Re: [PLUG] Internship for people with Linux command line familiarity

[Ben Koenig]

Does anyone here know if Free Geek still teaches a commandline class? I don't 
see any references to it (or other classes) on their website but this would 
have been a great example of the skills taught in that class. 

If you need a creative workaround, you can look for technicians with MacOS 
management experience. Any T1/T2 tech who has had to work with JAMF managed 
devices has probably spent some time in ZSH. Oddly enough many of those people 
know Linux exists but have no idea how similar the commandline environment is. 
Most of the people working in that particular field would love an opportunity 
to leave the corporate tech support world ... they just don't realize it yet. ;)

I just left (read: in the process of leaving) a job doing end user tech support 
in a corporate environment with over 77,000 employees. At least 10 of the 
people I worked with have never used a linux system but are more than capable 
of running commands in an Ubuntu terminal.  Some of our KB articles for 
managing macOS even involved lists of shell commands. A Linux manpage would be 
a welcome change for many of those techs.

Long story short: try looking for IT support techs with Mac MDM experience who 
are interested in more advanced career opportunities. Create an equivalency 
between an environment people already know and the scary linux beast they don't 
know and you might find more people. 
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Saturday, September 23rd, 2023 at 4:07 PM, Russell Senior 
 wrote:


> Priority populations: "Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC),
> seniors, LGBTQIA+, immigrants and
> refugees, houseless or housing insecure, foster youth, domestic
> violence survivors, people impacted by
> incarceration, people with disabilities, and those living in poverty"
> 
> On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 3:40 PM Russell Senior
> russ...@personaltelco.net wrote:
> 
> > I'm involved with a grant funded project in which Personal Telco Project is 
> > to indoctrinate a few people in Community Networking serving a target 
> > population. We want people who are members of the target population, but in 
> > order to meet the project goals we feel like they need to start with a 
> > basic familiarity with Linux command line, since basically every part of 
> > the network management will require it. Our partners are concerned they 
> > won't be able to find anyone with the starting skills we have asked for. As 
> > someone for whom the Year of the Linux Desktop has been every year since 
> > 1993, I have trouble understanding their concern. We are only looking for a 
> > few people in the Portland metro area, and there are certainly a few such 
> > people here, it is just a matter of finding them and funneling them towards 
> > the entrance gate. We aren't in charge of selecting people, but given our 
> > partners concerns it seems appropriate to help them recruit potential 
> > candidates, and PLUG seems like a good place to start looking.
> > 
> > I have thought about asking local community colleges that teach Linux 
> > skills.
> > 
> > Any other thoughts?
> > 
> > --
> > Russell Senior, President
> > russ...@personaltelco.net

Re: [PLUG] 1TB Samsung SSD (Magician), filesystems

[Ben Koenig]

A good place to start would be to do some math regarding the TBW of this model 
and compare to your expected workload. 

https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/warranty/?model=N0002506

Samsung's warranty only applies to drives that haven't been worked to death in 
this way. I usually treat this TBW value as an easy EOL target for when the 
drive may just stop due to excessive writes. 


The 870 EVO 1TB has a warranty of 5 years, or 600 Terabytes Written, whichever 
comes first. if you write 500GB worth of data every day that comes out to 
182,500 GB (approximately 180TB) of data written in one year. in 5 years you 
will have written 900TB of data. The warranty would end during the 3rd year.

This gives you a sense of how much data you actually need to write before you 
hit that limit. 

You probably aren't working the drive that hard.. so lets assume you will write 
500GB every week, for 10 years.

gb_per_write = 500
writes_per_year = 52
tbw = (gb_per_write * writes_per_year) / 1024

print tbw
25.390625 TB written in 1 year
print tbw*10
253.90625 TB written in 10 years

What I don't know, is how many writes are associated with swap usage. Next step 
for me would be to find out how much data is writing to my drive in an average 
week, and caculate that in.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, September 21st, 2023 at 2:00 AM, Keith Lofstrom 
 wrote:


> I appreciate the discussion (disagreements?) about file
> systems. Recently, I have been migrating all my systems
> from ancient "Redhat/CentOS" to Debian, and pretty much
> let Debian choose the file system and partitioning.
> 
> Along with this, I am moving all systems to 1 TB Samsung
> 870 EVO 1TB SATA (except for my 12TB Dirvish backup drives).
> I don't store Big Stuff like music or videos, so even my
> largest drive, with files dating back 40 years, uses
> "only" 450 GB in / (including /bin and /usr and /home).
> 
> -
> 
> MY QUESTION isn't about file systems and partitioning,
> but about Samsung SSD Magician 
> ... which allows me to set aside extra "userspace" SSD
> storage area for firmware error correction.
> 
> Should I do so?
> 
> Background info: SSD storage cells are fast but
> imperfect - many overwrites (thousands but not
> millions) will eventually wear out bit cells, in
> sectors that the drive firmware will replace with
> spare sectors ... "belonging" to disk firmware and
> hidden from user view.
> 
> If the entire "visible" SSD is formatted, there will
> still be many hidden "firmware" spare sectors for
> error correction, but perhaps not enough if large
> areas of the disk are frequently overwritten ...
> ... which might happen with the swap partition on
> my ancient 3GB RAM laptops.
> 
> My guess is that Linux will tend to use the "first
> sectors" of swap more often than the last sectors,
> so even if I make a much larger swap, the first
> sectors might wear out and fail. Perhaps Debian 12
> Bookworm is smart enough to spread usage throughout
> swap, rather than the first sectors.
> 
> Again, I am VERY unlikely to use an entire terabyte
> drive, though I worry that Samsung's SSD Magician might
> do bad voodoo, especially with me mis-operating it.
> 
> The 870 EVO 1TB drives are only $60, so I can afford
> to mess one up with an experiment, as long as I learn
> from the experience.
> 
> Should I do so?
> 
> Keith
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

Re: [PLUG] Can't boot to new dual boot

[Ben Koenig]

Rolling back to the beginning of this conversation since I noticed several 
things missing from this attempt to configure dual boot. 

Whenever you set up a multi-boot system, there are several things you have to 
outline BEFORE you make any changes to your system. These really are not 
optional, there are so many different ways to set up bootloaders that if you 
don't define these first then you WILL get confused. It also makes it near 
impossible to ask for help because you don't know what exactly to ask for help 
with, resulting in random tidbits of advice from the internet. 

If you really want to dual boot Xubuntu and Debian, start by answering the 
following 3 questions. Once you have these figured out, you can start to 
configure it piece by piece.

1) Do you want to use UEFI or Legacy boot mode? This is a bios option and which 
one you pick will set the stage for everything else
2) Which OS do you want to designate as your "Master" OS? This is the OS you 
use to configure the bootloader and boot menu. Ideally this is whatever you are 
most comfortable with so you aren't completely lost when something breaks.
3) Do you want a custom menu?

Trying to install a second OS without answering the above questions will create 
more problems than anyone needs. It's also easier for us to recommend solutions 
once we know what tools you are working with. 
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Monday, September 18th, 2023 at 9:39 AM, John Jason Jordan  
wrote:


> Xubuntu is on a three-year-old 1TB M.2 card and it has worked well for
> years. I think I want to change to Debian, so I downloaded the Xfce
> flavor of the Debian 12 ISO and burned it to a USB drive. Then I went
> out and bought a new 2TB M.2 drive and installed it in the computer in
> a spare, unused slot. I booted to the flash drive and went through the
> installation, specifying the new 2TB drive, creating a 200GB partition
> for / and 1800GB for /home. At the end the installer stopped and said
> it had found the Xubuntu installation, and did I want to create a dual
> boot? I answered 'yes,' and it said that upon booting I would have the
> choice of which OS to boot to. After the installation completed and I
> rebooted it went straight into Xubuntu; no option to boot to Debian,
> like the new drive wasn't even installed. While in Xubuntu I noted that
> the / and /home partitions on Debian had been mounted, so I looked at
> them and all the files appeared to be in the partitions.
> 
> The BIOS has a feature where you can choose which disk drive you want
> to boot to; all you have to do is hold down F12 and you will get a
> menu. I did so, and there was the new M.2 drive in the list, so I
> selected it. Unfortunately it did not boot. Instead, a few minutes later
> I was staring at a black screen with a flashing underscore in the upper
> left corner. The keyboard was inactive, and there was no mouse.
> 
> I had one more trick up my sleeve - go to the the BIOS directly. In the
> BIOS I swapped the boot order of the drives so the new M.2 drive would
> be first to boot. But when I booted it still wouldn't boot Debian; all I
> got was the same black screen and flashing underscore.
> 
> I've been reading up on how to get this to work and I haven't found the
> answer yet. Both drives have a separate partitions for / and /home, and
> each of them has a /boot/grub/grub.cfg file in the / partition. At the
> top of the menu entries, the one in the Debian drive has Debian and
> Debian-Alternative followed by 80 (believe it or not) menu entries for
> Xubuntu. On the Xubuntu drive the file has menu entries only for
> Xubuntu, although only about 20 of them. Methinks some serious tidying
> up is overdue, but that can wait. Maybe a command to update grub is the
> right way to do it.
> 
> This would probably be easy to fix, if I only knew how. I'm anxiously
> looking for suggestions so I can look at Debian 12 on the new drive. :)

Re: [PLUG] Change hard drive FS

[Ben Koenig]

I can't find a link to share at the moment, but I remember reading some 
comments from an interview with one of the EXT4 developers where he said that 
while there are some issues, EXT4 is extremely robust when it comes to 
recovering from data corruption. 

Basically he was saying that it tends to be pretty magically when replaying the 
journal, but still gets corrupted. This means that data gets corrupted for 
everybody, but depending on your use case the journal replay feature will 
either magically fix the problem or catastrophically fail. 

Back to Rich's original question though you don't configure your filesystem 
with fdisk. If you already have drives that are actively in use then you can 
leave the partitions alone, and just reformat with mkfs. Slackware also 
includes several /sbin/mkfs.* programs as front ends to whatever filesystem you 
intend to use. 

bash-5.1$ ls -l /sbin/mkfs*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  14664 Feb 15  2022 /sbin/mkfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  35408 Feb 15  2022 /sbin/mkfs.bfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 532576 Jan 15  2022 /sbin/mkfs.btrfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  39480 Feb 15  2022 /sbin/mkfs.cramfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  35184 Nov 17  2021 /sbin/mkfs.exfat
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  6 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.ext2 -> mke2fs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  6 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.ext3 -> mke2fs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  6 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.ext4 -> mke2fs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  6 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.ext4dev -> mke2fs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  44144 Feb 13  2021 /sbin/mkfs.f2fs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  56592 Feb 13  2021 /sbin/mkfs.fat
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  8 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.jfs -> jfs_mkfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 109664 Feb 15  2022 /sbin/mkfs.minix
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  8 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.msdos -> mkfs.fat
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Jun 24 15:05 /sbin/mkfs.ntfs -> /sbin/mkntfs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.reiserfs -> mkreiserfs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  8 Feb 18  2022 /sbin/mkfs.vfat -> mkfs.fat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 486904 Aug 21  2021 /sbin/mkfs.xfs

See the manpages. You don't need fdisk unless you want to change parition 
sizes/settings. Once mkfs has been run and the new drive is mounted, linux 
should handle the translation between filesystems seamlessly. 
-Ben

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, September 19th, 2023 at 1:35 PM, Michael Ewan 
 wrote:


> I am glad you have not had any problems. I have had the opposite
> experience with ext4 but never a problem with xfs, hence my suggestion.
> 
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 1:25 PM Rich Shepard rshep...@appl-ecosys.com
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 19 Sep 2023, Michael Ewan wrote:
> > 
> > > You will ultimately have problems with a corrupted file system with ext4,
> > > almost guaranteed. Xfs is a much more robust file system but if you do
> > > not
> > > trust it, then try zfs or btrfs.
> > 
> > Michael,
> > 
> > I've used ext2, ext3, and ext4 with no issues on any of them. I'll stay
> > with
> > what's worked flawlessly with me since 1997.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Rich

Re: [PLUG] [PLUG-TALK] Find name of program (distros ...)

[Ben Koenig]

Since snap is really just another package repository, you can query it the same 
way you query whatever package manager you have been using. Snapd itself has to 
be installed via dpkg on an ubuntu system in order for it to function.

So if you compare the output of 'snap list' to 'dpkg -l' you should be able to 
find out which programs are snap. THAT SAID, it looks like there is an extra 
wrinkle where ubuntu installs stub .deb packages for snap programs that don't 
actually contain any files. So snap programs will still show up in dpkg because 
the folks over at canonical are all Olympic gold medalists in mental 
gynmastics. 

-Ben

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, September 10th, 2023 at 3:20 PM, Keith Lofstrom  
wrote:


> On Sun, Sep 10, 2023 at 05:18:11PM +0000, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > Mint is a popular choice for people who are familiar with Ubuntu but don't 
> > want these higher level changes.
> 
> ...
> 
> > There is a lot of diversity in the Linux world, you can always find a 
> > distro that suits your wants/needs. Situations like this are where I 
> > usually pull out my "I told you so face" because Canonical has been doing 
> > dumb shit since 2012.
> > 
> > -Ben
> 
> 
> I agree with Ben's observation ... I will agree more on the plug
> list rather than the plug-talk list, because surprisingly, this
> is actually about Linux and computers, rather than "Off-topic".
> 
> It might be flammable, however, distro wars often are :-(
> 
> See y'all over there ...
> 
> Keith
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
> ___
> PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org
> PLUG-talk mailing list
> plug-t...@pdxlinux.org
> https://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk

Re: [PLUG] No Speaker for September yet, anybody want to or have a lead?

[Ben Koenig]

I have an idea for a PLUG Talk but it will have to wait until October or 
November. I'm starting a new job next week so I won't be able to make 
September. 


-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Monday, August 28th, 2023 at 9:39 PM, Russell Senior  
wrote:


> Hi folks,
> 
> Neither Michael (last I checked) nor I have a speaker lined up for
> September 7. Does anyone have something they'd like to talk about or
> know anyone who might? If not, we are rapidly heading for another UnPLUG
> at, presumably, Rose City Book Pub again. I joked last month that the
> last speaker was responsible for finding the next speaker, or they had
> to speak again. But everyone just laughed. I thought it sounded like a
> great idea.
> 
> Anyway, ANY IDEAS? Reply to plug@pdxlinux.org or me.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> --
> Russell Senior
> PLUG Volunteer
> russ...@pdxlinux.org

Re: [PLUG] wikis breaking on updates (was: Re: Upgrage Breaks MediaWiki - why?)

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, August 1st, 2023 at 1:06 AM, Russell Senior  
wrote:


> 
> On 7/31/23 23:15, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > The longterm success and/or failure of any software project comes down to 
> > the maintainability of the codebase. Projects with good, clean codebases 
> > get more love because the cost of contributing is much lower. Given how 
> > many big projects use moinmoin I think it's safe to say that nobody has 
> > bothered to fix it because it's a hot fucking mess.
> 
> The wikipedia entry says "a steamed or boiled bean pudding".
> 
> I think what actually happened is that v1.x achieved a kind of stability
> and it basically didn't change for a decade and the people who knew how
> it worked kind of wandered away. It was only the abandonment of python2
> that has led to the "crisis". There has been a slow moving effort to
> build a v2 of MoinMoin, but it's reportedly not ready for production, or
> wasn't when I looked last (again, about a year ago).
> 
> 
> --
> Russell Senior
> russ...@pdxlinux.org


Probably. python2.7 isn't exactly broken or bad, just unmaintained. There are a 
lot of projects that just don't see a benefit from moving to python3. A lot of 
internet keyboard warriors like to act like you just need a project manager and 
some financial incentive to make the change, but no that's just not how it 
works. 

Even I've soured on python because of this. By the time I get used to the way 
things work, stuff changes and my code breaks. 
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] wikis breaking on updates (was: Re: Upgrage Breaks MediaWiki - why?)

[Ben Koenig]

I wonder why WINE, FFMPEG, the Linux Kernel, all mainstream distros...

- KDE
- GNOME
- XFCE
- QT
- GTK

and many other projects DO NOT have this problem, despite all of them being 
infinitely more complex than a collection of python scripts.

The longterm success and/or failure of any software project comes down to the 
maintainability of the codebase. Projects with good, clean codebases get more 
love because the cost of contributing is much lower. Given how many big 
projects use moinmoin I think it's safe to say that nobody has bothered to fix 
it because it's a hot fucking mess.

FWIW... $5000 for a 2to3 conversion of moinmoin is a fucking insult to the 
developer who ends up doing all the work. But if Debian needs a modern system 
to run their moinmoin wiki I'd be happy to set them up with a Slackware 15.0 
installation with python2.7.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Monday, July 31st, 2023 at 5:31 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> > a dead-end solution with a future of pain, fragility, and
> > (probably) unpatched security vulnerabilities while people scramble to find
> 
> and implement a solution (that may no >longer exist within even a reasonable
> 
> set of parameters).
> 
> I feel compelled to point out that if people spent half the time simply
> paying a software programmer to upgrade the codebase of these projects that
> they spend complaining about the projects becoming dead end, that they would
> have updated projects that work for a tenth of the price that Micro$oft
> wants them to pay for windows versions of things.
> 
> How many hundreds if not thousands of wikis on the Internet that use
> Moinmoin have ever just considered posting a message "We just upgraded to
> Debian Bullseye and we get 10 compiler errors when attempting to build
> Moinmoin on it. $5000 to the first person who fixes that and produces a
> functioning binary, and feeds the changes back into the public source"
> 
> OR, how many of them have picked up a compiler and tried their hand at
> fixing it themselves?
> 
> Ted
>

Re: [PLUG] Upgrage Breaks MediaWiki - why?

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, July 30th, 2023 at 11:31 AM, Michael Rasmussen  
wrote:


> Short Story:
> Running MediaWiki, a php based app
> Upgraded my Archlinux host with `pacman -Syu`
> MediaWiki Breaks with this error:
> 
> Installing some PHP extensions is required.
> Required components
> You are missing a required extension to PHP that MediaWiki requires to
> run. Please install:
> intl (more information)
> 
> Long Story:
> intl has been required since v1.36 - several versions back that I have
> used all along
> 
> I checked php.ini to verify that it had not be chanced in the process. I
> found:
> 
> extension=intl.so
> [intl]
> ;intl.default_locale =
> ; happens within intl functions. The value is the level of the error
> produced.
> intl.error_level = E_WARNING
> intl.use_exceptions = 0
> 
> So that is in place and functional.
> 
> Do you have any idea about what to check? Arch normally reliable source
> of help has come up dry thus far.
> 
> --
> 
> Michael Rasmussen
> Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity

I'd check the release notes and migration log for the new version of mediawiki. 
It sounds like there was a change to the dependencies and it might not be happy 
with the version you have installed. 

You can also verify that this module is for the same version of PHP as your 
mediawiki installation.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] "sold as 16GB" PNY flash drives store >30GB

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, May 28th, 2023 at 12:37 AM, Keith Lofstrom  wrote:


> I bought a "PNY 16GB Attaché 3 USB 2.0 Flash Drive 10-Pack"
> from Amazon for $27.98, to transfer files from some ancient
> CentOS machines to replacement Debian machines.
> 
> The four I've tested so far format to more than 30GB (!!!)
> of ext3 file systems. Hard to believe, so I read/write-
> tested two of them with random patterns for a few days.
> No bits lost.
> 
> I haven't "debugged" this strange miracle deeply; I don't
> know whether they actually store 328(2^30) bits, or a
> slightly smaller fraction of that. My guess is that the
> chip inside is for a 32GB product, with some spare memory
> pages beyond that, but a few too many pages were defective
> to sell as a 32 GB product. So PNY formatted the "best"
> pages to look like a 16GB Windows flash drive and file
> system, and sold the drive as that.
> 
> Formatting that I ignored and overwrote; I don't have any
> Windows machines around.
> 
> If any of you wants to deeply examine one of these drives,
> I would be glad to give one to you, in return for data and
> opinions about that data. To do the job right, you might
> need a variable 5-volt"-ish" power supply and a temperature
> oven; some pages may fail near spec limits. I might loan
> a power supply, but my lab oven is too big to move.
> 
> I can't guarantee that other PNY "10 packs" will behave
> the same. But as a retired chip designer, schooled in
> the idea that "a defect is a treasure" (hoard and test
> and understand them, never sell them to lesser beings),
> it is marvelous to encounter an "anti-defect".
> 
> Keith L.
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

Maybe bring some of these to the upcoming Un-PLUG meeting so we have something 
to play with! Does the physical label on the drive actually say 16GB? That 
amazon page has a button to switch over to the 32GB version for $28.80. If they 
ended up sending you 32GB models then that just means the vendor lost track of 
their own scam.

Why would you pay $27.98 for 160 GB when you can pay 28.80 for 320 GB?
https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Attache-Flash-Drive-P-FD16GX10ATT03-MP/dp/B01MCY4L2R/ref=asc_df_B01MCY4L2R?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20=df0=79852149837934=s=e=be=m===pla-4583451676482249=1

Click the button for the difference sizes (16/32/64). The 16GB is also labeled 
as on sale, probably just to get unsuspecting luddites to pay the same price 
for lower capacity chips. The math doesn't add up.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Sending a Google-Earth Pro image via email

[Ben Koenig]

I'm sorry, but what exactly is the point of asking what distro someone uses, 
only to completely disregard what they tell you? Distros are defined by their 
package manager so unless slackware is debian based it probably doesn't use 
apt.

Regardless this isn't some fancy MUA thing. Google Earth simply wants to 
generate an email and load it into the user's client of choice. On my system it 
only offers thunderbird, but doesn't see kmail or any of the commandline 
options because it wasn't designed to look for every mail client ever created. 
I don't know what system it's using to find the client, might be some sort of 
XDG standard they are looking for.

The workaround is to save the file to disk, then attach to an email you 
composed in the client of your choice. If google doesn't want to see your 
client.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, May 18th, 2023 at 9:28 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> If you do an apt get install postfix and during the setup set it to send mail 
> to a "smartmailer" ie: your ISP then you should be able to use the MUAs on 
> the system.
> 
> Ted
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG plug-boun...@pdxlinux.org On Behalf Of Rich Shepard
> 
> Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2023 6:11 PM
> To: plug@pdxlinux.org
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Sending a Google-Earth Pro image via email
> 
> On Fri, 19 May 2023, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
> > What is the operating system/version/make/model/year of Linux you are using?
> 
> 
> Ted,
> 
> Slackware64-15.0 the most current production distribution.
> 
> Rich

Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti Experts?

[Ben Koenig]

Yeah they usually have a couple options, but only a couple. There are some 
really wacky issues from years ago that typically require a software update to 
resolve. Even knowing what the hotspot is currently broadcasting can be helpful 
in narrowing it down or ruling it out.

Try connecting a MBP from 2013/2014 to a wpa 2/3 network and youll see what I 
mean. It works on paper :)

-Ben
Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On May 12, 2023, 2:22 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt < t...@portlandia-it.com> wrote:
-Original Message- From: PLUG On Behalf Of Ben Koenig Sent: Friday, May 
12, 2023 5:47 AM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group Subject: Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti 
Experts? >Something about this Verizon hotspot network is different from the 
others. What is it? >By far the easiest thing to do here is change the Verizon 
hotspot to broadcast an OPEN network, no >encryption. If that works then we 
know more-or-less where the problem is. >Not saying this is a solution. OPEN 
encryption should not fail on any device and will tell us if the Verizon 
>hotspot is using an encryption scheme that the Bullet M2 can't handle. I have 
worked with some of these cell hotspot devices before and they are most 
definitely KISS devices and his may not even permit him to make any changes 
whatsoever to the encryption. Instructions that come with them are on the order 
of "plug it in and it will display the SSID and password on screen" and that's 
pretty much it. The cell companies don't want to offer any kind of support on 
them at all so it's like "get this on a 30 day return and if you can't make it 
work send it back to us, but don't call for support unless the device tells you 
"no cell signal" on screen" . Ted

Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti Experts?

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Friday, May 12th, 2023 at 5:15 AM, Tomas Kuchta 
 wrote:


> > .
> 
> 
> I'd think that Russell's suggestion about backup + reset to factory +
> update to the latest firmware + reconfigure is the least costly and
> intrusive option to start with.
> 
> If you still cannot connect to the wifi hotspot after that - then it would
> be prudent to start trouble shoot. Let's cross that bridge when 
> 
> -T

A factory reset is the MOST intrusive option because you are little wiping out 
all data and preferences on a device and taking it offline. Remember that the 
device is currently functioning as intended on other networks so why mess with 
that? So before making changes to the configuration or firmware we should try 
to isolate the point of failure. Isolate the problem then root cause. 

Something about this Verizon hotspot network is different from the others. What 
is it?

By far the easiest thing to do here is change the Verizon hotspot to broadcast 
an OPEN network, no encryption. If that works then we know more-or-less where 
the problem is.

Not saying this is a solution. OPEN encryption should not fail on any device 
and will tell us if the Verizon hotspot is using an encryption scheme that the 
Bullet M2 can't handle. 
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti Experts?

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, May 10th, 2023 at 2:47 PM, Michael Barnes  
wrote:


> I have a local network using an Ubiquiti Bullet M2 feeding a Netgear router
> that serves my various devices. The Bullet serves as an access point and
> pulls from an available wifi source.
> I got a hotspot from Verizon for internet access. When I log into the
> Bullet to select a source, the hotspot shows up on the list, but is not
> selectable. It has good signal strength, just not the little circle that
> allows me to select it.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael


This is a pretty straightforward problem. If 80-90% of the discussion here goes 
over your head that's fine because 80-90% of the discussion isn't particularly 
focused on the task at hand.

There's not a lot of wifi-oriented documentation for the Bullet M2 which makes 
me wonder if this is a wifi compatibility issue. From what I can gather it's 
802.11n which is a few generations back. It's very possible that you are 
encountering a compatibility issue between the 2 devices but without more 
details regarding the encryption method and wifi standard your verizon hotspot 
is using it's hard to tell what exactly is causing the issue. If you still want 
to try and troubleshoot then the following info would be very helpful:

- make/model of the verizon hotspot
- wifi version being broadcast. Is it N, AC, AX?
- encryption method. WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPA3, or something else?

Not to insult the experience of any of the IT people here but there's a 
HUGE difference between setting up a wifi network according to a current 
published standard, and documenting compatibility issues in a QA environment 
for IOT devices during the entire product development cycle. There are known 
compatibility issues and known workarounds for those issues when they occur... 
so check the model/version against known quirks before running off on network 
topology tangents. This is probably just some stupid WPA2/3 glitch.

That and the M2 bullet is designed specifically to chain between routers in the 
way he described. The Friendly Manual shows the exact topology he is going for.
https://dl.ui.com/qsg/BulletM2-HP/BulletM2-HP_EN.html

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Looking for a paid POP/IMAP email provider

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Saturday, May 6th, 2023 at 6:44 AM, Rich Shepard  
wrote:


> On Sat, 6 May 2023, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> > Though I live in SW Missouri, I've followed this list for years. My
> > current provider is terminating email service soon. I run SeaMonkey on
> > Debian. Wishing to avoid ads, I specified "paid" in the subject line.
> 
> 
> Richard,
> 
> How about gmail? Or proton mail https://proton.me/mail?
> 
> 
> Rich

FYI protonmail has issues with mailing list compatibility. PLUG being a perfect 
 example. While yes you technically pay in $$$ they still run their Support 
center like it's Microsoft. 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] 3rd party vpn Defense evasion

[Ben Koenig]

While I firmly disagree, I don't have any isssue with people who want to see 
autism as a positive thing. How we come to terms with our humanity and the 
shitstorm that is society is a personal process.

But when you project your attitude onto others without thinking you end up 
discriminating. Even if you don't consider autism to be a disorder, it's still 
comes down to whether or not it's a fact, and you are not in position to make 
that claim. It's really not about autism being good or bad, it's about the 
claim and how others feel about it. And these days convincing someone they have 
autism when they don't can be extremely dangerous and life threatening so maybe 
don't casually bring it up.

I don't want to see this shit on PLUG. This is an online text-only format with 
a specific focus on Linux conversations so if you want to get into the 
prevalence of autistic nerds in the IT world feel free to take it to PLUG-TALK. 
I'm the last person to dictate politeness on any online forum but I'm gonna sit 
my ass down on this hill and say that bringing statements about mental health 
into a discussion about linux network monitoring is crossing multiple lines. If 
any PLUG old-timers want to get cranky about my attitude I'll show myself the 
door. :)

And for the record, thanks for taking a day to write an honest and 
significantly less toxic response. Most people would have doubled down on their 
BS rather than explain it.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, April 23rd, 2023 at 3:23 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> Well as I have been on the autism scale myself since I was born and I have 
> read quite a bit about it in an effort to understand what my differences are, 
> I perhaps have a radically different view of it than you do. It is not a 
> disorder unless someone is severely autistic. It is, in fact, an evolutionary 
> advantage that has become more prevalent in humans for the simple and obvious 
> reason that it gives people who have "mild" cases of it the ability to be 
> highly successful with technology and machinery as well as music and the 
> arts. As humans have become more civilized, people with the genetic group 
> that causes autism have out competed people that lack this. Einstein for 
> example is a textbook example. I've worked in high tech since 1994 and the 
> most successful programmers, engineers, it people, - the "techies" of the 
> world - are all on the scale. That is after all what the word nerd was coined 
> to describe. So I am actually rather proud of being on the scale and I DONT 
> regard having it negatively. I'm sorry you do and I hope you can eventually 
> realize your view of it being a disorder is discriminatory. IMHO the biggest 
> proponents of the idea that mild autism is a disorder are old school 
> educators who's main goal in life is getting kids in school to sit down and 
> shut up. Happily that view is gradually changing but it's clear we still have 
> a lot of work to do.
> 
> Get Outlook for Androidhttps://aka.ms/AAb9ysg
> 
> ____
> From: PLUG plug-boun...@pdxlinux.org on behalf of Ben Koenig 
> techkoe...@protonmail.com
> 
> Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2023 5:29:40 PM
> To: Portland Linux/Unix Group plug@pdxlinux.org
> 
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] 3rd party vpn Defense evasion
> 
> --- Original Message ---
> On Tuesday, April 18th, 2023 at 8:38 AM, Ishak Micheil isaa...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > Greetings,
> > I am tasked to identify a solution to detecting users obfuscating their ip,
> > using verity of VPN services.
> > 
> > What we've done
> > - Prevent users from installing software (VPN Cliens)
> > 
> > - Possibly having a code on endpoints, to collect ip addresses tied to wifi
> > or LAN connection prior to attaching to VPN service,
> > 
> > any other ideas?
> 
> 
> 
> Some people want to debate this ass some sort of political issue, but it's 
> pretty straight forward. This usually is more of a concern at SMBs that don't 
> want to splurge for company managed hardware and ask their employees to BYoD. 
> This then creates anxiety among managers that gets projected down to IT.
> 
> If you control the VDI system, then you have the ability to see who is 
> connecting. At most companies the VPN software used to connect to the VDI is 
> ALSO company managed, so you can see that too.
> 
> So, you log all accesses to the VPN on the server side and monitor for 
> trends. You may not be able to stop an employee from giving out access 
> credentials, but you can see when the IP address used to connect the VPN 
> changes. From here, you implement Zero-trust policies where only known IP 
> addresses are able to access the network because you know the IP address, but 
> 

Re: [PLUG] 3rd party vpn Defense evasion

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 18th, 2023 at 8:38 AM, Ishak Micheil  
wrote:


> Greetings,
> I am tasked to identify a solution to detecting users obfuscating their ip,
> using verity of VPN services.
> 
> What we've done
> - Prevent users from installing software (VPN Cliens)
> 
> - Possibly having a code on endpoints, to collect ip addresses tied to wifi
> or LAN connection prior to attaching to VPN service,
> 
> any other ideas?


Some people want to debate this ass some sort of political issue, but it's 
pretty straight forward. This usually is more of a concern at SMBs that don't 
want to splurge for company managed hardware and ask their employees to BYoD. 
This then creates anxiety among managers that gets projected down to IT. 

If you control the VDI system, then you have the ability to see who is 
connecting. At most companies the VPN software used to connect to the VDI is 
ALSO company managed, so you can see that too.

So, you log all accesses to the VPN on the server side and monitor for trends. 
You may not be able to stop an employee from giving out access credentials, but 
you can see when the IP address used to connect the VPN changes. From here, you 
implement Zero-trust policies where only known IP addresses are able to access 
the network because you know the IP address, but may not have logged it 
effectively until now.

There are additional layers of control you can add but it ultimately comes down 
to what a given company is willing to provide for their employees/contractors. 
I've worked with systems that would make the kind of subcontracting you 
describe very difficult but in those cases you end up with the employer buying 
a special wifi router for their staff. A lot of managers will ask for a magical 
fix without understanding how much effort it takes to lock this down. For us in 
IT sometimes we just need to map out all the things that would need to be 
implemented and assign a $$$ value to them. Most companies will decide not to 
bother at that point.


Think of it like an arms race, at what point does your user have to jump 
through so many hoops that the act of enabling a subcontractor becomes more 
work than the actual job? Or, we could be Ted and go off on abusive rants about 
how IT people are autistic for even considering this type of solution. ;)
-Ben


P.S.  Hey Denis, I would have posted this info sooner since it's a pretty 
interesting question but was discouraged from doing so because Ted was trying 
to shit on everyone. May the Facts be with me :)

Re: [PLUG] 3rd party vpn Defense evasion

[Ben Koenig]

I'm not the one accusing IT people of having social disorders. 

There's clearly a double standard here and a few of you are getting ready to 
team up and attack the little guy.

Accsusing people of being autistic in order to win the argument is wrong. Ted 
has been very aggressive in this discussion and made statements that are 
clearly derogatory in nature.

As for my contribution, I pointed out that that Ted's assertion that IT should 
not be involved here was wrong, and provided facts to clarify that. Maybe he 
(and you) can learn soemthing from that?

Regardless of all that, you've made it clear that you just want to attack me. I 
don't appreciate the autism accusation and frankly, Ted owes everyone an 
apoplogy for being an abusive asshole.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Saturday, April 22nd, 2023 at 4:38 PM, Denis Heidtmann 
 wrote:


> What (positive) contribution do your insults bring to the discussion? Can
> you find a less hostile way to contribute?
> 
> -Denis
> 
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 4:02 PM Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > Don't be such a dipshit.
> > 
> > Yes, HR and Management are responsible for taking corrective action
> > against employees not doing their job. "Job" in this context being defined
> > by that employees contract so there's no reason for us to speculate and
> > pass judgement on whether or not IT should bother.
> > 
> > What you seem to be missing in your attempt to over-compensate for your
> > sense of psychological supremacy is that in order to take correct action
> > from a management perspective, IT has to identify the digital paper trail.
> > That's what we do - We can and often should keep track of network
> > connections and report them accordingly. Whether that person gets punished
> > is not for us to say.
> > 
> > And in some cases this has to be handled proactively. This kind of
> > subcontracting can create massive legal problems for some companies so even
> > if the manager goes and tells them to stop, its too late. Data has been
> > leaked and lawsuits start to fly.
> > 
> > Sadly there are a lot of people in the modern linux community that seem to
> > believe that their understanding of IT trumps everyone else. Small,
> > inexperienced minds that see their own personal use case as superior to all
> > others.
> > 
> > -Ben
> > 
> > --- Original Message ---
> > On Wednesday, April 19th, 2023 at 4:43 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt <
> > t...@portlandia-it.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > For employees it depends if they are exempt or not. Any supervisory
> > > employee who can fire people is automatically considered exempt and many
> > > other employee classifications (such as programming) are considered exempt
> > > as well. (exemption is once more IRS and state taxing authority
> > > determination that the company has no say over)
> > > 
> > > If the employee is exempt from overtime then it's illegal for the
> > > company to require that they work a certain number of hours, or at certain
> > > times. If the company DOES tell the employee this (that they have to track
> > > their time) then the employee can hit them for mandatory overtime (if they
> > > exceed 40 hours)
> > > 
> > > Exempt/non exempt classifications are more commonly referred to as
> > > salaried/hourly employees.
> > > 
> > > Long and short of it is you cannot use an online form to consider "work
> > > to be valid" for a salaried AKA exempt employee. Salaried employees are
> > > paid BY THE JOB not by being logged into something for a certain time.
> > > 
> > > Companies quite often forget that putting someone like a programmer on
> > > salary is a two way street. The benefit from the company's point of view 
> > > is
> > > they don't have to pay overtime for one of those work-round-the-clock-push
> > > times. But in exchange for that, the employee also doesn't have to work 40
> > > hours every week either. A decent salaried employee keeps an eye on time
> > > since it's an important metric for how much work is reasonable to expect a
> > > salaried employee to do but it is NOT the absolute metric.
> > > 
> > > Companies who have tried to do it differently - that is, not pay OT and
> > > make you work late during crunch time - and still make you work 40 hours -
> > > regularly end up paying very large fines and back salary to people when
> > > they get sued. It's healthy for that to happen for owners of those
> > > companies to get slapped silly f

Re: [PLUG] 3rd party vpn Defense evasion

[Ben Koenig]

Don't be such a dipshit.

Yes, HR and Management are responsible for taking corrective action against 
employees not doing their job. "Job" in this context being defined by that 
employees contract so there's no reason for us to speculate and pass judgement 
on whether or not IT should bother.

What you seem to be missing in your attempt to over-compensate for your sense 
of psychological supremacy is that in order to take correct action from a 
management perspective, IT has to identify the digital paper trail. That's what 
we do - We can and often should keep track of network connections and report 
them accordingly. Whether that person gets punished is not for us to say. 

And in some cases this has to be handled proactively. This kind of 
subcontracting can create massive legal problems for some companies so even if 
the manager goes and tells them to stop, its too late. Data has been leaked and 
lawsuits start to fly. 

Sadly there are a lot of people in the modern linux community that seem to 
believe that their understanding of IT trumps everyone else. Small, 
inexperienced minds that see their own personal use case as superior to all 
others. 
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, April 19th, 2023 at 4:43 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> For employees it depends if they are exempt or not. Any supervisory employee 
> who can fire people is automatically considered exempt and many other 
> employee classifications (such as programming) are considered exempt as well. 
> (exemption is once more IRS and state taxing authority determination that the 
> company has no say over)
> 
> If the employee is exempt from overtime then it's illegal for the company to 
> require that they work a certain number of hours, or at certain times. If the 
> company DOES tell the employee this (that they have to track their time) then 
> the employee can hit them for mandatory overtime (if they exceed 40 hours)
> 
> Exempt/non exempt classifications are more commonly referred to as 
> salaried/hourly employees.
> 
> Long and short of it is you cannot use an online form to consider "work to be 
> valid" for a salaried AKA exempt employee. Salaried employees are paid BY THE 
> JOB not by being logged into something for a certain time.
> 
> Companies quite often forget that putting someone like a programmer on salary 
> is a two way street. The benefit from the company's point of view is they 
> don't have to pay overtime for one of those work-round-the-clock-push times. 
> But in exchange for that, the employee also doesn't have to work 40 hours 
> every week either. A decent salaried employee keeps an eye on time since it's 
> an important metric for how much work is reasonable to expect a salaried 
> employee to do but it is NOT the absolute metric.
> 
> Companies who have tried to do it differently - that is, not pay OT and make 
> you work late during crunch time - and still make you work 40 hours - 
> regularly end up paying very large fines and back salary to people when they 
> get sued. It's healthy for that to happen for owners of those companies to 
> get slapped silly for trying to exploit workers from time to time.
> 
> Once more as I keep saying this needs to be handled from an employee 
> management standpoint via managers and HR not from the IT department trying 
> to play God and the managers being wussies and afraid to talk to employees.
> 
> Is it simply that a large number of IT people are on the autism spectrum and 
> have social anxiety disorder that they will literally waste weeks of company 
> time on elaborate technical solutions that can be handled in 5 minutes by a 
> manager walking up to an employee and saying "hey dude you know that thing 
> you are doing with the VPN, well knock it off"
> 
> Or is it that their anxiety disorder and desire to Play God just drives them 
> to believe that every other employee in the company is trying to screw IT???
> 
> Sheesh!!!
> 
> Ted
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG plug-boun...@pdxlinux.org On Behalf Of Daniel Ortiz
> 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2023 1:39 PM
> To: Portland Linux/Unix Group plug@pdxlinux.org
> 
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] 3rd party vpn Defense evasion
> 
> Disclaimer: some of the following if not all could be wrong.
> 
> Wouldn't it be easier to deal with the credentials side to avoid this problem 
> in the first place? To illustrate what I mean, here's a theoretical idea that 
> while it might be flawed (like potential security failures), could be useful 
> in terms of guidance. When an employee logs in, it sends an email to their 
> company Gmail account complete the login in procedure. They click the link to 
> a Google form which requires them to be logged in to their company Google 
> account for the submitted form to either work or be considered valid. Once, 
> it's submitted, a program will allow them to finish the login process. Also, 
> doing something with a company Google account could be helpful since 

Re: [PLUG] USB 3 port running very slowly - why?

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 18th, 2023 at 12:16 AM, American Citizen 
 wrote:


> Well, after doing some more digging, I found out that this drive is very
> limited in read/write speeds
> 
> And I did find a nice USB flash stick testing tool called "F3" (for
> Fight Flash Fraud) See https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3/
> 
> Finally, I consider this problem solved. (don't necessary assume gift
> drives are a prize)
> 
> - Randall

Ethics in Marketing strikes again!

Delivering speeds Up To* whatever the connector is capable of..

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Building pulseaudio-equalizer

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, April 16th, 2023 at 3:39 PM, Rich Shepard  
wrote:


> On Sun, 16 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > Ah ok so here is where we got real problems. First off, you don't want to
> > use pip. it makes it very difficult to remove packages later and can
> > result in a broken python installation.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> I've used pip when I could not find an SBo package.
> 
> > You can try starting the build with "meson build -Dpython=python2.7" to
> > make sure it selects the older python. If that doesn't work you might need
> > to seek other solutions since dealing with an incomplete python stack is a
> > project all on it's own.
> 
> 
> Wait ... meson wants python2 and not python3?
> 
> Nope:
> $ meson build -Dpython=python2.7
> Traceback (most recent call last):
> File "/usr/bin/meson", line 6, in 
> 
> from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
> File 
> "/home/rshepard/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pkg_resources/init.py", 
> line 3324, in 
> 
> def _initialize_master_working_set():
> File 
> "/home/rshepard/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pkg_resources/init.py", 
> line 3298, in _call_aside
> f(*args, **kwargs)
> File 
> "/home/rshepard/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pkg_resources/init.py", 
> line 3336, in _initialize_master_working_set
> working_set = WorkingSet._build_master()
> File 
> "/home/rshepard/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pkg_resources/init.py", 
> line 629, in _build_master
> ws.require(requires)
> File 
> "/home/rshepard/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pkg_resources/init.py", 
> line 966, in require
> needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
> File 
> "/home/rshepard/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pkg_resources/init.py", 
> line 827, in resolve
> dist = self._resolve_dist(
> File 
> "/home/rshepard/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pkg_resources/init.py", 
> line 868, in _resolve_dist
> raise DistributionNotFound(req, requirers)
> pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: The 'meson==0.59.2' distribution was not 
> found and is required by the application
> 
> Yet,
> $ ls /var/log/packages/ | grep meson
> meson-0.59.2-x86_64-2
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rich

 you'll figure it out. sink or swim. Most of the slackware community has 
pretty much given up using python on 14.2 for this exact reason. 

And you've been using pip so this ones on you. 
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Building pulseaudio-equalizer

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, April 16th, 2023 at 1:35 PM, Rich Shepard  
wrote:


> On Sun, 16 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > "meson build" didn't work?
> 
> 
> No:
> $ meson build
> Traceback (most recent call last):
> File "/usr/bin/meson", line 6, in 
> 
> from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
> ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'
> 
> Now I'm trying to learn why I can't install pkg_resources using pip with
> python3-3.9.10 installed here:
> # pip install pkg_resources
> bash: /usr/bin/pip: /usr/bin/python3.7: bad interpreter: No such file or 
> directory
> 
> There is no python3.7 installed:
> [root@salmo /usr/bin]# ls python*
> python@ python2-config@ python2.7-config* python3-sip* pythontex*
> python-config@ python2-sip* python3@ python3.9*
> python2@ python2.7* python3-config@ python3.9-config*
> 
> Rich

Ah ok so here is where we got real problems. First off, you don't want to use 
pip. it makes it very difficult to remove packages later and can result in a 
broken python installation.

Other than that, this type of thing is not unusual on 14.2 since it doesn't 
include a full python3 stack. Either you are missing a dependency, or meson 
hasn't been properly configured for the correct python version.

You can try starting the build with "meson build -Dpython=python2.7" to make 
sure it selects the older python. If that doesn't work you might need to seek 
other solutions since dealing with an incomplete python stack is a project all 
on it's own. 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Building pulseaudio-equalizer

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, April 16th, 2023 at 11:22 AM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Sun, 16 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > $ meson build
> > That is 'meson' then a SPACE then 'build'. They didn't tell you to run
> > meson.build, so why are you executing the file manually? Did you just
> > assume that they made a mistake?
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Well, I assumed that 'mason.build' was the file name, not the command 'mason
> build.' So, ...
> $ mason build
> -bash: mason: command not found
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rich

"meson build" didn't work?

mason meson mason meson mason meson..

Re: [PLUG] Building pulseaudio-equalizer

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, April 16th, 2023 at 10:36 AM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Sun, 16 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > > I'm stuck at the first command:
> > > $ mason.build
> > > -bash: mason.build: command not found
> 
> > Run the command provided in their README.
> > $ meson build
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Isn't that what I did with bash telling me the command's not found?
> 
> Now, combining the first two lines from the README's build and install
> section I get this result:
> $ sh meson.build
> meson.build: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token 
> `'pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa',' meson.build: line 1:` 
> project('pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa','
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rich

As mentioned in their instructions, you run the meson command with the build 
argument.

$ meson build

That is 'meson' then a SPACE then 'build'. They didn't tell you to run 
meson.build, so why are you executing the file manually? Did you just assume 
that they made a mistake? 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Building pulseaudio-equalizer

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, April 16th, 2023 at 10:11 AM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> To build LAD's improved fork of pulseaudio-equalizer I built the two
> dependencies not present on my system: ladswa and fftw. Now I have all
> needed dependencies:
> ## Dependencies
> 
> * Meson ≥ 0.46 & Ninja
> * GTK+ 3
> * Python ≥ 2.7 or 3
> * PyGObject ≥ 3.30
> * SWH Plugins
> * Pulseaudio
> * bash & bc
> 
> and when I try to implement the build sequence:
> ## Build & Install
> 
> ```sh
> meson build
> cd build
> ninja
> (sudo) ninja install
> 
> I'm stuck at the first command:
> $ mason.build
> -bash: mason.build: command not found
> [rshepard@salmo pulseaudio-equalizer]$ ./meson.build
> -bash: ./meson.build: Permission denied
> 
> The mason.build perms are:
> -rw-r--r-- 1 rshepard users 738 Apr 16 09:45 meson.build
> 
> What have I done incorrectly?
> 
> TIA,
> 
> Rich

Run the command provided in their README.

$ meson build

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Headphone issues

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Friday, April 14th, 2023 at 1:29 PM, Rich Shepard  
wrote:


> On Fri, 14 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > Now if you want to stop randomly moving things from one port to another in
> > a desperate attempt to get it working, then we can probably go through and
> > actually troubleshoot the problem.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Testing ports is generally considered a good first step. Now I know that I
> get stereo sound from the rear panel 3.5mm (green) audio output, the
> headphones will stay there.
> 
> > Like I mentioned in my original response there's something screwy with
> > what you described in pavucontrol and given the discrepancy you just ran
> > into between your browser and zoom you are just confirming my suspicion.
> 
> > - remove all extra devices and make sure it works with the most minimal
> > hardware setup.
> 
> 
> Microphone + headphones; speakers turned off
> 
> > your devices and make whatever adjustments are needed in pavucontrol to
> > get audio in/out
> 
> 
> Audio in is not an issue; it works with Zoom and Jitsi.
> 
> The last time I futzed with this issue pavucontrol's configuration tab
> recognized speakers and headphone and let me select which I wanted. Now it's
> not recognizing that headphones are connected.
> 
> I wish you a quick, and completely, recovery from your COVID19 infection. A
> news article today said the likelihood of long COVID is less with a second
> infection than with a first one. I hope you never have to face that.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rich

This COVID #2. When I got it the first time the vaccines were only approved for 
old people so I had to tough it out but it was mild for me. This time it was 
moderate, with a nice high feve. I actually tested negative yesterday but still 
working through the symptoms. This whole week sucked.

As for your troubleshooting, maybe I should clarify my point about 
jack-sensing

Yes, I GET IT. I AM WELL AWARE THAT MOVING TO A DIFFERENT PORT IS A 
TROUBLESHOOTING STEP. That's not in dispute. What I'm saying is that pulse will 
get confused when you do that. Just because it has the ability to detect 
whether or not a jack is plugged in doesn't mean that it will get it right. It 
often gets it WRONG.

Also, pulse has another feature that you need to take into consideration. 
Whenever you plug in heaphones, pulseaudio likes to be "user friendly" and 
switch to that device. This means that when you move to a different port to 
verify functionality, the settings may reconfigure themselves and now things 
are different. So it makes it very difficult to follow the Rule of One to 
identify things like bad ports/cables. I've run into situations where I'm 
troubleshooting, just like you and suddenly all sound is being directed to my 
HDMI output. 

Whenever you move a device for testing to a new port, you have to verify that 
the inputs/ouputs didn't get bumped over to a completely different device. But 
since your description of what you see in pavucontrol doesn't make any sense, I 
have no idea if this is an issue of user error, hardware failure, or software 
failure. This is why I ask you to stop moving jacks around. Every time you move 
a jack, we have to start from the beginning. That's pulseuadio Working As 
Intended.

Or jacksensing could just be broken. It's broken on my system right now.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Headphone issues

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Friday, April 14th, 2023 at 12:46 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Fri, 14 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > For real though your description of Pavucontrol's display doesn't make any
> > sense. It looks like you are conflating the device list displayed in the
> > Output Devices tab with the drop down that allows you to select which Port
> > is currently in use. Are you looking for a missing USB audio device or are
> > you trying to configure which port your motherboard's sound chip is
> > outputting on?
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> See the update I just posted: news and youtube videos: sound; zoom test
> meeting no sound. As naive about computer audio as I am the results make no
> sense to me.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rich

It makes perfect sense. This isn't a straight-laced ALSA system from the late 
90's. There's jack sensing and stream-based audio processing. 

For Pulseaudio, each application gets its own audio stream. This stream can 
then be moved from one device to another without the application having to 
restart playback. So yes, there are going to be times where different 
applications behave differently. Your troubleshooting steps are adding more 
confusion to the problem. Now if you want to stop randomly moving things from 
one port to another in a desperate attempt to get it working, then we can 
probably go through and actually troubleshoot the problem. Like I mentioned in 
my original response there's something screwy with what you described in 
pavucontrol and given the discrepancy you just ran into between your browser 
and zoom you are just confirming my suspicion. You got some funky pavucontrol 
settings and moving to a different port is just going to make the problem 
worse, NOT BETTER.

Being naive has nothing to do with it. I'll tell you the same thing I tell all 
the Windows users I talk to about audio issues:

- remove all extra devices and make sure it works with the most minimal 
hardware setup. 
- once we confirm that basic audio is working we can add your devices and make 
whatever adjustments are needed in pavucontrol to get audio in/out

Normally on a Friday like this I'd be doing onsite tech support for a 
well-known shoe company, but I've got a nice big case of COVID. They use 
Mac/Windows, but this is one of the problems they often have and the solution 
is always the same. What OS you happen to be using is just minor details... 
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Headphone issues

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Friday, April 14th, 2023 at 12:03 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> My Panasonic RP-HT 161 stereo headphones were connected to the desktop
> through a mini-phone jack to USB adapter. When I used a Zoom test it told me
> the headphones worked. During the Zoom meeting, they didn't work.
> 
> Over the past several years I've used a pair of Creative Pebble speakers. I
> finally realized that while they're okay for streaming background music they
> are horrible for voice, distorting it so it's unintelligable; I'm replacing
> them this weekend with a pair of PreSonus Eris E3.5-3.5" near field studio
> monitors. While this change will allow me to hear videos, for a Zoom (or
> Jitsi) meeting they'll feed back to the Marantz Pro MPM-1000 condensor
> microphone, so I want to use headphones.
> 
> Pavucontrol didn't see the headphones using the USB connection. Connecting
> them to the output jack on the rear of the desktop pavucontrol the Output
> Devices tab shows ADA ATI HDMI (Digital Stereo [HDMI 2] Output unplugged),
> Line Out (plugged in) and Headphones (unplugged) and the Configuration tab
> shows HD-Audio Generic (Analog Stereo Duplex).
> 
> The Zoom meeting is being rescheduled but I need to fix the headphone issue.
> What might be the issue here?
> 
> TIA,
> 
> Rich

Let me refer you to my Sales team. One of them should reach out to you shortly 
with a quote for our Technical Support Services.


For real though your description of Pavucontrol's display doesn't make any 
sense. It looks like you are conflating the device list displayed in the Output 
Devices tab with the drop down that allows you to select which Port is 
currently in use. Are you looking for a missing USB audio device or are you 
trying to configure which port your motherboard's sound chip is outputting on?
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Help needed connecting a webcam to a zoom meeting

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, April 12th, 2023 at 8:07 AM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> One more issue needs resolving: Zoom does not recognize my Logitech C925e
> webcam. The camera is on (the green light flashes on and off). I started a
> new Zoom meeting (using the zoom-linux applicaion) and the video is crossed
> out.
> 
> Selected the menu and no cameras are shown as present and accounted for in
> the displayed options.
> 
> The Zoom help doesn't because there is no camera shown in the video menu.
> 
> Suggestions needed.
> 
> TIA,
> 
> Rich

Can you run the "groups" command and paste the output here? Make sure you run 
it in a terminal as the same user you use for zoom.

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Help needed connecting to a zoom meeting using browser [FIXED]

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 at 1:45 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > That means it found a zoom instance running and decided not to open
> > another one. This is typical zoom behavior.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Mea culpa! There was a zoom-linux instance in a small v.t. hidden behind the
> web browser window. I didn't see it until I clicked on a URL in the alpine
> message window which moved the browser to that virtual Xfce panel window.
> 
> So now in another panel window I can launch zoom-linux. Guess I don't need
> the phone number as I'll have a meeting ID and passcode.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Rich

Nice. I will miss the days when I was able to open as many copies of an 
application as I wanted.

If I want to fill up my 16GB RAM with duplicate copies of an app that's my 
business!
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Help needed connecting to a zoom meeting using browser

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 at 12:37 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
> > I don't know where to go from here.
> 
> 
> It occurred to me that the speakers are being used to stream music. I paused
> that application and ran the command again:
> 
> [rshepard@salmo zoom]$ ./ZoomLauncher
> [rshepard@salmo zoom]$
> 
> So it found pulseaudio running as the session daemon, but provided no output
> on the process or why it failed.
> 
> Rich

That means it found a zoom instance running and decided not to open another 
one. This is typical zoom behavior. 

- Check your system tray for a zoom icon.
- ps -A |grep zoom
- if nothing, reboot since your pulseaudio instance is probable buggered up.


What you are describing is what zoom is literally designed to do. 
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Help needed connecting to a zoom meeting using browser

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 at 12:34 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > Well that kind of depends on what the problem is. You need to be more
> > specific than "it don't work" because there are a bunch of things that can
> > happen and each one speaks to a different underlying cause.
> 
> > When you run it in the terminal, does it hang and hold onto the prompt?
> > Does it run and immediately exit?
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Well. Now a different response:
> $ ./ZoomLauncher
> ZoomLauncher started.
> Zoom path is: /opt/zoom
> cmd line:
> Start subprocess: /opt/zoom/zoom sucessfully, process pid: 5709
> Class App Lib Possible Culprit Flags
>
> ...
>
> 
> zoom started.
> No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.

you shouldn't be getting that error. 14.2 pulseaudio works out-of-the-box. 

> ...
> 
> zoom started.
> zoom started.
> Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/fonts.conf", line 102: unknown element "blank"
> Client: Breakpad is using Single Client Mode! client fd = -1
> Exit zoom as another zoom instance is running!
> zoom exited normally, exit code is 0 .
> ZoomLauncher exit.
> 
> And:
> $ pulseaudio
> E: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.
> E: [pulseaudio] main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.
> 

Don't do that. FFS dude, daemons are not something you just call directly. You 
don't check the status of an apache webserver by typing httpd, and you don't 
check the status of the pulseaudio sound server by typing pulseaudio.

There's a very strong chance that your various background daemons are all 
running out of order and you need to reboot to make sure everything has loaded 
in the correct order. You never just execute pulse directly you have to make 
sure it gets called appropriately so that it ties into the rest of the desktop 
session. 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Help needed connecting to a zoom meeting using browser

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 at 12:19 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > Have you tried running it from the terminal? It should say something.
> > It's possible that some of the underlying libs in 14.2 are too old.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> That's where I run it. If libs are too old wouldn't there be a message
> telling me that?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rich

Well that kind of depends on what the problem is. You need to be more specific 
than "it don't work" because there are a bunch of things that can happen and 
each one speaks to a different underlying cause. 

When you run it in the terminal, does it hang and hold onto the prompt? Does it 
run and immediately exit?

Do you see an icon in your system tray because Zoom can be configured to open 
straight into your tray without any message or warning. 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Help needed connecting to a zoom meeting using browser

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 at 11:17 AM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > What you probably need to do here is run the script for 15.0. Normally
> > this is a bad idea but apps like this are often just a repack of the
> > pre-built binaries into Slackware's .t?z format. I think the tradition
> > here is to dump these closed-source applications into /opt with whatever
> > libraries they need. It's very windows-y.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> I just upgraded the old zoom-5.5 to the current
> zoom-linux-5.14.2.2046-x86_64-1_SBo. But, /usr/bin/zoom-linux fails to load
> the application; so does the file to which that links:
> /opt/zoom/ZoomLauncher.
> 
> No error message. Nothing. Just won't load.
> 
> Your thoughts on this?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rich

Have you tried running it from the terminal? It should say something.

It's possible that some of the underlying libs in 14.2 are too old.

Re: [PLUG] Help needed connecting to a zoom meeting using browser

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, April 11th, 2023 at 10:50 AM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Jason Barnett wrote:
> 
> > Just use the "Join from your browser" option. You may have to clear
> > cookies if you previously gave that site permission to launch the
> > application.
> 
> 
> Jason,
> 
> That's what I did because the zoom-linux application doesn't work, either.
> Zoom hasn't supported Slackware for some reason, but I keep trying.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rich


Zoom works fine on Slackware. The build script from SBo should work just keep 
in mind that SBo may lag a little bit behind the upstream app. 

And you are on 14.2. The zoom-linux SBo script for 14.2 is still installing 
5.6. The most recent script (on 15.0) is building 5.14.2.2046. 

What you probably need to do here is run the script for 15.0. Normally this is 
a bad idea but apps like this are often just a repack of the pre-built binaries 
into Slackware's .t?z format. I think the tradition here is to dump these 
closed-source applications into /opt with whatever libraries they need. It's 
very windows-y.


-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Google Bard - entry level sys-admin, learning fast?

[Ben Koenig]

The initial response included instructions for scanpst.exe. I didn't copy it in 
because it was HUGE. Took forever for it to print out in their interface. 

But the reason I tried that question was because a few weeks ago I actually got 
that from a user at the company I'm working at. He was having an ongoing 
problem with this error message and previous attempts by tech support to fix it 
had failed. This included running scanpst.exe, but the problem kept coming back 
no matter how many times he rebooted his PC.

Turns out He was on windows 10 and kept doing a "cold boot" by shutting 
down the laptop ("shutdown" from the start menu) and then booting it back up. I 
had him try "restart" instead of "shut down" and the problem magically went 
away. Also resolved a few other issues as well. So I disabled FAST START (the 
feature responsible for the behavior that he was experiencing) and the user was 
super stoked to finally have this fixed.

This leads me to wonder if any AI chat technology sponsored by a given company 
will have the ability to question the functionality of a product designed by 
said company. Will MS-sponsored AI be able to recognize that Windows is just a 
piece of shit and consider implementing workarounds that DISABLE functionality 
that MS wants to push on users? Seems like a conflict of interest.

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, March 30th, 2023 at 12:41 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> What is COMPLETELY STUPID about that advice is the OST file is ONLY created 
> when Outlook is connected to an Exchange server and it is a duplicate of the 
> mailbox in the Exchange server database.
> 
> You also can't delete cached mode since the Exchange server sends out a GPO 
> that enforces whatever way it wants to setup.
> 
> So if it gets corrupted the fix is simple - delete the Outlook profile and 
> create a new one and login and the OST file will be recreated.
> 
> It is the PST file that you use repair tools and other such nonsense on. And 
> the Microsoft supplied tool is scanpst.exe
> 
> Incidentally the most common PST error I ever see is caused by corruption 
> from spams.
> 
> Ted
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG plug-boun...@pdxlinux.org On Behalf Of Ben Koenig
> 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2023 11:44 PM
> To: Portland Linux/Unix Group plug@pdxlinux.org
> 
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Google Bard - entry level sys-admin, learning fast?
> 
> --- Original Message ---
> On Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 at 6:13 PM, Keith Lofstrom kei...@kl-ic.com 
> wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > Career sys-admins, take note. You may want to retrain as a career
> > re-trainer; many sys-admins may soon be looking for new careers.
> > ...
> 
> 
> On this particular note... I decided to give chatgpt a test and see how it 
> handles a basic tech support question. I'm abbreviating the responses due to 
> hardcore mansplaining.
> 
> Q: My Outlook is giving me an error saying that the OST file is corrupted. 
> How do I fix it?
> 
> The provided response was pretty large. Lots of instructions for a tool that 
> repairs the OST file which is common. Also includes a last resort step to 
> recreate the file entirely. So I issued a follow up question...
> 
> Q: I tried to re-create my ost file but that didn't work.
> 
> A: It recommended disabling cached mode. Recommended using a third party tool 
> to repair the OST file, and then dropped this beautiful piece of advice into 
> the chat.
> 
> "If none of these solutions work, you may need to contact your IT department 
> or an IT professional for further assistance."
> 
> I just love how it repeated the standard MS response. Every BSoD includes 
> that message and being the LLM that it is, regurgitated what is probably one 
> of the most common error messages to ever exist. Do we have any reason to 
> believe that Bard is any better?
> 
> -Ben

Re: [PLUG] Google Bard - entry level sys-admin, learning fast?

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 at 6:13 PM, Keith Lofstrom  
wrote:
...
> Career sys-admins, take note. You may want to retrain as
> a career re-trainer; many sys-admins may soon be looking
> for new careers.
> ...

On this particular note... I decided to give chatgpt a test and see how it 
handles a basic tech support question. I'm abbreviating the responses due to 
hardcore mansplaining. 

Q: My Outlook is giving me an error saying that the OST file is corrupted. How 
do I fix it?

The provided response was pretty large. Lots of instructions for a tool that 
repairs the OST file which is common. Also includes a last resort step to 
recreate the file entirely.  So I issued a follow up question...

Q: I tried to re-create my ost file but that didn't work.

A: It recommended disabling cached mode. Recommended using a third party tool 
to repair the OST file, and then dropped this beautiful piece of advice into 
the chat.

"If none of these solutions work, you may need to contact your IT department or 
an IT professional for further assistance."

I just love how it repeated the standard MS response. Every BSoD includes that 
message and being the LLM that it is, regurgitated what is probably one of the 
most common error messages to ever exist. Do we have any reason to believe that 
Bard is any better?
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Google Bard - entry level sys-admin, learning fast?

[Ben Koenig]

Was that English? Or did the rules of grammar change when i wasn't looking?

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 at 10:22 PM, John Sechrest 
 wrote:


> Let me suggest that much of our understanding of reasoning is not in the
> boxes that we think it is in.
> 
> Let me point you to this paper:
> https://yoheinakajima.com/task-driven-autonomous-agent-utilizing-gpt-4-pinecone-and-langchain-for-diverse-applications/
> 
> and let me suggest that you look at what he is doing with http://yohei.me
> 
> and his twitter address http://twitter.com/yoheinakajima
> 
> A bit shift has happened. We are still in the process of understanding what
> it means.
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 10:05 PM MC_Sequoia mcsequ...@protonmail.com
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > "Career sys-admins, take note. You may want to retrain as
> > a career re-trainer; many sys-admins may soon be looking
> > for new careers."
> > 
> > Color me very skeptical. One large blind spot of AI is context and/or
> > situational understanding.
> > 
> > A few examples.
> > 
> > The AI that made a digital stick person fall on it's face then stand up on
> > its head and fall over again then repeat as the fastest way for the person
> > to get from point A to Point B.
> > 
> > The AI security camera that was defeated by a group of Marines who snuck
> > up on it by posing as a cardboard box, bush, trashcan or just by doing
> > somersaults and not moving like a normal human being would.
> > 
> > If I had a nickel for every time some newbie blew something up, whether
> > they be a sys-admin, developer, engineer, etc who didn't understand the
> > codebase, the problem, the network, the work flow, the use case, etc.
> > 
> > There are many ways to solve any given computer problem and usually we
> > humans have preferences in terms of efficiency, cost, elegance, simplicity,
> > service disruption, time, etc.
> > 
> > To me, that is the mark of intelligence. It's not just solving a given
> > problem but solving it in a way that takes many of those into account
> > and/or in order of priority and/or preference.
> > 
> > I mean, has any problem posted on the PLUG list ever been solved without a
> > fairly robust discussion regarding taking at least a few things into
> > consideration?
> 
> 
> --
> --
> [image: www.seattleangelconference.com]
> http://www.seattleangelconference.com/
> 
> 
> JOHN SECHREST
> *Founder, *Seattle Angel Conference
> TEL (541) 250-0844 EMAIL sechr...@seattleangel.com
> Schedule A Meeting http://sechrest.youcanbookme.com/
> 
> 
> http://seattleangelconference.com
> @nwangelconf
> 
> An Investor driven event bringing together new investors and new
> entrepreneurs to expand the startup ecosystem.

Re: [PLUG] Google Bard - entry level sys-admin, learning fast?

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 at 6:13 PM, Keith Lofstrom  
wrote:


> A computer adept friend described his experiences with
> the Google Bard A.I. (which is probably subscribed to
> this list, howdy Bard! Surname first, are you Asian?)
> 
> Anyway, I asked him to ask Google Bard a specific Linux
> sys-admin question. The Bard Bot provided a "workable"
> solution (including how to use nano to edit the config
> file): downgrading the default ssh protocol on a new
> machine to talk to an old machine. That does work,
> but screws up default ssh to other machines.
> 
> (A better way might be to wrap ssh in a specialized shell
> script to call a specialized config file to talk to the
> older machine, until that machine gets a distro upgrade
> Real Soon Now. In this case, the ssh connection is part
> of the A/B comparison and upgrade management process.)
> 
> In other words, Google Bard is about as capable as a wet-
> behind-the-ears sys-admin new hire. Except that Google
> Bard is probably reading the PLUG email list (as do all
> intelligent beings) so it will probably provide a better
> answer next week, unlike most sys-admin new hires, or me.
> 
> Career sys-admins, take note. You may want to retrain as
> a career re-trainer; many sys-admins may soon be looking
> for new careers.
> 
> Keith
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

So... Stackoverflow? 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Video card fan noise

[Ben Koenig]

you can run gkrellm to view the current speed. Also shows all your temps.

-Ben
Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Mar 26, 2023, 1:43 PM, Rich Shepard wrote:

> On Sun, 26 Mar 2023, American Citizen wrote: > 
> https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/radeon-500-series/radeon-rx-500-series/radeon-rx-580
>  > you could contact support and ask how to do fan control under linux I had 
> looked at the AMD web site and didn't see a support page. I'll look again. 
> Thanks, Rich

Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu MATE LTS 3 years vs 5 for non-LTS

[Ben Koenig]

That switch was an epic shitshow. Mostly due to GPU driver limitations and a 
complete lack of official OEM installation tools. Things might be different 
now. 

At the time, a lot of users actually asked if they could stay on the older XFCE 
based desktop. Mint didn't add any significant value to the end-user.

And I would know... I was part of the transition "team". 
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Friday, March 24th, 2023 at 1:38 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> I noticed that Free Geek switched to Mint for those PC's they sell a while 
> ago.
> 
> Screenshots of mint mate seem to be a mix of win 10, win 11 and MacOS desktop 
> stirred together with a strong win10 motif
> 
> But the $64k question can you still run older GTK2.0 apps on the desktop?
> 
> Ted
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG plug-boun...@pdxlinux.org On Behalf Of W7DAL
> 
> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2023 1:19 PM
> To: plug@pdxlinux.org
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu MATE LTS 3 years vs 5 for non-LTS
> 
> TryLinux Mint Mate latest version. They have finally made Linux user friendly 
> to the point I'm comfortable recommending it to non-tekkie friends. I've been 
> following Linux from the earliest days.
> 
> Good Luck!
> 
> -Dave
> 
> 
> On 3/24/2023 12:43 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 
> > I tried transitioning from Scientific Linux to Redhat LTS (not "L"
> > sadly). That went away.
> > 
> > Then I tried using Ubuntu Mate 20.04 LTS (horrid startup behaviors,
> > but 22.04 is worse). I get this email today:
> > 
> > -
> > As of 30 April 2023 Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS has reached EOL (End of
> > Life) and is no longer supported.
> > 
> > Being a long term release (LTS), official Ubuntu flavors are only
> > supported for 3 years, as opposed to Ubuntu's 5 years. This means
> > MATE components of your system will no longer receive updates after
> > today, but foundational components will continue to receive security
> > updates from Ubuntu.
> > -
> > 
> > Hrm. In Ubuntu-land, LTS long term support means less
> > time supported. And today is April 30.
> > 
> > So, sandwiched between way too many non-software engineering tasks,
> > I'm transitioning to Debian Mate.
> > So far, Debian is pain relief.
> > 
> > No promise of LTS, but upgrades seem effortless and the dancing
> > paperclips and snaps and gesture GUI are absent.
> > Smaller RAM footprint, therefore I can keep using my "tall-screen" 3x4
> > laptops for their principal function, reading and writing A and A4
> > format documents.
> > 
> > We'll see how this goes. I fear that gesture GUI (which requires
> > steady hands, no tremor) will eventually take over the Linux desktop,
> > so I may have less than a decade to complete
> > important-to-the-world-IMHO keyboard-driven computing and writing
> > tasks.
> > 
> > Sigh. The world will not end with a bang, instead a "tweet".
> > 
> > Keith L.

Re: [PLUG] lspci output and matching software to the actual hardware

[Ben Koenig]

lspci -k

If the name of a given device looks odd, check the date of your hwdata package.

-Ben

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Mar 20, 2023, 5:29 PM, American Citizen wrote:

> To all: The discussion concerning getting a monitor firmware code correct 
> brings up an interesting question: I just ran lspci on my system (under root 
> privileges) and got quite a long list: How do I assure that the CPU and 
> drivers for the controllers are correctly matched to the hardware? Or do we 
> naively assume that whatever (insert your favorite linux flavor here) will 
> get it right? Do we have to do some manual intervention here? lspci output 
> --> 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 DMI2 
> (rev 04) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 
> PCI Express Root Port 1a (rev 04) 00:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon 
> E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 PCI Express Root Port 2a (rev 04) 00:03.0 PCI 
> bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 PCI Express Root Port 
> 3a (rev 04) 00:05.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 
> v2/Core i7 VTd/Memory Map/Misc (rev 04) 00:05.2 System peripheral: Intel 
> Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 IIO RAS (rev 04) 00:05.4 PIC: Intel 
> Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 IOAPIC (rev 04) 00:11.0 PCI bridge: 
> Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset PCI Express Virtual Root Port (rev 
> 05) 00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network 
> Connection (Lewisville) (rev 05) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 
> C600/X79 series chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05) 00:1b.0 
> Audio device: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset High Definition Audio 
> Controller (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series 
> chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel 
> Corporation C600/X79 series chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b5) 00:1c.6 
> PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 
> (rev b5) 00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset PCI 
> Express Root Port 4 (rev b5) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 
> C600/X79 series chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI 
> bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel 
> Corporation C600/X79 series chipset LPC Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 RAID bus 
> controller: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset SATA RAID Controller 
> (rev 05) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset SMBus Host 
> Controller (rev 05) 02:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Intel 
> Corporation C602 chipset 4-Port SATA Storage Control Unit (rev 05) 05:00.0 
> VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208B [GeForce GT 710] (rev 
> a1) 05:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GK208 HDMI/DP Audio Controller 
> (rev a1) 07:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
> RTL8812AE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) 08:00.0 USB 
> controller: Texas Instruments TUSB73x0 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 xHCI Host 
> Controller (rev 02) 09:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): LSI Corporation FW322/323 
> [TrueFire] 1394a Controller (rev 70) 7f:08.0 System peripheral: Intel 
> Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 QPI Link 0 (rev 04) 7f:09.0 System 
> peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 QPI Link 1 (rev 
> 04) 7f:0a.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core 
> i7 Power Control Unit 0 (rev 04) 7f:0a.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 
> Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Power Control Unit 1 (rev 04) 7f:0a.2 System 
> peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Power Control 
> Unit 2 (rev 04) 7f:0a.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon 
> E5 v2/Core i7 Power Control Unit 3 (rev 04) 7f:0b.0 System peripheral: Intel 
> Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 UBOX Registers (rev 04) 7f:0b.3 
> System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 UBOX 
> Registers (rev 04) 7f:0c.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 
> v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Unicast Registers (rev 04) 7f:0c.1 System peripheral: 
> Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Unicast Registers (rev 04) 
> 7f:0c.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 
> Unicast Registers (rev 04) 7f:0d.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon 
> E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Unicast Registers (rev 04) 7f:0d.1 System 
> peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Unicast Registers 
> (rev 04) 7f:0d.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 
> v2/Core i7 Unicast Registers (rev 04) 7f:0e.0 System peripheral: Intel 
> Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Home Agent 0 (rev 04) 7f:0e.1 
> Performance counters: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v2/Xeon E5 v2/Core i7 Home 
> Agent 0 (rev 04) 7f:0f.0 System peripheral: 

Re: [PLUG] Verizon door to door sales ...

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 at 7:56 PM, Keith Lofstrom  wrote:


> On Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 02:29:19PM +0000, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > The sales pitch was dubious the moment someone mentioned it came from 
> > Verizon's door-to-door salesperson.
> > 
> > I didn't even know Verizon would show up in person to advertise their 
> > service and TBH, there's a possibility that they don't
> > 
> > -Ben
> 
> 
> Indeed, a Verizon door-to-door sales program seems less
> likely than thieves scouting the neighborhood for expensive
> home entertainment systems to burgle. Take pictures of
> those "sales reps", and learn if they are locals.
> 
> Question: do home security camera systems still upload
> security pictures when line power is shut down, perhaps
> by pulling off the power meter outside? Well organized
> criminals will disable surveillance.
> 
> Keith
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

As with any computer question... depends on how it was designed. 

But at least when it comes to Verizon we know that they DO engage in 
door-to-door sales at some level.
https://www.verizon.com/info/fios-door-to-door-sales-reps/

That said the fact that such a company does engage potential customers 
through this channel makes it more difficult to identify the fakes.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Venue for next month ...

[Ben Koenig]

Sidewalks are apparently not a thing in Hillsboro. For all the talk about big 
tech in Hillsboro the actual center of the city has yet to re-discover ancient 
Roman technology.

Last time I was actually down there the whole area closed up because someone 
made a run for it during a murder trial. Last 2 MAX stations were closed and 
the entire area was on lockdown. TBH  Hillsboro is like a white ghetto... 
people say great things but when you actually go there it's nothing but dingy 
SMBs and semi-homeless dudes looking for an opportunity. The whole place is 
spooky.

I've learned recently that the "Hillsboro experience" is not uniform. People 
love to mention all the tech companies out here but there are places where you 
can look behind the curtain and see a completely different world. Kinda like at 
the Olympics where they built that wall to hide the actual China from everyone. 
LOL

That giant Salesforce building always makes me laugh. It's right across from a 
dingy strip mall that has a church AND a gun store. That street is like 
Corporate America, God 'n Guns, and Woke culture staring each other down in a 
good 'ol Mexican Standoff. 
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Monday, March 6th, 2023 at 5:21 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> There's lots of places afterwards near Hawthorne Farms. But like any suburban 
> place they expect you to be driving cars to get to them. Mass Transit is sort 
> of a novelty out there. It's kind of like the token green thing they drag out 
> and show people to prove they care about the environment. LOL (disclaimer I 
> grew up a few miles from there)
> 
> Ted
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG plug-boun...@pdxlinux.org On Behalf Of Keith Lofstrom
> 
> Sent: Monday, March 6, 2023 2:52 PM
> To: Portland Linux/Unix Group plug@pdxlinux.org
> 
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Venue for next month ...
> 
> On Sun, Mar 05, 2023 at 01:54:29PM -0800, Michael Ewan wrote:
> 
> > If you can find a member at Intel or a sponsor there, the auditoriums
> > are free to use and are outside the security area. The Hawthorne
> > Farms site is ideal since it is on the MAX line. Of course that
> > implies people will want to travel to Hillsboro.
> 
> 
> I've attended many IEEE meetings at Intel Hawthorne Farms.
> The Max Blue Line stop is a 7 minute walk south of HF3.
> A meeting at Intel might attract some interesting speakers and attendees. Not 
> much nearby for afters.
> 
> But then, I live in Beaverton, and I've noticed that many Portlanders 
> encounter an invisible force barrier west of Washington Park, perhaps the 
> same force barrier that I encounter near Vancouver and Gresham and Gladstone.
> 
> Keith
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

Re: [PLUG] Venue for next month ...

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Monday, March 6th, 2023 at 7:07 PM, Russell Senior  
wrote:


> Larry Brigman larry.brig...@gmail.com writes:
> 
> > Take light rail to downtown Hillsboro (3rd street station?) to find a
> > few places for after-hours. Sports Look is right at the stop. Other
> > places are only a couple of blocks away.
> 
> 
> Fwiw, anecdotally, public transit time from Hillsboro Transit Center to
> my home in NE Portland is 1.5 hours (and 35 minutes by car).
> 
> 
> --
> Russell Senior
> russ...@pdxlinux.org

Is that bus or MAX? I often take the MAX between NE Portland to Hillsboro and 
1.5hrs seems excessive.

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Verizon towers for internet ... 20 miles, really?

[Ben Koenig]

The sales pitch was dubious the moment someone mentioned it came from Verizon's 
door-to-door salesperson. 

I didn't even know Verizon would show up in person to advertise their service 
and TBH, there's a possibility that they don't
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 at 5:51 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt 
 wrote:


> Actually what is happening more and more (especially in other countries) is 
> "micro cells"
> 
> Verizon for example has these micro cell stations. They don't really 
> advertise them but they sell them. You can buy one
> And plug it into your cable or other land line and it pumps out cell signal 
> at the max 1/4 watt FCC unlicensed rate which is enough to reach around 3-4 
> houses away in the city.
> 
> You will get absolutely guaranteed cell coverage. As will your neighbors.
> 
> A slightly higher power version of that is probably perched somewhere on one 
> of your neighborhood telephone poles.
> 
> What the carriers have found is you get too many idiots going on and on about 
> being "radiated to death by that big cell tower" in the city so they are more 
> and more avoiding siting fewer big large high cell towers, instead siting 
> more smaller cell towers. They want you to get evenly baked, LOL.
> 
> Ted
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: PLUG plug-boun...@pdxlinux.org On Behalf Of Keith Lofstrom
> 
> Sent: Monday, March 6, 2023 10:37 PM
> To: Denis Heidtmann denis.heidtm...@gmail.com
> 
> Cc: General Linux/UNIX discussion and help, civil and on-topic 
> p...@lists.pdxlinux.org
> 
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Verizon towers for internet ... 20 miles, really?
> 
> 
> In the REAL world, Cell service works by dividing a region into patches. As 
> customers become denser, larger patches are carved into many smaller patches 
> with LESS power per transmitter per patch, because (inverse square!) the data 
> beams need not reach as far.
> 
> 
> Keith
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

Re: [PLUG] List-Id: Portland Linux/Unix Group

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, March 5th, 2023 at 5:41 AM, Rich Shepard  
wrote:


> On Sat, 4 Mar 2023, Russell Senior wrote:
> 
> > Wes set the list hostname back to pdxlinux.org (from the temporary
> > lists.pdxlinux.org) which should make your old mail filters happy.
> 
> 
> My thanks again to Wes, Russell, and Michael for the time and effort they
> spent restoring the mail lists.
> 
> Rich

And David! I had no idea there was a David involved in all this ;)

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] PLUG "Marketing" and hosting input welcome

[Ben Koenig]

The softPLUG meetings have attracted a steady trickle of new users so I'm
going to continue that. I don't think "marketing" is the best term for this
puzzle. It's more of a longevity question. Is PLUG a personal project that
lives and dies with its founders, or do we want to take the next step and
setup something that can outlive everyone?

My approach to the online meetings came from experience with the Chess
community since I have some experience helping out with the Portland Chess
Club. I basically emulated what they do for their Wednesday "Casual Night"
and it seems to work perfectly. One suggestion I have is to not worry so
much about the actual technology or web platform used. pdxchess has been
around since 1911 and shows no signs of slowing down. This is especially
funny considering the state of the web infrastructure used by all chess
organizations in the NW region.

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I think we should learn from successful
strategies implemented by similar organizations.
-Ben

On Fri, Jan 20, 2023 at 10:09 PM Randy Bush  wrote:

> i am bimodal.  $dayjob is a bottom feeding scum sucking sillicone valley
> vendor who has not fired me yet.  my research and personal life is quite
> different.
>
> yes, i am on mastodon enoclue@iox.exchange.  my twitter accound has been
> dormant for ages.  i do not use facebook et alia.
>
> i run my own mail, dns, jitsi, xmpp, ..., usually debian or freebsd.  at
> least i no longer coordinate portland's fidonet :)
>
> i do not give a squat about external facing marketing stuff.  but i
> admit it would be good if new folk could find portland's geek community.
>
> randy, a surly old curmudgeon, but not as surly as keith :)
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Protonmail vs PLUG - The battle rages on

[Ben Koenig]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2023 at 12:12 AM Keith Lofstrom  wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 20, 2023 at 02:58:15PM -0800, Ben Koenig wrote:
> > Well, it appears that Proton has made their decision and are blaming PLUG
> > for this issue.
>
> > > Yes, that's correct. Proton Mail does not allow third-party services to
> > send messages on our behalf.
>
> It's their party, they can cry if they want to.  Protonmail
> is useful as a privacy-protecting email service, but is not
> useful as a general purpose tool.
>
> Perhaps we should explore alternatives to Protonmail that are
> (1) zealously protective of privacy, and (2) compatible with
> mailing lists like plug, and (3) incompatible with masquerade
> by spammers ... which I suspect motivates Protonmail's policy.
>
> From the 10,000 foot level, email seems to be broken, diluted
> by spam and abused by criminals, so perhaps we should find
> (or invent and sell) better baskets to put our precious
> communication eggs in.  No clue how; I run my own email
> server, and spend way too much time training spam filters.
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom  kei...@keithl.com


So I take issue with that approach. Not saying anyone has to change but
there's a problem that everyone says they want to fix, but never actually
does when the opportunity presents itself..

Protonmail is zealously protective at privacy, that's where it excels. The
problem is that their implementation creates ambiguity and fails to take
into consideration how email is actually used. My core problem is that if
they communicated this effectively then it would be a decision on their
end. Sales/Marketing tells me one thing, Support tells me something else.
If anything they are literally over-zealous, to the point of embarking on
an Inquisition to execute bad emails.

Now most people in this situation would say "meh, moving on to someone
else's product." But for me there's more to it. Forgive me for bringing
politics in, but political systems are nothing more than a management
system that reflects the cultures and societies that they manage. And right
now much of the "developed" world is having a bit of a problem with things
like facts, trust, and basic honesty. I mean, nobody here thinks Bill Gates
is a good person, but we've all heard the conspiracy theories, right?

It is easy to go and have an opinion here, but it's very different to
actually root cause where the confusion and anger comes from. When
companies (which are just big groups of people) get into a habit of
misleading and in some cases, intentionally lying it creates problems for
trust and throws off communication. We had an example of that here on PLUG
not long ago. The discussion regarding censorship via Cloudflare was rooted
in fear and concern. This invited someone attempting to correct the record,
and honestly neither of them were wrong. But we all know there are issues
with censorship, whether it be the result of malicious activity, technical
failure, or even the fact that someone can, if they felt the urge to cut
someone off.

I mean right now, Protonmail is silently dropping their own users' emails.
And what makes this so strange to me is that they have the technical
infrastructure to A) determine that an email might be spoofed and B) notify
the user. This is good, make identity verification something that I (the
User) am in full control of. Instead they are deciding that in the case of
other Proton users, drop the message, tell the recipient nothing, and move
on. A potentially legit message disappearing without a trace. No warning,
no FAQ, and no marketing material that tells me such a thing may happen?
That's sketchy, super fucking sketchy.

Email isn't broken, people are. Even those of us who claim to have
knowledge in this area have been known to do things incorrectly. Running
from one vendor to the next isn't going to change anything -  You just keep
running.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Protonmail vs PLUG - The battle rages on

[Ben Koenig]

Well, it appears that Proton has made their decision and are blaming PLUG
for this issue.

>From there support team:
*> Filip F.* (ProtonMail)

> Jan 20, 2023, 16:26 GMT+1
> Hello Ben,

> Thanks for the feedback. We apologize for the delayed response.

> Yes, that's correct. Proton Mail does not allow third-party services to
send messages on our behalf.

> Third-party servers should not use any Proton Mail address as the "From
Address" of an email. Emails sent this way would be dropped because they
would use an incorrect From Address.

> Thank you for your understanding.

> Kind regards,

> Filip F.
> Customer Support
> Proton Mail

"""

I still don't buy this, simply because if Proton wants to say that any
message where there is a discrepancy between the sender domain and the
"from" domain must be dropped, they should do so consistently. They let
through everyone else so I still call BS on them.

BUT, is PLUG in any way different from how other mailing lists operate?
i.e. LKML or any of the lists used by various distros. If the PLUG lists
are configured the way everyone does it then Proton is basically saying
everyone except them is doing it wrong.

-Ben

On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 7:22 AM Kevin Williams  wrote:

> Ben,
>
> I started migrating from Gmail to ProtonMail a few years ago, bought a
> paid plan, and parked my domain with them.
>
> I switched to Fastmail about four months ago, because proton mail does not
> support Mutt, or any email client without their local decryption bridge
> installed (no support for the BSDs).
>
> I still have a proton account, but without my domain there, and on the
> free plan. It’s a recovery address in case anything happens with my domain.
>
> Kevin
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2023, at 6:57 PM, Ben Koenig wrote:
> > Testing a working around. Father unit noticed some discrepencies with
> protonmail interop on other mailman lists.
> >
> >
> > -Ben
> >
> >
> > --- Original Message ---
> > On Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 8:55 AM, Ben Koenig <
> techkoe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > (responding from my gmail account now)
> > >
> > > So sure, there are technical nuances that are the underlying cause of
> this
> > > behavior. However, the whole point of a computer is consistent
> execution of
> > > a given policy. Regardless of protonmail's stance on this there are a
> > > number of problems with the way they have communicated it, expectations
> > > they have set, and even the technical side itself is in question.
> > >
> > > Mailing lists are a fact of how email is used. By configuring your
> server
> > > in a way that causes this situation you are effectively disabling
> support
> > > for things like Linux Kernel development (they work through the LKML).
> > > Saying that your Secure Email Service can't be used to assist in the
> > > development of one of the world's biggest Secure Operating Systems
> hardly
> > > seems like a reasonable business strategy. I'm not a dev or engineer,
> but I
> > > am an expert in Support and this is something that companies need to
> stop
> > > doing. I'm going through their support docs and have yet to find
> anything
> > > stating what I was just told. No FAQ's referencing this or any other
> > > warnings that this is not supported.
> > >
> > > There is also the double standard that the UI literally knows how to
> > > differentiate normal emails from list emails by displaying a message
> that
> > > says "This message is from a mailing list". Ths implies that protonmail
> > > does in fact support interop with mailman, despite their support team's
> > > claim that they do not. Their website (https://proton.me/mail) also
> > > suggests that mailing lists can be used with their service. So why am
> I now
> > > being told that they don't support it?
> > >
> > > I pay protonmail SPECIFICALLY for the honesty and support that comes
> with
> > > being a paying customer. I don't complain too harshly about the dumb
> shit
> > > gmail does because it costs me $0 to have gmail. If you don't like what
> > > google does - LEAVE. Not only am I considering cancelling my
> subscription,
> > > but I have half a mind to reach out to a lawyer and see if this can be
> > > considered false advertising. I really don't care who is to blame for
> this
> > > shit, because upper managers at tech companies need to learn how to
> keep
> > > their entire organization synchronized.
> > >
> > > Sell

Re: [PLUG] Protonmail vs PLUG - The battle rages on

[Ben Koenig]

Testing a working around. Father unit noticed some discrepencies with 
protonmail interop on other mailman lists.


-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 8:55 AM, Ben Koenig  
wrote:


> (responding from my gmail account now)
> 
> So sure, there are technical nuances that are the underlying cause of this
> behavior. However, the whole point of a computer is consistent execution of
> a given policy. Regardless of protonmail's stance on this there are a
> number of problems with the way they have communicated it, expectations
> they have set, and even the technical side itself is in question.
> 
> Mailing lists are a fact of how email is used. By configuring your server
> in a way that causes this situation you are effectively disabling support
> for things like Linux Kernel development (they work through the LKML).
> Saying that your Secure Email Service can't be used to assist in the
> development of one of the world's biggest Secure Operating Systems hardly
> seems like a reasonable business strategy. I'm not a dev or engineer, but I
> am an expert in Support and this is something that companies need to stop
> doing. I'm going through their support docs and have yet to find anything
> stating what I was just told. No FAQ's referencing this or any other
> warnings that this is not supported.
> 
> There is also the double standard that the UI literally knows how to
> differentiate normal emails from list emails by displaying a message that
> says "This message is from a mailing list". Ths implies that protonmail
> does in fact support interop with mailman, despite their support team's
> claim that they do not. Their website (https://proton.me/mail) also
> suggests that mailing lists can be used with their service. So why am I now
> being told that they don't support it?
> 
> I pay protonmail SPECIFICALLY for the honesty and support that comes with
> being a paying customer. I don't complain too harshly about the dumb shit
> gmail does because it costs me $0 to have gmail. If you don't like what
> google does - LEAVE. Not only am I considering cancelling my subscription,
> but I have half a mind to reach out to a lawyer and see if this can be
> considered false advertising. I really don't care who is to blame for this
> shit, because upper managers at tech companies need to learn how to keep
> their entire organization synchronized.
> 
> Selling access to a web service isn't just about how it works. It's about
> setting expectations and building trust. And in this case, a bunch of
> scientists from CERN just abused my trust and I can either challenge them
> on a field of facts... or I can "lie back and take it". Since PLUG has
> several other protonmail users, I suggest they contact support and ask
> what's up.
> 
> -Ben
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 8:22 AM Jason Barbier ja...@corrupted.io wrote:
> 
> > I can tell you they are right and wrong, I get protonmail replies from the
> > list but I had to go monkey around with my spam settings to ensure they
> > land in my inbox. What they do is have all their spam controls like dmarc
> > and spf set to hard fail, when your service evaluates the message PLUGs
> > mail servers are not on the allow list, your servers spam filters do what
> > they do which for a lot of people its stuff it in the big dev null in the
> > sky. Now the part where protonmail is wrong is they can't force my servers
> > to do anything what they do with the info protonmail gives me is still in
> > my control.
> > There is little that can be done to fix this, the only real way to fix it
> > is changing the mailman behavior to send from an address on the plug domain
> > which has its own problems. The only reason that is the only real way is
> > regardless of protonmail or any other service changing parts of thier spam
> > controls mailman is still spoofing addresses and will still fail dkim and
> > other more advanced controls, and it would honestly not be a workable
> > solution to try and allow list serves to send as your domain. This breaks a
> > lot of the behavior of things like listservs but spammers and advertisers
> > once again ruin something for everyone
> > 
> > On 18 at 08:01 someone claiming to be Ben Koenig said:
> > 
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > As I've mentioned recently, I've been having trouble receiving emails
> > > from this list when the sender is using a protonmail.com account. Since
> > > this appears to be protonmail specific, I contacted their support team,
> > > provided an example message (with timestamp) and confirmed that this
> > > was through a mailing list (runn

Re: [PLUG] Protonmail vs PLUG - The battle rages on

[Ben Koenig]

(responding from my gmail account now)

So sure, there are technical nuances that are the underlying cause of this
behavior. However, the whole point of a computer is consistent execution of
a given policy. Regardless of protonmail's stance on this there are a
number of problems with the way they have communicated it, expectations
they have set, and even the technical side itself is in question.

Mailing lists are a fact of how email is used. By configuring your server
in a way that causes this situation you are effectively disabling support
for things like Linux Kernel development (they work through the LKML).
Saying that your Secure Email Service can't be used to assist in the
development of one of the world's biggest Secure Operating Systems hardly
seems like a reasonable business strategy. I'm not a dev or engineer, but I
am an expert in Support and this is something that companies need to stop
doing. I'm going through their support docs and have yet to find anything
stating what I was just told. No FAQ's referencing this or any other
warnings that this is not supported.

There is also the double standard that the UI literally knows how to
differentiate normal emails from list emails by displaying a message that
says "This message is from a mailing list". Ths implies that protonmail
does in fact support interop with mailman, despite their support team's
claim that they do not. Their website (https://proton.me/mail) also
suggests that mailing lists can be used with their service. So why am I now
being told that they don't support it?

I pay protonmail SPECIFICALLY for the honesty and support that comes with
being a paying customer. I don't complain too harshly about the dumb shit
gmail does because it costs me $0 to have gmail. If you don't like what
google does - LEAVE. Not only am I considering cancelling my subscription,
but I have half a mind to reach out to a lawyer and see if this can be
considered false advertising. I really don't care who is to blame for this
shit, because upper managers at tech companies need to learn how to keep
their entire organization synchronized.

Selling access to a web service isn't just about how it works. It's about
setting expectations and building trust. And in this case, a bunch of
scientists from CERN just abused my trust and I can either challenge them
on a field of facts... or I can "lie back and take it". Since PLUG has
several other protonmail users, I suggest they contact support and ask
what's up.
-Ben

On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 8:22 AM Jason Barbier  wrote:

> I can tell you they are right and wrong, I get protonmail replies from the
> list but I had to go monkey around with my spam settings to ensure they
> land in my inbox. What they do is have all their spam controls like dmarc
> and spf set to hard fail, when your service evaluates the message PLUGs
> mail servers are not on the allow list, your servers spam filters do what
> they do which for a lot of people its stuff it in the big dev null in the
> sky. Now the part where protonmail is wrong is they can't force my servers
> to do anything what they do with the info protonmail gives me is still in
> my control.
> There is little that can be done to fix this, the only real way to fix it
> is changing the mailman behavior to send from an address on the plug domain
> which has its own problems. The only reason that is the only real way is
> regardless of protonmail or any other service changing parts of thier spam
> controls mailman is still spoofing addresses and will still fail dkim and
> other more advanced controls, and it would honestly not be a workable
> solution to try and allow list serves to send as your domain. This breaks a
> lot of the behavior of things like listservs but spammers and advertisers
> once again ruin something for everyone
>
> On 18 at 08:01 someone claiming to be Ben Koenig said:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > As I've mentioned recently, I've been having trouble receiving emails
> > from this list when the sender is using a protonmail.com account. Since
> > this appears to be protonmail specific, I contacted their support team,
> > provided an example message (with timestamp) and confirmed that this
> > was through a mailing list (running Mailman). Here is the response I
> > got:
> >
> > """
> > Hello,
> >
> > Thanks for the feedback.
> >
> > Please note that sending a message on a behalf of Proton Mail by using
> > a third-party service is not allowed, and that's the reason why you
> > didn't receive the message.
> >
> > We set our system that way in order to protect Proton Mail’s IP
> > reputation and ensure all messages sent from Proton Mail are delivered
> > to your recipient’s inbox — not their spam folder
> >
> > We apologize for not being 

[PLUG] Protonmail vs PLUG - The battle rages on

[Ben Koenig]

Hi all,

As I've mentioned recently, I've been having trouble receiving emails from this 
list when the sender is using a protonmail.com account. Since this appears to 
be protonmail specific, I contacted their support team, provided an example 
message (with timestamp) and confirmed that this was through a mailing list 
(running Mailman). Here is the response I got:

"""
Hello,

Thanks for the feedback.

Please note that sending a message on a behalf of Proton Mail by using a 
third-party service is not allowed, and that's the reason why you didn't 
receive the message.

We set our system that way in order to protect Proton Mail’s IP reputation and 
ensure all messages sent from Proton Mail are delivered to your recipient’s 
inbox — not their spam folder

We apologize for not being able to assist you on this matter.

Kind regards,

Filip F.
Customer Support
Proton Mail

"""

Obviously I'm not pleased with that response. BUT I faintly recall someone else 
on this list using this particular service once replied to one of my emails, 
but of course I never saw it, just another user's reply.

For any protonmail users on PLUG that do receive this message, can you please 
reply to verify that you did? According to their support team under no 
circumstances should you be seeing this message.

Given that I likely won't see your response, also send a different email 
(+different subject) to me directly so that I can compare.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Powered USB-A hub

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Monday, January 16th, 2023 at 4:12 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 17 Jan 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > Whoops, no AR/VR is Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. As in VR
> > headsets. I've seen a lot of motherboards brag about USB ports that are
> > dedicated to that purpose which just means that it's a more robust
> > implementation.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Oh. I've always found reality to be ideal, just as it is.

LOL. When someone figures out how to build a reality where powered USB hubs 
don't need to be power cycled regularly, I'll hop onboard. Until then I'm 
staying with the one we got. 

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Powered USB-A hub

[Ben Koenig]

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Monday, January 16th, 2023 at 3:50 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Mon, 16 Jan 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > That's probably fine. My rule of thumb is to not PLUG higher end hubs into
> > lower end ports. e.g. a bunch of USB 3.0 devices in a hub that connects to
> > a USB 2.0 host.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Makes sense to me.
> 
> > But it sounds like your board has some of the fancier new ports. I bet
> > it's listed as a single port because newer USB speeds can do a multi-lane
> > thing for higher speeds. I bet both connects are tied together so if you
> > leave one empty you might actually get the full 10Gbps. But using both
> > simultaneously will probably throttle each to 5Gbps.
> 
> 
> I'm not concerned about data transfer rates, but preparing video tutorials.
> 
> > So it should be fine. You aren't doing any serious data transfers or AR/VR
> > so it should handle things. Test and verify the hub when you get it since
> > they can be wonky. Especially the bigger hubs, 10 external ports is the
> > pinnacle of hedonism.
> 
> 
> I assume AR and VR refer to audio recording and video recording? If so,
> that's just what I want to do.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rich

Whoops, no AR/VR is Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. As in VR headsets. 
I've seen a lot of motherboards brag about USB ports that are dedicated to that 
purpose which just means that it's a more robust implementation. 

I looked up your mobo and it looks like it has that setup. On the back of the 
PRIME X470-PRO there is a single USB Type A connector right next to a USB-C 
connector. This is actually a single port, and you should treat it as such. If 
you plug your HUB into one of those ports and leave the other empty then it 
probably won't get cranky when other stuff is happening. You can even get a 
USB-C compatible hub to minimize RF interference!

Also, logitech webcams don't count as video recording so as long as you keep it 
simple you should be fine. It's not like you are pulling down 1080p frames at 
30fps in a lossless format.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Powered USB-A hub

[Ben Koenig]

That's probably fine. My rule of thumb is to not PLUG higher end hubs into 
lower end ports. e.g. a bunch of USB 3.0 devices in a hub that connects to a 
USB 2.0 host. 

But it sounds like your board has some of the fancier new ports. I bet it's 
listed as a single port because newer USB speeds can do a multi-lane thing for 
higher speeds. I bet both connects are tied together so if you leave one empty 
you might actually get the full 10Gbps. But using both simultaneously will 
probably throttle each to 5Gbps. 

So it should be fine. You aren't doing any serious data transfers or AR/VR so 
it should handle things. Test and verify the hub when you get it since they can 
be wonky. Especially the bigger hubs, 10 external ports is the pinnacle of 
hedonism.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Monday, January 16th, 2023 at 3:21 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Mon, 16 Jan 2023, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > What kind of USB ports does your desktop have? Check version and detected
> > speed.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> The Asus PRIME X470-PRO in this desktop has:
> - 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (up to 5Gbps) at back panel (blue)
> - 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gbps) front panel connector (yet, there are 2
> ports visible on the front panel.)
> - etc on mid-board
> 
> The front panel has mic (red) and headphone (green) ports on the front.
> Perhaps, I could connect the headphone mini-phono plug in the green port,
> perhaps a USB-A female port -> mini-phone plug for the microphone/Focusrite
> 
> pre-amp, and use one of the front panel ports for the webcam. But, a USB hub
> would be more convenient; I'd leave the components attached and connect the
> hub to the desktop when needed.
> 
> Your advice, please,
> 
> Rich

Re: [PLUG] Powered USB-A hub

[Ben Koenig]

What kind of USB ports does your desktop have? Check version and detected speed.

-Ben
Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Jan 16, 2023, 2:49 PM, Rich Shepard wrote:

> Hi hardware gurus, I have a couple of low cost, powered USB-A hubs, but they 
> are limited to the input devices they'll support. The front panel of my 
> desktops have 2 USB-A ports. I want to connect a Focusrite microphone 
> pre-amp, a Logitech web cam, and a Panasonic headphone to a powered hub that 
> is connected to a single desktop (or laptop). My web search finds a SABRENT 
> 60W 10 Port USB 3.0 Hub, an ACASIS 16 Ports 90W USB 3.0 Data Hub, an Anker 10 
> Port 60W Data Hub, and others with lower listed power, or no listed power. 
> Would any of these be suitable for my application? Rich

Re: [PLUG] Mozilla Firefox, Cloudflare DNS Resolver and Digital Citizenship

[Ben Koenig]

Not to derail someone else's conversation here, but I can't help but point out 
the absurd circumstances surrounding this message.

>From my perspective, you have provided a very spirited response to what I can 
>only guess was Mike's critique of your attitude towards censorship. Looks like 
>he might have been trying to set the record straight, but of course I'll never 
>know because I never saw his email show up on this list. 

And, as it turns out after a quick review of PLUG's email archives, I've not 
received any of the emails he has sent to this list. If I wasn't the type of 
person who enjoys investigating discrepencies in a repeating pattern then I 
would probably just continue my life of blissful ignorance in a world where 
"MC_Sequoia " does not exist, and "American Citizen 
" is just some random internet weirdo who responds 
to imaginary messages.

Funny isn't it, the conclusions we can come to when communication breaks down? 
I could assume that I'm being targeted for my anti-google views or I could 
shrug it off as some minor technical mishap. Or I could assume nothing and send 
a message to the relevant support group and make it their problem. Kind of 
sucks to be in that situation where I'm just stuck between two organizations 
with no personal control over either. I am at the mercy of the PLUG List admins 
and Proton Mail support team. Ya

I just think it's amusing to see a conversation about censorship get 
"censored". Clearly someone doesn't want me to see Mike's opinions on this 
subject. #SARCASM
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Sunday, January 15th, 2023 at 7:21 PM, American Citizen 
 wrote:


> Hello Mike:
> 
> My post has engendered quite a response. I appreciate that you are
> willing to go through with a fine toothed comb to get to the bottom of
> everything.
> 
> I am willing to be corrected. I trust that what I have said does not
> come over with a air of self-righteousness (or virtue signaling)
> 
> I apologize and ask to retract my statement "force" inferring that COO
> Michelle Zatlyn said that, as that is not true as you have pointed out.
> Thank you for correcting this misstatement. Actually when I composed my
> post, I thought I might be making a mistake here.
> 
> Please listen to
> https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/wef/schwab-wants-a-digital-citizenship-to-use-the-internet/
> at 1 min 20 secs into this interview where Cloudflare COO Michelle
> Zatlyn stumbled around saying "better digital citizenship" but she wants
> everyone in the world to embrace digital citizenship. This is pretty
> plain from what she said.
> 
> I am NOT unaware of the goals of the WEF community to establish the
> digital citizenship requirements (see https://www.dqindex.org/en/)
> 
> But I am NOT in favor of unelected people to have the final say so as to
> who is allowed to say so on the internet and who can be censored. I
> trust that you agree with this. We need to have an open discussion about
> who we are allowing to have the final word and why we believe this.
> 
> The past 2 or 3 weeks, I have carefully documenting censorship via the
> major search engines and this is an alarming discovery which should
> concern everyone on the planet. I did NOT ask to be censored from
> certain websites, such as the United States Geological Survey, yet here
> I am. And I did NOT ask certain topics on the search engines to be
> censored, but this has occurred.
> 
> We need to have free and open discussions, not be censored by some
> entity based in the United Nations or elsewhere claiming that they have
> the last word. This is assuming authority.
> 
> I appreciate that you have taken the time to carefully respond.
> 
> And I agree with you that trust begins with an honest intention to have
> an open-minded discussion based upon facts, data and sound logic.
> 
> Thank you for your post. It is appreciated by me.
> 
> Randall
>

Re: [PLUG] question on how to fix a mysterious DNS address problem

[Ben Koenig]

That's probably coming from your router or networkmanager. I very much doubt 
your ISP is setting that. 

resolv.conf is written by networking daemons running on your local system, so 
I'd start looking at whatever is configuring your network locally first, then 
work from there.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, January 5th, 2023 at 4:58 PM, American Citizen 
 wrote:


> Some more information here about DNS 10.0.18.1
> 
> from URL https://www.lookip.net/ip/10.0.18.1
> 
> 10.0.18.1
> 
> Here you can find all lookup results for private IP address 10.0.18.1.
> If you are trying to find how to login to your internet router, modem,
> extender or wireless access point, you can access the built-in HTML
> webpage by clicking the following link for http or https.
> 
> The most used default username and password to gain access to the
> administrative interface is 'admin' or 'setup' and in case of a TP Link,
> Netgear or D-Link wireless (or Wi-Fi) router you can also find the
> default settings on the back of the device. If this doesn't work or you,
> then you could choose to reset the router. To do this, you need to press
> and hold it's reset button for approximately 10 seconds. This will
> restore the factory settings and enables you to log in with the details
> specified on the sticker.
> 
> IP address 10.0.18.1 is registered by the Internet Assigned Numbers
> Authority (IANA) as a part of private network 10.0.18.0/24.
> IP addresses in the private space are not assigned to any specific
> organization, including your ISP (Internet Service Provider), and
> everyone is allowed to use these IP addresses without the consent of a
> regional Internet registry as described in RFC 1918, unlike public IP
> addresses.
> 
> However, IP packets addressed from a private range cannot be sent
> through the public Internet, and so if such a private network needs to
> connect to the Internet, it has to be done through a network address
> translator (also called NAT) gateway, or a proxy server (usually
> reachable on port 8080 or 8081 if it doesn't work directly).
> 
> An example of a NAT gateway would be a wired or wireless router you
> receive from a broadband provider. A gateway web interface should be
> available through the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and/or HTTPS
> (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) protocols. To try this, you should
> enter 'http://ip address' or 'https://ip address' in the address bar of
> your favorite web browser like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox and log
> in with the username and password provided by your provider.
> 
> You can use these types of (private network) IP addresses in your local
> network and assign it to your devices such as a personal computer,
> laptop, tablet and/or smartphone. It is also possible to configure a
> range within a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server to do
> the IP assigning automatically.
> 
> ===
> 
> does this mean my internet provider is sneaking in this DNS covertly?
>

Re: [PLUG] Resolved: Adding an AppImage to a panel in Xubuntu

[Ben Koenig]

For reference, here's the document that defines what you can put in those 
launchers:
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#exec-variables

Looks like you either need to specify an absolute path, or make sure the app is 
in a folder specified by $PATH. Most DE's and even some window managers 
implement XDG so this is distro agnostic. 
-Ben

--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, January 4th, 2023 at 1:50 PM, Dick Steffens 
 wrote:


> On 1/4/23 12:22, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > The XDG launchers used in most Desktop environments don't have the ability 
> > to use shell expansion ($ variables or ~). So you need to specify the full 
> > path. Most GUI tools to create a launcher will have a file selecter that 
> > you can use, and you might notice that after selecting your file it inputs 
> > the full path.
> > 
> > You might be able to set a "working directory" in the launcher, and then 
> > just specify the name of the file you want to execute.
> > 
> > There might be variables available per the XDG specification, but I can't 
> > remember what they are. I'm pretty sure there is a syntax to specify the 
> > user.
> 
> 
> That worked. I put /home/rsteff in front of the rest of the string. Also
> I was able to choose the working directory in the Launcher widget by
> clicking on a file folder icon. After that, I was able to click on the
> file folder icon next to the command selector and it took the .appimage
> file for OpenShot in that directory.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> --
> Regards,
> 
> Dick Steffens

[PLUG] January 2022 - softPLUG Jitsi Meeting

[Ben Koenig]

Hi all,

Tomorrow is the first first Thursday of 2022!

For newer members, this is when we typically host our monthly PLUG Talks for 
advanced and/or interesting topics. However, pending a return to in-person 
meetings I am hosting a casual, online meeting via Jitsi. There is no specific 
topic, this is just an opportunity to interact outside the confines of our 
email inboxen. All Linux (and BSD!) related questions/gossip/news are welcome.

Who: You!
When: Thursday, 1/5/2022 @ 7:00PM Pacific Time
Where:https://meet.jit.si/PDXLinux

Feel free to hop in whenever works for you. I'm holding the virtual door open 
until 8PM.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Adding an AppImage to a panel in Xubuntu

[Ben Koenig]

The XDG launchers used in most Desktop environments don't have the ability to 
use shell expansion ($ variables or ~). So you need to specify the full path. 
Most GUI tools to create a launcher will have a file selecter that you can use, 
and you might notice that after selecting your file it inputs the full path. 

You *might* be able to set a "working directory" in the launcher, and then just 
specify the name of the file you want to execute. 

There might be variables available per the XDG specification, but I can't 
remember what they are. I'm pretty sure there is a syntax to specify the user. 
-Ben

--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, January 4th, 2023 at 12:17 PM, Dick Steffens 
 wrote:


> On 1/4/23 12:01, Tomas Kuchta wrote:
> 
> > Try $HOME/ Instead of ~/
> 
> 
> Thanks, but similar error message:
> 
> Failed to execute command "$HOME/appimage/OpenShot-v3.0.0-x86_64.AppImage".
> Failed to execute child process
> "$HOME/appimage/OpenShot-v3.0.0-x86_64.AppImage" (No such file or directory)
> 
> 
> Just to make sure I'm not mistyping:
> 
> rsteff@ENU-1:~/appimage$ ls
> OpenShot-v3.0.0-x86_64.AppImage
> 
> Text in the Launcher:
> OpenShot-v3.0.0-x86_64.AppImage
> 
> (I did mistype the error message in my first post. The Launcher has the
> filename correct.)
> 
> --
> Regards,
> 
> Dick Steffens

Re: [PLUG] Emails not making it through PLUG - again

[Ben Koenig]

Ugh. Thanks for confirming, I guess I need to shoot an email to the proton 
people and see if there's a reason this is happening. 

I'm having the same problem with Ed on this list too. I can see his emails 
through the list but he can't see mine. We thought it was specific to the 
custom domain feature but now I'm having the same problem without that enabled. 
Something strange is happening when the PLUG list is used to distribute emails 
among addresses hosted by protonmail. Why, I dunno.

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, December 28th, 2022 at 11:19 AM, wes  wrote:


> yes, I can confirm that Reid is using protonmail.
> 
> -wes
> 
> On Wed, Dec 28, 2022 at 8:48 AM Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > Forking this off into a new topic since it's not related to my original
> > question.
> > 
> > In the email quoted below from Rich, I see that he is quoting someone by
> > the name of "Reid". I don't see any emails from this user but a quick
> > search of my inbox suggests that he might be using a protonmail account.
> > I assume this means he replied to my question but I seem to be getting
> > everyone but him.
> > 
> > Can anyone confirm if this is the case? I've encounted some strange
> > problems since moving to this service for PLUG and this adds another
> > datapoint.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > -Ben
> > 
> > --- Original Message ---
> > On Tuesday, December 27th, 2022 at 2:10 PM, Rich Shepard <
> > rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Tue, 27 Dec 2022, Reid wrote:
> > > 
> > > > You could try something like `diff --changed-group-format='%<' 
> > > > --unchanged-group-format=''`, or one of its variants. That example 
> > > > assumes
> > > > that the first file is the one you want lines from. Check the diff man
> > > > page under "--GTYPE-group-format=GFMT".
> > > 
> > > diff -y shows differences, but both files being compared. On the other
> > > hand
> > > (besides four fingers and a thum) there's comm:
> > > 
> > > man comm:
> > > NAME
> > > comm - compare two sorted files line by line
> > > 
> > > SYNOPSIS
> > > comm [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2
> > > 
> > > DESCRIPTION
> > > Compare sorted files FILE1 and FILE2 line by line.
> > > 
> > > When FILE1 or FILE2 (not both) is -, read standard input.
> > > 
> > > With no options, produce three-column output. Column one contains lines
> > > unique to
> > > FILE1, column two contains lines unique to FILE2, and column three
> > > contains lines
> > > common to both files.
> > > 
> > > -1 suppress column 1 (lines unique to FILE1)
> > > 
> > > -2 suppress column 2 (lines unique to FILE2)
> > > 
> > > -3 suppress column 3 (lines that appear in both files)
> > > 
> > > --check-order
> > > 
> > > It's really handy and will do what Ben wants.
> > > 
> > > Rich

[PLUG] Emails not making it through PLUG - again

[Ben Koenig]

Forking this off into a new topic since it's not related to my original 
question.

In the email quoted below from Rich, I see that he is quoting someone by the 
name of "Reid". I don't see any emails from this user but a quick search of my 
inbox suggests that he *might* be using a protonmail account. I assume this 
means he replied to my question but I seem to be getting everyone but him.

Can anyone confirm if this is the case? I've encounted some strange problems 
since moving to this service for PLUG and this adds another datapoint. 

Thanks,
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, December 27th, 2022 at 2:10 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 27 Dec 2022, Reid wrote:
> 
> > You could try something like `diff --changed-group-format='%<' 
> > --unchanged-group-format=''`, or one of its variants. That example assumes
> > that the first file is the one you want lines from. Check the diff man
> > page under "--GTYPE-group-format=GFMT".
> 
> 
> diff -y shows differences, but both files being compared. On the other hand
> (besides four fingers and a thum) there's comm:
> 
> man comm:
> NAME
> comm - compare two sorted files line by line
> 
> SYNOPSIS
> comm [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2
> 
> DESCRIPTION
> Compare sorted files FILE1 and FILE2 line by line.
> 
> When FILE1 or FILE2 (not both) is -, read standard input.
> 
> With no options, produce three-column output. Column one contains lines 
> unique to
> FILE1, column two contains lines unique to FILE2, and column three contains 
> lines
> common to both files.
> 
> -1 suppress column 1 (lines unique to FILE1)
> 
> -2 suppress column 2 (lines unique to FILE2)
> 
> -3 suppress column 3 (lines that appear in both files)
> 
> --check-order
> 
> It's really handy and will do what Ben wants.
> 
> Rich

Re: [PLUG] Comparing 2 files and printing lines that are different

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, December 27th, 2022 at 3:37 PM, bri...@pounceofcats.com 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 27 Dec 2022 22:06:18 +
> Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com wrote:
> 
> > Diff essentially does what I want, but it adds a bunch of other stuff. I 
> > haven't found a set of options to tell to simply the output. Here's an 
> > example:
> 
> 
> Study the man page. diff has options which allow you to override the behavior 
> when a line is missing, has been added, etc...
> 
> you can format those lines arbitrarily. The options
> 
> --GTYPE-group-format
> 
> --LTYPE-line-format
> 
> will be of interest to you.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Brian

Diff could definitely work here but comm seems to directly address what I want 
without any fancy formatting. I was able to slide comm into my shell script and 
didn't need to add much complexity.

I'm going with the butter knife for this sandwich, even if the swiss army knife 
has more features. :)
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Comparing 2 files and printing lines that are different

[Ben Koenig]

Ha, I knew one of these GNU tools could do it! I nearly gave myself a migraine 
struggling to remember which command did this. I kept landing on cmp but it 
works byte-for-byte.

For the example above, just do:

bash-5.1$ comm -1 -3  a.csv b.csv 
2,m
4,d
5,e
6,f

And Bob's (literally) my uncle. Thanks Rich!
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, December 27th, 2022 at 2:10 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Tue, 27 Dec 2022, Reid wrote:
> 
> > You could try something like `diff --changed-group-format='%<' 
> > --unchanged-group-format=''`, or one of its variants. That example assumes
> > that the first file is the one you want lines from. Check the diff man
> > page under "--GTYPE-group-format=GFMT".
> 
> 
> diff -y shows differences, but both files being compared. On the other hand
> (besides four fingers and a thum) there's comm:
> 
> man comm:
> NAME
> comm - compare two sorted files line by line
> 
> SYNOPSIS
> comm [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2
> 
> DESCRIPTION
> Compare sorted files FILE1 and FILE2 line by line.
> 
> When FILE1 or FILE2 (not both) is -, read standard input.
> 
> With no options, produce three-column output. Column one contains lines 
> unique to
> FILE1, column two contains lines unique to FILE2, and column three contains 
> lines
> common to both files.
> 
> -1 suppress column 1 (lines unique to FILE1)
> 
> -2 suppress column 2 (lines unique to FILE2)
> 
> -3 suppress column 3 (lines that appear in both files)
> 
> --check-order
> 
> It's really handy and will do what Ben wants.
> 
> Rich

Re: [PLUG] Comparing 2 files and printing lines that are different

[Ben Koenig]

Diff essentially does what I want, but it adds a bunch of other stuff. I 
haven't found a set of options to tell to simply the output. Here's an example:

-a.csv-
1,a
2,b
3,c

-b.csv-
1,a
2,m
3,c
4,d
5,e
6,f

Diff gives me the following:

bash-5.1$ diff a.csv b.csv 
2c2
< 2,b
---
> 2,m
3a4,6
> 4,d
> 5,e
> 6,f

The problem  is that I only want to know what lines were added or changed (a 
change is considered an add for this project). Removals and metadata are not 
needed. Now that I'm looking at it again I suppose I can just grep for the ">" 
and use that as my final diff. I'm not seeing any obvious way to simply the 
output in the manpage. 

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, December 27th, 2022 at 1:47 PM, Robert Citek 
 wrote:


> Can you give an example of what you've tried and what you would like the
> expected outcome to be?
> 
> Here's a quick sample showing lines 4 and 5 have been added:
> 
> $ diff <( seq 1 3 ) <( seq 1 5 )
> 3a4,5
> 
> > 4
> > 5
> 
> 
> Regards,
> - Robert
> 
> 
> On Tue, Dec 27, 2022 at 2:35 PM Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I thought there was a command to do this but I'm having trouble finding it
> > and diff is doing strange stuff.
> > 
> > I have a csv file that grows over time. What I want to do is take a newer
> > version of the file, compare it to the old one, and only print the lines
> > that are different. This also needs to be easily automated within a BASH
> > script.
> > 
> > Are there options to diff that I'm missing or a different command that can
> > quickly print only those lines unique to the first file? I'm resisting the
> > urge to read the lines into a python list and compare manually.
> > 
> > -Ben

[PLUG] Comparing 2 files and printing lines that are different

[Ben Koenig]

Hi all,

I thought there was a command to do this but I'm having trouble finding it and 
diff is doing strange stuff.

I have a csv file that grows over time. What I want to do is take a newer 
version of the file, compare it to the old one, and only print the lines that 
are different. This also needs to be easily automated within a BASH script.

Are there options to diff that I'm missing or a different command that can 
quickly print only those lines unique to the first file? I'm resisting the urge 
to read the lines into a python list and compare manually.

-Ben

Re: [PLUG] MS2131i-8 USB Cellular Modem

[Ben Koenig]

If you watch dmesg as you plug it in the kernel should spit out messages that a 
USB device has been detected. At the very least you should see it detect the 
productID:vendorID.

You can also run lsusb to look for it. The device IDs are important to 
determine if you have a driver, and if so how to get it to load. There are 
hardware databases that we can look up to see if this device is working under 
linux.

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, December 15th, 2022 at 5:39 PM, Michael Barnes 
 wrote:


> I recently acquired a MS2131i-8 USB Cellular Modem. Supposedly, I can just
> plug it into a USB port and use it to access the Internet. Not a lot of
> other details.
> 
> Nothing seems to happen plugging it in, no indications on dmesg or
> anything. On Windows, it gave a popup saying no driver available.
> 
> Anybody know anything about these?
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael

Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu SNAP versus limited memory

[Ben Koenig]

Well it was 2012 so a lot has changed, but GNOME3 would still fail by their 
other metrics (accessibility and GPU requirements). After xubuntu they went 
with Mint, which was kind of a shitshow but for other reasons. At least with 
Mint there were straightforward workarounds for unsupported systems.

For Keith it's worth pointing out that the minimum hardware requirements 
currently listed by Canonical include 4GB RAM. I know that most companies will 
overspec on their marketing material but based on past experiences I would not 
treat this as a suggestion.
https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Canonical also has a history of dropping architectures they deem as obsolete, 
such as non-PAE kernels for their 32-bit distribution. This one also bit Free 
Geek, but it's impact on reusability was minor. Web of Trust dictates that I 
urge caution when attempting to put Ubuntu on an old PC

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, December 15th, 2022 at 5:55 PM, Paul Goins  
wrote:


> Thanks for replying Ben! And I basically agree, if memory is at a premium,
> using something like Xubuntu is a good option.
> 
> Also, vanilla Ubuntu uses Gnome 3 rather than Unity nowadays, which is a
> decent DE but perhaps not my first choice for older hardware.
> 
> - Paul
> 
> On Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 8:51 AM Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > I never managed to root cause it, but I did isolate the problem to a
> > combination Ubuntu 12.04 (unity desktop), the GTK CUPS configuration tool,
> > and 1GB of RAM.
> > 
> > What we ran into was that the standard GUI tool used by all distros was
> > crashing during the printer setup process. On a given system, if we had 2GB
> > of RAM it would work. Take a single RAM stick out and it would fail.
> > Howeever, on the same hardware running Xubuntu the problem did not
> > reproduce.
> > 
> > So it wasn't an issue with the Ubuntu core or even the application itself
> > since Xubuntu was installing the same packages. And the CUPS configurator
> > originates from Red Hat as well, it's a generic tool used in all distros.
> > Something about that tool, running inside the Unity desktop, was causing it
> > to crash when the PC only had 1 GB of RAM.
> > 
> > This was the last straw for Ubuntu at Free Geek. The Unity desktop had
> > already caused a number of concerns and this issue was the last nail in the
> > coffin for the organization. When I suggested moving to Xubuntu with some
> > custom packages to make the desktop look like gnome2 there wasn't a lot of
> > pushback.
> > 
> > -Ben
> > 
> > --- Original Message ---
> > On Wednesday, December 14th, 2022 at 8:54 PM, Paul Goins <
> > vultair...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm curious: do you have any idea what the root cause might have been?
> > > Was
> > > it the choice of desktop environment for example? (Certainly Gnome isn't
> > > the most lightweight environment.)
> > > 
> > > I'm curious what Free Geek moved to instead? (Legitimately curious, not
> > > getting defensive at all here.)
> > > 
> > > - Paul
> > > 
> > > On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 6:18 PM Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com
> > > 
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > > --- Original Message ---
> > > > On Wednesday, December 14th, 2022 at 5:01 PM, Keith Lofstrom <
> > > > kei...@kl-ic.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > I'm moving from a Redhat-family distro (Scientific Linux,
> > > > > a physics-heavy CENTOS clone) to Debian-family distros.
> > > > > I've played with Ubuntu 20.10 and and 22.10 on two
> > > > > desktops; "snap" seems to use nontrivial amounts of RAM.
> > > > > My preferred laptops are only 3GB; RAM bloat is an issue.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I also maintain an offsite virtual server; my favorite
> > > > > hosting company supports CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Is snap actually a memory hog, or is that my misperception?
> > > > > Will snap remain mostly Canonical's walled garden?
> > > > > 
> > > > > Moving to uncluttered Debian LTS (with its vast collection
> > > > > of packages) seems to be a better option in the long term -
> > > > > unless Debian "snap"s as well.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Keith
> > > > > 
> > > > > --
> > > > > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
> > > > 
> > > > Ubuntu has al

Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu SNAP versus limited memory

[Ben Koenig]

I never managed to root cause it, but I did isolate the problem to a 
combination Ubuntu 12.04 (unity desktop), the GTK CUPS configuration tool, and 
1GB of RAM.

What we ran into was that the standard GUI tool used by all distros was 
crashing during the printer setup process. On a given system, if we had 2GB of 
RAM it would work. Take a single RAM stick out and it would fail. Howeever, on 
the same hardware running Xubuntu the problem did not reproduce. 

So it wasn't an issue with the Ubuntu core or even the application itself since 
Xubuntu was installing the same packages. And the CUPS configurator originates 
from Red Hat as well, it's a generic tool used in all distros. Something about 
that tool, running inside the Unity desktop, was causing it to crash when the 
PC only had 1 GB of RAM. 

This was the last straw for Ubuntu at Free Geek. The Unity desktop had already 
caused a number of concerns and this issue was the last nail in the coffin for 
the organization. When I suggested moving to Xubuntu with some custom packages 
to make the desktop look like gnome2 there wasn't a lot of pushback.
-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, December 14th, 2022 at 8:54 PM, Paul Goins  
wrote:


> I'm curious: do you have any idea what the root cause might have been? Was
> it the choice of desktop environment for example? (Certainly Gnome isn't
> the most lightweight environment.)
>
> I'm curious what Free Geek moved to instead? (Legitimately curious, not
> getting defensive at all here.)
>
> - Paul
>
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 6:18 PM Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com
>
> wrote:
>
> > --- Original Message ---
> > On Wednesday, December 14th, 2022 at 5:01 PM, Keith Lofstrom <
> > kei...@kl-ic.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I'm moving from a Redhat-family distro (Scientific Linux,
> > > a physics-heavy CENTOS clone) to Debian-family distros.
> > > I've played with Ubuntu 20.10 and and 22.10 on two
> > > desktops; "snap" seems to use nontrivial amounts of RAM.
> > > My preferred laptops are only 3GB; RAM bloat is an issue.
> > >
> > > I also maintain an offsite virtual server; my favorite
> > > hosting company supports CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian.
> > >
> > > Is snap actually a memory hog, or is that my misperception?
> > > Will snap remain mostly Canonical's walled garden?
> > >
> > > Moving to uncluttered Debian LTS (with its vast collection
> > > of packages) seems to be a better option in the long term -
> > > unless Debian "snap"s as well.
> > >
> > > Keith
> > >
> > > --
> > > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
> >
> > Ubuntu has always had memory problems, even before snaps. In 2012 Free
> > Geek moved away from vanilla ubuntu as a direct result of apps crashing in
> > low memory configurations. On a system with 2GB of memory things worked
> > fine, but removing a single stick (simulating RAM failure, used/refurbished
> > hardware) would cause some basic GUI apps to crash. That was 2012, we
> > reliably demonstrated Ubuntu's inability to handle low-spec machines. I
> > performed the testing myself and AFAIK they never went back to Ubuntu.
> >
> > As for snaps, someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think there may be a
> > small RAM penalty. The whole idea is that a given app (and all of it's
> > associated assets and dependencies) can be bundled together in a single
> > squashfs package. Compared with a traditional linux systems using shared
> > libraries, you are going to use more RAM.
> >
> > - the squashfs modules have to be decompressed in real time. This is
> > similar to what the CD/USB installer does but on a per-app scale.
> > - apps may not necessarily rely on the global libraries for things like
> > GTK/QT or openssl. This means that if multiple apps are shipping with their
> > own copy of a library that already exists globally, then memory will need
> > to be allocated for each instance of said library.
> >
> > Exactly how much RAM is wasted here is determined by the 1337 skillz of
> > both the snapd devs and snap package builders. As with anything, the more
> > stuff you have loaded, the more memory it's going to use...
> >
> > -Ben

Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu SNAP versus limited memory

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Wednesday, December 14th, 2022 at 5:01 PM, Keith Lofstrom  
wrote:


> I'm moving from a Redhat-family distro (Scientific Linux,
> a physics-heavy CENTOS clone) to Debian-family distros.
> I've played with Ubuntu 20.10 and and 22.10 on two
> desktops; "snap" seems to use nontrivial amounts of RAM.
> My preferred laptops are only 3GB; RAM bloat is an issue.
> 
> I also maintain an offsite virtual server; my favorite
> hosting company supports CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian.
> 
> Is snap actually a memory hog, or is that my misperception?
> Will snap remain mostly Canonical's walled garden?
> 
> Moving to uncluttered Debian LTS (with its vast collection
> of packages) seems to be a better option in the long term -
> unless Debian "snap"s as well.
> 
> Keith
> 
> 
>
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

Ubuntu has always had memory problems, even before snaps. In 2012 Free Geek 
moved away from vanilla ubuntu as a direct result of apps crashing in low 
memory configurations. On a system with 2GB of memory things worked fine, but 
removing a single stick (simulating RAM failure, used/refurbished hardware) 
would cause some basic GUI apps to crash. That was 2012, we reliably 
demonstrated Ubuntu's inability to handle low-spec machines. I performed the 
testing myself and AFAIK they never went back to Ubuntu. 

As for snaps, someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think there may be a small 
RAM penalty. The whole idea is that a given app (and all of it's associated 
assets and dependencies) can be bundled together in a single squashfs package. 
Compared with a traditional linux systems using shared libraries, you are going 
to use more RAM. 

- the squashfs modules have to be decompressed in real time. This is similar to 
what the CD/USB installer does but on a per-app scale.
- apps may not necessarily rely on the global libraries for things like GTK/QT 
or openssl. This means that if multiple apps are shipping with their own copy 
of a library that already exists globally, then memory will need to be 
allocated for each instance of said library.


Exactly how much RAM is wasted here is determined by the 1337 skillz of both 
the snapd devs and snap package builders. As with anything, the more stuff you 
have loaded, the more memory it's going to use...
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Creating a replica Slackware setup ( was: File permissions issue )

[Ben Koenig]

Hi Robert,

Replicating the setup usually just involves finding out if the package causing 
problems is an "official" slackware package. This means it's either part of the 
base distribution or came from SBo. How you install it doesn't matter, as long 
as it's from an official mirror. In this case texindy is part of texlive, which 
has been included with the distribution for a very long time and is usually 
included unless you specifically opt out during the install.

Slackpkg provides a network capable front-end to pkgtools, which provides the 
scripts used to actually install/remove/upgrade packages. 

So in this particular case, someone was having issues with texindy, a file that 
is included with texlive. Therefore, all Slackware users should have the same 
file, in the same place. slackpkg will even tell you which package it was 
installed with

# slackpkg file-search /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/texindy.pl 
Note that the Slackware version can make a huge difference here. TBH I didn't 
realize Rich was on 14.2, I thought he upgraded.

You can always download directly from a mirror and use installpkg
http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-14.2/slackware64/t/
http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-15.0/slackware64/t/

The slackpkg command I gave earlier assumed 15.0. Some of the package names 
have changed so you'll want to find those and make sure they are installed.

-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Saturday, December 3rd, 2022 at 9:07 AM, Robert Citek 
 wrote:


> Thanks, Ben.
> 
> Getting closer.
> 
> $ grep -v '^#' /etc/slackpkg/mirrors
> http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware64-14.2/
> 
> $ slackpkg update
> 
> $ yes | slackpkg install texlive xfig fig2dev texinfo
> 
> $ yes | slackpkg install texindy
> Checking local integrity... DONE
> Looking for texindy in package list. Please wait... DONE
> No packages match the pattern for upgrade. Try:
> 
> /usr/sbin/slackpkg install|reinstall
> 
> P.S. I realize the issue with texindy is a solved problem. But I'm curious
> to know how to create a replica Slackware setup.
> 
> Regards,
> - Robert
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 7:09 PM Ben Koenig techkoe...@protonmail.com wrote:
> 
> > If you skipped the t/ series during installation then you can install it
> > one of 2 ways.
> > 
> > If you have the install media then you can manually install the packages
> > located in slackware64/t/*.txz. install/upgrade pkg doesn't know where to
> > look you have to give a path and it does not support network locations.
> > $ installpkg path/to/package.txz
> > 
> > Most people prefer to configure slackpkg since that provides the familiar
> > apt or yum style procedure. Just uncomment a mirror in
> > /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and do the following:
> > $ slackpkg update
> > $ slackpkg search tex (to make sure the mirror was properly retrieved)
> > $ slackpkg install texlive xfig fig2dev texinfo
> > 
> > -Ben
> > 
> > --- Original Message ---
> > On Friday, December 2nd, 2022 at 4:27 PM, Robert Citek <
> > robert.ci...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > I guess I was a bit terse. I'm trying to replicate your setup. So, when I
> > > was asking what commands you ran to install the package, what I really
> > > meant to ask was what commands would I need to run in order to create a
> > > replica of your system. Of course, if you don't provide complete
> > > information to me, it makes replicating your setup a bit more ...
> > > challenging.
> > > 
> > > But to answer your question: no, I do not have TeXLive 2021 installed in
> > > my
> > > Slackware environment.
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > - Robert
> > > 
> > > On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 5:09 PM Rich Shepard rshep...@appl-ecosys.com
> > > 
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Fri, 2 Dec 2022, Robert Citek wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > That doesn't work for me:
> > > > > 
> > > > > bash-4.3# installpkg texindy
> > > > > Cannot install texindy: file not found
> > > > 
> > > > Robert,
> > > > 
> > > > Do you have TeXLive 2021 installed?
> > > > 
> > > > Regards,
> > > > 
> > > > Rich

Re: [PLUG] File permissions issue

[Ben Koenig]

If you skipped the t/ series during installation then you can install it one of 
2 ways. 

If you have the install media then you can manually install the packages 
located in slackware64/t/*.txz. install/upgrade pkg doesn't know where to look 
you have to give a path and it does not support network locations.
$ installpkg path/to/package.txz

Most people prefer to configure slackpkg since that provides the familiar apt 
or yum style procedure. Just uncomment a mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and do 
the following:
$ slackpkg update
$ slackpkg search tex (to make sure the mirror was properly retrieved)
$ slackpkg install texlive xfig fig2dev texinfo


-Ben


--- Original Message ---
On Friday, December 2nd, 2022 at 4:27 PM, Robert Citek  
wrote:


> I guess I was a bit terse. I'm trying to replicate your setup. So, when I
> was asking what commands you ran to install the package, what I really
> meant to ask was what commands would I need to run in order to create a
> replica of your system. Of course, if you don't provide complete
> information to me, it makes replicating your setup a bit more ...
> challenging.
> 
> But to answer your question: no, I do not have TeXLive 2021 installed in my
> Slackware environment.
> 
> Regards,
> - Robert
> 
> On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 5:09 PM Rich Shepard rshep...@appl-ecosys.com
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2 Dec 2022, Robert Citek wrote:
> > 
> > > That doesn't work for me:
> > > 
> > > bash-4.3# installpkg texindy
> > > Cannot install texindy: file not found
> > 
> > Robert,
> > 
> > Do you have TeXLive 2021 installed?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > Rich

Re: [PLUG] File permissions issue

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Friday, December 2nd, 2022 at 2:27 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Fri, 2 Dec 2022, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > bash-5.1$ locate texindy
> > /usr/bin/texindy
> > /usr/man/man1/texindy.1.gz
> > /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/texindy.pl
> > /usr/share/texmf-dist/xindy/modules/base/texindy.xdy
> 
> > /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/texindy.pl seems to be exactly the
> > same as the ony in /usr/bin/.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> I moved texindy.pl from /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/ to
> /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/. Yet when I create the link to the new
> directory it's broken (red text on black background):
> # ll texindy
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 40 Dec 2 14:22 texindy -> 
> /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/texindy.pl
> 
> 
> Here I have:
> # locate texindy
> /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/texindy.pl
> /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/arara/rules/texindy.yaml
> /usr/share/texmf-dist/xindy/modules/base/texindy.xdy
> /usr/bin/texindy
> /usr/man/man1/texindy.1.gz
> 
> Rich

Well now it just looks like your tex install is broken since you have files I 
don't have, and files in places that don't match mine. If you haven't 
customized your install, can you just reinstall via slackpkg? Maybe clean up 
the folder structure to remove any loose .pl files?

Again only if those files are not actually needed. All I know is it doesn't 
match the stock layout. :(
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] File permissions issue

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Friday, December 2nd, 2022 at 2:17 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> On Fri, 2 Dec 2022, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > Did you upgrade to a newer version of text than what the distro comes
> > with? I don't have a texindy.pl in /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> No. The version in 14.2 and 15.0 are the same: texlive-2021.210418. And
> Herbert Voss sent me a 2011 version of the *.pl files which are currently
> installed. And without making the /usr/bin/ version a soft link both
> versions produce an error that texindy is not a link so it prints the error
> message on line 414 of the file.
> 
> TexLive on 14.2 was installed back in 2021 and has no issues other than with
> texindy. And I didn't notice that until earlier this week when I pdflatex
> didn't produce the index with the PDF despite having the index inserted at
> the end of the book.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Rich


Well that's just strange. I took a look at the script and yes, it clearly does 
want to run as a symlink. I don't exactly what it is trying to do, but I can 
recommend 2 things to try.

First is to make sure you have all the correct paths. You are linking to 
/usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/texindy.pl but a stock install of the same 
package puts them in /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/texindy.pl. It could 
be that something got moved around?

Second, try calling the symlink using the absolute path: /usr/bin/texindy. I 
don't think this will make a difference, but it is clearly trying to build a 
path based on $0 (the "real" name of the script) and I've seen other programs 
where logic added to define paths can actually fail based on how the program is 
called.

Re: [PLUG] File permissions issue

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Friday, December 2nd, 2022 at 1:37 PM, Rich Shepard 
 wrote:


> Trying to run texindy to create the index for a book kept failing. The
> reason was that /usr/bin/texindy was a perl script, not a link to the script
> in /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/texindy.pl. Permissions of that script are
> 755.
> 
> I deleted /usr/bin/texindy and replaced it with a softlink with permissions
> these perms:
> # ll texindy
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 40 Dec 2 11:41 texindy -> 
> /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/texindy.pl
> 
> 
> When I try to run the script (as a user) the response is:
> $ texindy biota-to-set-wq-standards.idx
> -bash: /usr/bin/texindy: Permission denied
> 
> What am I doing incorrectly?
> 
> Rich

Did you upgrade to a newer version of text than what the distro comes with? I 
don't have a texindy.pl in /usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts


bash-5.1$ locate texindy
/usr/bin/texindy
/usr/man/man1/texindy.1.gz
/usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/texindy.pl
/usr/share/texmf-dist/xindy/modules/base/texindy.xdy


/usr/share/texmf-dist/scripts/xindy/texindy.pl seems to be exactly the same as 
the ony in /usr/bin/. This is with stock 15.0 packages, I never mess with the 
tex stuff but I usually let it install anyway. 
-Ben

[PLUG] December 2022 - softPLUG Jitsi Meeting

[Ben Koenig]

Hi all,

December 1st is the 1st Thursday of December!

For newer members, this is when we typically host our monthly PLUG Talks for 
advanced and/or interesting topics. However, pending a return to in-person 
meetings I am hosting a casual, online meeting via Jitsi. There is no specific 
topic, this is just an opportunity to interact outside the confines of our 
email inboxen. All Linux (and BSD!) related questions/gossip/news are welcome.

Who: You!
When: Thursday, 12/1/2022 @ 7:00PM Pacific Time
Where:https://meet.jit.si/PDXLinux

Note regarding in-person events: I don't know what the latest is so if anyone 
has a plan to resume traditional PLUG talks this month just let me know. 
Virtual Meetings are easy to reschedule :-)

Feel free to hop in whenever works for you. I'm holding the virtual door open 
until 8PM.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] ubuntu or debian

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, November 17th, 2022 at 8:54 PM, Keith Lofstrom  
wrote:


> On Thu, Nov 17, 2022 at 06:34:42PM -0800, Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> > ubuntu has drivers for almost all kinky hardware
> > debian does not, but may move that way
> > ubuntu for laptops, debian for servers, is my use pattern
> 
> 
> There are some places in the world, with specialized
> jobs and tools, where a properly equipped person can
> honestly say "YOU CAN'T HAVE TOO MANY DOGSLEDS!"
> 
> For my office, and my job, I can (and DO) have too many
> operating systems.
> 
> My goal is to have fewer machines using one operating system,
> and focus my time and attention on writing, math, science,
> engineering, invention, and learning.
> 
> I want to pay as much attention to operating systems as I
> do to my gutters ... which we finish replacing tomorrow,
> using materials that will outlast me, and perhaps my wife.
> 
> Like the rainwater in my gutters, I want my data to flow
> without turbulence or leaks. I don't want two kinds of
> gutters, or operating systems.
> 
> Indeed, debian is suboptimal for my laptops, and ubuntu
> is suboptimal for my servers, but two distros are
> suboptimal for the limited mind-space I can devote to
> them. Which distro is least-suboptimal for both jobs?
> Which distro will be least-suboptimal in ten years?
> 
> Note that I cannot afford to hire a sysadmin - and I've
> tried to do so with what little I can afford.
> 
> Keith
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

You said you have old Thinkpad T60 laptops. 
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Thinkpad/T60/lenny

I doubt debian will be anything other than out-of-the-box on your Thinkpads. 
And even IF (that's a really big if) debian is a PITA to run on your laptops, 
it will always be the same PITA. On Debian - Any hoops you jump through now 
will be the same hoops people jumped through 10 years ago. The same cannot be 
said for Ubuntu. 

The Ubuntu I used in 2010 is dead. It's gone and it never came back no matter 
how many people complained. In 2032 the Ubuntu everyone is using today will be 
gone.

Re: [PLUG] ubuntu or debian

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, November 17th, 2022 at 6:27 PM, Keith Lofstrom  
wrote:


> > I hate the mount command (John Jason Jordan)
> 
> 
> If I correctly understood that thread, John's "problem"
> is that mount and df and other commands are designed for
> "real" file systems, not ubuntu snaps, which Canonical
> pretends are file systems, spewing a crap-ton of line
> noise when querying.
> 
> I (and presumably John) just want mount and df to display
> and manage the file systems we are responsible for, not
> distribution abstractions that Canonical wants to control,
> and seemingly remove from end user control. Perhaps there
> is a command line switch that snips out the snaps, and I
> can alias /usr/local/bin commands to those.
> 
> John, like me, lives on the command line, writing words,
> computing numbers ... not videos, not games, not graphical
> gestures.
> 
> I am already migrating from RedHat/IBM to Ubuntu-Mate to
> avoid distro churn and the end of long term support (LTS).
> 
> Debian seems to be extending towards community-supported
> and community-managed long-term support, while Ubuntu
> seems to be devolving towards an IBM/Redhat-like walled
> garden. Out of the frying pan, into the plasma torch?
> 
> Perhaps I should re-migrate from Mate-Ubuntu-LTS to
> Mate-Debian LTS. AFAIKS, the main thing I lose is easy
> access to proprietary hardware drivers ... though if I
> can buy hardware with open drivers (ditch the nVidia
> cards, purchase AMD/Radeon?), I can manage "nuts and
> volts) rather than dependencies and paywalls.
> 
> A related issue is my fondness for my older "big pixel"
> 3x4 Thinkpad laptops with trackpoint, though not their
> ancient 4 GB memory limit. I have a lifetime supply.
> 4 GB of RAM is constraining, but less so with an SSD
> "hard drive" and rapid swap. Screens? I have some
> 1536x2048 screens for my largest T60 Thinkpads, and
> tools to reprogram the BIOS to accept them.
> 
> So - get out your crystal balls, and help me decide which
> distro (Ubuntu, Debian) to use for the next decade.
> Which distro is most likely to enable new design and
> engineering/science/math apps, friendliest to occasional
> personal hardware and software hacks, least likely to
> migrate from free to prison-ware?
> 
> For me, a computer should be "just a tool". The more
> they resemble my Swedish great-grandfather's 1880's
> flat-blade screwdriver (which has turned hundreds of
> thousands of screws, and I still use), the better.
> 
> Keith L.
> 
> P.S. Some PLUGgers use other distros like Rocky or
> Slackware or BSD derivatives, and more power to them.
> But do me a favor and discuss the ubuntu/debian binary
> choice for now. My first "distro" (not counting PDP-8
> boot loader and paper tape) was BSD 3 at UC Berkeley,
> many decades ago; been there, done that.
> 
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

Debian is the obvious choice here. You spend a lot of time dealing with the 
constant churn of desktop-oriented ideas that you clearly have no interest in. 
You also seem to be the kind of person that is willing to put in the effort up 
front to make it work, then just set it and forget it. While Debian has 
implemented some sizable changes they tend to do so in a way that is 
considerate of older methods. See the 2019 vote on systemd for proof of that. 
Even when the default changes, nobody is gonna stop you from switching back to 
eth1/eth2 iface names. ;)

In 10 years Debian will likely look similar to what it is now, in that it 
starts off looking like nothing until you install the packages you want. Grab a 
minimal install iso and go nuts. 
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] SSH to external site not responsive

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, November 17th, 2022 at 12:01 PM, Randy Bush  wrote:


> on a tangent, preliminary tests seem to show that new mac os, ventura,
> magically turns your `scp` into `sftp`. ghu knows why. californians!
> 
> randy

It'll be fine. Rumor is that some people in california are trying to push 
algebra classes back to high school. Waiting that long to teach basic algorithm 
concepts will drastically impact the pool of talent for the computer science 
field. They can't write bad code if they don't know how to code in the first 
place! :)

Re: [PLUG] SSH to external site not responsive

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Thursday, November 17th, 2022 at 8:21 AM, Randy Bush  wrote:


> > debug2: resolving "ssh.phx.nearlyfreespeech.net" port 14982
> 
> 
> and it did not resolve? if not, dns issue?
> 
> > So my ssh uses a high number port. NFS uses port 22.
> 
> 
> which is perfectly normal

bash-5.1$ ssh --help
unknown option -- -
usage: ssh [-46AaCfGgKkMNnqsTtVvXxYy] [-B bind_interface]
   [-b bind_address] [-c cipher_spec] [-D [bind_address:]port]
   [-E log_file] [-e escape_char] [-F configfile] [-I pkcs11]
   [-i identity_file] [-J [user@]host[:port]] [-L address]
   [-l login_name] [-m mac_spec] [-O ctl_cmd] [-o option] [-p port]
   [-Q query_option] [-R address] [-S ctl_path] [-W host:port]
   [-w local_tun[:remote_tun]] destination [command [argument ...]]


ssh -p  @

You can add this to .ssh/config so that SSH always uses the given port for that 
host.

Re: [PLUG] I hate the mount command

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 at 2:58 PM, John Jason Jordan  
wrote:


> OK, I may be making some headway here.
> 
> sudo mdadm -D /dev/md0
> /dev/md0:
> Version : 1.2
> Creation Time : Mon Jan 25 13:53:32 2021
> Raid Level : raid0
> Array Size : 30005334016 (27.94 TiB 30.73 TB)
> Raid Devices : 4
> Total Devices : 4
> Persistence : Superblock is persistent
> 
> Update Time : Mon Jan 25 13:53:32 2021
> State : broken, FAILED
> Active Devices : 4
> Working Devices : 4
> Failed Devices : 0
> Spare Devices : 0
> 
> Layout : -unknown-
> Chunk Size : 512K
> 
> Consistency Policy : none
> 
> Number Major Minor RaidDevice State
> 0 259 2 0 active sync missing
> 1 259 1 1 active sync missing
> 2 259 0 2 active sync missing
> 3 259 3 3 active sync missing
> 
> Also tried sudo mdadm --run /dev/md0, but there was no output.
> 
> Is this repairable without wiping out the data and recreating the array?


mdadm is giving a state of  "broken, FAILED". A failed state in RAID usually 
means that the number of drive failures exceeds the tolerance of the RAID mode 
you chose. DEGRADED indicates drive failure with a potential to rebuild. 

In your case, however, mdadm is saying that all 4 devices are missing. This 
probably means that the array is broken simply because the devices are no 
longer present at their specified location. Since this is a removable device 
it's possible that the storage devices are using new entries in /dev/.

Since this occurred after a brief power outage and because mount says that a 
mountpoint is busy even though said mountpoint no longer exists... this sounds 
like a case of reassigned drive letters and you need to hunt down the RAID 
drives in your /dev folder. lsblk can help identify them. 
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] trying to detach running processes - but how?

[Ben Koenig]

--- Original Message ---
On Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 at 1:51 PM, American Citizen 
 wrote:


> Using the setsid() CLI command is exactly the right choice here. I have
> restarted the Plasma desktop after logging out and back in and the
> programs were still running attached to pid 1 (as desired)
> 
> What needs to happen now is to fix that annoying memory leak in
> plasmashell task
> 
> Thanks for the post, Kevin
> 
> 
> On 11/13/22 20:55, Kevin Williams wrote:
> 
> > setsid(1) looks like a good tool for detaching magma from bash. Then you 
> > could safely close bash and the konsole and restart plasma and the X server 
> > demons (systemd services) every now and then so that you can free up that 
> > 50% plus of your 32 gigs of ram.

Nice, that's a cool trick. Not sure if this helps or not. But I've been logged 
into KDE Plasma for 7 days now, and plasmashell memory usage is at 213.4 MB. I 
wonder what's causing yours to balloon out of control.

[PLUG] November 2022 - softPLUG Jitsi Meeting

[Ben Koenig]

Hi all,

The first Thursday of the month is almost upon us!

For newer members, this is when we typically host our monthly PLUG Talks for 
advanced and/or interesting topics. However, pending a return to in-person 
meetings I am hosting a casual, online meeting via Jitsi. There is no specific 
topic, this is just an opportunity to interact outside the confines of our 
email inboxen. All Linux (and BSD!) related questions/gossip/news are welcome :)

Who: You!
When: Thursday, 11/3/2022 @ 7:00PM Pacific
Where:https://meet.jit.si/PDXLinux

Feel free to hop in whenever works for you. I'm holding the virtual door open 
until 8PM.
-Ben

[PLUG] October 2022 - softPLUG Jitsi Meeting

[Ben Koenig]

Hi all,

It's the first Thursday of the month, so it's time for my last minute reminder!

For newer members, this is when we typically host our monthly PLUG Talks for 
advanced and/or interesting topics. However, pending a return to in-person 
meetings I am hosting a casual, online meeting via Jitsi. There is no specific 
topic, this is just an opportunity to interact outside the confines of our 
email inboxen. All Linux (and BSD!) related questions/gossip/news are welcome :)

Who: You!
When: 1665108000
Where:https://meet.jit.si/PDXLinux

Feel free to hop in whenever works for you. I'm holding the "door" open until 
8PM.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Off topic but not sure who to ask

[Ben Koenig]

Scripted tech support strikes again.

https://xkcd.com/806/

-Ben
Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Sep 21, 2022, 5:35 PM, Chuck Hast wrote:

> UPDATE. Google finally relented and told my wife that they were going to send 
> the device to her home address. Now we are just awaiting the RMA info page to 
> answer any other questions they may have. I guess someone finally READ the 
> data and realized that her address was in the USA. Again thank you for all of 
> the recommendations. On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 9:53 AM Chuck Hast  wrote: > I 
> want to thank all of you for your information, each was a > nugget to be 
> mined... One thing that I had not thought about > was the FCC. A good friend 
> of mine had an issue quite similar > to this with another carrier, they were 
> giving him the same > run around. He got fed up, being a lawyer he looked at 
> the > options saw that a call to the FCC might take care of it, sure > enough 
> he made his call gave this information, next day he > got a call from someone 
> very high up in the carriers org asking > how that the issue could be 
> resolved, he told the fellow what > he was trying to get done and it was 
> taken care of in minutes. > So that maybe the route I will take. > > Daniel, 
> regarding having to use guile to deal with these people > remember my wife 
> has been paying her Fi account every month > she has been paying her monthly 
> bill for the phone purchase > every month, and she has been paying phone 
> insurance every > month. For them to say they cannot send the phone to her > 
> USA address because it is out of the country is not only outrageous > but 
> denying her the legal and proper use of the service she is > paying for. That 
> is I believe in some circles called theft or theft > of services. Under that 
> situation, you do what you have to withing > the bounds of decency to recover 
> your lost property. > > I do not like to lie but I do not like to have things 
> stolen from > me. > > -- Chuck Hast -- KP4DJT -- I can do all things through 
> Christ which strengtheneth me. Ph 4:13 KJV Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me 
> fortalece. Fil 4:13 RVR1960

Re: [PLUG] ATTENTION REQUIRED | ONE MORE STEP

[Ben Koenig]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐

On Friday, October 15th, 2021 at 7:57 PM,  wrote:

> I just ended up having to write an email to a site's tech contact via
>
> their whois records because their website has been down for the past
>
> two days. Replaced with the message:
>
> Checking your browser before accessing example.tld.
>
> This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested
>
> content shortly.
>
> Please allow up to 5 seconds…
>
> DDoS protection by Cloudflare
>
> a new change from the usual ATTENTION REQUIRED | ONE MORE STEP
>
> oh so your human? Name every stoplight
>
> Apparently I'm not the only one with this problem, as seen by
>
> https://git.fuwafuwa.moe/you/stop_cloudflare/src/branch/master/PEOPLE.md
>
> They are marketing themselves as some kind of ddos
>
> protection site to prevent downtime, but in actuality when websites use
>
> cloudflare, their website in inaccessible and is effectively down. Down
>
> when it wouldn't be if no cloudflare was used.
>
> webmasters seem to fall for Cloudflare's shady marketing
>
> tactics, making claims like it will ""speed up"" your site or that your
>
> site /needs/ a ""CDN"" when they aren't streaming video or doing
>
> something latency intensive. I'm surprised they continue on with these
>
> dubious at best advertising claims.
>
> Cloudflare's near-monopoly on popular websites has put them in a
>
> position of power; which they use to censor the internet by making
>
> absurd claims that I and many other people are robots and blocking
>
> their access websites. Or saying I have "A VIRUS" on my network without
>
> any evidence. Using that baseless claim as justification. I have
>
> noticed it really seems to just block every browser that isn't google
>
> chrome or mozilla firefox (90% google funded).
>
> Surely there are laws to prevent this kind of thing? If there aren't
>
> like like to discuss potential laws that could be put in place, at
>
> least local at first to stop cloudflare.
>

The question you need to ask is this:

"If I, as a user feel that I have suffered financial damage as a result of the 
actions taken by , who do I contact in order to make seek 
compensation?"

There is a discussion to be had for the Free Software community involving class 
action lawsuits. In particular, how to get the ball rolling because these days 
liebel, defamation, and false advertising are commonplace. There are plenty of 
things happening that impact me financially in the tech industry but I have no 
idea who I need to call in order to flex my rights as a US citizen.

I honestly don't know how these extreme conservatives/liberals manage to burn 
through so many legal claims. Everytime someone says something racist/sexist 
there's a national shitshow but when Google lies to congress it's all crickets. 
Maybe this is why Red Hat is trying to bury the FSF under false claims of 
transphobic behavior - The FSF is so busy defending themselves they never have 
a chance to actually advocate for the community.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] REVISED "Guiding Windows user to Linux"

[Ben Koenig]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐

On Monday, October 11th, 2021 at 7:24 AM, Richard Owlett  
wrote:

> On 10/11/2021 12:30 AM, Ben Koenig wrote:
>
> > ‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
> >
> > On Sunday, October 10th, 2021 at 8:36 AM, Michael Rasmussen 
> > mich...@jamhome.us wrote:
> >
> > > On 2021-10-10 04:37, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > >
> > > > 1.  Ben said that Windows10's desktop resembles Linux.
> > >
> > > Which Linux?
> > >
> > > So many ways to set up Linux from my Pop_OS to a blinking cursor on an
> > >
> > > 80x24 blank screen with a prompt of name@machine$
> > >
> > > Michael Rasmussen, Portland Oregon
> > >   Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity
> > >
> >
> > Maybe I should clarify. As far as your Pastor is concerned - Windows 10 is 
> > so different from XP and 7 that it might as well be a Linux distro. It'll 
> > take the same amount of effort to migrate him no matter what platform you 
> > choose.
> >
> > -   They moved away from traditional "My Computer" terminology as discussed 
> > earlier.
> > -   Window management is ripped straight from compiz. This started in Vista 
> > but today the 3D compositor for Windows10 behaves just like any linux 
> > desktop.
> > -   Settings App. The new settings tool for things like networking and 
> > other basic tasks is basically just a clone of all the MacOS/Linux versions.
> >
> > Basically, for a long time MS was the odd one out for a lot of things which 
> > forced a lot of people to become reliant on it. Fast forward 20 years and 
> > that is no longer the case. The average end-user isn't going to notice the 
> > differences and migrating them to Linux is no different than migrating them 
> > to Win10.
> >
> > Don't bother with a VM. Just find out what applications he relies on and 
> > set him up with a desktop that supports those apps. He will need to adjust, 
> > but that will still happen even if he stays on Windows. One of these days 
> > MS will stop dicking us around and officially deprecate their NT kernel in 
> > favor of whatever Canonical compiles for them.
> >
> > -Ben
>
> I just looked at the Wikipedia article on Windows 10.
>
> Their current machine may be new enough to have it. It's been a couple
>
> of years since I've seen it.
>
> An expert computer person at church has recommended that I get them a
>
> business class machine with Windows 11 and 16 GB of memory. If it has
>
> suitable Linux like features that may be the end of it.

An expert computer person recommended 16GB of RAM??? That's not an expert, 
that's a microsoft propagandist. Unless this user relies on an application that 
specifically requires Windows (which I very much doubt they do) then you should 
go with a Linux desktop.

My point was that trying to find a linux desktop that "most resembles windows" 
is no longer meaningful. Windows no longer resembles Windows and the complaints 
people have about Linux are no different than those they have of Windows10. 
Win11 will just end up being more of the same so you might as well move people 
to Linux for ethical reasons. The idea that Windows is the "gold standard" and 
"built for end users" is just misinformation promoted by MS media influencers.

You could (as an experiment) set him up with a windows box and see what 
happens. If this guy is not tech savvy I'd bet that he will struggle with the 
new and "improved" windows desktop design. Everybody does, because it's 
complete shit.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] REVISED "Guiding Windows user to Linux"

[Ben Koenig]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐

On Sunday, October 10th, 2021 at 8:36 AM, Michael Rasmussen 
 wrote:

> On 2021-10-10 04:37, Richard Owlett wrote:
>
> > 1.  Ben said that Windows10's desktop resembles Linux.
>
> Which Linux?
>
> So many ways to set up Linux from my Pop_OS to a blinking cursor on an
>
> 80x24 blank screen with a prompt of name@machine$
>
> --
>
>Michael Rasmussen, Portland Oregon
>  Be Appropriate && Follow Your Curiosity
>

Maybe I should clarify. As far as your Pastor is concerned - Windows 10 is so 
different from XP and 7 that it might as well be a Linux distro. It'll take the 
same amount of effort to migrate him no matter what platform you choose.

- They moved away from traditional "My Computer" terminology as discussed 
earlier.
- Window management is ripped straight from compiz. This started in Vista but 
today the 3D compositor for Windows10 behaves just like any linux desktop.
- Settings App. The new settings tool for things like networking and other 
basic tasks is basically just a clone of all the MacOS/Linux versions.

Basically, for a long time MS was the odd one out for a lot of things which 
forced a lot of people to become reliant on it. Fast forward 20 years and that 
is no longer the case. The average end-user isn't going to notice the 
differences and migrating them to Linux is no different than migrating them to 
Win10.

Don't bother with a VM. Just find out what applications he relies on and set 
him up with a desktop that supports those apps. He will need to adjust, but 
that will still happen even if he stays on Windows. One of these days MS will 
stop dicking us around and officially deprecate their NT kernel in favor of 
whatever Canonical compiles for them.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Guiding Windows user to Linux

[Ben Koenig]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐

On Friday, October 8th, 2021 at 9:54 AM, wes  wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 9:49 AM Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net wrote:
>
> > On 10/08/2021 10:49 AM, wes wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 7:02 AM Richard Owlett rowl...@cloud85.net
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > 2.  Do recent versions of Windows still have icons titled "Windows
> > > >
> > > > Explorer" and "My Computer"?
> > >
> > > In Windows 10, "My Computer" was renamed to "This PC" - however it is not
> > >
> > > displayed on the desktop by default. Microsoft has gone to the "search
> > >
> > > for
> > >
> > > what you're looking for" methodology rather than the old "choose from
> > >
> > > this
> > >
> > > set of options" plan. So we are expected to click the Start menu, then
> > >
> > > type
> > >
> > > in things like "this" and it will show "This PC" as one of the search
> > >
> > > results.
> > >
> > > There is a file-folder icon displayed by default which opens Explorer
> > >
> > > (what
> > >
> > > we used to refer to as "Windows Explorer") which will then allow one to
> > >
> > > navigate to the top level (C:). Disk usage info will be shown right on
> > >
> > > that
> > >
> > > screen.
> > >
> > > -wes
> >
> > 1.  Is it labeled "Explorer"?
>
> Icons in the task bar don't have labels. Simply pictures. Icons on the
>
> desktop do have labels/names, but Explorer is not found there by default.
>
> When I do this, the conversation usually goes something like:
>
> Me: Do you see a picture of a file-folder along the bottom of the screen?
>
> Them: No
>
> Me: Ok, click on the Start menu then
>
> Them: What's that?
>
> Me: In the lower left corner of the screen, there is a little picture of a
>
> flag type of shape
>
> Them: Ok, I see that
>
> Me: Click that
>
> Them: Ok, I did
>
> Me: What do you see?
>
> Them: Nothing
>
> (at this point I start seriously reconsidering my life choices)
>
> Me: Ok, try typing in the letters T, H, I, S
>
> Them: Ok, I did that
>
> Me: Do you see an option come up named "This PC"?
>
> (fingers crossed, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let this work)
>
> Them: Yes
>
> Me: Ok, click on that
>
> > 2.  What does it display by default?
> >
> > Does the string "C:" appear?
>
> By default, I believe it displays the user's "Libraries" - it lets them
>
> choose to enter Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc. On the left will be
>
> navigation options. I believe some scrolling will be needed to find the C:
>
> option, which yes, that string literally appears there. There may be a
>
> "This PC" heading to help them find it.
>
> I have to give clear instructions in an email as they and I will not be
>
> > home at the same time for a few days.
>
> Your expectations may be a little high. I would anticipate some
>
> back-and-forth before finding the answers you're looking for.
>
> -wes

+1 to that. If the user is not super tech savvy it's best to break the email 
up. Instead of a single email describing all the steps, breaking it down step 
by step has been far more effective in my experience. Don't be afraid to start 
with an email to make sure the file explorer is open, then proceed once that is 
accomplished.

On more than one occasion I've asked people "You know that thing you do to go 
look at your photos? Click on that". People think in terms that are relevant to 
them and the whole "Explorer" terminology is completely disconnected from how 
people use their computers.

Make it a conversation and you'll be more likely to succeed.
-Ben

Re: [PLUG] Guiding Windows user to Linux

[Ben Koenig]

If memory serves you can usually find total HDD space pretty easily though the 
exact terminology varies from one windows version to the next. Either right 
click on My Computer or pop open the Disk Manager if that fails.

In general, if you open the file manager you should see something on the 
left-hand panel that says "My Computer" or just "Computer". This will be there 
regardless of which folder you have open so you can always just click on 
whatever you use to access your documents or files.

Once you find the Computer button, just right click-> properties. This should 
give you the size of you C:\ drive which is going to represent a majority of 
the disk. You can approximate total HDD size from there without having to walk 
someone through accessing the Disk Management tool.

On any linux distro its just Terminal-> "df -h" which contrary to popular 
belief is much easier walk someone through over the phone

-Ben

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐

On Friday, October 8th, 2021 at 8:36 AM, Richard Owlett  
wrote:

> On 10/08/2021 09:32 AM, Ben Koenig wrote:
>
> > Good questions:
> >
> > 1.  No. This is typically distro specific and only applies to end-user
> >
> > "desktop" distributions.
>
> That would not be a problem. It would be primarily a common frame of
>
> reference. And as I would not be the author, it would prompt them to ask
>
> a different set of questions than I would think of.
>
> > If such a document does exist I would check with projects like Linux Mint.
>
> I'll search for Linux Mint info.
>
> > Debian is unlikely to have what you are looking for.
> >
> > 2.  Yes and no.. theyve been moving stuff around and in many ways windows10
> >
> > resembles your average linux desktop. While the terminology still exists
> >
> > it does not match what you might expect from xp or 7 so I dont recommend
> >
> > relying on it.
>
> I need to know how big a drive they have and how much free space.
>
> Suggestion on how to phrase the question clearly in an email? If they
>
> and I were going to be home at the same time this weekend I would just
>
> call them.
>
> > Whatever you do dont give them gnome or ubuntu. Things won't end well :(
>
> ROFL!
>
> Ubuntu is reason I run Debian.
>
> Gnome3 is the reason I use MATE.
>
> > -Ben
> >
> > Sent from ProtonMail mobile
>
> Thank you.
>
> >  Original Message 
> >
> > On Oct 8, 2021, 7:02 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >
> > > I've been providing informal support to a local couple for decades. He
> > >
> > > is a retired pastor, now a missionary. A few years ago they bought a
> > >
> > > computer from a local big box store. It has problems and customer
> > >
> > > support has been inadequate. As part of my support for the missions
> > >
> > > agency, I'll be purchasing a replacement. As I've not used Windows since
> > >
> > > WinXP and they are pure Windows users I will set it up to dual boot
> > >
> > > Windows and Debian. I've bought several refurbished machines from a
> > >
> > > local company and have watched them deal with non-techie customers. That
> > >
> > > will provide expert Windows support if/when needed.
> > >
> > > My immediate questions:
> > >
> > > 1.  Is there any site that explains to a non-techie the differences
> > >
> > > between Windows and Linux and the advantages of using Linux?.
> > >
> > > Preferably without describing "how-to".
> > >
> > > [ From my side the advantage is using maintenance tools
> > >
> > > I'm familiar with.]
> > > 2.  Do recent versions of Windows still have icons titled "Windows
> > >
> > > Explorer" and "My Computer"?
> > >
> > > [ As we'll not be meeting for about a week I'm asking them for some
> > >
> > > details of their current hardware. I'm suspicious that they may be
> > >
> > > low on free disk space.]
> > >
> > > TIA

Re: [PLUG] Guiding Windows user to Linux

[Ben Koenig]

Good questions:
1) No. This is typically distro specific and only applies to end-user "desktop" 
distributions. If such a document does exist I would check with projects like 
Linux Mint. Debian is unlikely to have what you are looking for.

2) Yes and no.. theyve been moving stuff around and in many ways windows10 
resembles your average linux desktop. While the terminology still exists it 
does not match what you might expect from xp or 7 so I dont recommend relying 
on it.

Whatever you do dont give them gnome or ubuntu. Things won't end well :(
-Ben

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Oct 8, 2021, 7:02 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

> I've been providing informal support to a local couple for decades. He
> is a retired pastor, now a missionary. A few years ago they bought a
> computer from a local big box store. It has problems and customer
> support has been inadequate. As part of my support for the missions
> agency, I'll be purchasing a replacement. As I've not used Windows since
> WinXP and they are pure Windows users I will set it up to dual boot
> Windows and Debian. I've bought several refurbished machines from a
> local company and have watched them deal with non-techie customers. That
> will provide expert Windows support if/when needed.
>
> My immediate questions:
> 1. Is there any site that explains to a non-techie the differences
> between Windows and Linux and the advantages of using Linux?.
> Preferably *without* describing "how-to".
> [ From my side the advantage is using maintenance tools
> I'm familiar with.]
> 2. Do recent versions of Windows still have icons titled "Windows
> Explorer" and "My Computer"?
> [ As we'll not be meeting for about a week I'm asking them for some
> details of their current hardware. I'm suspicious that they may be
> low on free disk space.]
>
> TIA

Re: [PLUG] visudo for ubuntu ... pico? nano? joe?

[Ben Koenig]

$ echo "export EDITOR=ed" >> ~/.bashrc
$ echo -e "alias edsudo=\"visudo\"" >> ~/.bashrc

restart your shell, and experience everything a line editor has to offer.
$ edsudo

Could also set the alias to nanosudo or joesudo.

Or just edit directly with nano if you are confident that you never make 
mistakes.
-Ben

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Oct 4, 2021, 1:12 AM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> I am learning about Ubuntu sysadmin, and why I should use
> visudo instead of logging in as root user to use vi.
> This assumes that Eve hasn't inserted a malware version
> of visudo into my path ...
>
> Except - on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, visudo calls the "nano"
> text editor, and on 20.04 LTS it calls the "joe" text
> editor. So WHY still call it visudo?
>
> Anyway, I will use vi (aka vim) until they pry my keyboard
> out of my cold dead fingers. I change editors as often as
> I change lungs.
>
> Other helpful guest sysadmins may prefer this shifting
> editor nonsense, so I plan to leave /usr/bin/visudo as-is
> and create a /usr/local/sbin/vvisudo shell script
> containing "sudo EDITOR=vim visudo" ...
>
> ... and add Yet Another Postit with how to exit nano
> or joe, or whatever editor they eventually choose for
> 22.04 LTS, in case I forget the extra v for vvisudo.
>
> Keith
>
> P.S. Ctl-x for nano, Ctl-k for joe. I think ...
>
> P.P.S. vi turns fifty in 2026. I've used it since it
> was beta. Others change editors more often than they
> change their underwear.
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com

Re: [PLUG] PLUG Constituent Poll 2021

[Ben Koenig]

-Ben

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐

On Thursday, September 23rd, 2021 at 4:01 PM, Michael Dexter 
 wrote:

> On 9/23/21 6:22 AM, Daniel Ortiz wrote:
>
> > Another suggestion you could consider doing is making the meetings into a
> >
> > YouTube live and putting the meeting link in the description. It might not
> >
> > solve your problem of low attendance, but it is an idea than can be
> >
> > scrutinized. It also doesn't have to be YouTube live if the price of
> >
> > helping Google get more money, and be more dominant is one that won't be
> >
> > paid. Also, some people might interact through live comments, so including
> >
> > their interaction in the meetings could also be considered.
>
> I'll say this... one of the single things that surprised me most this
>
> year with an online developer summit was then they pushed from Zoom to
>
> YouTube (Live?) and I could pause to take a phone call, and catch back
>
> up to realtime. They scheduled ten minute breaks, put that on the
>
> screen, and was remarkably smooth. I will look into that. Not that we
>
> have breaks, but it actually solved a problem!
>
> Michael

The youtube live thing is kind of cool but I'm never really sure how "live" it 
is since the interface is kind of slim on those details. News companies have 
been using it lately and I wonder if any other video streaming services have 
something similar. Unfortunately Odyssee wandered off into college bro memeland 
so I'm hesitant to suggest it even though it's a nice system.

Re: [PLUG] Terabyte paper tape

[Ben Koenig]

People talk about old tech they same way they talk about fast food.

Gone are the days when a burger would be eaten with both hands. A bygone era 
when a man would stand by the quality of his work, truly committed to quality.

We live in an era when technology is shrunken and diminished. With a single 
hand we grasp a shortlived device designed to be used and discarded as quickly 
as the box it came in.

The computers of my generation are gimped, handicapped machines made to exist 
as a node in an infinite network of communication protocols. What was once a 
puzzle is now a debate, and arguments have replaced conversations.

On paper, I work with computers every day. But in reality 90% of my time is 
spent proving who is responsible for a bad Customer Experience.

It would be nice to spend some time in a room filled with analog devices and 
paper storage media. The same tech used to split the atom and visit the moon..

After the testing I recently did on some Macbook M1 laptops going back to punch 
cards sounds like an amazing idea.

-Ben
Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Sep 22, 2021, 5:36 PM, John Sechrest wrote:

> I remember that the first task in a new computer installation was to get
> the manuals set up. We often had 5-8 ft of Manuals that came with a system.
> So upboxing the manuals and setting them into binders was almost as big a
> task as getting the computer set up.
>
> They used to build reference manuals and Users guides with the full
> expectations you could find what you needed, since there was no network and
> every good manual page read was one less support call.
>
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 5:33 PM Tomas Kuchta 
> wrote:
>
>> You did not miss much.
>>
>> The old tech sucked. I was (un) fortunate enough to experience it, both at
>> home and work.
>>
>> About the only good thing about it was its simplicity and openness. Most of
>> the ancient computers came with awesome manuals for both HW and SW. It was
>> so easy to learn and understand. I guess, that the same could be said about
>> today's tech albeit at different abstraction level.
>>
>> -Tomas
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 11:34 Atharva Lele  wrote:
>>
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > Reading all of this is really so interesting to me! I was born in 1998
>> and
>> > I feel like I've missed out on so much!
>> >
>> > My first computer was an Intel Pentium 4 with 256MB RAM and 40GB HDD.
>> > Hopefully I'll get to at least tinker with some of the old tech!
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Atharva Lele
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 11:43 AM Daniel Ortiz <
>> > elamigodanielor...@gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > If it is desired or decided to try to replicate the experience of paper
>> > > tape coding then theoretically Google's teachable machine could be one
>> > > component used to accomplish that:
>> > > https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com
>> > >
>> > > On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 11:02 AM Russell Senior <
>> > russ...@personaltelco.net
>> > > >
>> > > wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > You can still get the clack-clack-ding-ding without the hardware:
>> > > >
>> > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd5oomwEBb0
>> > > >
>> > > > but it's hard to replicate the smell of paper tape.
>> > > >
>> > > > On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 4:08 AM Keith Lofstrom 
>> > wrote:
>> > > > >
>> > > > > "My first computer" was a DEC PDP8 at Tektronix, which I
>> > > > > was allowed to use at age 16 in 1969. The programming was
>> > > > > language was FOCAL. No disk drive - I/O was an ASR-33
>> > > > > teletype, and a "high speed" 60 character-per-second paper
>> > > > > tape reader.
>> > > > >
>> > > > > I compare that to my new 80 gram, 1 Terabyte SATA3 solid
>> > > > > state drive. A terabyte of paper tape would fill a cube
>> > > > > 20 meters on a side, weigh more than 10,000 metric tonnes,
>> > > > > and take 530 years to read.
>> > > > >
>> > > > > Not all was bad back then. The lawns we kids were told
>> > > > > to get off of were larger.
>> > > > >
>> > > > > Keith
>> > > > >
>> > > > > --
>> > > > > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
>> > > >
>> > >
>> >
>>
>
> --
> [image: www.seattleangelconference.com]
> 
>
> *JOHN SECHREST*
> *Founder, *Seattle Angel Conference
> TEL (541) 250-0844 EMAIL sechr...@seattleangel.com
> Schedule A Meeting 
>
> http://seattleangelconference.com
> @sechrest

Re: [PLUG] PLUG Constituent Poll 2021

[Ben Koenig]

The use of online meetings for troubleshooting is not an either/or question.

Some topics require in person assistance.

Some topics can be easily handled through via chat.

Some people can't show up at Free Geek on the weekend.

Instead of approaching this in a one-size-fits-all manner, lets try to think of 
this as an opportunity to expand. A hybrid approach will better meet everyone's 
schedule and generate more group activity in general.

And honestly.. some of you might be surprised what kind of issues can be 
resolved with voice chat.
-Ben

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Sep 22, 2021, 2:59 PM, wes wrote:

> +1 to this. If anyone knows of another potential venue, even temporarily
> until Free Geek is available again, please speak up.
>
> I know of places in Vancouver we could use, but I doubt that works for most
> people.
>
> -wes
>
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 2:47 PM Russell Senior 
> wrote:
>
>> I think the primary obstacle to an in-person clinic right now is that
>> FreeGeek is still mostly closed. At least, not hosting events, afaik.
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 2:38 PM John Jason Jordan  wrote:
>> >
>> > On Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:46:56 -0700
>> > Michael Dexter  dijo:
>> >
>> > >On 9/22/21 5:52 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:
>> > >> In the late 1990s and early 2000s I attended PLUG meetings in the PSU
>> > >> Library and the clinics at the schools. Both were where I learned a
>> > >> lot about linux.
>> > >>
>> > >> Now the meetings are computer-specific and highly technical. I cannot
>> > >> benefit from that information so I don't tune in.
>> > >
>> > >Let's make this actionable.
>> > >
>> > >What would an online clinic look like and who would want to facilitate
>> > >it? Assuming you aren't seeking help with the chicken and egg issue of
>> > >trying to get your A/V working to attend the meeting!
>> >
>> > The metro area is now over 60% vaccinated and schools are re-opening,
>> > so I've been considering a query here if we might be able to revive the
>> > in-person clinics.
>> >
>> > A virtual clinic is a possible alternative, but I can foresee some
>> > difficulties. For example, quite often at the clinics we have someone
>> > bring in a computer and want to install Linux on it. Usually the person
>> > has already tried and failed. Usually we are successful, but getting
>> > the job done often requires sitting in front of the screen. How can we
>> > help when the person's computer doesn't have an OS yet?
>> >
>> > There are lots of other software problems that are hard to troubleshoot
>> > without seeing the user's screen. I have used Zoom a few times, but I
>> > don't know if there is a way to make my full screen viewable by others,
>> > i.e., seeing error messages or terminal windows that are not part of
>> > the browser window.
>> >
>> > I might add that we also frequently have hardware issues that require
>> > screwdrivers and other tools to deal with. Does Zoom have a feature
>> > where I can stick my hand through the Zoom tab in my browser and have
>> > it come out on another user's screen, complete with a screwdriver?
>> >
>> > I'm not suggesting that a virtual clinic is not useful, but limitations
>> > are something to consider.
>>

Re: [PLUG] PLUG Constituent Poll 2021

[Ben Koenig]

Building on what Rich mentioned, I'd like to see the PLUG Clinic expand into 
the online space.

The deep dive presentations are great but sometimes you want to focus down a 
single technical issue. Email isnt always the most effective way to 
troubleshoot a problem.

-Ben

 Original Message 
On Sep 22, 2021, 5:52 AM, Rich Shepard < rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
On Wed, 22 Sep 2021, Michael Dexter wrote:
> Is this a mirror on the broader situation, or is this not what you want
> from PLUG?
Michael,
I'm not a computer professional or work in a business where computers are
the end. For my business they are a means to an end, a critical tool.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s I attended PLUG meetings in the PSU
Library and the clinics at the schools. Both were where I learned a lot
about linux.
Now the meetings are computer-specific and highly technical. I cannot
benefit from that information so I don't tune in.
However, the mail lists are extremely important and valuable and I am
grateful to all of you who make the time and effort to maintain them.
Stay well,
Rich

Re: [PLUG] How long to display video title

[Ben Koenig]

init needs better titles on its video tutorials. All the documentation looks 
like it was designed for distribution via gopher.

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Sep 10, 2021, 6:15 PM, wrote:

> For the record. I love the simplicity of init, and have since I first
> touched Unix (BSD 4.1). IMO systemd, albeit powerful, is just too complex
> (for PID 1).
>
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2021, Ben Koenig wrote:
>
>> Your advice on ttitle lengths was interesting though. I'll probably use that.
>>
>> Sent from ProtonMail mobile
>>
>>  Original Message 
>> On Sep 10, 2021, 5:51 PM, wrote:
>>
>>> I never said it was good. I said "exciting".
>>>
>>> On Sat, 11 Sep 2021, Ben Koenig wrote:
>>>
>>>> Can you please refrain from making grossly misinformed claims about 
>>>> systemd/init?
>>>>
>>>> I'm really not in the mood to dig up links showing the abusive behavior of 
>>>> the systemd founders.
>>>>
>>>> After 10 years of hearing lies about systemd/init I am rightfully pissed 
>>>> off.
>>>> -Ben
>>>>
>>>> Sent from ProtonMail mobile
>>>>
>>>>  Original Message 
>>>> On Sep 10, 2021, 5:26 PM, wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> We could get all "Star Wars" on titles :-). But, this is supposed to be a
>>>>> group of like minded people who in some way add to the Portland area Linux
>>>>> eco system (users, devs, ops, devops, designers, etc.), not content
>>>>> creation experts. When Rich posted for help on a video I, who rarely post,
>>>>> thought why not help. After all, many of us probably know others from
>>>>> other knowledge domains that could offer help for things not exactly
>>>>> "Linux", sort of quora for pdxlinux. I hate to say this to a group of
>>>>> people who love Linux, but Linux itself has become boring. Systemd
>>>>> replacing init is probably the most exciting (misunderstood) thing that's
>>>>> happened to (some) distros in recent years.
>>>>>
>>>>> 25 years of video production experience is good knowledge. Especially to a
>>>>> group of (mostly) engineers.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 10 Sep 2021, Daniel Ortiz wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> The rule Brooks brought could be sufficient for your problem, but while a
>>>>>> video editor is certainly more qualified than me in dealing with your
>>>>>> problem; the rule doesn't account for the two things I mentioned.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 6:24 PM Daniel Ortiz 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It depends on the pacing of the video and what you want the audience's
>>>>>>> reaction to be. For example, if showing the title is meant to be
>>>>>>> accompanied by beautiful music that is supposed to make your audience 
>>>>>>> feel
>>>>>>> like an epic adventure is coming then it might be best to not rush the
>>>>>>> title's appearance. On the other hand, if you want to do a quick intro 
>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>> causes your audience to feel something as well as curiosity and after 
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> title to jump in straight into the video then it might be best to keep 
>>>>>>> it
>>>>>>> short. There is no hard and fast rule unless someone figured one or some
>>>>>>> out.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 3:44 PM Rich Shepard 
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I've a .jpg of the video title that I'll record using vokoscreenNG. 
>>>>>>>> Using
>>>>>>>> pitivi I'll edit that short file in front of the video content itself.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> With my very limited video creation experience I have no sense of how
>>>>>>>> long a
>>>>>>>> video title should appear. So I'd like suggestions on how long that 
>>>>>>>> title
>>>>>>>> should be displayed.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> TIA,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Rich
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>

Re: [PLUG] How long to display video title

[Ben Koenig]

Your advice on ttitle lengths was interesting though. I'll probably use that.

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

 Original Message 
On Sep 10, 2021, 5:51 PM, wrote:

> I never said it was good. I said "exciting".
>
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2021, Ben Koenig wrote:
>
>> Can you please refrain from making grossly misinformed claims about 
>> systemd/init?
>>
>> I'm really not in the mood to dig up links showing the abusive behavior of 
>> the systemd founders.
>>
>> After 10 years of hearing lies about systemd/init I am rightfully pissed off.
>> -Ben
>>
>> Sent from ProtonMail mobile
>>
>>  Original Message 
>> On Sep 10, 2021, 5:26 PM, wrote:
>>
>>> We could get all "Star Wars" on titles :-). But, this is supposed to be a
>>> group of like minded people who in some way add to the Portland area Linux
>>> eco system (users, devs, ops, devops, designers, etc.), not content
>>> creation experts. When Rich posted for help on a video I, who rarely post,
>>> thought why not help. After all, many of us probably know others from
>>> other knowledge domains that could offer help for things not exactly
>>> "Linux", sort of quora for pdxlinux. I hate to say this to a group of
>>> people who love Linux, but Linux itself has become boring. Systemd
>>> replacing init is probably the most exciting (misunderstood) thing that's
>>> happened to (some) distros in recent years.
>>>
>>> 25 years of video production experience is good knowledge. Especially to a
>>> group of (mostly) engineers.
>>>
>>> On Fri, 10 Sep 2021, Daniel Ortiz wrote:
>>>
>>>> The rule Brooks brought could be sufficient for your problem, but while a
>>>> video editor is certainly more qualified than me in dealing with your
>>>> problem; the rule doesn't account for the two things I mentioned.
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 6:24 PM Daniel Ortiz 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It depends on the pacing of the video and what you want the audience's
>>>>> reaction to be. For example, if showing the title is meant to be
>>>>> accompanied by beautiful music that is supposed to make your audience feel
>>>>> like an epic adventure is coming then it might be best to not rush the
>>>>> title's appearance. On the other hand, if you want to do a quick intro 
>>>>> that
>>>>> causes your audience to feel something as well as curiosity and after the
>>>>> title to jump in straight into the video then it might be best to keep it
>>>>> short. There is no hard and fast rule unless someone figured one or some
>>>>> out.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 3:44 PM Rich Shepard 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I've a .jpg of the video title that I'll record using vokoscreenNG. Using
>>>>>> pitivi I'll edit that short file in front of the video content itself.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> With my very limited video creation experience I have no sense of how
>>>>>> long a
>>>>>> video title should appear. So I'd like suggestions on how long that title
>>>>>> should be displayed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> TIA,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Rich
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>