Re: [OCLUG-Tech] path completion query

[Brett Delmage]

On Fri, 6 Apr 2018, J C Nash wrote:


I really never imagined my "lazy keyboard habits" would lead to all this 
discovery.


"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... 
The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All 
progress depends on the unreasonable man."

 -- George Bernard Shaw

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] path completion query

[Brett Delmage]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2018, Dianne Skoll wrote:


On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 10:16:29 -0400
J C Nash  wrote:


And. ... tab on first couple of letters of symlinked directory gives
no /, but hitting tab again gives the /. Went back to my local bash
and same behaviour.


That's a smart way to work.  Sometimes you want the slash and sometimes
not.

cd symlink/  # want the slash
rm symlink   # don't want the slash - rm symlink/ will fail

Clever bash! :)


So I thought I had a vague idea of how command completion works (i.e. 
'some scripts in an /etc directory somewhere that I saw years ago' :-)


This discussion prompted me to look it up... and I got waay deeper than I 
planned, again ;-)


Reading this article about 'under the hood'

https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/02/14/bash-programmable-completion/
(part 2)

way down, I discovered more about readline. And buried in that, a config 
option related to symlinks


set mark-symlinked-directories off  (aha!)

which is described in the bash man page, around line 1758 (you have to 
love docs that are this extensive...):


  mark-symlinked-directories (Off)
If set to On, completed names which are symbolic links to 
directories have a slash appended (subject to the value of 
mark-directories).


So it looks like this symlink behavior can vary by distro -- but is easily 
configurable with a line in inputrc.


Who knew. I discovered lots more about readline config I never new 
before. I really enjoy the questions on this list because I often learn 
something new.


--
Congratulations and thanks to the new OCLUG directors!

Brett



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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] is "xargs" really still useful just for limiting command line size?

[Brett Delmage]

On Fri, 16 Mar 2018, J C Nash wrote:


This may introduce a tangent, but I find the limit is often not the
coded one but issues related to
- getting 250 characters into the line and not remembering whether the
  parameter should be X or x and what the difference is.


Indeed.

For those who may not be familiar, "#" is a useful key combo in bash 
for this situation. I was delighted to discover it.


It immediately puts a "#" comment character at the start of your line then 
submits it as if you had pressed enter. The incomplete command is then in 
your command line buffer as a comment. You can look up the missing info 
you need, then retrieve your command line using the Up arrow key or ^R, 
then carry on completing and submitting it after deleting the "#".


Kind of like a ^Z suspend for the command line.

Shell (bash) processing, including application argument parsing and 
completion, and easy handling of filenames with spaces in by starting them 
with a quote has *really* advanced over the decades. In my opinion command 
line has made more useful progress than graphical interfaces in the past 
20 years.


I was really blown away when I accidently discovered that scp does command 
line (e.g. filesystem path) completion on the *remote* host! e.g. hit 
 as you enter a filesystem path and it can show options or complete 
it, just as if it was your local host. You need to have key-based, not 
password, authentication on the remote system for this to work, obviously.


As for xargs (almost always with -0) I use it all the time. It allows me 
to pipe multiple commands together is a consistent manner that always 
works, so less thinking. :-)


Brett

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] is there a FHS/LSB rationale for installing in /usr/bin vs /usr/sbin?

[Brett Delmage]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2018, Brett Delmage wrote:


WHat does file ../sbin/* show on other systems?


I meant: file /sbin/*
file /usr/sbin/*

Any static linking?
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] is there a FHS/LSB rationale for installing in /usr/bin vs /usr/sbin?

[Brett Delmage]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2018, Robert P. J. Day wrote:


 more nitpicky pedantry, but i was summarizing some handy system H/W
utilities and noticed that, while lsusb and lspci philosophically do
the same thing (that is, display system info), on my fedora system,
they are installed differently:

 $ type lsusb
 lsusb is /usr/bin/lsusb
 $ type lspci
 lspci is /usr/sbin/lspci



/sbin/* executables were historically statically linked, accessible 
earlier in the system starup process before shared libs were possibly 
mounted or available.


Hmm. Running "file" on my /sbin/*, /usr/sbin/* on 16.04 only shows 
dynamically linked utilities. Years ago, I remember seeing statically 
linked files in these dirs.


Presumably, at least modern releases are complex enough that booting to a 
normal runtime config now requires so much (blame systemd? ;-) or maybe 
just md, raid, lvm, crypto fs) that it's not practical or useful to build 
static execs that could be used to boot to a lesser (recovery) system 
state? Dunno.


I can see lspci being of more 'utility' in debugging a system in recovery 
mode than lsusb, which might explain the different (historical?) 
placements.


Today it could just be that /sbin exec should be available on the first 
part of system initialization? But no longer real concern given boot disk 
sizes of GBs?


Anyway, not an official FHS/LSC reason, just my observation.

WHat does file ../sbin/* show on other systems?

Brett


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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] does current gnu grep support EREs out of the box?

[Brett Delmage]

On Tue, 6 Mar 2018, Richard Guy Briggs wrote:


 info(1) sucks.


Agreed. But pinfo is an improvement.
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] does anyone still use "dump" for backups these days?

[Brett Delmage]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2018, Vic Gedris wrote:


I've been using http://rsnapshot.org for many years. Yes, it's an rsync
wrapper.  Should be available most distro package libraries.


Likewise.
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] looking for a new host for my web site for april 1

[Brett Delmage]

On Fri, 10 Mar 2017, Robert P. J. Day wrote:


 so, recommendations for local hosting to which i can move this?
thanks.


Canadian Web Hosting / cacloud.ca is consistently professional and 
helpful, from their tech support to billing. I get _way_ more support 
responsiveness from them than I pay for ($0 for my VMs, just the basics).


Of course, I am understand that tech support can be a crappy job 
sometimes, so I go out of my way to be pleasant and appreciateive in my 
communications with them. And yes - you can talk with someone on the 
phone too, without difficulty.


I always get a feeling of confidence when the support tickets all have 
full real names and even phone extensions with them.


They're Vancouver-based but have a Toronto centre. Only shortcoming to me 
is that they are a Vanix but not Torix member - but I'm working on 
them :-)


My other server is by my feet, at the end of a Teksavvy connection. It 
primarily runs a phpList mail list, mostly for locals. If the g-men want 
the data from that, they'll have to hack it - or I'll know they came for 
and took it.


Brett
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Computer Hardware Stores

[Brett Delmage]

On Sat, 19 Jul 2014, Prof J C Nash (U30A) wrote:


I've been reasonably happy with my purchases and interaction with Canada
Computers, in particular the Rideau Store, though I've also dealt with
Merivale and Kanata branches.


Likewise. I've shopped at the Kanata, Merivale, Rideau and Tenth Line 
stores (and I don't own a car).


Just be fully aware of their return policies, which may be a little 
tighter than other retailers. Ask before paying.


Brett

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Looking for DNS ...

[Brett Delmage]

On Sat, 3 May 2014, Derek Murphy (Simba 64 bit) wrote:

Strange. I use TekSavvy with a static IP, run my own mail server (Sendmail, 
because I'm old) and DNS (BIND, also because I'm old) and I've never had a 
problem sending mail to anyone.


Likewise. I even run a local (announce type) mailing list with about 1000 
subscribers on my server, which is running postfix. (I do have SPF, DKIM, 
etc. all configured properly.)


Brett
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] What does the + signify in ls -l output?

[Brett Delmage]

On Tue, 7 Jan 2014, Vic Gedris wrote:


It means there's an access control list (getfacl / setfacl...).

You're right, the documentation should be way more obvious.  man ls
should point to that.


rday wrote:

typically, extended permissions such as ACLs.


...except attibutes such as immutable which you need chattr/lsattr to 
get at (and which I find quite useful for additional data protection).


Vic and Robert, thanks for pointing me in the right direction last week. I 
really appreciated that.


I was familiar with acl in general, but had used it much so didn't 
remember it, and was incorrectly looking in the lsattr direction.


Coincidentally, in the past week, I also realized that getfacl/ setfacl 
was just the tool I need to save and restore tight web server file 
permissions around updates (for piwik.org - it's a great FLOSS webserver 
analytics tool if anyone need one)  that requires webserver-writable file 
perms during updates.


Brett
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[OCLUG-Tech] What does the + signify in ls -l output?

[Brett Delmage]

I've completely forgotten the meaning of the + in ls output  e.g.

-rw-r-+ 1 brett www-data 88565 Jan  3 23:45 131230-233137-1.jpg
-rw-r-  1 brett www-data 25007 Jan  7 14:00 logo.jpg

and nothing I've RTFM'd or googled seems to show its meaning.
Anyone?

And what would I man to get an explanation of ls format if I was a 
newbie?


Brett
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] free mailing list host

[Brett Delmage]

On Fri, 29 Nov 2013, Richard Guy Briggs wrote:


On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 02:27:19PM -0500, Jean-Luc cooke wrote:

mailchimp


yahoogroups?
google?


I guess all of these could be suitable if you don't care about having your 
subscribers' privacy violated via the U.S. Patriot Act.  i.e. U.S. hosted.


Canadian providers?
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Game system photos on Wikipedia given a huge boost

[Brett Delmage]

On Fri, 1 Nov 2013, Rob Echlin wrote:


Evan Amos is a profiessional photographer with a love for gaming systems.

Here is his story

http://petapixel.com/2013/10/31/power-wikipedia-became-gamings-popular-anonymous-photographer/


His kickstarter has raised over the $8500 he asked for, but there is  likely 
room for more.
g


Interesting.

OttawaJazzScene.ca (which I am publisher and a journalist / 
photojournalist / IT guy at) raised ~$5000 in our second community-funding 
campaign in June. We don't use a funding platform though. I run our 
campaigns in-house, so we can avoid the percentage that services like 
kickstarter take off the top. I also run all our servers in Ottawa or 
Toronto to keep as much email list subscriber and donor data as far away 
as possible from the warrantless spying that occurs in the US.


As much as possible, our workstation computers, web/mail/dns/list servers, 
etc. are Linux based, and are free/libre open source software. Thanks to 
our supporters, I'm able to give some financial support to software 
projects which we use.


cheers,

Brett
OttawaJazzScene.ca

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] what's the state of the art for linux (openwrt?) based wireless routers?

[Brett Delmage]

On Mon, 5 Aug 2013, Mike Hopper wrote:


And ya...I felt kind of dirty suggesting a BSD based solution on here!


Heh. I think Linux users are among the smartest to understand that using 
the best tool for a job makes sense. Linux is... in many cases, but not 
all.


I've been investigating virtualizing BSD/pfSense as a network front end 
for my Linux server. Because, it reportedly does an excellent job running 
MLPPP (which I need to use because I can't get a fast netpipe to my 
house) and which Linux still handles very poorly.


Anyone else on this list running pfSense under KVM on Linux?

Brett
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] what's the state of the art for linux (openwrt?) based wireless routers?

[Brett Delmage]

On Mon, 5 Aug 2013, Jeff Moncrieff wrote:


I run pfSense but not as a VM I do not like the idea of running a router on a 
virtual machine. it a security risk better to get a cheap system.


If power use, physical space, and reliability are not of concern, sure why 
not.

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[OCLUG-Tech] Heavy-duty linux wifi access point / server?

[Brett Delmage]

I recall there are some people on this list who have dealt with something 
like I'd like to do.

I'd like to reach people with cellphones and tablets, gathered in large 
(semi-public) congregation in Ottawa. Think OLS conference, for example, 
except outside; and far less data transfer per user (maybe). I'd like to 
set up an open wifi access point connected to a Linux webserver serving 
static, or if possible, semi-static (cache-backed CMS) pages. At worst 
case, all it would have to serve is one static page.

Never having done this before, I have no idea of how many associations or 
connections to expect. I'm guessing a few dozen to 200 range.

Now I recall someone talking at the IPV6 conference last year about the 
(APs?) being overloaded by people with wifi-enabled phones on OC Transpo 
buses going by the building on the Transitway. I don't recall much more 
than that.

I expect an i7 linux workstation I have could keep up with the web 
requests.

So I'm wondering what it would take in equipment, especially wifi, for me 
to set something up like this? I would NOT be able to set up any more than 
one AP (or at least one AP location), given the physical limitations of 
the setup, out of my control. The operational duration would be about one 
week.

This is not a mission crticial project.  It can fail from overload and 
that's fine, but it would be nice if it didn't die at 20 accesses. If it 
can work without too setup and cost (I cannot afford gear purchase, but 
maybe rental) then I might try it. This is just a guerilla outreach 
experiment I'd like to try if it's not way beyond my resources.

Any tips on this, thoughts, or websites or where to find out more about 
this kind of setup and what's required?

Brett

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[OCLUG-Tech] DNS servers with low Ottawa latency ?

[Brett Delmage]

Does anyone know of any affordable DNS services like Zoneedit at 151 Front 
Street or elsewhere, with low latency to Ottawa ISPs/clients? I need a 
secondary DNS server to replace the one operating on my Linux host at the 
end of my DSL line (no incremental cost, but obviously not the best 
technical setup for my growing traffic). Most of the traffic for my sites 
is from Ottawa and Gatineau users.

A dig lookup shows 16 ms from my Front St VPS versus 46 ms lookup from 
zoneedit's server.

I want to keep all my services in Canada. The yanks have clearly shown 
can't be trusted to keep their paws off people's domain records and 
servers.

Brett

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] OCLUG AGM - discussing change

[Brett Delmage]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2012, Richard Guy Briggs wrote:


On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 08:46:55AM -0400, Grégoire, André wrote:

It would cool if we could have a poll to see where members preferred
to have the meetings that way the majority would take it.


This assumes that the potential body of interested people aren't already
ignoring us because of accessibility.

It would certainly be more objective than the current set of anekdotes.


It *could* be more objective if conducted properly and transparently for 
all OCLUG members. Otherwise it might just be a disguised representation 
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] AGM discussion -- location of meetings

[Brett Delmage]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2012, Eric Brackenbury wrote:

 Some folks have started to come to meetings only to find the content way
 above their knowledge level and so not returned (I know they should have
 stayed to push the other brains to share and help).

Or maybe they just found the environment unfriendly ?

I've been an OCLUG member since it started. I've been out to fewer 
meetings in recent years due to time conflicts that always seem to arise, 
and the difficulty of even finding the damned room on the Algonquin 
campus. (That's a 'skill-testing' question!)

I attended the Arts Ottawa East (AOE) AGM at Shenkman Arts Centre in 
Orleans last night (which, BTW is an easy 30 min OC Transpo / walking 
trip from halfway across Ottawa). The interesting thing to me was how much 
more friendly it was there than OCLUG meetings (YMMV). The AGM was 
relatively short and there was plenty of time to talk after. Although I 
knew *nobody* there, except maybe to see a few employees, I didn't stop 
having engaging conversations with different people until they 
threw us out at 9 PM. Everyone was given a name badge upon arrival (and 
this is common at other non-profit get-togethers) and that certainly 
helped.

From my experience, OCLUG activities, whether at the meeting, or Beer SIG, 
often fall short. I could imagine a new person not making much human 
contact and not coming back if they didn't come just for the talk. So 
while I expect people to argue with me on the point that OCLUG activities 
are not as friendly to those not already knowing a bunch of people there, 
I will suggest that others may have already experienced what I am saying, 
didn't come back, and maybe are not here on this list now either.

As they say, first impressions matter.

If someone just came to the talk and left (even if they gained useful 
knowledge) I'd suggest that not much OCLUG community was built.

Talks, learning etc. can be done in other means these days as others have 
noted. I suggest that if OCLUG really wants to talk about *meatspace* 
activity, then there are some attitudinal and procedural changes, that 
begin with each of us, that could be helpful to sustain and build that.

But is that what OCLUG members want?

Brett
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Changing ISPs

[Brett Delmage]

On Sun, 15 Jan 2012, Shawn H Corey wrote:

 I'm currently using Bell for my ISP but I thinking of changing; they are
 charging too much money for too little performance. I am looking for an
 ISP to provide DSL at home. Any suggestions?

I would also support Teksavvy from personal experience of 5 years; I was 
previously with Bhell for 11.

To assist you in making your own informed decision I'll point you to 
Canadian ISP forums at DSL Reports. http://www.dslreports.com/forums/23

You can find lots of user experiences shared here, at least in the 
Teksavvy forums. I would suggest you read the Teksavvy blog and forums 
before choosing their newer cable offering (over Rogers network). There 
have been some serious problems and weeks-long many-customer outages since 
December. The DSL services seems to have been fairly reliable.

Note that with the latest CRTC-screwing of Canadian Internet users, that 
DSL prices are generally increasing a bit in a month or so.

Good luck!

Brett

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] how to mount a filesystem *inside* an SD card image?

[Brett Delmage]

On Sun, 11 Dec 2011, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

 mount with the offset option:

 mount -t ext3 -o loop,offset=your_start_offset sd_card.img /mnt/mountpoint

  ah, i'm embarrassed to admit i never knew the loop mount accepted an
 offset.  problem solved.

Hey - I learned something new that I didn't know either... glad you asked.

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] RISCy Raspberry and the ARM Revolution: Part Deux

[Brett Delmage]

On Wed, 19 Oct 2011, Paul Bourgeois wrote:

 (get your HDMI cable from a dollar store because you won't find a better 
 price on the things),

Regrettably, only Monstor cables will work with Linux-based HDMI. All the 
other cables still have too much oxygen in them.
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] why does my new ASUS laptop not run the memory test?

[Brett Delmage]

On Wed, 21 Sep 2011, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

  just picked up a new ASUS laptop and first thing i tried was to just
 boot from a ubuntu 11.04 dvd and do a memory test.  but the memory
 test didn't do anything -- the memtest+ screen came up, but no
 testing, it just sat there.

memtest86?

I found that older versions don't deal with newer Intel CPUs well e.g. i5. 
Get Memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/) put it on a USB drive and try 
that.

Brett

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[OCLUG-Tech] How to root my Nexus S gingerbread phone for OpenVPN

[Brett Delmage]

Having recently acquired a Nexus S phone I'd like to root it so I can 
install OpenVPN among other things. I'm running the latest version of 
gingerbread, 3.4.3

I'd like to run an OpenVPN client for which I'll install a server for, on 
my linux server.

I expect someone on the list has already rooted their phone...? I'd 
welcome any pointers to trustworthy and proven sites, instructions and 
downloads for this task. I'm not too worried about bricking the phone. But 
I do worry about installing a trojan, because I know nothing very little 
about the Android world yet. I've seen a number of instructions on the web 
but don't know which sources to trust.

I'd also be interested in hearing of anyone else's fav sites for Android 
development and hacking.

And if I wanted to run PPTP or L2TP/ipsec, any recommendations on 
which one is least hassle to set up a server for (ubuntu)?

Thanks :-)

Brett

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Linux Digest, Vol 76, Issue 19

[Brett Delmage]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2011, Richard Guy Briggs wrote:
 I did have a problem a year ago where the phone was working
 intermittently, but DSL was fine.  I have my DSL on a dry loop, so it is
 seperate from the phone line.  It turned out to be a problem outside
 where Bell connected the feed to my demarcation point, so it was their
 problem to fix.

 On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 01:00:22PM -0400, Shawn H Corey wrote:
 I noticed that when the wind picked up, the my connection went
 intermittent, that is, it started cutting out in periods of seconds to
 minutes.  Guess it's time to get Bell a call.  :(

Good luck.

We should all hope to have dry loops :-)

Bhell had some crappy exterior wiring here in the Civic Hospital area. 
Every time it rained, the phone line started to short out. Often, DSL 
continued to work in a degraded manner when the POTS quit, but even the 
DSL would eventually quit too after getting slower and slower as the 
higher frequency channels dropped out. Service came back slowly as the wet 
wiring dried, sometimes days later.

(The shorting process somehow caused 911 to be dialed sometimes. Worse 
case was when the cops showed up at my front door at 2 AM on a night I was 
sleeping, thinking they had a serious call.)

It took Bhell 1.5 YEARS to finally find and fix the degraded exterior 
wiring. It was a few blocks from my house.

And it is now again the rainy season...

Brett
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] VPS Service Providers

[Brett Delmage]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Michael Walma wrote:

 I am in the hunt to move my servers ... to another service 
 provider.

 I know there was some discussion on this list about two years back,
 but that info is now a little dated.

 Any recommendations?

Michael,

It's been two months+ since you inquired about VPS Service Providers. I 
was wondering if you have any findings, positive or negative, to share 
back with the list members about this? I'm sure those who contributed 
suggestions, and others, would be glad to know.


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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Authoritative-only DNS Server?

[Brett Delmage]

On Wed, 9 Feb 2011, Michael Walma wrote:

 I am looking for recommendations for an authoritative-only DNS server
 to replace Bind on my virtual server slice.  Bind is over-kill for my
 needs, which is just to serve authoritative records for my domains
 (with traffic at only dozens per day) and places too much of a demand
 on my small slice.  I know I could get DNS from a third party,

 but I like having complete control.

So do I :-)

try maradns + zoneserver

Very lightweight compared to Bind. I used it for that reason.

I have run maradns + postfix + Mailman + Apache + mysql + php + spampd spam 
filtering in a 256 MB Ubuntu VPS.

The only issue is different zone files (but not difficult). Not as full 
featured as Bind. (I can provide you with a working example if you want.)

 I've done some googling and am following a few leads, but most reviews
 focus on performance rather than on minimizing footprint.

Here's the memory usage:

   PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
   623 nobody20   0  2068  684  508 S0  0.1   0:10.11 maradns
  1085 nobody20   0  1884  456  348 S0  0.1   0:00.00 zoneserver
  1095 nobody20   0  1884  316  188 S0  0.1   0:00.00 zoneserver
  1097 nobody20   0  1884  304  176 S0  0.1   0:00.00 zoneserver

Brett

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] VPS Service Providers

[Brett Delmage]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Michael Walma wrote:

 I am in the hunt to move my servers from a VPS hosted by vpsville.ca
 to another service provider.  My patience has run out with vpsville,
 which, while relatively cheap, has not worked out for me in terms of
 reliability or responsiveness to problems.

Michael, I'm sorry to hear that. I've been running two servers at 
vpsville.ca (Canadian corporation, servers located at 151 Front Street) 
for about two years. Now, I'd be the last person to say that vpsville was 
perfect. I am in no way questioning your experience, which could vary from 
mine for 100 possible different configuration differences.  A few years 
ago, they apparently had a significant, unrecoverable loss of customer 
data. Ouch. (OFFSITE backups - always - folks) I've had a few short 
outages and one longer one; it seems like they rebooted the parent host 
and it had to fsck terabyte-sized filesystem - whoops, bad config. 
(remember tune2fs, guys!)

I just did a major distro change on one server (to 10.04 LTS) and they 
promptly handled swapping my IP addreses between VPSs, as I did the 
upgrade on a temporary VPS for migration and testing before making it the 
new production server.

Overall, vpsville has worked pretty well for my two sites serving mostly 
Ottawa-Gatineau users. I got 25% off for life coupon discounts for both 
servers so the cost is reasonable, but other businesses are in the same 
range too. VPSVille offers an unconditional 30 day money back guarantee on 
all services, and you can rent on a monthly basis (or even less if you 
know how), so an evaluation is minimal risk and money upfront.

It was an interesting experience getting Linux - Apache - Mysql - PHP - 
Postfix - greylisting - Mailman - spamd and DNS all running on a 256 MB 
-configured VPS, when I run 8 GB RAM on my home servers. I learned a bit 
;-)

I haven't used any other VPS hoster so can't offer a fair comparison to 
others.

Brett
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[OCLUG-Tech] Spam-filtering spam from Roaring Penguin

[Brett Delmage]

Don't know what hapenned to my message the first time... resend.

-- Forwarded message --
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 14:05:34
From: Brett Delmage br...@twobikes.ottawa.on.ca
To: li...@oclug.on.ca
Subject: Spam-filtering spam from Roaring Penguin


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-- 
BEGIN-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS
--

Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 01DEH7ipC) is spam:
Spam:
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEH7ipCm=16333adfedf6t=20101208c=s
Not spam:
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEH7ipCm=16333adfedf6t=20101208c=n
Forget vote: 
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEH7ipCm=16333adfedf6t=20101208c=f
--
END-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS

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[OCLUG-Tech] Spam-filtering spam from Roaring Penguin

[Brett Delmage]

Wierd. Don't know what happened to my message the first TWO timeS... 
Resent, crossing fingers. Sorry for the repeats.

-- Forwarded message --
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 14:05:34
From: Brett Delmage br...@twobikes.ottawa.on.ca
To: li...@oclug.on.ca
Subject: Spam-filtering spam from Roaring Penguin





-- 
BEGIN-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS
--

Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 01DEHalvQ) is spam:
Spam:
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEHalvQm=356ff18f00bbt=20101208c=s
Not spam:
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEHalvQm=356ff18f00bbt=20101208c=n
Forget vote: 
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEHalvQm=356ff18f00bbt=20101208c=f
--
END-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS

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[OCLUG-Tech] Spam-filtering spam from Roaring Penguin

[Brett Delmage]

Ok, I think I realized where my message body is going here. (I've broken 
the ANTI SPAM 'header' this time, that I had quoted -- let's hope this one 
works. Again, sorry for the repeats, but in an ironic way it kind of 
supports my call to remove this unnecessary clutter in our list messages - 
it can break them.

Apologies in advance if this one doesn't work and you can't see this 
apology ;-)


Original message:

Can this BEGIN  ANTISPAM - VOTING - LINKS spammage be turned off? (see 
bottom of message below). It does not really need to be cluttering every 
list message to every subscriber.

In this example
- The message is posted to a moderated email list
- the message originates at gmail

so: no applicability/need here for human-spam voting.

This would be something a moderator should be doing - not every list member.


-- Forwarded message --
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 11:24:26
From: george.stand...@gmail.com george.stand...@gmail.com
To: li...@oclug.on.ca, Ubuntu-CA Mailing List ubuntu...@lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: [OCLUG-Tech] Ubuntu Hour tomorrow (Thursday Dec 9th 8PM)

Monthly Ottawa Ubuntu meeting is tomorrow.

Ubuntu Hour Ottawa
December 9th
8PM
@ The Exchange (Rideau Center)
The last few time we have been downstairs.

http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/590/detail/

Hope to see you there,
George aka ZykoticK9

-- 




-- 
BEGIN-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS
--

Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 01DEHijQE) is spam:
Spam:
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEHijQEm=360beaa50290t=20101208c=s
Not spam:
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEHijQEm=360beaa50290t=20101208c=n
Forget vote: 
https://antispam.roaringpenguin.com/canit/b.php?i=01DEHijQEm=360beaa50290t=20101208c=f
--
END-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Symmetric broadband provider

[Brett Delmage]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2010, Spencer Cheng wrote:

 I am looking for a broadband provider who can supply 10 Mbps symmetric 
 broadband in the west end of Ottawa for some demos and (Linux) protocol 
 testing. Need decent uplink bandwidth so most broadband services are 
 out. Hosting companies would be fine if they can guarantee consistent 
 amount of bandwidth available. Does such a service exist at 
 semi-resonable price? I would love to get fibre pulled to my house but I 
 don't think it is gonna to happen. Thanks in advance.

You might look up TekSavvy's MLPPP (bonding) option. It's not going to be 
cheap. But anything else, if you can get it, is not going to be cheap 
either. Of course, it still won't be symmetric.

Someone posted a speedtest of many (8?) MLPPP'd DSL lines on the 
dslreports teksavvy forum in the past 3? months. The numbers were quite 
amazing IIRC.

Brett
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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Recommendations for a Video Card

[Brett Delmage]

On Tue, 23 Mar 2010, John Elliott wrote:

 Can anyone recommend an inexpensive PCI-Express video card which is well
 supported by X11 and does not require ATI drivers?

 Resolution required is 1920x1080 or better.

Hmm. Not clear from your message if you are implying that you want a 
ATI radeon type card with a FLOSS driver, or something else?

The nvidia-based cards work for me. I was not a fan of the nvidia closed 
source drivers for years. But after reading an interview about them about 
the shared code between their different platforms, I am more accepting. 
Nvidia does at least keep the drivers updated with features for linux.

John, you mentioned 1920x1080. Are you planning to watch HD video / MPEG 
streams? Nvidia drivers support VDPAU ( http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU 
). I installed an inexpensive nvidia card (GT210) on my mythtv box two 
months ago and it _really_ works. Watching HDTV takes almost no CPU at 
all with VDPAU and the GPU doing most of the work.

Pccyber has GT210s for (oh my - on sale now, for $36.77 with rebate) Does 
that meet your 'inexpensive' requirement? It's a good price even without 
the rebate.

There might be even better deals, but I would not hesitate to look at this 
card specifically, and pccyber's stock in nvidia cards.

Brett
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[OCLUG-Tech] best practice for periodically checking (ext3) filesystems?

[Brett Delmage]

What do other people do on (home) servers for checking large ext3 or other 
journaling filesystems?

It always seems to be the lesser convenient time for a fsck to run when I 
reboot for a kernel update, even though the count frequency and maximal 
time are at increased values right now.

A 1 TB disk full of my ripped CDs can take a while to fsck...

As per the man page, I'm not sure it's really a good idea to set tune2fs 
-i/-c to 0/-1 (never) and then never fsck. But I'm thinking I could do do 
that AND set a calender or other reminder for me to do a forced reboot and 
forced check every (how long?). I can reboot and check when fscking time 
won't be a bother.

I should add that the server runs md RAID1 and is on a UPS. It very rarely 
goes down for other than a proper shutdown/reboot - now that I don't have 
a buggy nvidia driver :-p.

(My VPS host in Toronto had a reboot last year and their fscking took 
fscking hours to run... THAT was a bother.)

Or maybe ext3 is so reliable I can turn checking off forever?

What do you think?

Brett

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Difficulty using Rogers Yahoo! WebMail with 3.5.x versions of Firefox

[Brett Delmage]

On Thu, 3 Dec 2009, Bruce Miller wrote:


I got annoyed with them last night and


He Bruce, I can understand why. That's outrageous. Is there any way you 
can minimize your interaction with their webmail, perhaps by using IMAP? 
Or forwarding your email to a Google account and reading their ads instead 
? ;-)


I am glad I run my own mail server.

Really, the ONLY action that matters here is to walk away with your $$. No 
business gives a damn, if you keep sending money their way every month.


Sometimes that might mean giving something up on our parts as consumers, 
as part of the switch.


I'm sorry if you have no options but to get internet from them.

Good luck with your complaints process. I'm glad to see you initiate that 
against these guys. Keep in mind that with most businesses, especially 
mega-corps, money talks is really all that matters, because that's all 
they exist for.


I do think you have an interesting point about the enforced ads and should 
complain to the Commissioner anyway, after you get the official excuse 
from Robbers, attaching it as background. You can leave Robbers once you 
finish holding them accountable ;-)


Also, for those unaware of it on the list, I have found dslreports.com 
forums to have solid participation of very knowledgeable and sharing 
users. The Rogers forum is here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rogers


Bruce, you might want to share your story in that forum and build a mass 
of consumer backlash and have 100 people sending in official complaints to 
the Commissioner :-)


Brett

(who went through a month of hell with Bhell this spring when Bhell broke 
my original ADSL I had for 11 years and were unable and unwilling to 
repair or replace it. I ended up gladly also switching that DSL service to 
TekSavvy. It's something I should have done ages ago, except the Bhell 
bridged ethernet ADSL gave me some redundancy against single points of 
failure within TekSavvy. As I said earlier, tradeoffs.)

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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Need some advice re: RAID and LVM ?!?

[Brett Delmage]

On Wed, 25 Nov 2009, Damian Gerow wrote:


After all, on a 250GB drive, it's going to be a while before I
hit the 100GB barrier, let alone actually need the whole drive.


You don't have much locally-stored email, do you?

:-)
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[OCLUG-Tech] Will I have problems booting after these lilo messages?

[Brett Delmage]

I just fixed a bug in my Ubuntu 9.04 initrd links, where the default boot 
was pointing to a -server version, which seems to be missing many modules 
(like for eth0!) so doesn't work too well. I changed it to the -generic 
initrd and all was fine.


Do I need to run some kind of mkinitrd to fix this?

I just relinked my initrd.img to the working -server image and ran lilo.
I received the following warnings. Does anyone know if I will have 
problems booting next time, or how I can tell, before I reboot ?


Warning: /dev/sdb is not on the first disk is not a problem, that is 
just updating the MBR of my second drive in my RAID 1 as expected.


Brett


/# lilo
Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed
Warning: '/proc/partitions' does not match '/dev' directory structure.
Name change: '/dev/dm-0' - '/dev/vg1/vg1-root'
Warning: Name change: '/dev/dm-1' - '/dev/vg1/vg1-swap'
Warning: Name change: '/dev/dm-2' - '/dev/vg1/vg1-var'
Warning: Name change: '/dev/dm-3' - '/dev/vg1/vg1home'
Added Linux *
Added LinuxOLD
Added LinuxTest
The Master boot record of  /dev/sda  has been updated.
Warning: /dev/sdb is not on the first disk
The Master boot record of  /dev/sdb  has been updated.
8 warnings were issued.

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