wrote:

On Saturday, 13 February 2021 11:20:30 GMT CA Wills wrote:

As Peter said below, this seems to be the same problem, only one item
not connecting.

So a question: if I have another router (a previous TT one) can I:

Using the additional router.;

1.  Connect it up exactly as the present one (same name) but located in
the living room where I most use my laptop, wiil it work? Or will it
interfere with the original?  ((Approx 7m + 2 walls away)

You can only have one Router connected to the phone line, but otherwise
setting the old one up as a repeater would probably be the best thing to do,
providing that the old Router can be set up that way.  I can't comment on that
without seeing the Model Number (and always assuming that TT provide a
downloadable manual).

If that isn't possible, you may be able to connect the old router to the new
one with an Ethernet cable and set the old one ups as an AP with the same
ESSID and credentials.  You'd need to have them in the same room in that case
(or drill holes in your walls).


Looking at my old 3Com router that I am using as a repeater over powerline 
adapters, I can't find a configuration item to disable ADSL, But  what Clive 
must do is disable DHCP on the remote router. I think that is all that I did.

This remote router has different Wifi settings. The system status does show WAN 
connection type: N.A. and Status: DISCONNECTED, but of course it would.

Peter


Powerline adapters might be a solution for Clive, Argos?



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Re: [Dorset] Wireless dropping out

[PeterMerchant]

On 13/02/2021 13:06, Terry Coles wrote:

On Saturday, 13 February 2021 11:20:30 GMT CA Wills wrote:

As Peter said below, this seems to be the same problem, only one item
not connecting.

So a question: if I have another router (a previous TT one) can I:

Using the additional router.;

1.  Connect it up exactly as the present one (same name) but located in
the living room where I most use my laptop, wiil it work? Or will it
interfere with the original?  ((Approx 7m + 2 walls away)

You can only have one Router connected to the phone line, but otherwise
setting the old one up as a repeater would probably be the best thing to do,
providing that the old Router can be set up that way.  I can't comment on that
without seeing the Model Number (and always assuming that TT provide a
downloadable manual).

If that isn't possible, you may be able to connect the old router to the new
one with an Ethernet cable and set the old one ups as an AP with the same
ESSID and credentials.  You'd need to have them in the same room in that case
(or drill holes in your walls).


Looking at my old 3Com router that I am using as a repeater over powerline 
adapters, I can't find a configuration item to disable ADSL, But  what Clive 
must do is disable DHCP on the remote router. I think that is all that I did.

This remote router has different Wifi settings. The system status does show WAN 
connection type: N.A. and Status: DISCONNECTED, but of course it would.

Peter

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Wireless dropping out

[PeterMerchant]

On 11/02/2021 09:06, CA Wills wrote:

Hi All

My wireless connection to the router keeps dropping out even though it reports 
64% signal.  Yesterday everything was OK all day but this morning no connection.

The router is mounted on a high shelf in a room with 2 single brick walls 
between.  This problem has recently started (since mid Jan), it's not 
consistent and nothing has changed with settings on the laptop. I have thought 
that perhaps the wireless card in the laptop is failing but would that not be 
permanent?  The card is fixed and held by 2 screws to the motherboard.  Do 
cards fail as they age?

I've just moved into the room with the router and the signal is 89% but still 
no connection.  I will now plug in an Ethernet cable to send this.


Clive, i just had a thought. Which Router are you using - Is it a TT Sagemcom? 
I have been having problems with my Sagemcom in that one device many times will 
not connect to it. It happens to be the only computer wired into it, and has a 
fixed IP address. Many mornings it just would not connect, no matter how many 
times I disabled and enabled the interface, and many times caused the router to 
reboot. I have reverted back to the previous router which I think is the D-Link 
with exactly the same configuration and it works, well, it works.

Can you swap out your router and see if the problem persists?

Peter



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Re: [Dorset] Terminate a Python Program Conditionally (or Alternatively Trace a Running Program)

[PeterMerchant]

Alternatively, is there a way to get trace to do it's stuff while the program
is executing?


I have used the Logger function in Python on the Raspberry Pi to see what my 
program is doing. Unfortunately I was unable to get logger working with the 
timestamp, but it did write to a logfile for analysis.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Wireless dropping out

[PeterMerchant]

On 11/02/2021 09:06, CA Wills wrote:

Hi All

My wireless connection to the router keeps dropping out even though it reports 
64% signal.  Yesterday everything was OK all day but this morning no connection.

The router is mounted on a high shelf in a room with 2 single brick walls 
between.  This problem has recently started (since mid Jan), it's not 
consistent and nothing has changed with settings on the laptop. I have thought 
that perhaps the wireless card in the laptop is failing but would that not be 
permanent?  The card is fixed and held by 2 screws to the motherboard.  Do 
cards fail as they age?

I've just moved into the room with the router and the signal is 89% but still 
no connection.  I will now plug in an Ethernet cable to send this.


I have periodic occurrences like this.  I don't know why they occur but I have 
a thought in my head that once a device is logged into a router and drops out, 
if the MAC is still assigned to the one connection it won't allow a second 
connection using that MAC.

My occurrences are on both this upstairs fixed PC [it's wireless because the 
wireless is faster than over the Powerline Adapter] and also my tablet, and I 
have found that if I disconnect  the wireless under software control and then 
reconnect I am usually back on. Does that work for you?

Peter


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[Dorset] Router Wifi configs

[PeterMerchant]

The question is, in a router that has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz capability, should 
the ESSID/security for these be different, or is it alright to have them both 
the same? Mine are both the same, and I have a computer that won't connect to 
the router.

When I first set it up this way, my tablet connected/dropped out/reconnected 
and repeated this, so I changed routers.

Peter.


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[Dorset] HP Printers and Flash

[PeterMerchant]

In a discussion with friends yesterday, they discussed the problems of 
communicating with HP printers from W10 now that Flash has been  killed, 
because apparently HP drivers use it.  Is this a problem from Linux? I expect 
not, but if I come across a printer it would be good to know.

Peter


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[Dorset] Microsoft on Raspberry Pi

[PeterMerchant]

I came across this article on nixcraft and I wonder if I should be worried 
about it. I am well aware that M$ is becoming more linux friendly(?), but not 
sure that I want them prying into my Pi.


 _Heads up: Microsoft repo secretly installed on all Raspberry Pi’s Linux OS 
_

Raspberry Pi is a little useful computer for learning programming and building 
projects. It comes with Debian Linux based modified operating system called 
Raspbian. It is the most widely installed OS on RPi. In a recent update, the 
Raspberry Pi OS installed a Microsoft apt repository on all machines running 
Raspberry Pi OS without the person’s or admin’s knowledge. Every time a 
Raspbian device is updated by having this repo, it will ping a Microsoft 
server. Microsoft telemetry has a bad reputation in the Linux community. Let us 
see why and how this matters to Linux users.
[continue reading…] 


Of course I am aware that M$ now owns Git, and this seems to me to be 
underhanded extending their reach.

Peter

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Re: [Dorset] Assistance debugging Python on Raspberry Pi.

[PeterMerchant]

On 29/01/2021 08:18, PeterMerchant wrote:

I have a program on my Raspberry Pi  (subscriber) that gets MQTT messages from 
a broker (Mosquitto) also on the Pi, and lights LEDS depending on the content 
of the messages.  My final intention is to add my ultrasonic detector to this 
program. Note that these LEDs are the test rig for my RC car, so eventually I 
would want the U/S to detect possible collisions.

The R-Pi was headless, but now has a screen attached.

BUT anytime I add anything to the program the subscriber stops firing the LEDs. 
I can't tell if it is still working. I tried to print  to stdout in each 
function, but nothing happened. I tried in one function to write to a logfile, 
and that function's LED didn't fire. Good point there is that other functions 
still worked. I had added the functions to detect the U/S but ended up 
commenting them out as it seemed to stop the system. Even having a function in 
the program that did nothing seemed to stop operation. Can one have an 'orphan' 
function in a Python program?  The R-Pi LOGGER function also stops it.

Appreciate any thoughts and suggestions.  This morning my thought was to 
rewrite the whole subscriber program into a lot fewer function calls, which I 
don't fancy doing.

Peter M


I have it sorted. I wish that I had discovered these a month ago. I was 
wondering if there was a way of testing my program before running it on the PI, 
and I discovered these debugging sites. They both found the same error so I am 
hopeful that tomorrow I can progress.  (And then found the second error.)

https://extendsclass.com/python.html          and
https://www.onlinegdb.com/online_python_debugger

Peter
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Re: [Dorset] Next Meeting - Tonight at 8 pm

[PeterMerchant]

Damn, forgot. and too late now.
Next month I hope.
P.
On 02/02/2021 12:18, Terry Coles wrote:

All,

The next Online Meeting is tonight at 8 pm using Jitsi.

Simply click on the following link and you will be taken to the Meeting
using your default browser:

https://meet.jit.si/dorset-lug

Chrome or Chromium are probably better than Firefox for using Jitsi.  An
alternative to installing one of those two is to obtain it bundled especially
for Jitsi from:

https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

This should be as simple as

 wget -q https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases/download/
v2.4.2/jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage
 chmod +x jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage
 ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage

and then entering ‘dorset-lug’ as the meeting ID.

Hope to see you all this evening.




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Re: [Dorset] Assistance debugging Python on Raspberry Pi.

[PeterMerchant]

On 29/01/2021 10:36, PeterMerchant wrote:

And I forgot to say, Thanks to Keith and Ralph for the help.



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Re: [Dorset] Assistance debugging Python on Raspberry Pi.

[PeterMerchant]

I'm Getting somewhere.

I changed the Logging.basic config to have a filename of 
/home/pi/mqtt/debug_log.txt  and took out the asctime and levelname formatting 
bits.   I added  the Logging. debug  lines in a couple of the functions. It 
worked in that the file is in that location, and one of the debug messages has 
printed. Have to look at the others now.
Anyway, progress!

Still have to figure out how to add the ultrasonic functions and get them to 
work. I will probably add a do-nothing function to the program for testing 
first.
P.

On 29/01/2021 10:36, PeterMerchant wrote:

You should find that file given your first debug() call as those lines

work for me here.

 $ cat >peter.py
 import logging
 logging.basicConfig(filename='debug_log.txt', level=logging.DEBUG, 
format='%(asctime)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
 logging.debug('This is a log message.')
 $
 $ python peter.py
 $ cat debug_log.txt
 2021-01-29 09:42:35,195 - DEBUG - This is a log message.


I added those three lines to my file after the import time line,

and now it does not work, and I cannot find the logfile.


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Re: [Dorset] Assistance debugging Python on Raspberry Pi.

[PeterMerchant]

You should find that file given your first debug() call as those lines

work for me here.

 $ cat >peter.py
 import logging
 logging.basicConfig(filename='debug_log.txt', level=logging.DEBUG, 
format='%(asctime)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
 logging.debug('This is a log message.')
 $
 $ python peter.py
 $ cat debug_log.txt
 2021-01-29 09:42:35,195 - DEBUG - This is a log message.
 


I added those three lines to my file after the import time line,

and now it does not work, and I cannot find the logfile. I have connected the 
pi to the internet to do an update.  i'll look around and see if I have to load 
logger on to the pi separately.

Interesting statement on update:

"release file for 'update' is not valid yet(invalid for another 6d 23h  xmin 
30sec)   Not seen that before.


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Re: [Dorset] Assistance debugging Python on Raspberry Pi.

[PeterMerchant]

On 29/01/2021 09:22, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Peter,


BUT anytime I add anything to the program the subscriber stops firing
the LEDs.

‘Anything’ is very vague.  Can you attach the output of

 diff -u working.py broken.py

where you've done some simple change which breaks it, e.g...


I can't do that because every time it fails I back it out to the working code. 
Attached is the Python with the Logger code inserted.  It also contains the 
Ultrasonic detection and action [Distance() and us_act()].  Perhaps I don't 
know where to find the debug_log.txt.


#!python3
# 2020-09-14  This is a change to  RC car-7 from using Flask and HTML to using 
Mosquitto
# 2020-11-06  Edited to remove all the calculations leading up to the PWM 
percentage
# 2121-01-08  Adding Ultrasonic detection to forward motion, then halt, 
reverse, turn left,halt and back to forward
# 2121-01-16  Adding debug statements


# *** SET UP MQTT   ***

# from https://techtutorialsx.com/2017/04/23/python-subscribing-to-mqtt-topic/
import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt
import time
import logging
logging.basicConfig(filename='debug_log.txt', level=logging.DEBUG, 
format='%(asctime)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
logging.debug('This is a log message.')

Connected = False #global variable for the state of the connection

broker_address= "192.168.4.1"
port = 1883
user = "rc-car-11"
password = "carr0t"

# Create client   --?? Is this the same as User?
client = mqtt.Client(client_id="rc-car-11")

# Connect to broker
client.connect(broker_address,1883,60)

# Subscriber to topic
client.subscribe("rc-car-pwm")

# *** SET UP R-Pi GPIO    ***

# This gives us control of the Raspberry Pi's pins.
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

# Tell it which pin number we'll  be using to refer to the GPIO pins.
# We will use the physical pin ordering. Set initial state of pins
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)
GPIO.setwarnings(False)

MotorFwd = 18
MotorBack = 12
MotorLeft = 19
MotorRight = 23

GPIO.setup(MotorFwd, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(MotorBack, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(MotorLeft, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(MotorRight, GPIO.OUT)

# PWM pin = Motor Forward
u_d_pin_no = 18
GPIO.setup(u_d_pin_no, GPIO.OUT)

# Ultrasonic setup
GPIO_TRIGGER = 13
GPIO_ECHO = 15

GPIO.setup(GPIO_TRIGGER, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(GPIO_ECHO, GPIO.IN)


frequency_hertz = 50
pwm = GPIO.PWM(u_d_pin_no, frequency_hertz)

PWM_Stop = 0
PWM_value = 0
PWM_increment = 15
# becomes 15 after calculations  [old comment]
# set to 15, removed calculations
# can remove  duty_cycle_percentage as it is same as PWM_Value

# reverse control   Nov 11 2020
# from 
https://www.electronicwings.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-pwm-generation-using-python-and-c
Backpin = 12
GPIO.setup(Backpin,GPIO.OUT)   # can remove this as it is MotorBack above
back_pwm = GPIO.PWM(Backpin,1000)

# ***    SET UP Functions   ***

def on():    # STOP!
    global PWM_value
    PWM_value = 0
    pwm.start(PWM_value)
    GPIO.output(MotorBack, GPIO.LOW)
    back_pwm.start(0)    # added to stop pwm reverse
    logger.debug('STOP')

def up_15():
    global PWM_value
    PWM_value = PWM_value + PWM_increment
    pwm.start(PWM_value)
    logger.debug('Forward 15, now Distance test')
    if distance() < 40:
    us_act()


def down_15():
    global PWM_value
    logger.debug('Slow Down')
    if  PWM_value > 0 :
    PWM_value = PWM_value - PWM_increment
    pwm.start(PWM_value)
    else :
    PWM_value  = 0


def motorleft():
    GPIO.output(MotorLeft,GPIO.HIGH)
    GPIO.output(MotorRight, GPIO.LOW)
    logger.debug('Turn Left')
    time.sleep(1)
    GPIO.output(MotorLeft, GPIO.LOW)


def motorright():
    GPIO.output(MotorLeft, GPIO.LOW)
    GPIO.output(MotorRight, GPIO.HIGH)
    logger.debug('Turn Right')
    time.sleep(1)
    GPIO.output(MotorRight, GPIO.LOW)
    return ()


def mbackwards():
# stop forward motion
    global PWM_value
    PWM_value = 0
    pwm.start(PWM_value)
# wait a short time
    time.sleep(0.3)
# now go backwards
#    GPIO.output(MotorBack, GPIO.HIGH)
    back_pwm.start(30)  #30% duty cycle
    return ()

def on_message(client, userdata, message):
   logger.debug('Wait for button')
   if message.payload  == b'forward':
  up_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'slow':
  down_15()
   elif message.payload  == b'stop':
  on()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorleft':
  motorleft()
   elif message.payload  == b'motorright':
  motorright()
   elif message.payload  == b'backwards':
  mbackwards()
   else:
  print(message.payload)

def distance():
    logger.debug('Start distance sampling')

    # set Trigger to HIGH
    GPIO.output(GPIO_TRIGGER, True)

    # set Trigger after 0.01ms to LOW
    time.sleep(0.1)
    GPIO.output(GPIO_TRIGGER, False)

    StartTime = time.time()
    StopTime = time.time()

    # save StartTime
    while GPIO.input(GPIO_ECHO) == 0:
    StartTime = time.time()

    # save time of arrival
    while GPIO.input(GPIO_ECHO) == 1:
    StopTime = time.time()

  

[Dorset] Assistance debugging Python on Raspberry Pi.

[PeterMerchant]

I have a program on my Raspberry Pi  (subscriber) that gets MQTT messages from 
a broker (Mosquitto) also on the Pi, and lights LEDS depending on the content 
of the messages.  My final intention is to add my ultrasonic detector to this 
program. Note that these LEDs are the test rig for my RC car, so eventually I 
would want the U/S to detect possible collisions.

The R-Pi was headless, but now has a screen attached.

BUT anytime I add anything to the program the subscriber stops firing the LEDs. 
I can't tell if it is still working. I tried to print  to stdout in each 
function, but nothing happened. I tried in one function to write to a logfile, 
and that function's LED didn't fire. Good point there is that other functions 
still worked. I had added the functions to detect the U/S but ended up 
commenting them out as it seemed to stop the system. Even having a function in 
the program that did nothing seemed to stop operation. Can one have an 'orphan' 
function in a Python program?  The R-Pi LOGGER function also stops it.

Appreciate any thoughts and suggestions.  This morning my thought was to 
rewrite the whole subscriber program into a lot fewer function calls, which I 
don't fancy doing.

Peter M.




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Re: [Dorset] Problem with 'full' Root partition

[PeterMerchant]

Perhaps try Bleachbit?
P.
On 27/01/2021 14:37, C Wills wrote:

Sorry the original copy was sent from another email address which is not 
authorised by DLUG system.  Sending from the correct address, hope you don't 
get it twice!!
Clive

Hi All

Yesterday my wife started her PC and got a warning notice saying there was on 
1GiB on space left on the 'root' partition.
Checking today the following was reported:-

sda1  Ext4 / size - 24.5GiB,  Used - 22.7GiB (93%)  Free - 1.71GiB (7%).

There is plenty of space for the /Home  partition but no space on sda1 and I 
can't extend it.
I checked with the disk analyser tool and it showed that the 'var' file has 
used most of the space; it's full of Flatpack folders. All the other folders 
look OK.
I remember seeing a tool that can 'clean' folder/discs but can't find it now.  
Thought it may be the temp folder fill up the space but that looks OK.
Can't work out what has happened to fill the 'root' folder, no extra software 
installed and last time I looked it was only about 50% full.

If I don't do something soon then the PC will lock up And she will do her 'nut' 
(doesn't like computers  that go wrong!)


What's happening please and can I recover the space.  All above by using a GUI 
desktop, Mint 19.2 Cinnamon.




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Re: [Dorset] Old Books - Junk?

[PeterMerchant]

On 23/01/2021 18:25, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

On 06/01/2021 10:21, PeterMerchant wrote:

If anybody wants them, I will keep them aside, otherwise it's
recycling bin or charity shop.

Computer Security - Gollman  second Edition 2006 (3rd edition came out
in 2011)

Local Area Network Management, Design and Security - Mikalsen 2002

Principles of Network and System Administration - Burgess 2000 (2nd
Edition came out in 2004)

What should I do with them?

[ don't say put them back on my shelves for another 10 years!]

Peter M.



Okay, I've finally had a look, hopefully I didn't take too long.

Computer Security - Gollman looks interesting to me, would you want
anything for it?


Of course not. Email me your address off-line and one day soon I'll make it my 
destination for a cycle ride.



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Re: [Dorset] Using Flask to render a set of Buttons.

[PeterMerchant]

On 21/01/2021 13:54, Terry Coles wrote:

On Thursday, 21 January 2021 13:52:27 GMT PeterMerchant wrote:

Sending you separately an article form LXformat that shows how to do this.
I did this for my remote control car, with the R-Pi configured as an access
point and Flask Web server, and the HTML Calling Python to set GPIO pins to
drive the motors.

Peter,

Which issue was that?  I sunscribe to LXf


Issue 229. A couple of Years ago.

P.




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Re: [Dorset] Using Flask to render a set of Buttons.

[PeterMerchant]

On 21/01/2021 12:39, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

I'm building a Web page to allow users to monitor key status information on
one of the Pis at WMT.  I also want to create a page where users can press a
button to carry out certain tasks, such as Start or Stop some music playing or
select a new Playlist. The Player is written in Python. Altogether, there are
around 10 or more control functions that I want to invoke.

I have the monitoring page working reasonably well using a suitable html
template and a Flask route which populates the status values on the rendered
page. However, the control side is making me think a bit. I've found quite a
lot of tutorials and text book examples that use forms and a 'Submit' button,
but so far nothing quite like what I want.

What I need is for the user to be presented with set of buttons that, when
pressed, cause a bit of Python code to be executed that communicates with the
Player program.  On receipt of the message, the Player program will trigger a
set of functions to carry out the requested action.  The communication side is
sorted; all I need is an example or a link to a suitable tutorial that
illustrates the Flask code that I need to make it happen and if necessary, the
associated template.


Here is a bit of a demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsj-cnHkr_k

Peter






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Re: [Dorset] Using Flask to render a set of Buttons.

[PeterMerchant]

On 21/01/2021 12:39, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

I'm building a Web page to allow users to monitor key status information on
one of the Pis at WMT.  I also want to create a page where users can press a
button to carry out certain tasks, such as Start or Stop some music playing or
select a new Playlist. The Player is written in Python. Altogether, there are
around 10 or more control functions that I want to invoke.

I have the monitoring page working reasonably well using a suitable html
template and a Flask route which populates the status values on the rendered
page. However, the control side is making me think a bit. I've found quite a
lot of tutorials and text book examples that use forms and a 'Submit' button,
but so far nothing quite like what I want.

What I need is for the user to be presented with set of buttons that, when
pressed, cause a bit of Python code to be executed that communicates with the
Player program.  On receipt of the message, the Player program will trigger a
set of functions to carry out the requested action.  The communication side is
sorted; all I need is an example or a link to a suitable tutorial that
illustrates the Flask code that I need to make it happen and if necessary, the
associated template.

Here is a bit of pseudo code to illustrate what I'm trying to do:

@app.route('/control')
def control():
 Add a Button called "Stop the Music"
 ON click run:
socket.write("Stop the Music")

Add another button...

etc.


Can anyone help?


Sending you separately an article form LXformat that shows how to do this.  I 
did this for my remote control car, with the R-Pi configured as an access point 
and Flask Web server, and the HTML Calling Python to set GPIO pins to drive the 
motors.

Peter M.


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Re: [Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico

[PeterMerchant]

Do you not compile the C code before uploading it to an Arduino or similar?
I've never used an Arduino but have always assumed that the compiler was in
the IDE not the device.


been using a Wemos D1 which has some of these features plus Wifi, and
programmed in c.

That's an interesting device too, albeit a lot less capable than this latest
offering.

The microPython is the attractive thing.  When i was evaluating the options at
WMT in 2016, I plumped for the RPi Zero because it was half the price of the
cheapest Arduino, but more importantly it supported Python.


Yes, The Arduino IDE has a 'verify' Button that compiles the code and reports 
errors, and also the 'upload' button that compiles and then uploads the 
firmware to the device.  I am using the Wemos like a remote control unit with 6 
buttons as inputs, and I2C display, and MQTT over Wifi to my Raspberry Pi.  And 
powered by a USB powerbank, as I never wired up the 4 battery AA pack.

When I first got the Wemos I tried to load the MicroPython on to is 
unsuccessfully a few times, so It was interesting after I got given the Arduino 
Unos  to discover that I could program the Wemos using the IDE.

I concur that you did the right thing back then choosing the Raspberry Pi for 
all the work at the WMT.

About the USB connections, I thought that the specified length for USB 
connections was 5 Metres? Are you going further than that at WMT?

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Raspberry Pi Pico

[PeterMerchant]

On 21/01/2021 07:51, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Terry,


https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-silicon-pico-now-on-sale/

New RP2040 SoC which they designed.

- Dual-core 133MHz Arm Cortex-M0+.
- 264 KiB on-chip RAM.
- Support for up to 16MB of off-chip Flash memory on dedicated QSPI bus.
- Interpolator and integer divider peripherals.
- DMA controller.
- 30 × GPIO, four of which can be used as analogue inputs.
-  2 × UARTs.
-  2 × SPI controllers.
-  2 × I2C controllers.
- 16 × PWM channels.
-  1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support.
-  8 × Raspberry Pi Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines.
- USB mass-storage boot mode with UF2 support, for drag-and-drop
   programming.


I notice that it doesn't have WiFi, and I wonder if it could be programmed from 
the Arduino IDE as 'c' is mentioned. Perhaps that will come. I have been using 
a Wemos D1 which has some of these features plus Wifi, and programmed in c.

Peter


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[Dorset] Am I allowed a moan?

[PeterMerchant]

I have been trying to work with a group 'Wimborne laptops for schools' for 
children at home who do not have computers to work with. A friend gave me her 
old computer to donate and I had my own old one. I was told that the sufficient 
requirement was for a browser.   So I installed Xubuntu Linux on these, and 
updated them to the latest Firefox. These are 32 bit machines  circa 2005.

So I fixed them up with webcams [Aside: Cheese isn't the best tool for 
evaluating webcams, use vlc] and donated them. They were set up identically  
for username and auto-login.

Meanwhile I phoned Q.E School and they said that they only wanted machines post 
2016 that they could log into and put their own software and updates on.   St. 
Michaels Middle School gace examples of programs that they wanted to run over 
the browser and they were ok.

Then I get this message back from the group: Hi Peter Just in case you get any 
more laptops schools are unable to use the Xubuntu Operating system. it has to 
be windows 10 pro just so you don't waste your time .

Which is a bit stupid as quite a few kids are using parents mobile phones and 
ipads - Not W10!

So they want to scrap my laptops and use them for spares - Sure!!!

Rant over. If I get them back I will take them to a local school myself.

PeterM


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Re: [Dorset] Old Books - Junk?

[PeterMerchant]

I told my neighbour about this the other day when he mentioned he was cleaning 
out his loft and they collected all his old books, plus a few other bits, this 
morning. He didn't come by and get my books though.
Peter

On 06/01/2021 16:19, PeterMerchant wrote:

I remembered books2africa and looked them up. They will come and collect them 
up to 20Kg, but want me to pay £7 postage.

Peter




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Re: [Dorset] Recommendations for webcam?

[PeterMerchant]

On 08/01/2021 20:04, PeterMerchant wrote:

On 08/01/2021 15:27, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

Hi,

So as I mentioned I'm going to be buying a webcam as my existing
solution isn't working.

I imagine some of you probably use dedicated USB webcams, so perhaps you
could tell me which ones you're using?

I'll do research anyway, but it seems webcams are one of those things
where Linux support is still poor, so any recommendations are welcome :)

Hamish



I have a cheep Omnivision Webcam that used to work years ago with Linux, but no 
longer does. It does work with the R-Pi though.

44566.096851] usb 3-6: Product: USB Camera
[44566.096854] usb 3-6: Manufacturer: OmniVision Technologies, Inc.
[44566.222072] gspca_main: v2.14.0 registered
[44566.250399] gspca_main: ov519-2.14.0 probing 05a9:8519

And the other cheap one given to me by my son in law does work. Neither have a 
brand name on them

Product: USB2.0 Camera
[44825.513706] usb 3-4: Manufacturer: AVEO Technology Corp.
[44825.517869] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device USB2.0 Camera (1871:0d01)
[44825.580819] input: USB2.0 Camera: USB2.0 Camera as /devices/pci:00

I did have a Trust one for awhile, but for some reason I took it apart and 
never got it working again.

Peter M.



Correction: The Omnivision webcam does work, just not with Cheese on this 
computer. I tested it with cheese (didn't work) and with Camorama on my old 32 
bit laptop running xubuntu and it worked, so I tested it with vlc on this 
computer and it works.  And it works in jitsi.

The moral: choose your test software well. Cheese has known faults of this 
sort. Camorama not recognized in Discover on Kubuntu.

Peter




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Re: [Dorset] Recommendations for webcam?

[PeterMerchant]

On 08/01/2021 15:27, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

Hi,

So as I mentioned I'm going to be buying a webcam as my existing
solution isn't working.

I imagine some of you probably use dedicated USB webcams, so perhaps you
could tell me which ones you're using?

I'll do research anyway, but it seems webcams are one of those things
where Linux support is still poor, so any recommendations are welcome :)

Hamish



I have a cheep Omnivision Webcam that used to work years ago with Linux, but no 
longer does. It does work with the R-Pi though.

44566.096851] usb 3-6: Product: USB Camera
[44566.096854] usb 3-6: Manufacturer: OmniVision Technologies, Inc.
[44566.222072] gspca_main: v2.14.0 registered
[44566.250399] gspca_main: ov519-2.14.0 probing 05a9:8519

And the other cheap one given to me by my son in law does work. Neither have a 
brand name on them

Product: USB2.0 Camera
[44825.513706] usb 3-4: Manufacturer: AVEO Technology Corp.
[44825.517869] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device USB2.0 Camera (1871:0d01)
[44825.580819] input: USB2.0 Camera: USB2.0 Camera as /devices/pci:00

I did have a Trust one for awhile, but for some reason I took it apart and 
never got it working again.

Peter M.


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Re: [Dorset] Old Books - Junk?

[PeterMerchant]

I remembered books2africa and looked them up. They will come and collect them 
up to 20Kg, but want me to pay £7 postage.

Peter
On 06/01/2021 15:36, Bob Dunlop wrote:
  
Amatuer.

Those are only the ones that I thought I'd part with. I'm keeping the RCA 
Optoelectonics one from 1968, and a couple of similar ilk.


I've got technical books from 1978 on my shelf, acquired new for use not
something I've picked up later for historic interest.  Referred to a
couple of the Z80 programming ones just last year.  Also have two early
editions of K, had to buy a second when I misplaced the first.

As for getting rid of some of them.  I've had no luck with charity shops
or computing clubs etc.  My "The Art of Computer Programming" went in the
bin, yet I see the 2011 box set now retails for over a hundred, I should
have held on to them.

Anybody want a set of X-Windows programming manuals ? Eight volumes 1-7
(6 was in two parts) plus several suppliments.


Hah just spotted "Best of Byte Vol 1" (1977) I'm keeping that one.


On Wed, Jan 06 at 10:21, PeterMerchant wrote:

If anybody wants them, I will keep them aside, otherwise it's recycling bin or 
charity shop.

...




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[Dorset] Old Books - Junk?

[PeterMerchant]

If anybody wants them, I will keep them aside, otherwise it's recycling bin or 
charity shop.

Computer Security - Gollman  second Edition 2006 (3rd edition came out in 2011)

Local Area Network Management, Design and Security - Mikalsen 2002

Principles of Network and System Administration - Burgess 2000 (2nd Edition 
came out in 2004)

What should I do with them?

[ don't say put them back on my shelves for another 10 years!]

Peter M.


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Re: [Dorset] Migrating from VirtualBox to KVM/QEMU with virt-manager

[PeterMerchant]

On 17/12/2020 16:34, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:

Hi all,

I've had enough of VirtualBox's glitchiness, so I'm going to move as
many of my VMs to KVM/QEMU with virt-manager as possible. This should
also be more performant, or so I hear.

I've done this before with Linux VMs and it's fairly easy, but I was
wondering if anyone has heard of a way to move an activated Windows
install without deactivating it? Mine is an OEM copy, so I'll have to
pay for it again if it deactivates.

I could of course just leave that one alone, but it'd be good to get
them all working in KVM. I sadly have to keep VirtualBox around for a
few things, but might as well minimise those.

Hamish



Admin, the next meeting date in the footer needs correcting.

PM.

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Re: [Dorset] Audio sound from PC

[PeterMerchant]

A few months ago, when trying to get things working for a DLUG meeting with 
jitsi, I noticed a similar problem. The problem than was that I had something 
plugged into my rear sockets, and this disabled the front one.  Did you have 
something (Headphones?)  plugged into the front socket and disabling the rear 
one?

Peter

On 10/12/2020 17:45, C Wills wrote:

At the last meeting I asked about a problem getting sound from the PC to the 
Screen (it has internal speakers).  Some time ago I managed to turn off the 
sound, but can't remember how!
Several suggestions were made; tonight I've got the sound back on!  Only by 
connecting the screen to the front speaker socket. However it was always 
connect to the rear before.

Not found anything in the BIOS settings or in the 'sound menu' and am at a loss 
as to where else to look.
Running Mint 19.3 with cinnamon GUI.

Any idea's as to what I've done by switching 'off' the rear socket connection 
please?  I use the front sockets for JitSi (DLUG) and Zoom (Church) meetings.




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[Dorset] Arduino/ESP8266/Wemos programming problem

[PeterMerchant]

Hi, is there anyone here who is familiar with these devices, especially the 
Wemos D1. I am not skilled enough at programming to know what I have done wrong 
with my program, but it crashes and reboots. The language is not one that I am 
familiar with, and so much seems to be hidden in the OS.  If anyone could have 
a look at my program I would appreciate it.

(not attached, I'll send it to you).

I know that this is an off-chance, and off-topic for DLUG, but I thought I 
would give it a try.


Peter M.


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Re: [Dorset] funny in python software

[PeterMerchant]

Forget this.  The 'good' file was named subscriber.py.2 and therefore kate did 
not pick it up as a python file. A lot of other things were not coloured as 
well.

But I still have a problem in syslog about why it failed on that line and it 
never used to.

Peter

On 12/11/2020 14:37, PeterMerchant wrote:

I have a program for my MQTT stuff, and my subscriber file that receives 
instructions from the publisher failed  after I had made some modifications to 
it.

When I look at the file in kate, there is a difference that I cannot explain.

In these following lines, the word 'connect' is in blue in the failing version, 
but not highlighted in the good version. Here are the first few lines:

# 2020-09-14  This is a change to  RC car-7 from using Flask and HTML to using 
Mosquitto
# 2020-11-06  Edited to remove all the calculations leading up to the PWM 
percentage
#!python3

# *** SET UP MQTT   ***

# from https://techtutorialsx.com/2017/04/23/python-subscribing-to-mqtt-topic/
import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt
import time

Connected = False #global variable for the state of the connection

broker_address= "192.168.4.1"
port = 1883
user = "rc-car-11"
password = "N0YB"

# Create client   --?? Is this the same as User?
client = mqtt.Client(client_id="rc-car-11")

# Connect to broker
client.connect(broker_address,1883,60) # bad connect word.

# Subscriber to topic
client.subscribe("rc-car-pwm")

I even copied the line out of the good file and pasted into the faulty one, but 
'connect' turned blue.

Any thoughts?

peter M.






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[Dorset] funny in python software

[PeterMerchant]

I have a program for my MQTT stuff, and my subscriber file that receives 
instructions from the publisher failed  after I had made some modifications to 
it.

When I look at the file in kate, there is a difference that I cannot explain.

In these following lines, the word 'connect' is in blue in the failing version, 
but not highlighted in the good version. Here are the first few lines:

# 2020-09-14  This is a change to  RC car-7 from using Flask and HTML to using 
Mosquitto
# 2020-11-06  Edited to remove all the calculations leading up to the PWM 
percentage
#!python3

# *** SET UP MQTT   ***

# from https://techtutorialsx.com/2017/04/23/python-subscribing-to-mqtt-topic/
import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt
import time

Connected = False #global variable for the state of the connection

broker_address= "192.168.4.1"
port = 1883
user = "rc-car-11"
password = "N0YB"

# Create client   --?? Is this the same as User?
client = mqtt.Client(client_id="rc-car-11")

# Connect to broker
client.connect(broker_address,1883,60) # bad connect word.

# Subscriber to topic
client.subscribe("rc-car-pwm")

I even copied the line out of the good file and pasted into the faulty one, but 
'connect' turned blue.

Any thoughts?

peter M.



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[Dorset] Talktalk Sagem router

[PeterMerchant]

For the past few days I have been having trouble with my home network 
connectivity. I have been able to get out to the Internet, but my wireless 
connected PC hasn't been bale to print to my printer at the other end of a 
powerline adapter, and some devices I could browse in to but not ping. My Solar 
controller had failure to send data for 24 hours reported this morning, and 
wouldn't respond to a ping, but from the wired computer I could browse in to it 
[I can't remember if I could from the wireless computer] I reset all the 
powerline adapters with no improvement, but mid-afternoon I replaced the 
Talktalk 'super[!]' Sagem router with an old one and everything worked fine.  I 
was wondering if TT had updated  the firmware  with a broken update or 
something. Pleased that I have got it working, but I was wondering if the 
powerline adapters had gone unidirectional  for quite  a while.

I was wondering if any Talktalk users  have also experienced this?

Peter M.


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Re: [Dorset] lsblk command funny output

[PeterMerchant]

On 03/11/2020 22:32, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Peter,


NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0    7:0    0 141.7M  1 loop /snap/arduino/41

...

What are all these Loop things? should they be there? How do I get rid
of them, if it would make the PC better?

They're being used as part of running programs installed as snaps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(package_manager)
You can ignore them.  Each one is a file being made to look like a block
device.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_device


Thanks Ralph.  I continue to learn.

Peter


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[Dorset] lsblk command funny output

[PeterMerchant]

I was watching a yourtube video about copying SD cards and tried teh lsblk 
command that was used in the video.

It gave me the following output:

peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0    7:0    0 141.7M  1 loop /snap/arduino/41
loop1    7:1    0  55.3M  1 loop /snap/core18/1885
loop2    7:2    0  55.4M  1 loop /snap/core18/1932
loop3    7:3    0 161.4M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/128
loop4    7:4    0 162.9M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/145
loop5    7:5    0  62.1M  1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/1506
loop6    7:6    0    31M  1 loop /snap/snapd/9607
loop7    7:7    0    31M  1 loop /snap/snapd/9721
sda  8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0  74.5G  0 part /
├─sda2   8:2    0 1K  0 part
├─sda5   8:5    0   5.6G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda6   8:6    0 385.7G  0 part /home
sr0 11:0    1  1024M  0 rom
sr1 11:1    1  1024M  0 rom
peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$

What are all these Loop things? should they be there? How do I get rid of them, 
if it would make the PC better?

Thanks for any help,

Peter,

Sorry I missed the call tonight. we had a family difficulty.

P.


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[Dorset] ROS2

[PeterMerchant]

Anybody have any experience with ROS2 Robot Operating System? I just came 
across it.

https://index.ros.org/doc/ros2/

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] KDE - How to Disable Plasma Widgets

[PeterMerchant]

On 23/10/2020 09:43, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

Recently I posted to the Ubuntu Forums regarding a Plasma Widget (Notes) that
randomly drops Post-its on my desktop:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2452181

After four days, there has been no reply (there has been only one View and I
suspect that's me).

I'm sure in earlier iterations of KDE, Widgets could be disabled, but now it
seems that all I can do is to uninstall the package that contains that Widget
(and about a dozen others that I do use).

Has anyone any insights?


I keep seeing this [Notes appearing]  on our main computer after my wife has 
been using it, usually with some writing in it of hers. I must admit that I 
have not seen it since the last update. I don't know how she gets it.

Some time ago I transferred everything that I had in Notes into Google Keep so 
that I can see it on any of my devices.

Sorry, no insights on disabling widgets.

Peter



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[Dorset] MQTT

[PeterMerchant]

Some of you know that over the past few years I have been playing with old RC 
cars stripping out the RC receivers and replacing them with Raspberry Pi 
computers and using Python,HTML, and Flask to drive the cars.

Recently I came across MQTT and have now changed the software on the Pi to use 
this protocol. It wasn't easy, but it sort of works. There is a lot of help 
available on the Internet, but it is not always easy to understand.

As always this stuff is ongoing playtime for me.

Cheers, all.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Slow computer

[PeterMerchant]

On 22/08/2020 12:13, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Peter,


Processor : Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G3420 @ 3.20GHz
Memory: 8037MB (4978MB used)

As you say, only two, non-HyperThreaded, cores, but plenty of RAM space.




Are your main filesystems on a rusty hard drive rather than an SSD?
I'm guessing there are multiple concurrent programs fighting over the
I/O they require and causing the hard drive to spend its time seeking
back and forth, with a little reading and writing in between.



Thanks Ralph, Yes, I am working on Spinning rust, and I had a panic yesterday 
when it wouldn't even boot, But I swapped out the hard disk for another to 
prove that the  system was still OK, then replugged the memory and HD 
connections and it all seems OK, even a bit faster.

I also using Discover removed a couple of programs such as Bluetooth  and 
Braille  and stopped pppd-dns.service and something else modem related.

I will implement your suggestions as well. Much appreciated.

On another topic, SWMBO  has been complaining about poor Wifi where she rests 
in the kitchen, so today I bought a TP-Link range extender, and she is happy 
with the result. BUT that thing was a B*r to set up and kept disconnecting 
and didn't  follow the instructions that came with it or were available 
on-line.  It's an RE305 and I wouldn't recommend them  for that reason.

Cheers,

Peter



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Re: [Dorset] Slow computer

[PeterMerchant]

On 20/08/2020 09:36, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Peter,


$ systemd-analyze blame

Please provide the output of

 systemd-analyze time
 systemd-analyze critical-chain


peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$ systemd-analyze time

Startup finished in 3.412s (kernel) + 54.628s (userspace) = 58.041s
graphical.target reached after 54.613s in userspace

peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$  systemd-analyze critical-chain

The time when unit became active or started is printed after the "@" character.
The time the unit took to start is printed after the "+" character.

graphical.target @54.613s
└─multi-user.target @54.613s
  └─mpd.service @32.239s +22.372s
    └─network.target @32.109s
  └─NetworkManager.service @21.848s +10.260s
    └─dbus.service @21.845s
  └─basic.target @21.751s
    └─sockets.target @21.751s
  └─snapd.socket @21.750s +1ms
    └─sysinit.target @21.523s
  └─cryptsetup.target @21.516s
    └─systemd-ask-password-wall.path @3.329s
  └─-.mount @3.314s
    └─system.slice @3.314s
  └─-.slice @3.314s
peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$



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[Dorset] Slow computer

[PeterMerchant]

I notice that my computer takes nearly two minutes to boot in the morning and 
the first load of any program also takes a long time. I am running Kubuntu 
20.04 on a dual core  homebuilt computer.

Hardinfo gives:

Processor        : Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G3420 @ 3.20GHz
Memory        : 8037MB (4978MB used)
Machine Type        : Desktop
Operating System        : Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
User Name        : peterm (Peter Merchant)
Date/Time        : Wed 25 Mar 2020 10:02:24 GMT
-Display-
Resolution        : 1680x1050 pixels

I came across an article in Feb 2019 Linux Format about bootchart  and the 
discussion there is about using systemd-analyze blame which shows how many 
units are running and how long they take to start. BUT, which ones can I 
remove?   Being just a user and not a guru, I don't know what many of these do 
or if they can be removed safely. Thanks for any advice.

Peter.

Here is a few - not all:

peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$ systemd-analyze blame
3min 12.427s apt-daily.service
 43.818s man-db.service
 29.566s udisks2.service
 28.056s mpd.service
 23.120s networkd-dispatcher.service
 20.561s fwupd-refresh.service
 17.882s snapd.service
 15.714s accounts-daemon.service
 15.139s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
 15.120s systemd-journal-flush.service
 14.216s dev-sda1.device
 13.608s plymouth-start.service
 12.222s ModemManager.service
 11.719s polkit.service
 11.453s NetworkManager.service
 11.434s avahi-daemon.service
 10.846s thermald.service
 10.845s wpa_supplicant.service
 10.763s systemd-logind.service
  6.828s logrotate.service
  5.145s colord.service
  5.048s gpu-manager.service
  3.902s rsyslog.service
  2.730s apport.service
  2.639s grub-common.service
  2.510s systemd-udevd.service
  2.402s grub-initrd-fallback.service
  2.209s e2scrub_reap.service
  2.105s apt-daily-upgrade.service
  2.078s user@1000.service
  2.049s upower.service
  1.967s lm-sensors.service
  1.782s 
systemd-fsck@dev-disk-by\x2duuid-9f18c277\x2d0c1d\x2d4314\x2daf14\x2d5343168f4360.service
  1.608s apparmor.service
  1.117s clamav-daemon.service
  1.070s snapd.seeded.service
  1.004s plymouth-read-write.service
   880ms systemd-resolved.service



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Re: [Dorset] Help restoring MicroSD card

[PeterMerchant]

On 18/07/2020 10:13, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Peter,


Gparted  gives me 'Input/output error during read on /dev/sdb'

That's an error from the kernel, returned using errno(3) EIO from a
system call like read(2).

Run ‘dmesg -Hxw’ in a terminal to show the end of the kernel's
ring-buffer log.  Tap Enter a few times to create a marker of where the
end was.

Insert the SD card.  See if any messages appear about its partitions, or
anything else of interest.  Tap a few more Enters.

Try and do your gparted, or whatever, operation on it.  There might be a
kernel message which coincides with the EIO being returned to gparted.


I persevere says that the card is not partitioned or a similar message

If you don't want any data on the card then write to all its blocks,
allowing the card to discard the content of blocks which it has trouble
reading.

Something like

 tr \\000 \\377 /tmp/1mff

 while cat /tmp/1mff; do :; done |
 sudo dd status=progress of=/dev/...

 rm /tmp/1mff


Here's dmesg error messages from earlier this morning:

[ 4047.897691] usb 3-6: New USB device found, idVendor=090c, idProduct=6000
[ 4047.897697] usb 3-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 4047.897701] usb 3-6: Product: USB2.0 Card Reader
[ 4047.897705] usb 3-6: Manufacturer: Generic   ,   .
[ 4047.897709] usb 3-6: SerialNumber: 12345678901234567890
[ 4047.900808] usb-storage 3-6:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 4047.904014] usb-storage 3-6:1.0: Quirks match for vid 090c pid 6000: 10
[ 4047.904038] scsi host6: usb-storage 3-6:1.0
[ 4048.906005] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic   6000 PQ: 0 
ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 4048.907291] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[ 4048.908902] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 15126528 512-byte logical blocks: (7.74 
GB/7.21 GiB)
[ 4048.909167] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 4048.909169] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 4b 00 00 08
[ 4048.909445] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[ 4048.909448] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 4049.188789] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK 
driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[ 4049.188797] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current]
[ 4049.188803] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Add. Sense: Logical block address out of 
range
[ 4049.188810] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 
00
[ 4049.188814] print_req_error: critical target error, dev sdb, sector 0
[ 4049.188824] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read

and the last 6 lines repeat many times.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Help restoring MicroSD card

[PeterMerchant]

On 18/07/2020 09:44, Terry Coles wrote:

On Saturday, 18 July 2020 09:40:55 BST PeterMerchant wrote:

No Joy. USB connection on front of computer. Have tried both USB to SD
adapters and three different MicroSD adapters.

It sounds like it's b*d,


I think we had a discussion on this same topic many moons ago.

Do you still shutdown the Pi by switching off the power?

We had a discussion about that many moons ago :-)


Usually I  sudo shutdown first, but once it was not responding to commands I 
didn't have that option.

Peter


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[Dorset] Help restoring MicroSD card

[PeterMerchant]

Hi, I was doing an upgrade to the OS on my Raspberry Pi and it failed, and now 
I cannot communicate with it. It still gets an IP address, but not the one it 
was configured to have. and ssh doesn't connect.  So I decided to start again, 
and used etcher to reflash it with the latest Raspbian Buster. This failed. It 
is an 8GB card.

Gparted  gives me 'Input/output error during read on /dev/sdb' and if I 
persevere says that the card is not partitioned or a similar message Sorry I 
can't remember exactly or reproduce it.  I have tried mkusb, but I am missing 
something here.

Any advice, or is it a writeoff?

Peter



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[Dorset] New tools

[PeterMerchant]

Google gave me this article as part of the things that I see periodically. It 
is quite interesting about new tools to replace old ones. The whole 
journal/website looks interesting actually.

https://opensource.com/article/20/6/modern-linux-command-line-tools


Peter M.


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Re: [Dorset] Internet Access Using Tethering

[PeterMerchant]

On 20/06/2020 10:53, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

I've got something going on that I don't under stand (this is normal I hear
you saying).

I'm trying to test my Raspberry Pi VPN Server which is currently installed in
my workroom.  It has Internet access on one side via my Home Router and access
to my Pi network on the other.  I have successfully tested this setup from
inside my home network using the IP Address of the server in the Cert
settings, so I know the system basically works.

So now I need to test it from outside my home network and to do this I have
set up my Android phone as a hotspot and connected my Kubuntu laptop to it.
Unfortunately, I can't get the connection to work (I have changed the settings
to point at my Home Router's WAN address instead of the servers IP Address on
the home network.

When I connect to the hotspot I can:
1.  Browse the web.

2. Read back my public IP Address by typing what is my IP Address in Google.

3. Ping 8.8.8.8.

However, I can't ping my Home Router's WAN address.  if I disable the hotspot,
I can ping it successfully from my Android phone.

What am I missing here?  As far as I can see there is nothing in the Router's
config to make it reject ping requests (or connections) from certain sources,
although it perhaps does that by default and I'm chasing the wrong issue.


I don't know who 8.8.8.8 is,

but can you 'ping google.com' or nasa.com?

P.


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Re: [Dorset] Duplicating uSD cards

[PeterMerchant]

On 16/06/2020 07:27, PeterMerchant wrote:

On 15/06/2020 22:46, Andrew wrote:

I've just remembered, for a Raspberry Pi you don't need to duplicate the entire 
contents of the µSD card - you can create a new partition table and filesystems 
(FAT32 for boot, EXT4 for root) on the blank µSD card and copy everything using 
regular file copy commands.
You might need to edit what will become /etc/fstab to update the UUID of the 
new root filesystem. (And any other filesystems it needs to mount.)




It's not quite that simple somehow. To get the two partitions to the right 
size, I just installed an image of Raspbian stretch on the SD card, Then 
connected the 'master' card to the computer. I used Dolphin in split mode   and 
(Being extra careful) I was able to copy the contents of the boot partition 
across ok, but I was not permitted to write to the rootfs partition except in 
the home directory. I tried all sorts of ways of changing the permissions 
without success.

By going into terminal mode I  was able to edit things like dhcpcd.conf so that 
I can fire up the R-Pi and connect to a known IP address. So I am now updating 
and going to go through the rebuild process to get to my desired starting point 
for playing.

Peter



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Re: [Dorset] Duplicating uSD cards

[PeterMerchant]

On 15/06/2020 22:46, Andrew wrote:

I've just remembered, for a Raspberry Pi you don't need to duplicate the entire 
contents of the µSD card - you can create a new partition table and filesystems 
(FAT32 for boot, EXT4 for root) on the blank µSD card and copy everything using 
regular file copy commands.
You might need to edit what will become /etc/fstab to update the UUID of the 
new root filesystem. (And any other filesystems it needs to mount.)

The Raspberry Pi bootloader knows how to read a partition table and FAT32 
filesystem to load the kernel, so there's no magic hidden data on the disk like 
with IBM PC-BIOS type booting.

The same goes for UEFI system bootloaders - they understand partition tables 
and filesystems.


That's cool Andrew, I had wondered about that. If what I am doing doesn't work, 
I'll clear off all the files on the SD card and copy over the files from the 
good one.


Cheers,

Peter M.


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Re: [Dorset] Duplicating uSD cards

[PeterMerchant]

On 15/06/2020 11:36, Terry Coles wrote:

On Wednesday, 10 June 2020 16:06:01 BST Terry Coles wrote:

Nowadays I try to avoid the problem by shrinking the original partition a
bit before I dd it to create the image; you should be able to do it with
GParted. Then, when I copy it to the new card, the image should fit.

I think I was fooling myself when I did this back in the day.  We bought a
supply of Patriot 8 GB Micro SD Cards and I suspect that these had the most
capacity out of the selection that I had from Verbatim, Sandisk, etc.  I was
probably using those...

Anyway, I took an image of a card at the beginning of the month and when I
tried to copy it to a new card, it wouldn't fit ;-(  After various shenanigans
I posted a query on the Raspberry Pi Forums and got several responses see:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?
f=28=277218=1679441#p1679441

Out of the several options offered, I managed to fix the problem using a tool
called image-backup.  It turns out that image-backup is only part of a suite
of utilities called image-utils; see the discussion at the link for more info.

I downloaded this and initially used the included image-shrink utility to
reduce the size of the image that I had saved earlier. The process completed
without error, but it wouldn't mount, so there is clearly something wrong with
the original image. However I was able to successfully write it to a 16 GB
card and it subsequently booted with no problems.

So then, from within the running system, I used image-backup to save a backup
of the running system onto a memory stick plugged into a spare USB connector
on the Pi. This produced a 2.3 GB image instead of a 7.5 GB one and I was able
to successfully write that to an 8 GB SD Card and boot from that too.

(Note: Patience is needed because there is no feedback and it checks the
resultant image before exiting.)

There is an option to not expand the file-system on first boot, but now I know I
can create usable images using this tool, I didn't use that.

A highly recommended tool.


Thanks for that.

I gave up trying to duplicate the cards, and instead ran through my procedure 
for creating a new system, but using the latest Raspberry Pi OS.  There seems 
to be a fault with that or maybe I am just premature in that comment, as I had 
everything working until I tried to add the software to make the Pi a wifi 
access point. As a PS to that the R-Pi documentation for doing that has 
disappeared and been replaced by a different set of instructions with more 
capability.

When you have a standalone Pi configured for a different ESSID and IP addresses 
and the Wifi doesn't work, you are a bit stuffed.

So now I have reverted to the latest Raspbian Buster and am trying again. I 
don't let it keep me awake nights.

Peter



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Re: [Dorset] Duplicating uSD cards

[PeterMerchant]

On 10/06/2020 15:54, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Peter,


So I tried to use etcher and it tells me that the image is too large
for the destination card.

Perhaps they're different sizes.
Use ‘sudo lsblk -b’ to get a list of current block devices and their
size in bytes.  You can ignore the partitions.
Gather the size of both SD cards and compare.
If source > destination then that explains the error.

You can also compare source size in bytes to the size of the image file
you've created, just to see they match.

It might be that you can shrink the source's filesystem(s) and
partition(s) to leave a run of sectors at the end of the device unused.
The used sectors starting from the beginning of the block device may
then fit in the destination.


I see what you mean:

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT   (TDK)

sdb  8:16   1  15720251392  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   1 46005248  0 part
└─sdb2   8:18   1  15669919744  0 part
sr0 11:0    1   1073741312  0 rom
sr1 11:1    1   1073741312  0 rom
peterm@peterm-MBB-34204H:~$ sudo lsblk -b
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT   (Toshiba)

sdb  8:16   1  15552479232  0 disk
├─sdb1   8:17   1 46005248  0 part
└─sdb2   8:18   1  15502147584  0 part
sr0 11:0    1   1073741312  0 rom
sr1 11:1    1   1073741312  0 rom

I am sure that I used the Raspbian operation to expand the filesystem when I 
first used the card.

I just wondered if the bit that is missing was needed, and it must be because 
the card won't boot.!

Peter


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[Dorset] Duplicating uSD cards

[PeterMerchant]

I have been trying to duplicate a 16GB  MicroSD card to another and it hasn't 
worked. The original was a TDK 16GB card, which I copied to my computer with DD.

I then tried to use DD to copy it to the Toshiba card, with an error message 
[now lost].

So I tried to use etcher and it tells me that the image is too large for the 
destination card.

What has happened? Do I need to add some parameters when backing up the disk?

Peter



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Re: [Dorset] Wireguard on RPi

[PeterMerchant]

Oh, found the cause.

 
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/raspbian/applications/rpi-update.md

 rpi-update is a command line application that will update your
 Raspberry Pi OS kernel and VideoCore firmware to the latest
 pre-release versions.

 WARNING: Pre-release versions of software are not guaranteed to
 work.  You should not use rpi-update on any system unless
 recommended to do so by a Raspberry Pi engineer.  It may leave your
 system unreliable or even completely broken.  It should not be used
 as part of any regular update process.


Side question:

I think that I have only used this once, with no adverse effects. I usually use 
'sudo apt-get update'.

Is this different?

Peter


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[Dorset] Help with foreign versions of letters

[PeterMerchant via dorset]

Hi can anyone advise how I get foreign (Norwegian) variants of letters in UK 
linux? I need the o with two dots and the o with a line through it.  Of course 
it could be a limitation of my family history program (Gramps)  that it doesn't 
like  Alt 0248.


Cheers Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Clemantine Preventing Logout

[PeterMerchant]

On 23/05/2020 12:02, Terry Coles wrote:

On Saturday, 23 May 2020 11:55:49 BST zir...@xendistar.co.uk wrote:

Fair enough, I used to like Amarok as well when I used KDE. A few months
ago I installed KDE and Amarok was one of the first things I went
looking at, not impressed. I think KDE lasted just over a day before I
decided it was not for me.

Amarok was removed from the Kubuntu Repositories some time ago - lack of
development I expect.

The default player that was installed at the time was Clementine so I
switched.  Apparently the the default player is now Elise, which I also tried.
Definitely not impressed; even less features than Clementine and I couldn't get
the Playlist to populate by selecting the Files item.


I must be way behind the times. I never noticed that Amarok was gone when I 
went to 18.04 Kubuntu, and now just because I can I have Rhapsody in Blue 
playing via Kaffeine.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Clemantine Preventing Logout

[PeterMerchant]

On 20/05/2020 11:10, Terry Coles wrote:

Hi,

I've posted this as a question on Launchpad but with no useful response so
far.

The problem only started after I upgraded my system to Kubuntu 20.04.  When I
select 'Log Out', 'Shutdown' or 'Restart' from the KDE Menu,


I don't use the menu to log out. I just right click and select 'leave' and I'm 
done.

Peter


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[Dorset] Jitsi Webcams

[PeterMerchant]

One of the problems with my Jitsi session was the Webcam. This webcam has been 
successfully used with WhatsApp web video conferences.  vlc doesn't find it, 
but cheese does (without sound)

I have another old webcam 'ov519' that used to work and still works on a R-Pi, 
and I resurrected that to test. Cheese doesn't find it, but vlc does but 
without audio.

I keep intending to try and see if I can test a zoom link before making a call. 
- No, can test within call, but not before connecting.

Anyone familiar with Ekiga? Is it worth a try to test my webcam?

Peter

Here is dmesg for both devices:

[21568.277223] usb 3-6: new full-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
[21568.426039] usb 3-6: New USB device found, idVendor=05a9, idProduct=8519
[21568.426041] usb 3-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[21568.426042] usb 3-6: Product: USB Camera
[21568.426043] usb 3-6: Manufacturer: OmniVision Technologies, Inc.
[21568.529726] media: Linux media interface: v0.10
[21568.548578] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[21568.578881] gspca_main: v2.14.0 registered
[21568.597003] gspca_main: ov519-2.14.0 probing 05a9:8519
[21568.801628] input: ov519 as 
/devices/pci:00/:00:14.0/usb3/3-6/input/input18
[21568.802611] usbcore: registered new interface driver ov519
[21568.839192] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio
[21660.289600] usb 3-6: USB disconnect, device number 4

[21667.581349] usb 3-6: new high-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[21667.744625] usb 3-6: New USB device found, idVendor=1871, idProduct=0d01
[21667.744627] usb 3-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[21667.744629] usb 3-6: Product: USB2.0 Camera
[21667.744630] usb 3-6: Manufacturer: AVEO Technology Corp.
[21667.810969] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device USB2.0 Camera (1871:0d01)
[21667.871899] uvcvideo 3-6:1.0: Entity type for entity Extension 4 was not 
initialized!
[21667.871901] uvcvideo 3-6:1.0: Entity type for entity Processing 3 was not 
initialized!
[21667.871902] uvcvideo 3-6:1.0: Entity type for entity Camera 1 was not 
initialized!
[21667.872070] input: USB2.0 Camera: USB2.0 Camera as 
/devices/pci:00/:00:14.0/usb3/3-6/3-6:1.0/input/input19
[21667.872302] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[21667.872303] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1)



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Re: [Dorset] General Use of Jitsi - DLUG

[PeterMerchant]

On 12/05/2020 11:21, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi Clive,


Usin the LUG link could help if anyone else is listening in and has a
suggestion, maybe do that if we can't solve a problem.

One further thought... Either of you may share your screen or a window
on it so the other may see it which may help discussion, cutting out the
need for lots of verbal description.


On the basis of what Clive has said, when we get a dull day to try it I will 
also use Firefox.

Peter


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Re: [Dorset] Home PBX Resources.

[PeterMerchant]

A local company that one of my students runs used to implement Asterisk as a 
VOIP PBX in schools. It is a linux solution.

Interesting that I found it here: 
https://www.ubuntupit.com/top-20-best-linux-voip-and-video-chat-software/

Peter

On 07/05/2020 11:00, t...@ls83.eclipse.co.uk wrote:

Hi Ralph


On 06/05/2020 14:39, Ralph Corderoy wrote:

Hi,

Conversation in the virtual meeting late last night turned to
establishing a PBX at home hanging off a single POTS line. Here's some
related resources based on what was said and a bit of searching since.

What are FXO and FXS?  A brief summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_service_(telecommunications)#Use_in_voice-over-IP_systems

More detail: https://www.dceexpress.com/what-are-fxs-and-fxo/

So I think the incoming POTS would connect to an FXO device which, `from
the point of view of a telephone exchange, appears to be a telephone'.
The other side of the FXO would be a digital interface to the computer,
e.g. a PCI Express card.



Yes, my understanding too.


Once it's digital, VoIP phones could be used around the house with each
having a unique extension number.  Android and iOS devices can also run
apps to be a VoIP phone; there might be lots of those already around,
especially older models.

A well-known telephony interface manufacturer is
https://www.sangoma.com/telephony-cards/analog/



One device that keeps coming up in the Linksys SPA3102. Discontinued some years 
ago, but seems to have been well thought of. There's one or two on Ebay along 
with what looks to be Chinese knock-offs. It's difficult to find any current 
products that will do this - I guess nowadays people use a VOIP provider...



An alternative is for the existing land-line number to terminate with a
VoIP supplier on the Internet and to use the home's Internet connection
thereafter.  A POTS does have the advantage of working in a power cut.



Yes!

Cheers

Tim






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Re: [Dorset] Hibernate in (K)Ubuntu

[PeterMerchant]

You made me do it..

I ran up my ancient Dell Inspiron 6000 (32 bit) running xubuntu 18.04, and it 
has a suspend feature, but no obvious hibernate.

Peter


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