Re: [qubes-users] HCA reports - some advice please

2020-11-25 Thread Andrew David Wong

On 11/23/20 1:42 PM, Steve Coleman wrote:

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 2:31 PM Andrew David Wong  wrote:


On 11/23/20 10:06 AM, Steve Coleman wrote:

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 9:33 AM Andrew David Wong 

wrote:


I have a question about the HCL process and page display that I have been
wondering about.

I was for the longest time copying and pasting the HCL web page into a
spreadsheet just so I could sort and delete out all the old information,

as

I was looking to replace my desktop system with something more up to

date.

I can't tell you how many times in the last three years I copied the HCL

to

this spreadsheet, and when my old desktop finally died I had to give up
hope and just bought a new system sight unseen that was not on the list

and

I just hoped for the best. Fortunately, it worked out Ok.

As it is right now it is difficult and getting increasingly harder to

find

just the latest hardware on the list as it seems that by the time

something

appears on the list it is no longer even available for purchase.


Remember that these are almost all reports voluntarily submitted by
users. If it's mostly old hardware, that's because few people with new
hardware are submitting reports for that hardware.


Agreed. But it is certainly possible to make this more of a discussion on
how to give back to the community. The Qubes patriotic thing to do is to
submit your successes so others can follow without so much fear and
hesitation.

We can't force anyone

to submit reports, and we usually can't get new hardware to generate
reports on ourselves.


No, but a well-placed note/request at the end of the Qubes install process
could go a long way to actually encourage them to submit the report to help
others. The "how you can help" could also suggest this as a way to give
back which is easy even for novices who were just introduced to Qubes. Make
it a badge of honor. In fact, one could encourage people with questions to
include a report link/ID where the fundamentals of their basic machine
configuration would be available online for the experts to better
understand the problem. Not everyone would necessarily want to give their
anonymity away, but for some questions, this link could provide some
valuable information about the hardware that would be easy to share.



Good ideas!

I've opened an issue for this:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/6231

I've already implemented the documentation suggestions (as well as some 
similar ones inspired by your suggestions). For details, see the issue.



Though, to be fair, the reports from the mailing
list haven't been added in a while, so that might also be part of it.



Very true, unfortunately. I submitted my "Dell XPS 8930" but it has not
shown up yet. With 8 cores and 64GB of memory, it is already out of
production but it is still available through other retailers. Somebody who
is looking for a new beefy desktop may not see this on the HCL until it is
no longer available anywhere. That is the same boat I was in when my
desktop up and died and I had no choice but to draw straws and pick one
almost at random. Yes, there were other *very old* XPS's on the HCL and
some did *not* work properly, but based on the hardware in this one I
figured it might just work. Unfortunately, this only has a "firmware TPM"
that is disabled in BIOS when using the legacy boot settings and there is
no header on the motherboard to even add a physical TPM. I may just dabble
with the idea of a qubes auditable software-based vTPM (qTPM) and see if I
can find a way to make something work for the contributor's packages. Not
sure about that yet, but it's an idea that might even allow for locking
down the boot partition by making it read-only until after a successful
boot/login. Evil maids can't change what they can't edit.



We've decided to recruit an additional HCL maintainer to get reports 
from the mailing list onto the website more quickly. I've sent a message 
to these lists about it.



However,

there are LOTS of machines that you could only find on eBay and many/most
lack sufficient memory, BIOS, or current chipset support for the current
Qubes R4.x system being developed. Old systems on the HCL are seemingly
never updated, so you can't tell which ones are still working and which
ones have retired years ago. There are many items on that list even in

the

wrong categories (e.g. DIY System boards in the Desktop section when

there

is a separate section just for those) and I see no defined process by

which

to help change that.

My question is this: What would it take to get a set of simple filter
options on that HCL webpage?


This open issue is very similar to what you're asking:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3795

I've just opened two PRs (linked to this issue) that make the HCL tables
sortable. However, some rows break on sorting. Please see the issue
comments for more details and an image showing exactly how it breaks. If
you can help with this, please 

Re: [qubes-users] HCA reports - some advice please

2020-11-23 Thread Steve Coleman
On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 2:31 PM Andrew David Wong  wrote:

> On 11/23/20 10:06 AM, Steve Coleman wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 9:33 AM Andrew David Wong 
> wrote:
>
> > I have a question about the HCL process and page display that I have been
> > wondering about.
> >
> > I was for the longest time copying and pasting the HCL web page into a
> > spreadsheet just so I could sort and delete out all the old information,
> as
> > I was looking to replace my desktop system with something more up to
> date.
> > I can't tell you how many times in the last three years I copied the HCL
> to
> > this spreadsheet, and when my old desktop finally died I had to give up
> > hope and just bought a new system sight unseen that was not on the list
> and
> > I just hoped for the best. Fortunately, it worked out Ok.
> >
> > As it is right now it is difficult and getting increasingly harder to
> find
> > just the latest hardware on the list as it seems that by the time
> something
> > appears on the list it is no longer even available for purchase.
>
> Remember that these are almost all reports voluntarily submitted by
> users. If it's mostly old hardware, that's because few people with new
> hardware are submitting reports for that hardware.

Agreed. But it is certainly possible to make this more of a discussion on
how to give back to the community. The Qubes patriotic thing to do is to
submit your successes so others can follow without so much fear and
hesitation.

We can't force anyone
> to submit reports, and we usually can't get new hardware to generate
> reports on ourselves.

No, but a well-placed note/request at the end of the Qubes install process
could go a long way to actually encourage them to submit the report to help
others. The "how you can help" could also suggest this as a way to give
back which is easy even for novices who were just introduced to Qubes. Make
it a badge of honor. In fact, one could encourage people with questions to
include a report link/ID where the fundamentals of their basic machine
configuration would be available online for the experts to better
understand the problem. Not everyone would necessarily want to give their
anonymity away, but for some questions, this link could provide some
valuable information about the hardware that would be easy to share.

> Though, to be fair, the reports from the mailing
> list haven't been added in a while, so that might also be part of it.
>

Very true, unfortunately. I submitted my "Dell XPS 8930" but it has not
shown up yet. With 8 cores and 64GB of memory, it is already out of
production but it is still available through other retailers. Somebody who
is looking for a new beefy desktop may not see this on the HCL until it is
no longer available anywhere. That is the same boat I was in when my
desktop up and died and I had no choice but to draw straws and pick one
almost at random. Yes, there were other *very old* XPS's on the HCL and
some did *not* work properly, but based on the hardware in this one I
figured it might just work. Unfortunately, this only has a "firmware TPM"
that is disabled in BIOS when using the legacy boot settings and there is
no header on the motherboard to even add a physical TPM. I may just dabble
with the idea of a qubes auditable software-based vTPM (qTPM) and see if I
can find a way to make something work for the contributor's packages. Not
sure about that yet, but it's an idea that might even allow for locking
down the boot partition by making it read-only until after a successful
boot/login. Evil maids can't change what they can't edit.

> However,
> > there are LOTS of machines that you could only find on eBay and many/most
> > lack sufficient memory, BIOS, or current chipset support for the current
> > Qubes R4.x system being developed. Old systems on the HCL are seemingly
> > never updated, so you can't tell which ones are still working and which
> > ones have retired years ago. There are many items on that list even in
> the
> > wrong categories (e.g. DIY System boards in the Desktop section when
> there
> > is a separate section just for those) and I see no defined process by
> which
> > to help change that.
> >
> > My question is this: What would it take to get a set of simple filter
> > options on that HCL webpage?
>
> This open issue is very similar to what you're asking:
>
> https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3795
>
> I've just opened two PRs (linked to this issue) that make the HCL tables
> sortable. However, some rows break on sorting. Please see the issue
> comments for more details and an image showing exactly how it breaks. If
> you can help with this, please let me know on that issue.
>
> > Or, is there a way for someone to help clean
> > up and better organize this list?
> >
>
> There are two main ways you can help:
>
> 1. Help un-break the aforementioned sorting, or provide a better way to
> sort or filter the tables.
>
> 2. Submit a PR that modifies or removes old or bad HCL entries:
>
> 

Re: [qubes-users] HCA reports - some advice please

2020-11-23 Thread Andrew David Wong

On 11/23/20 10:06 AM, Steve Coleman wrote:

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 9:33 AM Andrew David Wong  wrote:



If you can fix them first, that would be a great help! I think it would
make things easier for our HCL maintainer. :)

Usually, it's just the model number for that product, e.g., "FX-8320" is
short for "AMD FX(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor". Take a look at the
existing entries for examples:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-hcl/tree/master


I am thinking of including the cpio files, but do not want to share a
serial number that they contain. WOuld those files be useful to others
if I edited them so that the serial number reads "Redacted"?



Sure, feel free to redact whatever you like. :)

If you prefer, you can send the cpio files directly to Marek
PGP-encrypted (instead of the to the mailing list). See here for more info:

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/hcl/#generating-and-submitting-new-reports



I have a question about the HCL process and page display that I have been
wondering about.

I was for the longest time copying and pasting the HCL web page into a
spreadsheet just so I could sort and delete out all the old information, as
I was looking to replace my desktop system with something more up to date.
I can't tell you how many times in the last three years I copied the HCL to
this spreadsheet, and when my old desktop finally died I had to give up
hope and just bought a new system sight unseen that was not on the list and
I just hoped for the best. Fortunately, it worked out Ok.

As it is right now it is difficult and getting increasingly harder to find
just the latest hardware on the list as it seems that by the time something
appears on the list it is no longer even available for purchase.


Remember that these are almost all reports voluntarily submitted by 
users. If it's mostly old hardware, that's because few people with new 
hardware are submitting reports for that hardware. We can't force anyone 
to submit reports, and we usually can't get new hardware to generate 
reports on ourselves. Though, to be fair, the reports from the mailing 
list haven't been added in a while, so that might also be part of it.



However,
there are LOTS of machines that you could only find on eBay and many/most
lack sufficient memory, BIOS, or current chipset support for the current
Qubes R4.x system being developed. Old systems on the HCL are seemingly
never updated, so you can't tell which ones are still working and which
ones have retired years ago. There are many items on that list even in the
wrong categories (e.g. DIY System boards in the Desktop section when there
is a separate section just for those) and I see no defined process by which
to help change that.

My question is this: What would it take to get a set of simple filter
options on that HCL webpage?


This open issue is very similar to what you're asking:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3795

I've just opened two PRs (linked to this issue) that make the HCL tables 
sortable. However, some rows break on sorting. Please see the issue 
comments for more details and an image showing exactly how it breaks. If 
you can help with this, please let me know on that issue.



Or, is there a way for someone to help clean
up and better organize this list?



There are two main ways you can help:

1. Help un-break the aforementioned sorting, or provide a better way to 
sort or filter the tables.


2. Submit a PR that modifies or removes old or bad HCL entries:

   https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-hcl/tree/master


Going forward it is not all that helpful to see what was historically
running, years ago, if they are no longer adequate for the current Qubes
R4.x baseline. My inclination is this lists' primary function should be to
support those who are looking for some adequate hardware that could run the
current baseline, and failing that test, it should be filtered out by
default. Or maybe just filter by date added/updated?



I can understand the motivation behind removing old entries for EOL 
Qubes releases. If those entries are truly of no use to anyone, then 
there is not much reason to keep them around. But perhaps there's some 
value in keeping the old entries that we're overlooking. I'm curious 
whether Chris and Marek have any opinions on this.


Another idea is to have separate HCL tables for each Qubes release, or 
even entirely separate HCL *pages* for each Qubes release. This might 
make sense as part of our plan for release-specific documentation:


https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/5308


Another thought is we should actively request those who successfully
upgrade their systems to the latest baseline to resubmit their HCL thus
showing that the same system is still capable of running the latest
baseline number. I know matching old and new HCL reports would require some
work, but I think if you want Qubes to be more popular this is a must.



We can request it, but I'm not sure how much uptake we'll get. In 
practice, 

Re: [qubes-users] HCA reports - some advice please

2020-11-23 Thread Steve Coleman
On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 9:33 AM Andrew David Wong  wrote:

>
> If you can fix them first, that would be a great help! I think it would
> make things easier for our HCL maintainer. :)
>
> Usually, it's just the model number for that product, e.g., "FX-8320" is
> short for "AMD FX(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor". Take a look at the
> existing entries for examples:
>
> https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-hcl/tree/master
>
> > I am thinking of including the cpio files, but do not want to share a
> > serial number that they contain. WOuld those files be useful to others
> > if I edited them so that the serial number reads "Redacted"?
> >
>
> Sure, feel free to redact whatever you like. :)
>
> If you prefer, you can send the cpio files directly to Marek
> PGP-encrypted (instead of the to the mailing list). See here for more info:
>
> https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/hcl/#generating-and-submitting-new-reports
>
>
I have a question about the HCL process and page display that I have been
wondering about.

I was for the longest time copying and pasting the HCL web page into a
spreadsheet just so I could sort and delete out all the old information, as
I was looking to replace my desktop system with something more up to date.
I can't tell you how many times in the last three years I copied the HCL to
this spreadsheet, and when my old desktop finally died I had to give up
hope and just bought a new system sight unseen that was not on the list and
I just hoped for the best. Fortunately, it worked out Ok.

As it is right now it is difficult and getting increasingly harder to find
just the latest hardware on the list as it seems that by the time something
appears on the list it is no longer even available for purchase. However,
there are LOTS of machines that you could only find on eBay and many/most
lack sufficient memory, BIOS, or current chipset support for the current
Qubes R4.x system being developed. Old systems on the HCL are seemingly
never updated, so you can't tell which ones are still working and which
ones have retired years ago. There are many items on that list even in the
wrong categories (e.g. DIY System boards in the Desktop section when there
is a separate section just for those) and I see no defined process by which
to help change that.

My question is this: What would it take to get a set of simple filter
options on that HCL webpage? Or, is there a way for someone to help clean
up and better organize this list?

Going forward it is not all that helpful to see what was historically
running, years ago, if they are no longer adequate for the current Qubes
R4.x baseline. My inclination is this lists' primary function should be to
support those who are looking for some adequate hardware that could run the
current baseline, and failing that test, it should be filtered out by
default. Or maybe just filter by date added/updated?

Another thought is we should actively request those who successfully
upgrade their systems to the latest baseline to resubmit their HCL thus
showing that the same system is still capable of running the latest
baseline number. I know matching old and new HCL reports would require some
work, but I think if you want Qubes to be more popular this is a must.

At the very least the list should have a way to display only those
currently running R4.x.x by default, but then let someone tweak the filter
settings to look at older hardware if they choose to do so.

thanks,

Steve

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Re: [qubes-users] HCA reports - some advice please

2020-11-23 Thread Andrew David Wong

On 11/22/20 10:50 AM, River~~ wrote:

hi I have got a new computer working, and it is a model new to Qubes
not just. (Guess who got it cheap on an early bird reduction on
kickstarter then :)

So, I am going to send in the HCA report.


Thank you!


I have produced the .yml
file. It contains some FIXME items. I am unclear: is it up to e to fix
them, or are they a note to whoever processes the report before
posting to the HCA page?



If you can fix them first, that would be a great help! I think it would 
make things easier for our HCL maintainer. :)



If I have to edit them, what do I use for the "short" items? Am I
reasonably free to abbreviate?



Usually, it's just the model number for that product, e.g., "FX-8320" is 
short for "AMD FX(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor". Take a look at the 
existing entries for examples:


https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-hcl/tree/master


I am thinking of including the cpio files, but do not want to share a
serial number that they contain. WOuld those files be useful to others
if I edited them so that the serial number reads "Redacted"?



Sure, feel free to redact whatever you like. :)

If you prefer, you can send the cpio files directly to Marek 
PGP-encrypted (instead of the to the mailing list). See here for more info:


https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/hcl/#generating-and-submitting-new-reports


Finally, the manufacturer's name shown in the .yml is different from
the name they used on kickstarter. Would it help, or would it cause
confusion, if I added at the end of their name "t/a MinisForum"?



It would be ok, but perhaps including this in the comment field instead 
would make it more likely that your manufacturer field matches any other 
reports submitted for products from the same manufacturer.


--
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org

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[qubes-users] HCA reports - some advice please

2020-11-22 Thread River~~
hi I have got a new computer working, and it is a model new to Qubes
not just. (Guess who got it cheap on an early bird reduction on
kickstarter then :)

So, I am going to send in the HCA report. I have produced the .yml
file. It contains some FIXME items. I am unclear: is it up to e to fix
them, or are they a note to whoever processes the report before
posting to the HCA page?

If I have to edit them, what do I use for the "short" items? Am I
reasonably free to abbreviate?

I am thinking of including the cpio files, but do not want to share a
serial number that they contain. WOuld those files be useful to others
if I edited them so that the serial number reads "Redacted"?

Finally, the manufacturer's name shown in the .yml is different from
the name they used on kickstarter. Would it help, or would it cause
confusion, if I added at the end of their name "t/a MinisForum"?

WArmly
R~~

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