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

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .


SSDs do control sector mapping to their physical flash blocks. So, it does
not matter if OS tries to write to the same sectors over and over. The
drive will always do wear leveling.

If you want to make sure that your partitions maintain their real sizes due
to bad flash block/cell tagging internally, then just leave some part of
the ssd not partitioned.

In general, you do not need to worry though, SSDs are overprovisioned a
little for this purpose, and, normally, filling the disk to 100% is bad
news anyway.

Hope it helps, T

>

Re: [PLUG] Debian 12 on VirtualBox

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 16:02 Nat Taylor  wrote:

> Another option might be to install Gnome Boxes
> https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-boxes/stable/
> .


Well yes ... there are a few genuinely rational needs for vbox on linux -
legacy VM which cannot be rebuilt (winXP, Win7,  old no longer
available linux distros, etc.), familiarity, decent GUI, vagrant (though
that is Hashicorp, no longer open source corp.).

Are you using Boxes? I found it pretty limited compared to
KVM/quemu/libvirt + virtManager even vBox. What is your experience? What
would make it attractive, especially for someone like Jon who does not use
Gnome, I think?

-T

>

Re: [PLUG] Debian 12 on VirtualBox

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 13:13 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

> ... snip ...
>

Before someone takes the trouble to point out to me that to make shared
> folders work you need to have VirtualBox, the Guest Additions, and the
> Extensions all installed, and each of the same version. Yes, I do have
> all of them installed, and they're all the same version. That is,
> they're installed in the 22.04 host, but not Debian, because they're
> not in the existing default Debian repositories.
> .


You may not want to try yet another vbox fix, me neither, so to that end I
install both vbox + additions from virtualbox.org, not from the distro
repositories. Virtualbox.org also host update repositories, so nothing
breaks over and over after updates.

This (above) has saved me a lot of anxiety, wasted time, . anyway.

All that said, I believe that KVM/quemu is better choice on Linux. Despite
that, vbox is essential for legacy pre-kvm-quemu VMs.

Just a thought, -T

>

Re: [PLUG] Mint, Ubuntu, Debian (and Centos and Redhat/IBM)

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2023, 05:06 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

>
> I spent two hours trying to get Virtualbox to recognize either the
> optical drive or a USB drive where I had installed the Live Debian 12
> ISO that I downloaded. I finally succeeded at getting the virtual
> machine to use the optical drive, although I failed with the USB drive.
> .


Not saying that what you try to do (boot ISO from USB stick in VM) should
not be done "damn it!" - BUT - it is certainly not the easiest way to
install stuff in VM, as you have found.

The way to go is to:
* add optical drive to vBox
* load the .iso file to the optical drive in gui or using command line
* boot from the virtual optical drive with .iso inserted.

Hope it helps, Tomas

>

Re: [PLUG] Zoom error 10?

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .

+1 for zoon in browser (firefox)

I also sometimes use cell phone android - both browser (firefox) and zoom
app - phone allows me to move around and do my things or travel better.

So, no experience with linux zoom.

-T

>

Re: [PLUG] SSD swap partition and/or swap file

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 19:05 Keith Lofstrom  wrote:

> Snip - looking for the question...
>
> "Optimum SSD swap? ?? ???"
> .


My recommendation depends on your filesystem:
a. No COW filesystems such as ext*, xfs, ... --> use swap file of
pre-allocated size. It is more flexible (you can adjust size) and there is
no speed down side.
b. COW filesystems such as btrfs, zfs - use pre-allocated swap file and
disable COW for the file OR (possibly better/neater) create swap subvolume
with disabled COW

I use swap subvolume on hosts with btrfs or ext4 swapfile for some cloud
instances.
If you need suspend to work, swap neds to be >= RAM, else chose smaller
depending on RAM and disk size constraints.

In general, swap (even 1/2 or 1/4 RAM) is a good thing if you do not like
hard to explain, sudden application crashes after unaccessible host due to
OOM kernel protection.

I use 500GB swap on 2TB RAM hosts, 16GB on hosts with 32GB RAM, down to 1GB
on 2GB RAM virtual/cloud hosts.

Hope that helps somewhat,
Tomas

>

Re: [PLUG] Absolute vs. Relative sound level?

[Tomas Kuchta]

- pavucontrol -

On Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 01:03 Dick Steffens  wrote:

> Is there a way to view and change the sound level in Linux? I'm
> interested in knowing what the hardware setting is for playing sound. I
> know I can change the level with the + and - keys on my laptop, or also
> from the program playing the music, but I'd like to know what the system
> thinks the number is from where I start raising or lowering the level,
> and I'd like to be able to set the level to a specific point.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Dick Steffens
>

Re: [PLUG] Question on USB audio drivers in linux and Logitech H390 Headphones

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 16:49 Russell Senior  wrote:

>
> Did you find this?
>
>https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=776995
>
> It suggests a fix using pactl.
>
> Tomas has wisely suggested in the past that virtually all problems can
> be solved with some combination of Sugru and pavucontrol. Those words
> echo in my ears.
>
>
> On 7/21/23 13:43, Russell Senior wrote:
> > Unlikely big volume range
> .


Priceless, Russell - bravo to your educational search/git fu

-T

>

Re: [PLUG] Question on USB audio drivers in linux and Logitech H390 Headphones

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .


I have fwup working and updating FW on recently released openSuSE 15.5.
Perhaps you could boot to it from USB stick and try if that helps with fwup
or/and the sound problem.

That said, openSuSE 15.x is staying behind on old (2-ish years) kernels in
order stay in sync with their enterprise linux kernels. That should not
affect fwup service though. Suse says that they backport HW, and  but,
there is clear limit to what they can do. Not to distract from your current
problem - as result of old kernel, I use Ubuntu on newer HW and openSuSE on
older HW for familiarity, sentimentality and OS diversity reasons.

So, perhaps you could also boot the latest Ubuntu fron USB stick and see if
sound and fwup works there.

Hope that it gives you some ideas.
Tomas

Re: [PLUG] Sluggish response

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 01:41 Ted Mittelstaedt  wrote:

> If it is a magnetic media drive that is older the drive could be suffering
> end stage sector failure where the bad sector table is filled up.  I've
> seen it many times and it always makes the drive get very slow
>
> Ted.
>

Bad sectors should be evident in Smart tools. It might be good idea to
check it to prove/dis-proof disk issues.

-T

>

Re: [PLUG] Question on a quick CLI program for validating a csv file

[Tomas Kuchta]

awk -F, '{ print NF }'

On Sat, May 20, 2023, 20:37 American Citizen 
wrote:

> Hello all:
>
> I am using the xsv program for most csv file operations since it is
> quite fast.
>
> There is one command which I wish it had, called "length" which would
> give the fields per record (delineated by a line-feed or new line)
>
> awk or gawk does have NF variable and I can use this to verify the
> integrity of a tab-delimited csv file, quickly and even have awk spit
> out the bad records which have the field count not matching the expected
> field count
>
> But awk fails to give the correct NF number if the csv files is comma
> delimited, since some of the fields can contain quotes to encapsulate a
> comma inside a string. This misleads awk, of course.
>
> If I try to use xsv to convert a comma delimited file to a tab, it will
> work if the csv file is valid, but if some record is corrupted, then xsv
> crashes with an error report. xsv only wants valid csv data.
>
> Does anyone know a validator for "pipe" delimited or "comma" delimited
> csv files? I need to validate both headered and no-headered csv files.
>
> Thanks for suggesting some quick CLI programs which does this quite well
>
> Randall
>
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti Experts?

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .
>

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

>

Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti Experts?

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .


Before disposing of your hotspot + cell provider and getting someone elses
phone replacing the hotspot. I would very carefully study the terms and
conditions.

I cannot believe that someone here would be promoting any "Unlimited" plan
as unlimited in dictionary terms when it comes to telco (mono/duo)polies.

"Cost on an unlimited plan is likely cheaper than cost on the Verizon
hotspot AND the AT cell plan.  And I'll even throw in a dd-wrt router
that will connect to the S9 when it's running it's wifi tethering."

Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti Experts?

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .


+1 for checking that there is single network with/in 192.168.1.0/24

If both/all sides use that network range, thing will likely not work.

-T

>

Re: [PLUG] Any Ubiquiti Experts?

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, May 10, 2023, 17:47 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.
> .


I am confused about your network topology. So, you get in internet over
wifi from somewhere, received by the bullet - that feeds Netgear router by
what? (Ethernet cable?) Then you get your other wifi devices connected to
Netgear or back to bullet on different vlan or ?? Very confusing  Now
you want the bullet to be able to get internet from 2nd source (hotspot),
but only when it is on?

It loos like pretty complex order. Perhaps you need some low level access
to the Linux network config on the bullet. If that is so, please consider
a) simplifying your network topology and b) installing wrt on the bullet so
that you can configure the network and routing directly.

-T

Tomas

Re: [PLUG] What are the permissions for .ssh/authorized_keys?

[Tomas Kuchta]

You can stop the sshd service on the server, then start it interactively
with - - then try connecting from the client to see the server response
in your server shell.

If you find this not helpful - please just ignore it. No comments necessary.

-T

On Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 09:53 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Thu, 27 Apr 2023, King Beowulf wrote:
>
> > When you ssh caddis -> salmo, sshd will log the event on salmo
> > (destination).
> > Slackware 15.0 default for sshd is
> > /var/log/syslog -> errors and status messages
> > /var/log/secure -> errors and status messages (pam)
> > look for sshd messages.
>
> Ed,
>
> Since last Sunday (syslog.4/secure.4) there are no ssh or sshd messages in
> either.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
>

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

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Mar 7, 2023, 13:59 Ted Mittelstaedt  wrote:

> IMHO the problem with that is an excessive number of MAX stations.
>
> When I was in NYC I noticed very few stations downtown on the rail.  You
> got on at penn station then the train flew out to the bouroghs.  And that
> thing moved damn fast.  MAX rail speed is much slower IMHO the result of
> political decisions of giving a stop to everyone to satisfy people not
> willing to walk 5 blocks downtown.
> .


Max needs to go underground in the downtown area - only then it can go
fast, don't stop at junctions and each stop can cover a few blocks with
different exits.

IMHO - from simply learning/observing how it is done elsewhere

>

Re: [PLUG] Powered USB-A hub - LSUSB MaxPower

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 22:16 MC_Sequoia  wrote:

> You want to a guess what the MaxPower is listed for the Logitech V20
> portable usb speakers are that are plugged into my pc?
>
> I'll give you one guess.
>
> Yep, MaxPower is listed as 590 mA
>
> "The USB 1.x and 2.0 specifications provide a 5 V supply on a single wire
> to power connected USB devices.
>
> A unit load is defined as 100 mA in USB 2.0, and 150 mA in USB 3.0. A
> device may draw a maximum of 5 unit loads (500 mA) from a port in USB 2.0;
> 6 (900 mA) in USB 3.0."
>
> "Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:0a04 Logitech, Inc. V20 portable speakers
> (USB powered)
> Device Descriptor:
>   bLength18
>   bDescriptorType 1
>   bcdUSB   1.10
>   bDeviceClass0
>   bDeviceSubClass 0
>   bDeviceProtocol 0
>   bMaxPacketSize0 8
>   idVendor   0x046d Logitech, Inc.
>   idProduct  0x0a04 V20 portable speakers (USB powered)
>   bcdDevice0.07
>   iManufacturer   1 Logitech
>   iProduct2 Logitech USB Speaker
>   iSerial 0
>   bNumConfigurations  1
>   Configuration Descriptor:
> bLength 9
> bDescriptorType 2
> wTotalLength   0x00e9
> bNumInterfaces  3
> bConfigurationValue 1
> iConfiguration  3 G6 2005/03/29 10:05
> bmAttributes 0xc0
>   Self Powered
> MaxPower  500mA
>
>
> The total RMS Power of the Logitech V20 Portable USB Speakers = 2 W or
> 2000 mA.
> .
>

Yikes, since when 2W at 5V is 2000mA?

-Tomas


>

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

[Tomas Kuchta]

As you already discovered 10.0.18.1 is not routable private IP. You ISP
(Comcast) does not put cable customers behind GNAT, I believe - so, as
already mentioned above it is likely openSuse not your ISP "feature".

If you run out of ideas, and following the comments in resolv.conf didn't
get you anywhere - you could try to fish for leads by:
sudo grep -r 10.0.18.1 /etc

This will likely lead you to a systemd service and/or network manager
config files, depending which one is managing your DNS config.

I am less and less familiar with openSuse these days, moving slowly away to
different distro(s), after decades or use Suse is becoming pretty nasty
shop in my personal experience. They are unable to provide even the most
basic billing support for paying individual customers, blocking emails due
to broken infrastructure and abandonment, not even answering their
corporate phone numbers, ., leading to completely unnecessary annual
legal credit card billing disputes.

Hope that helps, Tomas

Re: [PLUG] LiFePO4 UPS?

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2023, 16:22 Keith Lofstrom  wrote:

> I have an ancient Tripplite 700VA UPS, which is briefly
> triggered maybe twice a year, and needs a new sealed lead
> acid (SLA) battery maybe every two years.  Oh boy, more
> toxic waste, and shopping trips, and disposal trips.
>
> Theoretically, it can provide a signal that tells my
> computers to prepare for shutdown, but it doesn't seem
> to play nice with Linux.  Most of the outages have been
> less than 30 seconds, so triggered shutdown is not a
> "must have".  However, extra bonus points if the UPS
> /does/ behave well with more than one Linux machine.
>
> The load is two computers (250W) and perhaps one of two
> screens (another 60W?).  Note that 700VA actually means
> something like 400W continuously delivered - perhaps
> the VA number covers the peak impulse power at computer
> startup, or during a power line excursion.
>
> New technology LiFePO4 batteries last much longer and are
> environmentally cleaner than an SLA, and are shape and
> terminal compatible, but they charge differently.
> I tried one and failed.
>
> Perhaps there is a warranty-voiding retrofit hack for the
> Tripplite, but for safety's sake I prefer to purchase an
> Uninterruptable Power Supply designed for LiFePO4.
>
> Searching on Amazon reveals some $1K units (and a crap-ton
> of SLA in response to "Lithium"), more power than I need
> and way more dollars than I wish to spend.  I don't mind
> spending 2X, but not 5X.
>
> Suggestions?
> .


I came to the same lithium based battery UPS conclusion - there are no
easy, economical, reliable and save choices.

My solution is to get and wire external marine deep discharge battery to my
UPS when I need to replace its internal SLA battery. They play nicely with
the UPS and should last about decade for the similar cost to SLA.
Basically, I am kicking the can down the road!

Maybe, I will be able to UPS the whole house with an EV if/when I get one
some years down the road and forget about these crappy, expensive UPSs.

- T

>

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

[Tomas Kuchta]

Try $HOME/ Instead of ~/

On Wed, Jan 4, 2023, 14:29 Dick Steffens  wrote:

> I am using OpenShot, which is distributed as an AppImage. To run it I
> have to double click on it's icon in whatever directory I stash it. I'd
> rather have an icon on the panel I have at the bottom of my screen that
> has several icons for starting my most frequently used programs. I did
> some DDG searching and found an instruction to put it in a Launcher,
> which can be added to the panel. Unfortunately, assigning the program to
> the Launcher doesn't work. I get the error message:
>
> Failed to execute command "~/appimage/OpenShot-v.0.0-x86_64.AppImage".
> Failed to execute child process
> "~/appimage/OpenShot-v.0.0-x86_64.AppImage" (No such file or directory)
>
> Can someone offer a clue stick as to what I'm missing?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Dick Steffens
>

Re: [PLUG] Restart mdadm? SOLVED

[Tomas Kuchta]

TB is hot plug interface. As such, I'd sort of expect that HW and SW
assumes that it can safely traverse power states and that connection resets
may be OK.

If that is what is happening, it is of course pretty nasty thing to do to
md arrays. Native higher level file systems btrfs/zfs may fare better, but
I would be skeptical and expect similar problems. JBOD should be more
resilient.

In any case system logs, particularly power state changes should confirm
what is actually happening.

Hope that helps,
Tomas

On Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 04:02 Russell Senior 
wrote:

> Another good starting point is: cat /proc/mdstat
>
> On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 11:03 PM John Jason Jordan  wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 27 Nov 2022 22:39:48 -0800
> > Paul Goins  dijo:
> >
> > >When this occurs, have you tried "dmesg -T" or checked
> > >/var/log/kern.log or /var/log/syslog for suspicious log entries around
> > >the time of the error? Might be worth taking a peek as well.
> >
> > Your suspicion was correct - I had not tried either of those options,
> > and because I was unaware of them. I have added your suggestions to my
> > file for mdadm solutions. Next time this happens I will see what they
> > produce.
> >
>

Re: [PLUG] SSH to external site not responsive

[Tomas Kuchta]

Many shared hosting providers let people to sftp, but not ssh. This is
because there are many users/website on the host and executing stuff could
impact them all.

You may need to reach out to admins to enable ssh for you, if they support
it or get VM from someone like AWS, linode, etc.

Hope that helps,
Tomas

On Thu, Nov 17, 2022, 12:47 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Nov 2022, Ben Koenig wrote:
>
> > ssh -p  @
>
> Ben,
>
> Actually, all that's needed is the -p option (which I missed looking at the
> ssh options.)
>
> Now I need to contact the NFS community because ssh is not accepting the
> same password I use with sftp and logging into my account on the web. Sigh.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] a question regarding something like nohup or disown

[Tomas Kuchta]

I am curious what distro are you running?

I am running openSuSE and usually clock up about half year on the KDE
session before some update forces reboot. I keep it running 24/7 to pull
emails local, monitor environment (temp/humidity), VPN, remote desktop,
 other services. I have not experienced memory leaks.

Tomas

On Tue, Nov 8, 2022, 21:41 American Citizen 
wrote:

> Hi:
>
> I am running the KDE Plasmashell desktop, but it has memory leaks and
> eventually I will run out of system memory.
>
> If I logout, I will lose certain running jobs, which I really want to
> keep running.
>
> However if I start a shell, and do the %jobs -l command, nothing is
> there, so I cannot use %disown -r command nor prepend nohup in front of
> some command line execution with a background exec &.
>
> Just how can I attach a nohup to certain running pids, such that if I
> have to logout of the desktop session, these jobs still keep running?
>
> So far, the examples I have seen of nohup and disown, assume that one
> has a current shell open. They don't discuss what happens after the fact?
>
> Currently, if I logout of the desktop session, or restart the desktop, I
> lose the running programs.
>
> Any idea on how to stop this?
>
>
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Nordic, Russian keyboards

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 11:29 Galen Seitz  wrote:

>
> Huh.  I didn't know that the Compose key could be used in that way.  I
> always use it as a separate keystroke, not as a shift-like modifier.  I
> just tried it here and it works as you described.  I wonder if this
> works due to key rollover support.  Anyway, all of the following work,
> at least for me on my CentOS 7 xfce desktop.
>
> Compose held, ', a  ->  á
> Compose held, a, '  ->  á
> Compose, ', a   ->  á
> Compose, a, '   ->  á
> .


May I ask - what the . is Compose key? Is that Apple computer keyboard
thing?

I don't think I have ever seen/used keyboard with it. Perhaps, I am lucky??

Thanks, T

>

Re: [PLUG] Nordic, Russian keyboards

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2022, 00:57 Tomas Kuchta 
wrote:

>
> I also switch the keyboard layout while looking at the appropriate country
> key layout print out placed above the keyboard. After a while, I do not
> need to look at it much.
>
> All that said, I admit, I am getting lazier about it over the time; and
> simply use ascii characters skipping the diacritic. I still use Cyrillic
> layout from time to time, mostly to show off. People are pretty comfortable
> with English... So we use it as common language.
> .
>

 And there is of course another option  I have a friend pretty good
at using midi keyboard to type ...

>

Re: [PLUG] Nordic, Russian keyboards

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 23:57 Ali Corbin  wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 8:24 PM Keith Lofstrom  wrote:
> .
>
> > Does anyone on the plug list have experience using multiple
> > keyboards and alternate character sets?  Suggested vendors
> > for those keyboards?  Helpful Linux tools for linguistic
> > cripples?
> >
> > I regularly switch back and forth between Latin, Cyrillic, and (ancient)
> Greek.  But I simply switch the layouts, using a single physical keyboard
> for each.  Which takes some memorization.  Since I never learned to
> touch-type in Russian, I can use a phonetic Cyrillic keyboard and mostly
> press the Latin key that sounds like the Cyrillic one.  I do have to
> memorize where the extra letters are, or bring up an image of the keyboard
> layout, or even bring up the character map and click the letters into the
> paste buffer.
>

I also switch the keyboard layout while looking at the appropriate country
key layout print out placed above the keyboard. After a while, I do not
need to look at it much.

All that said, I admit, I am getting lazier about it over the time; and
simply use ascii characters skipping the diacritic. I still use Cyrillic
layout from time to time, mostly to show off. People are pretty comfortable
with English... So we use it as common language.

-T

>

Re: [PLUG] Adding another DNS record

[Tomas Kuchta]

Why bother with redirect, just define A record for both foo.com and
www.foo.com if you want to keep it as Wes suggested.

And get rid of @ name if you do not need it.

-T

On Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 08:32 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Oct 2022, wes wrote:
>
> > you're missing the MX record from this list. it definitely exists, so the
> > fact that you're not listing it here suggests that your info from your
> DNS
> > hosting provider is incomplete.
>
> Wes,
>
> Come to think of it, perhaps before I changed registrars, there was an MX
> record.
>
> > the MX records control where mail gets delivered. not the A record. so
> > changing the A record from the office IP to the web host IP will not
> break
> > your email service.
>
> I can certainly add an MX record, yet the current A record with the mail
> host has been working. I'll learn the specifics to add that record.
>
> It appears to me that the URL Redirect redirect record would work to
> redirect https://appl-ecosys.com to https://www.appl-ecosys.com. Just how
> that record is entered I need to learn.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
>
>

Re: [PLUG] apology for 2 post

[Tomas Kuchta]

I did not see anything coming from you today/yesterday.

Tomas

On Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 18:17 American Citizen 
wrote:

> To all:
>
> For some reason my system went ahead and made two posts to the group,
> despite the fact that I was working on the post and finally decided to
> cancel it and thunderbird put it into the draft folder.
>
> My apologies for this. Something strange is happening to my linux system
> and I cannot get the C programs to run correctly anymore.
>
> Randall
>
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Music Composing Software

[Tomas Kuchta]

I used to use Rosegarden for writing/playing scores. Like any of these
applications, it need some sort of midi sw/hw to render the sounds.

I found it much easier to enter scores using keyboard/mouse rather than by
midi keyboard. This is because midi input captures precise note
length/tempo - requiring significant clean up.

Like anything else, it needs time investment to acquire profficiency.

Hope it helps,
Tomas

On Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 08:30 Michael Barnes  wrote:

> I may have asked this before, but forgot.
>
> Any suggestions on music composing software for Linux? I'm not talking
> about an audio editor like Audacity. I want to see a staff and put notes on
> it and hopefully play it. I did find some programs maybe a year ago, but
> can't remember any of the names.
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>

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

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 02:04 wes  wrote:

> they don't care in the slightest. they're just following a script.
>
> if it was me, I would troll them a little. "I had to break the law to get
> my phone fixed because you wouldn't help me." but that's probably farther
> than most would want to go.
> .


Bureaucratic monsters do not care. They all just follow the script or loose
job for disturbing thought-less existence of said monster.

I have a feeling that everyone at the G corp. wants to be invisible right
now.

If you tell them that you got $3k flight ticket or cycled all the way from
CR to be able to call them from the state side - they will probably
recognize each other for sticking to their procedures. After all, they made
you to follow their rules, despite all the difficulty.

 Don't get me started about corporate IT .

>

Re: [PLUG] Typing accented characters in text files

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .

I used to just switch the keyboard to appropriate language and print the
keyboard layout on a piece of paper. After a while, I'd get used to the
layout. Much faster than entering key codes, even if you remember them.

It probably would not be so easy in arabic or Japanese That is
different type of barrier.

T

>

Re: [PLUG] Whitespace in Ubuntu 22.04 rsyslog.conf

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 13:34 Paul Heinlein  wrote:

> Just an FYI:
>
> At work, we use a puppet template to generate /etc/rsyslog.conf on all
> our *nix machines. That template was failing on the first Ubuntu 22.04
> host we tried to integrate with our puppet configs.
>
> In short, certain directives that encountered two spaces between
> directive and setting would fail, e.g.,
>
> $FileOwner  syslog
> $FileGroup  adm
>
> Replacing the two spaces with a single space fixed the problem.
>
> I scoured the changelogs but couldn't find evidence that this is an
> intentional change.
> .


Could this be UTF issue in rsyslog config parser/regexp?

I have been encountering strange invisible simple parsing issues recently.
If this is related, I usually resolve them by replacing [ \t] or \s or \S
with [[:space:]] patterns and it often helps.

I wish to know a way of color coding ascii and unicode in text/logs to make
it visible what is one byte versus multi-byte characters. It will likely
get settled over time.

Hope this helps, Tomas

>

Re: [PLUG] Vobsub2srt

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 15:49 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Sep 2022, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>
> > Actually, my tesseract is apt and my vobsub2srt is snap. And there is
> > no snap for tesseract and there is no apt for vobsub2srt. There are
> > also a couple of PPAs to install later versions of tesseract, including
> > 5.0, but that doesn't sound like the right move.
> >
> > Maybe I can find an old version of vobsub2srt from before snap existed.
>
> John,
>
> Others will comment on this suggestion, but since you appeared stymied now
> consider pointing the existing library version to the required value using
> a
> soft link. Each application will find the library version it wants. Not
> perfect, but it could be a temporary (or permanent) solution for you.
> .


That will not probably work with vobsub2srt in snap. Snap packages play in
snap only AFAIK.

That is why people are super frustrated about Firefox in snap - cannot
access ftp://sites, broken plugins, etc., etc.

My 2c, T

>

Re: [PLUG] Vobsub2srt

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 14:30 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Sep 2022 11:54:06 -0400
> Tomas Kuchta  dijo:
>
> >Try creating link with the name to your current tesseract lib file in
> >the lib directory.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. However, the error message doesn't say where
> it is looking for the lib file:
>
> vobsub2srt: error while loading shared libraries:
> libtesseract.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file
> or directory
>
> A seach on libtesseract* in Catfish gave me:
>
> /snap/vobsub2srt/34/usr/lib/libtesseract.so.3
> /snap/vobsub2srt/34/usr/lib/libtesseract.so.3.0.4
> /snap/vobsub2srt/34/usr/share/doc/libtesseract3
> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtesseract.a
> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtesseract.so
> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtesseract.so.4
> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtesseract.so.4.0.1
> /usr/share/doc/libtesseract-dev
> /usr/share/doc/libtesseract4
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/libtesseract-dev:amd64.list
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/libtesseract-dev:amd64.md5sums
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/libtesseract4:amd64.list
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/libtesseract4:amd64.md5sums
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/libtesseract4:amd64.shlibs
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/libtesseract4:amd64.triggers
>
> I begin to see what happened - vobsub2srt was installed with snap,
> which apparently put libtesseract.so.3 in a /snap folder (why??), and
> tesseract doesn't look in there. I have little knowledge of how to
> create links, but I do know how to copy and paste so, guessing that the
> file should be in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu, I copied the file into
> there, and that solved the problem. Except that now I have more things
> that tesseract can't find. Stay tuned. :)
>

I do not hink you want to copy the lib file from snap to your OS lib dir.
This is because you have no idea how it is compiled.

The issue is your tesseract is snap and vobsub2srt is not. Snap packages
cannot share libraries, that is the point of snaps.

You need to:
a) find snap version of vobsub2srt which includes tesseract libs.
b) find not snap tesseract package.

If your vobsub2srt is snap, do a) else b)

Hope that helps,
Tomas

>

Re: [PLUG] Vobsub2srt

[Tomas Kuchta]

Try creating link with the name to your current tesseract lib file in the
lib directory.

Tomas

On Sun, Sep 11, 2022, 22:41 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

> Vobsub2srt has been around for a long time to convert bitmap subtitles
> to srt (text) subtitles. It uses tesseract for the OCR work. I have
> tesseract installed  According to the man page
>
> vobsub2srt --lang en filename
>
> Is supposed to do the job, where 'filename' is the name given to each of
> the .sub and .idx files, without appending the extension. This is what I
> get:
>
> vobsub2srt: error while loading shared libraries:
> libtesseract.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file
> or directory
>
> I can't find libtesseract.so.3. The problem may be that vobsub2srt
> hasn't been updated since the turn of the millennium, where tesseract
> keeps coming out with updates.
>
> Any suggestions?
>

Re: [PLUG] IPv6 TCP connect timeout puzzler

[Tomas Kuchta]

Could the issue be that the ssh response is on ipv4, not on ipv6 as
expected?

-T

On Fri, Sep 9, 2022, 10:34 Paul Heinlein  wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Sep 2022, Russell Senior wrote:
>
> > I'm seeing bizarre behavior: host A initiates an ssh -6 to host B; host B
> > is a qemu-kvm guest of a kvm host, C. Tcpdump (on the initiating host A
> > shows A -> B TCP SYN packet, and a B -> A TCP SYN-ACK reply, but host A
> > apparently doesn't recognize it as valid (although, in wireshark they
> look
> > reasonable to an eyeball), because the connect syscall never returns
> (until
> > it times out), and the A -> B ACK handshake is never sent. Works fine for
> > ssh -4. If A and C are the same host, I see the same behavior. Another
> > wrinkle: if A is also a kvm guest of C, I don't see the SYN-ACK, just the
> > SYN. The kvm clients are connected via a network bridge on C, e.g. "brctl
> > show" sees N+1  real ethernet interfaces eth0, ... ethN, and the M+1
> > virtual interfaces associated with the kvm guests: vnet0 ... vnetM. There
> > are no netfilter rules to be seen on any of the hosts involved.
> >
> > Oh, and A can ping6 B, and vice versa, just fine. I'm only seeing this
> > weirdness with TCP.
> >
> > Anybody have any thoughts? This is violating my expectations.
>
> That is weird. Weirder still is the fact that I can duplicate those
> symptoms on my Mac that's hosting a Linux VM using the UTM hypervisor.
> ssh -6 fails but ping6 succeeds.
>
> --
> Paul Heinlein
> heinl...@madboa.com
> 45°22'48" N, 122°35'36" W
>

Re: [PLUG] trying to simplify my Linux operating system graphics components

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2022, 20:30 American Citizen 
wrote:

> Hi all:
>
> .


I use openSuSE for decades by now and I have no clue. I once had similar
trouble, over and over fighting with Nvidia. In the end I swore, no more,
and kept it by using Intel graphics and now AMD. That kept me out of the
trouble and happy linux user. So, many thanks to Intel for excellent
support and now AMD for following the same path.

Could this guide help you?
https://opensuse-guide.org/3d.php

Best, Tomas

>

Re: [PLUG] memory and swap not recovered after program kill - some questions

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 01:31 Cy  wrote:

> On Sun, 28 Aug 2022 01:23:08 -0700
> Russell Senior  wrote:
>
> > Uh, I'd take issue with "poorly designed". Maybe misunderstood.
>
> I don't mean the page cache is a bad idea. I mean that "MemFree" should be
> called
> something like "MemInactive" and "MemAvailable" should be called "MemFree"
> in
> /proc/meminfo. Some things in Linux are poorly named, with caveats in the
> documentation
> saying "Oh but not all free memory is free." It's a pretty minor complaint.
>

Maybe you are looking for available memory. This is reported

-T

Re: [PLUG] Does an Open Source Thermostat exist?

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2022, 17:04 Russell Senior 
wrote:

> I have used a bunch of these:
>
>   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T0K8NXC/
> and
>   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G7BE9WK/
>
> with https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433 and an rtlsdr (like this:
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VZ1AWQA/) to decode.
>
> For improved accuracy, I calibrated the sensors in an icebath (in
> several layers of ziplock bags and desiccant) for 0 degrees offset.
> .


These are good sensors with great battery life. I also have ThermPro
sensors, they work, but the ones Russell lists are better, smaller and much
longer battery life.

I do not calibrate them. I care about being comfortable and saving power
rather than worry about whether the temperature reading is 0.2-0.3 degrees
different from absolutely correct value.

-T

Re: [PLUG] Need help backing up my data

[Tomas Kuchta]

>
> .

How many files/average file size?

If you are copying millions of small files, it would be pretty slow to slow
SMR disk.

That said, you have tone of unnecessary options there. I will not comment
on options, you know what you need. Definitely get rid of the print, that
slows stuff a lot. If you really need the list of files, redirect it to a
file and watch the dile separately.

Hope that helps, -T

Re: [PLUG] Formating microSD card for VFAT

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 12:19 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> I've not before needed to format an SD card (of any size) in the computer.
> Now I have a couple of SunDisk 32G microSD cards for the Sir Gawain
> mini-camera that need formatting.
>
> I put the microSD card in an SD adapter, and the latter in a USB holder
> inserted in a desktop USB port.
>
> I'm used to seeing devices as sd(x). Does the above mean the microSD card
> is
> already vfat formatted?
> .


What does fdisk -l and/or lsblk tells you?

You should be able to format the thing in the camera anyway.

-T

Re: [PLUG] Hardware recommendations: KVM switch

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2022, 17:56 Joseph Carter 
wrote:

>
> > I'll re-learn how to set up network file system (NFS) and use that to
> mount
> > the secondary desktop on the primary desktop.
> >
> > Thanks for sharing!
>
> These days it seems like SMB is the most standard solution for that. I
> know people want nothing to do with SMB because "it's a Microsoft thing" …
> but no, at this point it's kind of not. Both Apple and the Samba team have
> extended SMB quite a bit for specifically working with UNIX systems. Not
> just UNIX permissions either—ACLs and extended attributes too. These things
> typically are not supported by the aging NFS systems out there. If NFS
> gives you any headaches, I recommend giving samba a shot.
>

NFS or SMB/CIFS have nothing to do with KVM sharing. Perhaps, Rich thought
that VNC is misspelled NFS, no idea.

That said, please re-discover modern NFS before making these
sweeping/generalized statements.

The major point of NFS is meant for multi-user system like *nix. It can be
mounted by the system without sharing user credentials. It is more
performant, distributed, ...

In short, NFS is different kind of animal than CIFS. Both NFS and CIFS
serve different purpose and come from different starting points.

Just my 2¢, -T

>

Re: [PLUG] Hardware recommendations: KVM switch

[Tomas Kuchta]

Just a comment about all the ssh/vnc/synergy/whatever solutions - they
obviously do not work with BIOS or with full disk encryption (before boot).

This is limitation not a bug. So, do not burry your the computers in real
hard to reach places.

-T

Re: [PLUG] Hardware recommendations: KVM switch

[Tomas Kuchta]

I find kvm switches to be nothing, but a frustration with modern desktop.
Most kvm will keep one of the computers disconnected at all times. This
results in not activating graphics card output or some desktop size issues.

Keith discussed it in older thread.

As result - I keep my multimedia PC connected to screen and access
everything else by VNC or ssh from the multimedia (assigned, not special)
PC. It also saves my desk space.

HTH, Tomas

On Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 10:48 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> I want to purchase a KVM switch that allows me to switch an HP Compaq
> LA1951g monitor between two desktop workstations. One workstation has a
> Radeon Pro WX 4100 video card with 4 mini-displayports, the other has a
> Radeon Pro WX 2100 video card with 2 mini-displayports and 1 displayport.
>
> My web searches find KVM switches for 2 or 3 monitors and a couple of hits
> for 1 monitor/2 computers (the latter presents Newegg and Amazon), but the
> descriptions all say 'dual monitors.'
>
> Not being a hardware guy I need recommendations for a KVM switch that would
> allow me to use one USB/DIN keyboard and trackball and the 1280x1024
> monitor
> with two desktop workstations which have mini-display ports in common. (I
> assume there are mini-displayport to displayport adapters, and vice versa.)
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] Thunderbird Login Issue

[Tomas Kuchta]

FWIW:

There used to be a way to enable insecure applications under google account.

-T


On Sun, Jun 12, 2022, 13:08 Tomas Kuchta 
wrote:

> I use on-line accounts in gnome and/or kde. They are so called "secure
> authentication apps". They in turn provide authentication via gnome/kde key
> wallets to my emai client - in my case evolution.
>
> Tomas
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 23:58 Russell Senior 
> wrote:
>
>> And, there are other authenticator apps that also work. They use a
>> shared key plus time to generate a six digit code that changes every
>> 30 seconds.
>>
>> TOTP
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_one-time_password for details.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 8:43 PM Randy Bush  wrote:
>> >
>> > >> In order to fix the issue you have to enable two
>> > >> factor authentication  on your Google account.
>> > >
>> > > Jesus Christ is Google hungry for phone numbers.
>> >
>> > no.  it's the millions they make off the free 2fa google authenticator
>> > app.  
>> >
>> > 2fs need not be a text message.  in fact, texts are worse and worse for
>> > 2fa.
>> >
>> > randy, who is not a big google fan but uses the authenticator
>>
>

Re: [PLUG] Thunderbird Login Issue

[Tomas Kuchta]

I use on-line accounts in gnome and/or kde. They are so called "secure
authentication apps". They in turn provide authentication via gnome/kde key
wallets to my emai client - in my case evolution.

Tomas

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 23:58 Russell Senior 
wrote:

> And, there are other authenticator apps that also work. They use a
> shared key plus time to generate a six digit code that changes every
> 30 seconds.
>
> TOTP
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_one-time_password for details.
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 8:43 PM Randy Bush  wrote:
> >
> > >> In order to fix the issue you have to enable two
> > >> factor authentication  on your Google account.
> > >
> > > Jesus Christ is Google hungry for phone numbers.
> >
> > no.  it's the millions they make off the free 2fa google authenticator
> > app.  
> >
> > 2fs need not be a text message.  in fact, texts are worse and worse for
> > 2fa.
> >
> > randy, who is not a big google fan but uses the authenticator
>

Re: [PLUG] Package Name Lengths in different distros

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 16:44 Keith Lofstrom  wrote:

> When you encounter one of
> the twits who creates ridiculously long package names,
> corner them and blabber about your vacation in Thailand,
> mentioning the official Thai (20 second to pronounce)
> capital city name frequently.  Watch the twits squirm.
> .


Let me remind you:
All long names stars with good intentions!

Re: [PLUG] Package Name Lengths in different distros

[Tomas Kuchta]

Suse can also have long names.

I'd keep the name column text or equivalent. You can always use index or
compute name's sha1/256 hash column if you need to speed up searches/joins
over millions of rows.

Tomas

On Thu, Jun 9, 2022, 22:47 Ben Koenig  wrote:

> --- Original Message ---
> On Thursday, June 9th, 2022 at 7:36 PM, Rich Shepard <
> rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
>
>
> > On Fri, 10 Jun 2022, Ben Koenig wrote:
> >
> > > How high should I set the limit?
> >
> >
> > Ben,
> >
> > I don't use mariadb but it's likely to have a data type such as 'text' or
> > 'varchar', both of which have no defined limit. Using such a data type on
> > your package name removes the issue of the name's length. This data type
> is
> > useful for a column that stores a comment or description the length of
> which
> > varies greatly from row to row.
> >
> > HTH,
> >
> > Rich
>
>
> I may end up looking into that though I'm largely confined to the
> character fields defined by django. Instead of a CharField I would use a
> TextField. That could end up requiring more custom code on my end which
> would need to be maintained.
>

Re: [PLUG] Alcatel Linkzone sold by T-Mobile, labeled "4G LTE HotSpot

[Tomas Kuchta]

This thread grows longer and I am still not any wiser how is the whole
thing connected and expected to work.

My advice is to try to describe how you connect whole setup, in simple
words. Please do not assume that we know what is terminal or host in 19xx
context, just avoid assuming that we do/should understand what you mean.
Obviously, we do not.

 What you are installing or configuring on what devices? What are you
trying to achieve? Why are you disabling wifi on a hotspot - how do you
expect to get data from the hotspot without wifi.

Hope that helps, Tomas

On Sun, Jun 5, 2022, 10:19 Russell Senior  wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 5, 2022, 02:57 Richard Owlett  wrote:
>
> > [...] As I view wifi as being intrinsically insecure, I have considered
> > it fortunate that a default Debian CANNOT connect connect to the wifi
> > chip in ANY of my laptops. This specific laptop will be used in an
> > environment that requires wifi.
> >
>
> Fwiw, by the same standard (that an arbitrary number of people can see your
> bits as they traverse from source to destination), the internet is *also*
> intrinsically insecure. Even a "private" fixed wire directly between you
> and your communicational correspondent can be tapped unless you supervise
> the entire wire. The traditional solution to insecure media is strong
> end-to-end encryption, so that the insecure media is not a problem.
>

Re: [PLUG] Wifi not working

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Mon, May 2, 2022, 13:23 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

>
> I also question why I must be root to fly in an airplane.


I do not need to be root to do this - because I am using network manager to
manage networks on laptops. Maybe, you also use network manage - in which
case you could install + start network manager applet to do all your
network related settings without root.

Tomas

Re: [PLUG] Can I enable trickle charging of my USB-C laptop?

[Tomas Kuchta]

You need charger (or battery bank) with the appropriate USB PD version.
Most cheap phone charger do not talk USB PD - but - you could get one of
those and it should work with everything.

USB PD 2 or 3 typically come as 45W or more. 60W ones are pretty small and
you could charge laptop, phone, battery bank off it. Framework sells one of
the GaN small 60W types for reasonable $$. Or bring your 100W laptop brick
for free to charge your phone fast.

Hope it helps,
-T

On Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 19:43 Eric House  wrote:

> I have a brand new laptop, my first with nothing but USB ports (two C, one
> old-style.) Ubuntu seems to run flawlessly, and it becomes part of my
> desktop setup via a single USB-C cable that carries Ethernet, video, power
> and whatever connected USB peripherals require. It came with a 100W power
> brick that plugs into a USB-C port.
>
> My one disappointment is that it won't charge off anything but a
> laptop-caliber charger. I'd hoped that when traveling I could bring a
> single smaller phone charger and that, even if it took overnight, the
> laptop could be charged. Instead it doesn't recognize anything providing
> less than 30W or so.
>
> Does anybody know if that's something I can change, either by installing or
> modifying software? Any suggestions where to start researching this? If
> it's not already obvious, I know next to nothing about USB.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --Eric
>
> PS I know there are some 30W chargers not much larger than phone chargers.
> But I'd rather be able to use whatever happens to be available, either an
> older charger or USB battery pack, in a pinch.
>
> PPS It's an MSI "Prestige 14" ultrabook with 32G/1T. $1K at Costco on sale.
> No touchscreen, and a lower-res screen that doesn't drain the battery on
> airplanes but drives a 4K monitor at home. I like!
> --
> My g-bike can trounce your e-bike!
>

Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu LTS upgrade timing

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 13:47 Nat Taylor  wrote:

> Of some relevance may be Rolling Rhino coming up, and another
> alternative that has kept my 20 year old Lenovo x220 chugging along, is
> plain old vanilla Arch Linux, with its rolling release.
> .


I understand what you are saying, BUT, as former Thinkpad x220 owner - I
must object!

X220 was released in 2011, today is year 2022 ==> not quite 20 years yet.

Since you are visiting from 2031, would you be willing to share some
details about stock prices, lottery numbers, etc? In private please!

LOL,
-T

>

Re: [PLUG] Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Calibration

[Tomas Kuchta]

Look for how to rotate the original raspberry pi screen. It is done via
transform matrix. If that works for your screen, using custom values in the
matrix allow for any transform, including offset, multiplication, rotation
and mirror.

-Tomas

On Fri, Apr 1, 2022, 01:29 Michael Barnes  wrote:

> I had a Raspberry Pi connected to the official 7" touchscreen monitor in my
> truck. The small monitor wasn't cutting it. I found and hooked up an
> Elecraft 10" monitor. It works great, but the touch feature is about 3/4"
> off from where I touch. Makes it near impossible to do anything via the
> touchscreen. I've been searching with no luck on how to calibrate this
> thing. What few references I found were years old and don't seem to be
> right for the latest systems. I'm using the latest (I think) Raspberry OS.
>
> Any tips on finding how to calibrate this thing?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>

Re: [PLUG] New perspectives Re: Mate, T60, hacks

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2022, 17:54 Randy Bush  wrote:

> i also indulge crowdfunded projects, and partially for the reasons you
> state.
>
> it appears that xue hopes to ship essentially a street rod version of
> the classic T60/61 (incl case, display, etc) for about USD 1,500, to
> which one would add 64G of ram and the M.2 NVMe SSDs.  i could not sort
> whether the cpu was included; would it not be waved on?
>
> i keep eyeing the framework, but both $dayjobs are mac houses.  my
> research racks are all deb/ubu except for a few old fbsd large zfs
> backup systems.
>
> randy, who bought a bunnie novena to bootstrap cryptech
>
.


I totally understand the goal and thinking behind this direction.

Thinking out of the box - raspberryPi 4 compute module on custom carrier
board stuffed to T60 chassis would probably fit the bill too, at lower cost
and maybe better performance.

I am certain, that there are other out of the box ideas.

Also - Not every failure leads to positive learning outcome for everyone. I
would probably feel pretty bad about failing project where 100 individuals
would loose $1.2k in my 20'. I am not sure if I'd be the same person I am
today Just saying ...

-T

Re: [PLUG] Understanding backup rsync error

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 09:16 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> Last night's incremental backup for /home has an error:
> Rsync-Errors (/media/backup/salmo-home/20220322-0030/tree/../rsync_error):
> =
> RSYNC_ERR:
> RSYNC_ERR:
> RSYNC_ERR:*** Execution cycle 0 ***
> RSYNC_ERR:
> RSYNC_ERR:file has vanished:
> "/home/rshepard/.spamassassin/bayes.lock"
> RSYNC_ERR:rsync warning: some files vanished before they could be
> transferred (code 24) at main.c(1189) [sender=3.1.3]
>
> I want to understand this error.
>
> Looks to me that the bayes.lock is created when a new email message arrives
> and is removed when spamassassin has processed the message. If that's the
> case why would rsync be looking for a file that was removed?
> .


There is delay between a) when rsync collecting what needs to transfer and
b) the actual transfer. Files changed between a) and b), that is what is
happening.

You could avoid it by 1) not writing/deleting stuff on the disk when your
backup is in progress or 2) by making filesystem snapshot and backing up
the snapshot. 1) is probably not practical. 2) would require filesystem
change to COW filesystem such as btrfs on Linux or zfs on BSD. Common
practice is to live with the errors or 2).

Best, Tomas

Re: [PLUG] multi-boot linux and multiple windows revs same machine

[Tomas Kuchta]

It won't work as easily as grub menus used to work, win10 needs UEFI winXP
has no idea what it is. Additionally, XP and Win 7 may refuse to boot on
anything newer than Haswell CPU.

Good luck,
T



On Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 15:01 Chuck Hast  wrote:

> Folks,
> I need to setup a machine that has Linux, Windows XP
> Windows 7 and Windows 10.
>
> This is one case where my beloved VM's do not work
> (THANK YOU MOTOROLA) So I need to be able to
> boot all of the above OS. I have done dual boot many
> times but I have not had to try to put 3 variants of
> windows on the same machine.
>
> Any guidance would be appreciated.
>
> I have a mix of what is called CPS or Customer
> Programming Software. The Motorola CPS can be
> a real bear to get going on a VM. Even though it
> sees a com port. I will not go into the horror stories
> of those products except to say that they can be a
> real pain. Once I get the OS running on bare metal
> then comes driver hell. But first the OS.
>
> I know that XP is expired and same for Win7, but
> these pieces of software are pretty OS specific.
>
> I have the ISO's for all of the OS installs.
>
> --
>
> 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] Seeking eSATA PCIe add-on card

[Tomas Kuchta]

Don't you have free sata port for this adapter?

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-18in-eSATA-Plate-Adapter/dp/B00MOENVOW/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=esata+adapter=1647552156=8-4

That shouldn't need additional linux driver.

-T

On Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 16:29 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> Looking for a PCIe add-on card with eSATA ports I see that apparently not
> all support linux or all motherboards (why that's so I don't understand.)
>
> Since my hardware knowledge is limited I'd appreciate suggestions from
> those
> who assemble systems much more frequently.
>
> TIA,
>
> Rich
>
>
>

Re: [PLUG] USB-A port colors and speeds

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 14:52 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Mar 2022, Tomas Kuchta wrote:
>
> > esata are standard cables like usb 1, 2, 3, 4. You can just buy them for
> a
> > few $$ in your local AMZN store.
>
> Tomas,
>
> It's SATA, not eSATA. on the Mediasonic Probox.
>
> > You keep repeating that your cable is white - Are you expecting someone
> > else to chip in and comment beside earlier advice from to connect some
> USB
> > 3 device with the cable and see what speed the kernel/driver uses?
>
> The cable itself is black, the inserts of the USB-A and USB-B plugs are
> white.
>
> Well, if you know how to check the speed of an unmounted device I'd
> appreciate your teaching me how to do this.
>

Please see previous post describing the commands (wasnit feom Ben?). You
responded that it is not installed on your system - just install it and use
any functional usb3 device to connect with the cable.

If you do not have any such device or cannot follow the procedure - I would
advice that you take the white color as USB 1.1 hint and purchase usb 3
cable which typically has blue insides. It is time effective and cheap way
to be sure.

Hope that helps,
Tomas

>
> Regards,
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] USB-A port colors and speeds

[Tomas Kuchta]

esata are standard cables like usb 1, 2, 3, 4. You can just buy them for a
few $$ in your local AMZN store.

You keep repeating that your cable is white - Are you expecting someone
else to chip in and comment beside earlier advice from to connect some USB
3 device with the cable and see what speed the kernel/driver uses?

Hope that helps,
-T



On Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 08:56 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Mar 2022, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>
> > I have a Mediasonic box that I formerly connected with its USB 3.0 port
> > with a 3.0 cable (everything blue).
>
> John,
>
> Well, my four-year-old Mediasonic has a white USB cable; I don't know where
> I put the eSATA cable.
>
> > I mention this experience just so you know that I had a good experience
> > with Mediasonic replacement parts.
>
> I'll contact Mediasonic and ask for a replacement eSATA cable and hook it
> up
> that way.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] Website Visitor/Download Counter

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 11:22 Timothy Scoppetta  wrote:

> I may be speaking from the bias of my comfort zone but hosting the pdf on
> any modern cloud storage (gs, s3, etc) should give you this for "free."
>
> On Thu, Feb 24, 2022, 08:19  wrote:
>
> >
> > It’s like it’s 1995 again :-). Here’s a resource for scripts but to use
> > them your hosting server will need to have CGI
> > capabilities:
> >
> >http://www.scriptarchive.com 
> >
> > For a lot of reasons I would recommend not adding counters to your page
> > and instead glean stats from your access files.
> >
> > Kevin
> >
> > On Thu, 24 Feb 2022, Michael Barnes wrote:
> >
> > > It seems like I have forgotten more than I knew in the first place.
> > >
> > > Anyhow, I have a small website for a group that is just a simple
> > hand-coded
> > > page and a pdf file for download. I have been asked if it is possible
> to
> > > add a visitor counter and a download counter (This page has been
> visited
> > ##
> > > times, This file has been downloaded ## times) to the page. I don't
> need
> > > any kind of tracking or  anything, just a raw count of page accesses
> and
> > > file downloads.
> > >
> > > My coding skills are passing fast, and I'm looking for something really
> > > simple. I did a quick search and everything I see seems to involve
> > > complicated databases and analytics. I want KISS.
> > >
>

No counters, with the exception of access logs, will work without CGI
enabled and working.

The simplest cgi implementation is probably to increment number embedded in
a file in access.

This can be done with any scripting language you are familiar with,
available in your webserver cgi config and reasonably secured.

-T

Re: [PLUG] 22:22:22 UTC 2022 at 2pm Pacific time Tuesday

[Tomas Kuchta]

When does the Mayan countdown calendar reaches all ? Is there
timezone for that?

-T

On Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 23:24 Steve Dum  wrote:

> You (and OPB) set me thinking about 2/22/22
> Today OPB has talked about today being a palindrome.
> Well it is, but that's not why it's so significant.
> As you pointed out, it's the long series of 2's.
>
> But with OPB mentioning palindrome I realized there
> are 9 consecutive dates in 22 that are palindromes,
> a very rare situation.
> (2/20/22 thru 2/28/22) at least for us folks who use
> the m/d/y format for dates. I was motivated to check
> with my date palindrome expert.
> Dr. Aziz Inan at Univ of Portland (and he's a Electrical engineer)
> Here is what he had to say about 2022 -- although
> this link talks about dates in the d/m/y format.
> https://www.farmersalmanac.com/palindrome-dates-in-2022-february-wins
> (with some farmers almanac commercials thrown in).
> He has an impressive list of date palindrome articles
> https://faculty.up.edu/ainan/palindrome.html
>
> steve
>
> Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> > I'm running this script in an xterm:
> >
> > while true; do date -u; sleep 10 ; done
> >
> > Tuesday Feb 22 afternoon, it may emit:
> >
> > ..
> > Tue Feb 22 22:22:12 UTC 2022
> > Tue Feb 22 22:22:22 UTC 2022
> > Tue Feb 22 22:22:32 UTC 2022
> > ..
> >
> > Them's a lotta 2s, and there won't be more 2s for 200 years.
> > And that will be a Friday, not a twos day.
> >
> > Or not, the stuff besides the "sleep 10" will take a few
> > milliseconds as well.
> >
> > Anyway, if someone is feeling ambitious, they can write a better
> > script with a more accurate clock mechanism.  Perhaps start up
> > at 22:21 UTC, highlight 22:22 UTC, finish at 22:23 UTC, then
> > screenprint the xterm window.
> >
> > Please send code!
> >
> > Or if you don't get the script debugged in time, 22:22 PDT.
> > But that isn't cricket, is it?  More like basketball.
> >
> > Keith
> >
>
>

Re: [PLUG] HDMI output

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 17:58 VY  wrote:

> Hi All
>
> I am testing my Dell laptop with a Linux Mint bootable USB drive.
> Things are all working except HDMI.
> I tried connecting 2 different monitors (using 2 different HDMI cables) but
> it just won't detect the external monitor.
>
> The Window 11 OS is able to see the external monitor so it is not hardware.
> Are there additional config I need to do for this external monitor to work?
> .


You do not identify you HW in any useful way.

That said, there were plenty examples (not hyped up, real support calls)
returning some recent intel based dell laptops with nvidia card because
they could not get it working.

I'd say, google your HW up on linux distros mailing lists. If you find that
you got the same issues - consider doing what many others did - returning
the HW and getting something which works.

-Tom

>

Re: [PLUG] Login keyring

[Tomas Kuchta]

Such is life with desktop/server these days. It is pretty annoying that the
security zealots who implemented authentication for just about anything
(filesystem, video, sound, usb, applications, etc.) on your system did not
think/care of this.

Anyway, the desktop login dialog unlocks keyring for you. If you disable
it, this is the outcome. I am not familiar with xubuntu - there is probably
a way to unlock the ring by authenticating with some special app...

This of course defeats the purpose of no-login dialog. The easiest is
probably to enable login and set empty password - that is if the security
zealots did not enforce password complexity.

Hope that helps,
-T

PS: Another annoying example: On most systems today, even if you
arhenticate, you cannot play sounds or display anything remotely. Meaning
that you cannot practically turn modern linux to a media player. One has to
turn to not secure, special flake, totally unsecured distros

On Sun, Feb 13, 2022, 02:02 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

> I have my desktop computer and my new laptop set up to boot Xubuntu
> without requiring a login. That part works perfectly, but the instant I
> try to do anything I get a popup:
>
> Authentications required
> The login keyring did not get unlocked when you logged into
> your computer
> Password: [ ]
>
> What's the point of booting without logging in if I have to log in to
> do anything? Not only that, if I enter my password to satisfy the login
> keyring (whatever that is), the next time I try to launch an
> application I have to login again ... and again ... and again.
>
> On my main computer I set it up to require a login, but the desktop and
> the new laptop don't have anything sensitive on them and they never
> leave the house.
>
> Is there any way to get rid of the stupid keyring requirements?
>

Re: [PLUG] VirtualBox Problems

[Tomas Kuchta]

I have no intention to judge other people choices - just my opinion + this
is pLUG.

No usb issues with Virtual Box here for about decade now - using Oracle
repo + virtualBox Additions.

I have no issues using usb with KVM either. I feel KVM is better and more
performant than VirtualBox these days.

Given my bad and costly experience with various commercial SW quality
and/or long term support, both personal and at work ---> I am of the
opinion that commercial software does not have positive ROI, fiscally and
intellectually - if there is a choice to be made. Most commercial solutions
look great on paper, if you can find what they are suppose to do at all,
but . Clearly commercial SW companies know it - hence the shift to
subscriptions, lobbying, competition removal, and various lock-in schemes.

My 2c - I would not touch VMware again, and vBox either, if not for legacy
reasons. KVM works and will keep working better.

-T

On Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 10:44 Chuck Hast  wrote:

> VirtualBox USB issues drove me to VMWare, and
> since for personal use it is free, I started using it.
>
> Never had any issues moving a VM from one
> VMWare machine to another.  I never tried VB
> again due to the USB issues I encountered.
>
> On Fri, Feb 11, 2022 at 11:21 PM John Jason Jordan  wrote:
>
> > I discovered that I can export from the old VirtualBox to OVF format
> > just by manually changing the name of the file it will create from .OVA
> > to .OVF. And the new VirtualBox on the Latitude will import it, except
> > that at the end the import fails:
> >
> > VirtualBox Error
> > Failed to import appliance ... Windows 10.ovf
> > Detail
> > Result code NS_ERROR_INVAL ID_ARG (0x80070057)
> >
> > I tried it both ways - exporting as OVA and exporting as OVF, and the
> > new VirtualBox will try to import either one, but at the end always
> > gives the above error message.
> >
> > I also tried copying the Windows 10.vdi file to ~/VirtualBox/VDI on
> > the new computer (where I had to create the folder first), but the new
> > VirtualBox does not see the machine. I also tried putting it in
> > ~/VirtualBox VMs, which is the default folder that the installer
> > created on the new computer, but it still is not visible.
> >
> > At the end I decided to just reinstall Windows 10 in VirtualBox on the
> > new computer from the .ISO that I still have. It took a couple of hours
> > of swearing, but I finally got it installed, except when I launch it I
> > get a screen with a lot of little squares instead of a Windows 10
> > screen. In VirtualBox the icon for Windows 10 appears and the Settings
> > to the right also appear, and appear correct, but I can't figure out
> > how to fix the video problem.
> >
> > TomasK  dijo:
> > >So, you need OVF to import it?
> > >Try export Virtual Appliance from menu then select one of the OVF
> > >formats.
> >
> > The format is not selectable, but (see above) the file that it will
> > create appears in a box below and you can just edit the name to .ova or
> > .ovf.
> >
> > >I do not bother - just:
> > >  rsync -a "VirtualBox VMs" .../home/$USER/
> > >  rsync -a .config/VirtualBox .../home/$USER/.config/
> > >
> > >Then start your new virtualbox and you should see everything as it used
> > >to be.
> >
> > I don't understand the rsync commands above. The .vdi files are on one
> > computer and they need to be copied to a new computer, and the
> > computers are not directly connected. It is faster and easier just to
> > copy files from the old computer to a USB drive and plug the drive into
> > the new computer. And I already did that on the new computer, both to
> > ~/.VirtualBox/VDI (which I had to create) and to ~/VirtualBox VMs
> > (created by the installer of 6.1.26).
> >
> > Tomorrow I'm going to scour the VitualBox forums hoping to find step by
> > step 'for dummies' instructions for how to install Windows 10 from an
> > ISO.
> >
> > I should add that this is not a crucial matter. My old computer has
> > Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 10, and none of them have been
> > run for at least a couple of years; Windows 2000 for at least five
> > years. If I had any brains I'd just forget about it.
> >
> > I should add that the old computer has Xubuntu 20.04.2 with VirtualBox
> > 6.1.16 and the new computer has Xubuntu 21.10 with VirtualBox 6.1.26.
> >
>
>
> --
>
> 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] Remove raid1 (/dev/md0) and its disks [DONE]

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2022, 08:39 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Thu, 10 Feb 2022, Galen Seitz wrote:
>
> > Using UUIDs should prevent much of this grief. For example, here's a line
> > from mdadm.conf on one my my machines:
>
> Galen/Tomas:
>
> Okay. I've six mdadm.conf files here, including /etc/mdadm.conf which is
> all
> commented out. Since mdadm has been working on creating the raid1 for about
> 17.5 hours now there may be content in there when it's finished.
>
> I'll learn more about using UUIDs in fstab as well as mdadm and use them. I
> have a record of them for the hdds in the Probox and can get the ones for
> the SSD and HDD in the desktop from fdisk.
> .


The point about not using /dev/sd*, especially with external enclosures, is
that the device letter can change (not just once) during the array build.

If you want to be sure that your storage works, just go to the begging and
use uuids to build and use the array. That is my advice anyway.

There is not much to learn about uuids, they are just a disk or partition
identifier, like /dev/sd*

Note: uuids for the disk and its partitions can change when creating
partitioning. They are assigned by fdisk/parted/etc. Essentially, you
manage uuids yourself.

Tomas

Re: [PLUG] Remove raid1 (/dev/md0) and its disks [DONE]

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 18:55 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Thu, 10 Feb 2022, Bill Barry wrote:
>
> > I don't know how far into setting this up, but you might want to
> > consider a ZFS mirror instead of the mdadm raid1.
>
> Bill,
>
> The 'create' function's been running about 2 hours so far. Now that I've
> dug
> deep into mdadm (having to redo the array several times due to hdd
> failures)
> I'm comfortable using it.
>
> > It could be a little easier to manage.
>
> Once I get it set up again and it's accepting input from my dirvish
> backups,
> rather than stuffing / to its gills, I don't expect to need to manage it
> unless one of the new WD Red NAS disks fails.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion, though. I had gotten away from deep dives into
> hardware and software over the past few years and I don't mind getting back
> to it and learning new things.
> .

You should start using UUIDs rather than /dev/sd* especially when having
the disks hanging outside the actual PC.  of course they can randomly
change letters causing things to go south.

I would expect that this would be clear after long mailing list sagas of
similar trouble with John's Mediasonic, or whatever the actual disk holding
contraption

-T

Re: [PLUG] Slackware 15.0 finally happened!

[Tomas Kuchta]

My first X on PC was XFree86 on fairly recent SuSE, think they just
switched from Slackware then.

Before PC - I used some X looking/feeling thing on sunOS, VMS and HPUX, if
i recall these abbreviations correctly.

-T

On Thu, Feb 3, 2022, 17:23 Russell Senior  wrote:

> My first distro was SLS in December 1992. I was an early adopter of
> Debian when it came along.
>
> On Thu, Feb 3, 2022 at 2:10 PM Paul Heinlein  wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 3 Feb 2022, Ben Koenig wrote:
> >
> > > It finally happened! Slackware 15.0 has been released!
> > > http://www.slackware.com/
> > >
> > > The world's oldest active Linux distro lives on! Praise Bob!
> >
> > I remember installing Slackware '95. It was my first experience with
> > Linux and difficult for me to fully understand. But it ran, and I got
> > X11 configured. So chuffed was I! :-)
> >
> > --
> > Paul Heinlein
> > heinl...@madboa.com
> > 45.38° N, 122.59° W
>

Re: [PLUG] Evil thermostat

[Tomas Kuchta]

w to clear the data out of the radio module.
> > >
> > > Ain't IoT fun, I have someone's cloud access and did not
> > >
> > > even know it...
> > >
> > > On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 5:43 PM Chuck Hast wch...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >
> > > > Well I had to go in and change some directory settings,
> > > >
> > > > still not sure what happened. But was able to save the
> > > >
> > > > file.
> > > >
> > > > On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 5:27 PM Chuck Hast wch...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Folks, I have a great transaction capture on Wireshark,
> > > > >
> > > > > when I went to save it I get a bitch screen that says
> > > > >
> > > > > You don't have permission to create or write to the file:
> > > > >
> > > > > test.pcapng
> > > > >
> > > > > Funny thing is I have been doing these captures now
> > > > >
> > > > > for several days, but this was the best one. I just am
> > > > >
> > > > > not sure why this is happening. I started Wireshark with
> > > > >
> > > > > elevated access, and I have not stopped it since I saved
> > > > >
> > > > > the last file. Never seen this before. I have seen it when
> > > > >
> > > > > something did not get started with a needed permission
> > > > >
> > > > > level but never seen something change without shutting
> > > > >
> > > > > it down and restarting.
> > > > >
> > > > > On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 10:58 AM Chuck Hast wch...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > I have a batch of Chinese security cameras, one day I was
> > > > > >
> > > > > > sniffing my LAN and saw these packets that should not have
> > > > > >
> > > > > > been there, started tracing them down and they were coming
> > > > > >
> > > > > > from the cameras, they were trying to connect to 4 chinese
> > > > > >
> > > > > > web sites and AWS. The now are on an island network which
> > > > > >
> > > > > > routes to nowhere and the only other thing on there is the port
> > > > > >
> > > > > > that sends all of the camera data to ZoneMinder. Crazy cameras
> > > > > >
> > > > > > were trying to call home constantly. I cleaned some of it up by
> > > > > >
> > > > > > giving them all static IP's and getting rid of any DNS info. Some
> > > > > >
> > > > > > of them still try but a lot less.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > That was before I started seeing comments on line about the
> > > > > >
> > > > > > cameras doing the "call home" thing.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 11:56 PM Tomas Kuchta <
> > > > > >
> > > > > > tomas.kuchta.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > Like with all other "smart things" you are the product, that
> > thing is
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > just
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > the bait to connect to you  I had the same thing with
> > environment
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > sensors this summer. I returned them and got bunch of half
> price
> > 433MHz
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > sensors + SDR to receive their signals.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > There are still 433MHz remote controlled relays + $5-$10
> > transmitters to
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > turn them on/off if you do not want to use SBC or Arduino.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > What sorry state of affairs, these things could be supper
> > useful, only
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > if
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > the would hot call home.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > -T
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > On Thu, Jan 6, 2022, 00:00 Chuck Hast wch...@gmai

Re: [PLUG] Using crosh shell on a Chromebook ( was: Chromebooks and Linux )

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:32 Robert Citek  wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 2:09 AM John Jason Jordan  wrote:
>
> > * If you have the laptop folded over, in 2-in-1 mode, how can you hold
> >   it up in the air (like you were reading a book sitting in a
> >   recliner), without your fingers pressing on the keys in back?
> >
>
> After a certain angle, the keyboard is inactivated and the laptop acts like
> a touch-screen tablet with an on-screen keyboard.  That said, I never use
> the 2-in-1 in tablet mode.  For me, it's too awkward.  When I'm reading
> a book or article, I prefer my iPad or Kindle ( if outside in daylight ).
> In the future, I'll probably get a tablet Chromebook and a folio case with
> a bluetooth keyboard that is backlit. Something like the Lenovo 10e.
>
> * If you are holding it up in portrait mode, does the display
> >   automatically go portrait as well?
> >
>
> Yes, the display rotates 90, 180, and 270 degrees as you rotate the
> Chromebook, just like a tablet.
> .


I solved the same reading problem with iPad + nextcloud client sync to my
server almost 2 years ago.

I still like that solution today.

Couple of learnings:
1. I tried light netbooks, lightweight laptops, android tablet before
setling on iPad.
2. Android tablet was fin-ish, but the lack of updates made it useless in
about 2 years + I did not like the wide screen format for reading.
3. Laptops/netbooks/Chromebooks end up clumsy and pretty heavy after a few
minutes + battery life + page flipping/zooming and other touch related
issues + it is distracting from reading because it can be used for other
computing stuff + the wide screen curse.
4. I find iPad pretty useless for anything but reading. I totally hate its
closed garden aproach to data, privacy, total lock-in  For reading it
works great, sreen format is excellent, and it gets updates for a long
time. Using NextCloud is not a problem for me - without it, it would not
work.

Bast, Tomas

>

Re: [PLUG] Evil thermostat

[Tomas Kuchta]

Like with all other "smart things" you are the product, that thing is just
the bait to connect to you  I had the same thing with environment
sensors this summer. I returned them and got bunch of half price 433MHz
sensors + SDR to receive their signals.

There are still 433MHz remote controlled relays + $5-$10 transmitters to
turn them on/off if you do not want to use SBC or Arduino.

What sorry state of affairs, these things could be supper useful, only if
the would hot call home.

-T

On Thu, Jan 6, 2022, 00:00 Chuck Hast  wrote:

> Well folks here is the capture. This is when the device does the
> time change.
> -SoF--
> No. TimeSource  Destination ProtocolLength  Info
> 14166995.707153289  192.168.7.45192.168.7.1 DNS 129
> Standard query 0x011d A my.radiothermostat.com
> 14176995.743011679  192.168.7.1 192.168.7.45DNS 283
> Standard query response 0x011d A my.radiothermostat.com CNAME
> rtcoa-load-balancer.energyhub.net CNAME
> prod-ext-2-397343966.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com A 3.214.34.120 A
> 54.209.187.172 A 107.21.255.187
> 14186995.744228645  192.168.7.45107.21.255.187  TCP 125
> 35222 → 80 [SYN] Seq=0 Win=2896 Len=0 MSS=1460 WS=1 SACK_PERM=1
> TSval=23065200 TSecr=0
> 14196995.795424653  107.21.255.187  192.168.7.45TCP 121 80
> → 35222 [SYN, ACK] Seq=0 Ack=1 Win=26847 Len=0 MSS=1460 SACK_PERM=1
> TSval=1316753308 TSecr=23065200 WS=256
> 14206995.796759302  192.168.7.45107.21.255.187  TCP 113
> 35222 → 80 [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=1 Win=2896 Len=0 TSval=23065200 TSecr=1316753308
> 14216995.797280360  192.168.7.45107.21.255.187  TCP 204
> 35222 → 80 [PSH, ACK] Seq=1 Ack=1 Win=2896 Len=91 TSval=23065200
> TSecr=1316753308 [TCP segment of a reassembled PDU]
> 14226995.851194008  107.21.255.187  192.168.7.45TCP 113 80
> → 35222 [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=92 Win=26880 Len=0 TSval=1316753363 TSecr=23065200
> 14236995.85530  192.168.7.45107.21.255.187  HTTP579
> POST /filtrete/rest/rtcoa HTTP/1.1
> 14246995.905205495  107.21.255.187  192.168.7.45TCP 113 80
> → 35222 [ACK] Seq=1 Ack=558 Win=28160 Len=0 TSval=1316753417 TSecr=23065300
> 14256995.912865908  107.21.255.187  192.168.7.45HTTP585
> HTTP/1.1 200 200
> 14266995.935820827  192.168.7.45107.21.255.187  TCP 113
> 35222 → 80 [FIN, PSH, ACK] Seq=558 Ack=473 Win=2424 Len=0 TSval=23065300
> TSecr=1316753424
> 14276995.986668924  107.21.255.187  192.168.7.45TCP 113 80
> → 35222 [FIN, ACK] Seq=473 Ack=559 Win=28160 Len=0 TSval=1316753499
> TSecr=23065300
>
> EoF-
> It is during this transaction that the time change takes place.
> I never signed up for their cloud service. This took place betwen
> Sept when I turned off the A/C and Nov when I turned on the
> heat. Thermostat was on all of the time. And as far as I know it
> was talking to the local HA server.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 6:56 PM Chuck Hast  wrote:
>
> > I am going to start the logging I tested yesterday back up.
> > I had enabled packet sniffing streaming to a remote server
> > (Wireshark on another machine) so I had it running indeed
> > I thought I had saved that file but when I went to look at it
> > this a.m. somehow I sent it down the bit toilet... Ohh well it
> > is just bits, be a good exercise to get it going again. I need
> > to trace things every once in a while knowing how to get
> > the bit stream out of the router to wireshark can be very
> > handy (I am looking these chinese cameras that call home)
> >
> > Now if I can get the manufacturer to do more than respond
> > with scripted replies...
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 6:17 PM Ben Koenig 
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Whoops looks like I hit the wrong reply button and moved this off the
> >> PLUG list.
> >>
> >> In my experience time sync issues are generally always the result of one
> >> of 3 different root causes. For embedded devices its often simpler since
> >> you have no control over the software, it just does whatever it was
> coded
> >> to do.
> >>
> >> #1 is the CMOS battery. If the firmware isn't holding on to certain
> >> settings (such as battery failure) then the clock will revert. Normally
> >> this sends you back to 1970 but I've seen more recent devices behave
> >> differently. In your case it looks like the time zone is not being held
> >> properly.
> >> #2 is buggy software on the device that is resetting the time. Could be
> a
> >> y2k22 style bug ( hi microsoft! ) or something else that it hit.
> >> #3 is the server. Since blocking the IP at the router prevents this
> issue
> >> then it might just be something stupid on their server end.
> >>
> >> IMO it's a combination of #2 and #3. This type of unexpected behavior is
> >> not uncommon on E.T. devices since they *ALWAYS* phone home 

Re: [PLUG] Computer hanging again when loading figure in lyx

[Tomas Kuchta]

Perhaps you run update on some of the shared libraries used by your
application and did not reboot.

Just a guess,
-T

On Wed, Dec 8, 2021, 17:19 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> Rebooting the desktop cleared the problem with a CPU core consuming 100% of
> its capacity without allowing me to select a directory and .pdf file to
> import when I tried the second time. And when trying to load the document
> in
> a new LyX instance.
>
> In the almost 25 years I've used LyX this has not happened before now.
>
> /var/log/messsages shows nothing pertinent.
>
> The tail of /var/log/syslog:
> Dec  8 14:12:11 salmo kernel: [11538.041281] usb 1-11: device not
> accepting address 50, error -71
> Dec  8 14:12:30 salmo kernel: [11556.565211] usb 1-11: device descriptor
> read/64, error -71
> Dec  8 14:12:32 salmo kernel: [11558.613448] usb 1-11: device descriptor
> read/64, error -71
> Dec  8 14:12:32 salmo kernel: [11558.928089] usb 1-11: unable to read
> config index 0 descriptor/all
> Dec  8 14:12:32 salmo kernel: [11558.928092] usb 1-11: can't read
> configurations, error -71
> Dec  8 14:12:56 salmo kernel: [11583.189619] usb 1-11: device descriptor
> read/64, error -71
> Dec  8 14:12:57 salmo kernel: [11583.526943] usb 1-11: can't set config
> #1, error -71
> Dec  8 14:13:00 salmo kernel: [11586.778448] usb 1-11: Device not
> responding to setup address.
> Dec  8 14:13:00 salmo kernel: [11586.985539] usb 1-11: Device not
> responding to setup address.
> Dec  8 14:13:00 salmo kernel: [11587.193176] usb 1-11: device not
> accepting address 94, error -71
>
> lsusb shows:
> Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
> Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
> Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
> Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
> Bus 002 Device 004: ID 174c:55aa ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1051E SATA
> 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1053E SATA 6Gb/s bridge, ASM1153 SATA 3Gb/s bridge
> Bus 002 Device 003: ID 05e3:0616 Genesys Logic, Inc. hub
> Bus 002 Device 002: ID 05e3:0612 Genesys Logic, Inc.
> Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
> Bus 001 Device 005: ID 047d:2048 Kensington Orbit Trackball with Scroll
> Ring
> Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05e3:0610 Genesys Logic, Inc. 4-port hub
> Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05e3:0610 Genesys Logic, Inc. 4-port hub
> Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
>
> What's usb 1-11?
>
> Where else can I look for the source of this problem?
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] Resolved: No Route To Host

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, Dec 1, 2021, 17:17 Chuck Hast  wrote:

> RJ-45 connectors are kind of like the Tasmanian devil character with teeth
> showing
> all directions... Expect to get bit by them all of the time.
> .


This is approximately the third decade I am wondering about those RJ-x's.

Why are they still so darn big and fragile?

IEEE (not a member, but user) has came up with massive technology progress
since the adoption of twisted pair for ethernet in early 90's - why not at
least standardizing the darn connetors flatter. And the snaggy plastic peg!
Don't get me started about the Peg!

-T

Re: [PLUG] No Route To Host

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 18:33 Dick Steffens  wrote:

> On 11/30/21 3:22 PM, bro...@netgate.net wrote:
> >
> > Try:
> >
> > ip link
> >
> > on ENU-1.
> >
> > If it doesn't see any interfaces, other than the looback, try
> > rebooting it.
>
> It saw loopback, and one other. I tried copying it to an email and
> discovered that ENU-1 can't see the Internet at all.
>
> I tried rebooting, but same results.
>
> I'm guessing I need to somehow re-establish a DNS entry. How does one do
> that these days? It used to be editing a file, but the file I'm told to
> look for no longer exists. Sigh
>
.


I'd start with
ip addr

If you do not have OK IP + dedault gateway + netmask - try different patch
cable.

-T

Re: [PLUG] Lenovo laptop [UPDATE]

[Tomas Kuchta]

My X13-1 thinkpad with Ryzen 7 4750U has not crashed in the year I have it
either. I suspend it a lot, have run out battery a few times, rarely reboot
post update 

When it was new, it needed newer kernel than in Ubuntu 20.04 at the time
though. One of the point releases upgraded the kernel a few months into it.

I changed ssd/nvme to lower power one, and all hw works from the start
including finger print reader. And I get bios updates through standard
fwupdmgr.

I hope it helps someone,
-T



On Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 16:43 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Nov 2021, Ben Koenig wrote:
>
> > There are also some stability issues with Ryzen systems. I get about
> 10-30
> > minutes in KDevelop before my thinkpad e485 crashes. Happens on my
> desktop
> > too.
>
> Ben,
>
> My Ryzen 7/2700 desktop has not crashed; the last reboot (user error, not
> hardware) was 121 days ago.
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] Lenovo laptop

[Tomas Kuchta]

Formally only thinkpad line is supports linux and allows hw upgrades. I am
not sure if that excludes customer electronics models such as idea pad.
There are rumors, not sure if true - I have exclusively enterprise thinkpad
experience, that upgrades may be somewhat restricted in bios for
non-enterprise models.

You can verify the ssd, by putting back the original and installing to
that. Also, new HW requires new kernel, some times bleeding edge. It is
little painful for updates, but reasonably easy to use current kernel in
the likes of Ubuntu and/or Fedora. I cannot recommend openSuse for new HW
with bleeding edge kernel.

That's all I can say from my experience.

Tomas

On Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 11:05 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> I believe that Lenovo is continuing it's linux support in its new laptops.
> Is there any reason why I could not install linux on the Lenovo Laptop
> IdeaPad 5 15ALC05 82LN006CUS AMD Ryzen 7 5000 Series 5700U (1.80GHz) 8 GB
> Memory 512 GB PCIe SSD AMD Radeon Graphics and upgrade the memory and the
> hard drive?
>
> Related question: are laptop SSD drives interchangable from one brand to
> another?
>
> TIA,
>
> Rich
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Gawk: skipping first line

[Tomas Kuchta]

Great resource, I use it frequently.

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 14:34 Russell Senior 
wrote:

> Did you look at this at all?
>
>   https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html
>
> It is similar to the original book, which I have on my shelf.
>
> On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 10:54 AM Rich Shepard 
> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 19 Nov 2021, Robert Citek wrote:
> >
> > > So you want ‘NR > 1’ to be a pattern, but you have it as an action.
> > > Your code needs to look more like this …
> > > BEGIN { FS = ","; OFS = "," }
> > > NR > 1 { print $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8 "chl-a", $9, "ug/l" }
> >
> > Robert,
> >
> > That does make sense, but none of the examples I found on the Web used it
> > like that. Each page presented the pattern as a separate line in the
> script.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] Gawk: skipping first line

[Tomas Kuchta]

I answered the same a while back, with similar response.

Time to try it!

-T


On Fri, Nov 19, 2021, 13:54 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Nov 2021, Robert Citek wrote:
>
> > So you want ‘NR > 1’ to be a pattern, but you have it as an action.
> > Your code needs to look more like this …
> > BEGIN { FS = ","; OFS = "," }
> > NR > 1 { print $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8 "chl-a", $9, "ug/l" }
>
> Robert,
>
> That does make sense, but none of the examples I found on the Web used it
> like that. Each page presented the pattern as a separate line in the
> script.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] Presentation mode in Linux Mint Mate

[Tomas Kuchta]

These days, screensaver is disabled through dBus, so individual
applications can, and do, disable it as appropriate.

Firefox does that when you play video, libreOffice in presentation mode,
etc.

Hope that is the case in whatever distro you use.

Tomas

On Fri, Nov 12, 2021, 14:57 Dick Steffens  wrote:

> In Xubuntu I have an icon with a lightening bolt that offers
> "Presentation mode". I'm trying to find the same thing in Linux Mint
> Mate. My DDG searches don't turn up anything, and I'm wondering if
> there's another name for preventing entering screen saver?
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Dick Steffens
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Downloading wide web page displays on a square monitor

[Tomas Kuchta]

If you really believe that it is caused by the lack of wide screen. You
could start vncserver -geometry 1920x1080
Then vncviewer :1
In it open the browser in full screen, load the page, print the page, 
Get off vncviewer, vncserver -kill :1

Or you could try different browser, such as google chrome

-T

On Mon, Nov 8, 2021, 16:35 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> On Mon, 8 Nov 2021, Robert Citek wrote:
>
> > This sounds like a job for Python's Pandas library, which can parse HTML
> > tables into data frames and export to CSV, for example.
> >
> > I'd be happy to try that out if you can e-mail a copy of the html file
> that
> > you downloaded, the one with html and javascript noise.
>
> Robert,
>
> I can handle .html, but the only way to get html is by saving. Here's an
> example:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml;>
> 
>  

Re: [PLUG] Problem with hplip/hp device manager not seeing printer on same unmanaged switch

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, Nov 3, 2021, 16:08 c  wrote:

> I have a printer connected to the same unmanaged switch as one of my ubuntu
> boxes, but I cannot get the device manager to see the printer, even if I
> manually add the ip address, both are getting  192.168.0.x addresses.
>
> I've tried changing the connection speed and making sure the printer is set
> to ipv4. This printer has always been reachable when I connect it and a
> machine directly to the router. I'm really not sure what to test or try
> next. Any suggestions?
> .


How about other computers? Can they see the printer?

-T

>

Re: [PLUG] DNS Provider

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Wed, Nov 3, 2021, 11:06 Paul Heinlein  wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Nov 2021, Tomas Kuchta wrote:
>
> > Wes is correct + it makes sense - IP owner is the entity which can create
> > reverse DNS record for the IP.
>
> Right. I think DNS has a built-in assumption that domain owners also
> manage their own IP space, which is mostly untrue for personal
> domains.
>
> > If you want to do your own email server, on Linode for example, you will
> go
> > to your DNS provider and set Linode's DNS server as your domain DNS or
> just
> > email DNS. Then create your zone + reverse record on Linode's DNS server.
>
> I'm willing to pay for an always-on VM, which may be an unnecessary
> expense for someone else, but Digital Ocean created the reverse
> pointers for my VM when I spun it up. I didn't need to change my DNS
> zone provider at all. I've used Zoneedit's free DNS service for years
> now; it's always been solid for me:
>
>https://www.zoneedit.com/free-dns/
> .


Ditto.
I did not have to pay Linode for reverse DNS on static IP. AWS is same, I
believe. The DNS needs to be managed/matched in two places though.

- T

Re: [PLUG] DNS Provider

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2021, 21:28 Michael Barnes  wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 2, 2021 at 6:16 PM wes  wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Nov 2, 2021 at 6:05 PM Michael Barnes 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > What an ordeal. I have a security camera system that sends email
> alerts.
> > I
> > > used to send via Google, but they tightened up their security and I
> > cannot
> > > use that any more. I figured I'd just set up a simple mail server on an
> > RPi
> > > and do it myself. My ISP provides a static IP I can set up pretty much
> > > anything I want. I bought a domain name through hover.com for the
> > purpose,
> > > and set up A and MX records in their DNS.
> > >
> > > I finally got my mail server figured out and working and try to send
> > email
> > > to my normal account, which is promptly rejected by my email provider
> > > (IONOS) for a bad PTR record. (Mail does go to my gmail account without
> > > complaint.) I go into the dashboard for my domain to set the PTR
> record,
> > > and there is no option. I contacted tech support and get "Sorry, we do
> > not
> > > support PTR records. You will need to host your DNS with a 3rd party."
> > What
> > > he heck kind of domain registrar who provides DNS services does not
> > support
> > > PTR records?
> > >
> >
> > the first half of their answer is sensible, the second half is not. no
> DNS
> > provider can do what you're looking to do.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Been browsing the Internet for DNS providers, and can't find anything
> > that
> > > tells me what they support. The few who I contacted said basically,
> "Sign
> > > up for our service to see what records we support."  Seriously?
> > >
> >
> > yeah, that's ridiculous.
> >
> >
> > > It's been like 15 years or more since I did this kind of stuff. Got to
> > > learn it all over again.
> > >
> >
> > I would suggest that you begin by learning more about what a PTR record
> is
> > and how it's used. it is essentially a DNS record for an IP address - the
> > opposite of what we typically understand as a DNS record. this is often
> > referred to in shorthand as a "reverse DNS record."
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Anybody have suggestions on a free or cheap DNS provider that I can set
> > PTR
> > > and any other needed records?
> > >
> >
> > since a PTR record is set on the IP address, only the owner of the IP
> > address can set it. you will need to ask your ISP if they allow this.
> most
> > business-class providers allow it, most residential-class don't, and
> > everywhere in between will give different answers.
> >
> > alternatively, you can configure your mail server to announce itself as
> the
> > hostname that matches what's currently in your PTR record, if it exists.
> > this is not super trivial, it will involve a fair amount of work, but it
> > can be done.
> >
> > -wes
> >
>
> Like I said, it has been many years since I've worked at this level and I
> have probably forgotten more than I knew in the first place.
>
> Thanks for your comments. After a little research, I think I understand the
> issue better. I do have a static IP through my ISP and they said my running
> servers should not be an issue, so I hope this is something they will
> accomodate.
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>
.


Wes is correct + it makes sense - IP owner is the entity which can create
reverse DNS record for the IP.

If you want to do your own email server, on Linode for example, you will go
to your DNS provider and set Linode's DNS server as your domain DNS or just
email DNS. Then create your zone + reverse record on Linode's DNS server.

This might seem like unnecessary hassle, to have essentially two separate
DNS providers. In my experience, if you care about controlling your domain
long term, it is very good idea to separate DNS and ISPs providers. That
way, you can move ISPs as well as DNS services independently.

Best luck, T

Re: [PLUG] awk: is field blank?

[Tomas Kuchta]

Awk variable NF contains number of fieds. So:
awk 'NF==8 { print }'

Will print lines with 8 fields.

Best, Tomas


On Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 11:31 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> I've a 351K line file with 8 fields. About 50K of those lines has $8 blank.
> I want awk to print only rows with values in all 8 fields. I'm not finding
> how to tell awk to print $0 if $8 is not blank.
>
> My awk/sed book doesn't seem to have this information and my web searches
> aren't finding the answer, either.
>
> Clue needed.
>
> Rich
>

Re: [PLUG] Window expansion

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 12:16 Chuck Hast  wrote:

> I will do more looking. I have already gone through the
> settings and so far no joy, in Compiz there are Snapping
> Windows which is disabled. Under Mate tweak > Window
> Behaviour > Do not auto-maximize new windows is ticked.
> .


I do not use Mate (whatever it is - please do not explain - I am not a GUI
person - as long as I can start a terminal window - that is all I care
about). I use default ubuntu distro (Gnome, I believe, it does not tell)
and openSuSE KDE.

It behaves the same as you describe. It irritates me to madness at a time -
because it stubbornly distracts me from the task at hand.

That being said - knowing that there is no settings for idiocy and lack of
imagination - I am learning to ignore it and restrain myself from "violent
attacks" on my innocent screen. The computers/responsible-humant are out of
my reach. So, I practice "keep calm and do your job" citizen. Then I went
to innocent bystanders, mostly on Wednesdays.


Hope that helps,
-T

Re: [PLUG] System D for Dinosaurs

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021, 03:10 Russell Senior 
wrote:

> I've gotten pretty far with: systemctl status, systemctl status  name>, systemctl restart , and journalctl -u .
> .


To add a few basic and useful commands:
systemctl enable|disable serviceName

journalctl  to see boot/service output.

The active/enabled service files are in /etc/systemd/system They typically
link/copy unit file templates from /usr/lib/systemd/system

Hope that helps,
Tomas

>

Re: [PLUG] Mailing List Archives Search Engine

[Tomas Kuchta]

+2 for google:
a) no additional traffic to the  mailing list. This could be significant
for trivial search engines.
b) speed - google responds in miliseconds
c) google's NLP is state of the art. No way <1k people team effort could
come close to what you get for free.

Just my 2c, -T


On Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 13:40 Russell Senior 
wrote:

> This sounds vaguely like a homework assignment.
>
> My advice would be to think about what information you'd need to have
> to be able to do the things you are describing, and then think about
> how to get that information.
>
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 8:25 AM Daniel Ortiz
>  wrote:
> >
> > Hello everyone,
> > May anyone please lead me in making a small search engine for this
> mailing
> > list's archives and another one? All it needs to do is return the links
> > that contains the words you put in regardless of space, order, location,
> or
> > capitalization. The words also don't have to be all in there. Don't
> concern
> > yourselves as much with the ranking system since that is secondary and
> > could be left out, but a ranking system that has ranking from the
> greatest
> > percentage to lowest percentage of words then in the search and ranking
> > from the first to the last word in the search (an example of that in
> action
> > is if the search has "programming FORTRAN" then it places first the links
> > with both words then the links with the first word then the link with the
> > last word) would make it more useful.
> > From, Daniel Ortiz
>

Re: [PLUG] PLUG Constituent Poll 2021

[Tomas Kuchta]

I love technical topics, even when it is outside of my core experience.
They are great for discovering new knowledge and tech.

If I could have a wish it would be more of hyperscale/cloud infrastructure
talks. What are the trends and useful mainstream tech, how to practically
and easily maintain small time, but scalable, disposable and movable
(across clos providers) services.

One can buy Linux laptop/desktop from bunch of reputable vendors these days
and they work. The remote virtual infrastructure is where the most
innovation happens these days. And it is supper useful to most people who
need to have or create stuff on the web. Even old school things like having
old email/web/storage/git/... server are possible and affordable again on
budget (both money and time) when deployed the right way.

Best, Tomas

Re: [PLUG] Audacity .aup3

[Tomas Kuchta]

Here is fairly unbiased description of what is going on with Audacity.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/audacitys-new-owner-is-in-another-fight-with-the-open-source-community/

-Tomas

On Wed, Sep 22, 2021, 19:06 Dick Steffens  wrote:

> On 9/22/21 3:52 PM, King Beowulf wrote:
> > On 9/22/21 14:41, Dick Steffens wrote:
> >> Anybody using Audacity? I had to use a Win10 machine to do some
> >> recording this morning. When I got home I went to copy the .aup file and
> >> directory to my Xubuntu machine. What I found was there isn't a .aup
> >> file and folder, but instead a .aup3 file. I went back to the Win10
> >> machine and tried to save as the old version, but that feature is not
> >> available.
> >>
> >>   From https://fileinfo.com/extension/aup3 it looks like this happened
> >> back in March of this year. I have version 2.3.3. The Win10 machine has
> >> version 3.0.4. Synaptic does not show version 3 on my Xubuntu machine. I
> >> hesitate to download the Linux version of 3 without knowing what will
> >> happen to my existing Audacity projects done with 2.3.3.
> >>
> >
> > According to the Audacity wiki, audacity-3.x will read and convert .aup
> > to .aup3 without issues.
>
> I see that. My issue is using audacity-2 with a .aup3 file. Can't be
> done, and the reason is pretty obvious, since they switched to SQLite.
>
> > Personally I never bothered with aup. I keep it all as either lossless
> > FLAC or uncompressed PCM WAV. That way, portability is assured. I can
> > easily enough convert to other formats with either audacity or a myriad
> > other tools.
>
> I decided to export the files on the Win10 machine to .wav, and then
> import them to audacity 2 on my Xubuntu machine. That worked. I was able
> to fuss with the audio a bit to my satisfaction, and then export them to
> .mp3, plus save the projects.
>
> > Your Xubuntu may too old have an older wxGTK or other libraries in the
> > repos that are not compatible with audacity-3.0.4.  Compiling 3.x has
> > become a bit of a hassle.
> >
>
> It's Xubuntu 20.04, and I've kept up with the updates.
>
> There appear to be some concerns about Audacity being "incompatible with
> the GPL license" as noted at:
>
> https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2021/03/install-audacity-3-0-0-ubuntu-20-04-flatpak/
>
> Flat who now? Yet another tool taking over other, as far as I know,
> perfectly good tools. Sigh.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Dick Steffens
>
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Terabyte paper tape

[Tomas Kuchta]

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
> > >
> >
>

Re: [PLUG] Constant Contact html and w3m

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2021, 17:24 Keith Lofstrom  wrote:

> Many mailing lists use Constant Contact.  The mails arrive
> as an ascii version and an html version.  The unformatted
> ascii version is unreadable.  The html version is readable,
> but I don't use complex web browsers on random content sent
> from uncertified sources - I hope to avoid zero day attacks.
>
> I sorta trust Constant Contact, and look at the formatted
> html version with w3m.  I presume w3m is a simpler tool,
> and not a likely target for attack.
>
> Is this naive?
> .


I may be naive 

I do not consider html email unsafe to look at in normal/maintained Linux
mail client or browser - AS LONG AS I DON'T CLICK ON LINKS.

I occasionally use w3m or even better - browsh. I do not do it for
security, I use text based browsers for convenience via ssh.

I cannot praise enough browsh - it is magic - you should try it.
https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh

Best, Tomas

Re: [PLUG] Startup Applications Re: two rotated screens with xrandr

[Tomas Kuchta]

You could do even better adding it to login manager. It would apply to
login screen as well as all other users

Tomas

On Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 23:34 Keith Lofstrom  wrote:

> In the August 9 email below, I called my xrandr script
> using .bashrc .
>
> Wrong, that also adds cruft to an ssh login from another
> computer.
>
> A better place to call this script is from Startup
> Applications Preferences.  For Gnome2 and Mate, that can
> be done by clicking down through the menu bar:
>
> MainMenu -> System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Startup Applications
>
> Then clicking the +Add button and browsing to the twoscreen
> shell script.
>
> That works, but must be added for every user logging in
> to my system via the desktop console.   For now, just
> keithl, and very rarely, root.  Postpandemic, others.
>
> Perhaps one of you can suggest a way to +Add the same
> script for all users when they login on the console.
> I made my change for Mate on a CentOS 7 system.  I will
> soon upgrade to Mate Ubuntu 20.04, which may have an
> "add this script for all users" method.
>
> Keith
>
> --
>
> On Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 04:24:00PM -0700, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> > This isn't a "problem", but an xrandr solution for a
> > problem with gnome desktop preferences.
> >
> > *** The problem:
> >
> > gnome "system/preferences/Hardware/Displays" rotates
> > paired screens improperly.
> >
> > ***  The setup:
> >
> > I have two ancient Planar 1910M monitors (1280x1024)
> > fed by a "two DVI port" video card.  The left monitor
> > is rotated left, the right monitor is rotated right,
> > so the skinny "tops" of the screens are side by side.
> >
> > ***  The problem in detail:
> >
> > When I use the gnome menu to rotate the displays, the
> > two patches of screen pixels are separated by a hidden
> > 256-pixel-wide undisplayed strip.  Dragging a window
> > between screens works, except that a strip in the
> > middle of the window is hidden.
> >
> > ***  The solution:
> >
> > After duckducking the intertubes, I found some ideas,
> > which became a three line script (~/bin/twoscreen) run
> > by .bashrc after login:
> >
> > ---
> > #!/bin/bash
> > xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --rotate left  --pos 0x0   \
> >--output DVI-I-2 --rotate right --right-of DVI-I-1
> > ---
> >
> > The important part is the "--right-of DVI-I-1" for screen two.
> > The gnome "video game" doesn't offer a way to do this.
> >
> > Your screen names will vary;
> >
> > xrandr | grep connected
> >
> > ... in an xterm will tell you what your screens are.
> >
> > After rotating and joining, my screens are:
> >
> > DVI-I-1 connected primary 1024x1280+0+0 left (normal left inverted right
> x axis y axis) 380mm x 300mm
> > DVI-I-2 connected 1024x1280+1024+0 right (normal left inverted right x
> axis y axis) 380mm x 300mm
> >
> > Keith
> >
> > P.S. Full Disclosure:  I use the "mate" fork of gnome2.
> > Perhaps gnome3 joins screens automatically, but I avoid
> > it because of the Many Many Other Really STUPID Things
> > gnome3 does automatically, in the quest to turn a
> > production desktop into a handwaving video game for
> > knuckledragging morons.  Useless for spastic seniors.
> >
> > I can phrase that less diplomatically if requested, but
> > impressionable youths under 30 read this list.  Don't
> > get me started on text (mis)rendering by Way(ste)land.
> >
> > P.P.S. - get off my lawn.
> >
> > --
> > Keith Lofstrom  kei...@keithl.com
> >
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom  kei...@keithl.com
>

Re: [PLUG] PDF-1.5 docs not searchable

[Tomas Kuchta]

They are not searchable because they do not contain text to search.
Typically, they contain image only.

The way I deal with it - I OCR the image, generate text document and place
that text into a layer under the image in the output PDF.

Having the text under the image layer preserves the original look of the
pdf why allowing for search and select.

I have seen pdf with text over the image, obscuring it - as well as various
attempts of making the text over the image invisible.

Of course, OCR is not perfect as well as preserving the text in the exact
position under the image. It mostly works for text, not so much for data
extraction from tables, etc.

I do not believe that there is OK-ish free SW solution to this. I use
commercial SW to do that. It works, but I cannot publicly recommend it due
to their nasty commercial behavior - no respect for privacy no sale just
licensing with build in obsolescence.

Tomas

On Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 16:18 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> I've encountered a few PDF-1.5 docs that are not searchable using xpdf,
> mupdf, okular, or MasterPDFEditor. Perhaps they're scanned and I don't know
> how to determine if they are.
>
> My web searches found nothing relevant; my search terms might be
> inefficient.
>
> Has anyone else experienced this?
>
> Rich
>
>
>

Re: [PLUG] Android Filesystems

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 00:09 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

>
> Maybe I need some utility on my phone to get it to read/write to ext4.
> Does anyone have any clues?
>

This has been discussed here before. Still maybe worth of a reminder.

I use TotalCommander + its sftp plugin to connect to my computer over
WiFi+LAN and transfer whatever I need without stinking troublesome USB
which I find crippled on Android.

I also use NextCloud app + server to synchronize files between my phone and
my cloud storage/calendar/etc. This needs more involved setup than
TotalComander though.

Best, T

>

Re: [PLUG] Fast way to add nic card to Ubuntu Server

[Tomas Kuchta]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2021, 09:16 Chuck Hast  wrote:

> For a desktop network manager does the magic. It sets things
> up for netplan, the yaml file is the netplan config file.
>
> But server does not use network manager because it is
> CLI only and NM is gui. It does us something called Subiquity
> to set the network stuff up, but once done it appears that you
> have to go in and manually modify the yaml file and then tell
> netplan to try it. If it flies you tell it to accept it.
> .
>

If you use NM on server - there is nmtui - ncurse based text gui to do
basic config.


>

Re: [PLUG] Emacs: appending columns

[Tomas Kuchta]

Are you seriously publishing other people SSNs for everyone on the net?

If they are real SSNs - good luck getting them off the mailing list and
search engine caches. So, so irresponsible.

Tomas

On Thu, Jul 1, 2021, 17:48 Rich Shepard  wrote:

> I know how to define and manipulate rectangular regions in emacs yet I'm
> not
> getting the results I need appending two columns to build a testing
> database.
>
> Using factory I created lists of SSNs, names, and addreses. Now I want to
> combine the SSNs and names, row-by-row, as they're in the same database
> table.
>
> Here are short versions of the lists
> ssn.dat:
> (155-02-5827,
> (795-61-4130,
> (833-38-7251,
> (302-37-0777,
> (360-19-8292,
>
> names.dat:
> Richard Chen);
> James Peterson);
> Dana Brown);
> Misty Mills);
> James Swanson);
>
> When I select the names and mark the rectangle for copying (C-x r M-w),
> then
> yank them in the ssn.dat file the first name is appended to the first ssn,
> but the rest of the names are placed between the second and last ssns in
> the
> list.
>
> I'm sure there's a way of appending each name to its ssn but I've not found
> it in my web searches.
>
> Help's appreciated,
>
> Rich
>
>

Re: [PLUG] CentOS7 Mounting Remote NFS Share on Reboot

[Tomas Kuchta]

Your mount does not work because yor network/nfs is not up at the time
/etc/fstab is evaluated.

Also NOTE: you mount external /var/snd to local /var/snd which is
definitely bad idea. Both locations exist and are used.

Traditionally mounting network storage can be solved by autofs. You could
also use systemd to do that these days.

If you choose autofs as solution - realize - it is a service, so it needs
to be installed, configured and added to systemd or init (depending on the
age of your system).

With autofs, stuff gets mounted when you access the directory/data you want
mounted

Best, Tomas


On Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 20:43 Michael Barnes  wrote:

> I have two CentOS7 machines which need to share a folder. I have the export
> stuff set up on the primary and fstab configured on the second computer.
>
> rd1:/var/snd /var/snd  nfs _netdev,defaults,auto   0 0
>
> If I do a "mount -a", everything works fine. However, if I restart the
> second computer, the share does not mount. I have to manually run "mount
> -a" to get it to mount.
>
> What do I need to fix to get it to automatically mount on reboot?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>

Re: [PLUG] *NOT* "how to ask ..." *BUT* "triggering useful ..."

[Tomas Kuchta]

Many of your answers are too elaborate to be comprehended by average human.
Especially those of us with strongly developed selective hearing/reading
skills.

See if you can focus longer:
https://phys.org/news/2015-05-technology-attention-span-shorter-goldfish.html

The point is the question and the answer should fit these realities.
If the do not, than one is probably wasting time asking or answering.

Tomas

Re: [PLUG] Still having issues with grub-pc

[Tomas Kuchta]

If you would not be hell set against totalComander - it has sftp plugin
which allows me to copy files on/off my phone.

It is probably faster than USB and definitely without the days of trouble
you like going through.

Ssh works on most Linux computers, so it is pretty easy to use for non
windows people.

-T

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 12:34 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jun 2021 22:35:13 -0700
> Russell Senior  dijo:
>
> >Step 1:
> >
> >  dpkg -l grub-pc
> >
> >which should give you the partially installed version you've got.
>
> The results are not at all clear:
> dpkg -l grub-pc
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
>
> |Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
> |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name
> Version  Architecture Description
>
> +++-==---==>
> iF  grub-pc2.04-1ubuntu26.4 amd64GRand Unified
> Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS versi> lines 1-6/6 (END)
>
> >Step 2:
> >
> >  dpkg --debug=3 -i
> >/var/cache/apt/archives/grub-pc_*.deb
> >
> >According to dpkg --debug=help, --debug=3 turns on
> >
> >  1  general  Generally helpful progress information
> >  2  scripts  Invocation and status of maintainer scripts
>
> dpkg --debug=3 -i
> dpkg: error: requested operation requires superuser privilege
> dpkg: error: --install needs at least one package archive file
> argument
>
> So then I did:
>
> sudo dpkg --debug=3 -i grub-pc
> dpkg: error: cannot access archive 'grub-pc': No such file or
> directory
>
> That's as far as I got.
>

Re: [PLUG] exFAT v. FAT32

[Tomas Kuchta]

If you are running ubuntu LTS not the latest incarnation - download the
latest ISO boot from it to liveOS (they call it Try Ubuntu) - use that to
format with exFat - hopefully that is new enough to support exFat without
hassle.

-T

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 14:41 John Jason Jordan  wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Jun 2021 15:43:12 -0700
> Vince Winter  dijo:
>
> >Both FAT32 and exFat lack permissions.
> >FAT32 max file size is 4gb. exFat max file size is 16*EB*.
> >Only back in January did gparted get the ability to format to exFAT.
> >(gparted 1.2.0+ using exfatprogs) exFAT is not open source and the
> >code for it was only relatively recently released by microsoft. Linux
> >Kernel 5.4 added it natively.
> >
> >Check software versions and try gparted again
> >or
> >
> >sudo mkfs.exfat -n LABEL /dev/sdXn
> >
> >If you need help let me know. :)
>
> Thanks for the above. Apparently I misread the maximum file size as
> 16GB, not 16EB. So one of my objections has disappeared.
>
> However, GParted still shows the option to format exFAT as grayed out.
> But I swear I previously used GParted to format a 128GB drive as exFAT,
> where the partition where it was grayed out is 1TB. I wonder if the
> partition size is what GParted has a problem with.
>
> But I also have a problem with the 128GB partition, which is on a USB
> stick. I have been using this drive continuously lately as I am working
> with my MP3 collection. When I drag and drop a file with any of my
> several GUI file managers the action is not instantaneous as it is when
> I do so on ext4 partitions. That is, about half the time it is
> instantaneous, but the rest of the time it takes several minutes. And
> we're talking about files that are only 10-50MB.
>
> There are two folders on this drive 'New' and 'Finished,' and this
> morning I wanted to duplicate two files (23MB and 30MB) on New to
> Finished. It took 32 minutes. Both folders were on the same exFAT
> partition (the 128GB USB drive). For kicks and giggles I deleted the
> copies and then tried the same copy operation from the command line.
> Same results. Then I copied the files from one of the exFAT folders to
> an ext4 folder, and it still took 32 minutes. But when I then copied the
> files from the ext4 folder to another ext4 folder the copy operation
> happened instantly.
>
> The literature says exFAT is supposed to be faster than FAT32. I wonder
> if there is a bug with exFAT on Linux, since it has been added to the
> kernel very recently.
>