[GTALUG] installing Windows is uselessly worse than installing Linux

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

[Always do backups before such drastic measures.]

The best way to install Windows is to go to another Windows box and use 
the the Window Media Creation Tool to create a bootable USB stick

Alternatively you could download the WIndows 11 Disk Image.

During installation, you have to answer a lot of questions.  It is 
extremely hard to evade linking the installation with a global Microsoft 
account (google to learn the ever-evolving tricks).

Good news: Windows can let other partitions on the disk remain.  In 
earlier years, it would just grab the whole disk.

Once it is installed, Windows will spend a lot of time installing updates 
and rebooting.  Installing updates is quite slow (perhaps due to 
anti-malware software).

And it lies about whether there are more updates.  When it says there are 
none, ask it to look again.

You also need to separately run the Microsoft app store app and ask it to 
do updates.

You also need to run you system vendor's update thingee too for some 
driver and firmware updates.  Even then, it is useful to see what firmware 
is available on the vendor's web site

This whole process involves multipler reboots, each requiring babysitting.
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Re: [GTALUG] Repair & Replace

[James Knott via talk]

On 2023-09-14 20:54, Peter King via talk wrote:
Next time I'll keep a small Windows partition as a hedge against 
problems. I have one on my X1 Carbon, and it works just fine, leaving 
Arch Linux alone.


I don't know about now, but you could get recovery disks while the 
ThinkPad was still under warranty.  There would have also been a 
recovery partition that you could have just left there, until you needed it.


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Re: [GTALUG] Repair & Replace

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Peter King via talk 
| 
| I will try using the iGPU when I get in to my office next, likely over the
| weekend.

First check whether the iGPU is connected to any ports on the case.

There are models of your computer that are sold without a dGPU, so that is 
promising.

My current desktop (10 years old, HP) does NOT have any ports for the 
iGPU.

|  The fan failure message comes from the BIOS after a complete
| shutdown (to a cold boot).  It looks to me like the fans are spinning.  If I
| tell it to ignore the fan message, everything runs ... fine.  Except for the
| date/time, which I have to reset.  Otherwise it works great until the next
| reboot.  Maybe it just is the CMOS after all.

That sure sounds like something that happens before the OS is booted.  
That means you should be able to get phone support without having to load 
Windows.

If they want you to update the firmware, you are still stuck with needing 
a Windows installation (I think).

| I have two Lenovo thinkpads which are complete workhorses, both run Arch
| linux, they are as solid as concrete.

Brands matter.  ThinkPad != Legend.  See my previous post to the list.

| Next time I'll keep a small Windows partition as a hedge against problems. I
| have one on my X1 Carbon, and it works just fine, leaving Arch Linux alone.

Lore: I have found 64G is a bit small for Windows.  Some updates fail due 
to insufficient space.  So I now give Windows 100G.  Alternatively, you 
could spend time to "de-bloat" it, but time is a precious commodity.

| I think I'll try switching the CMOS battery to see what happens.  Then if
| necessary try fwupdate.  Then if necessary try booting some version of Windows
| to update the firmware.  Then if necessary calling Lenovo to see what's what. 

Booting Windows is a bit daunting.  It hasn't been portable between 
systems (unlike Linux).  It hasn't been happy installed on a USB device 
(although it now can be done).

The best temporary approach is William's: add a second disk drive for 
Windows. Install Windows there.  You can even remove the drive once you 
think that your need has passed.

It is possible to use gparted to shrink most Linux file systems (not XFS; 
I don't know about LVM-managed space).  I like gparted for this.

(gparted can resize NTFS partitions, but it leaves behind some kind of 
damage.  If you immediately boot Windows, it should automatically repair 
that damage.)

You can install Windows on a disk that already has Linux.  The only 
problem is that it will tend to leave only Windows bootable.  Think* (and 
perhaps Lenovo) firmware setup screen tends to not be able to help with 
this unless you've installed to a different drive.  But the F12 on boot 
can boot Linux in this situation.  Odd.  Don't fix this until you've done 
any Windows or firmware updates you need.  Windows reboots during these 
processes and you don't want a surprise boot of Linux in the middle of 
this.

To fix this UEFI boot problem, I use the Linux efibootmgr(8) command.  
I've documented this arcane process in previous list mail.

| After all that I may try to salvage it by swapping out the MB, in which case
| hardware repair recommendations are still welcome!
| 
| 
| And if /everything/ fails, I'll ask Lennart what he recommends for new
| hardware.  (I did that for one of my computers years ago, did what he
| suggested, and it still runs beautifully!)

My current recommendation: consider a mini-PC.  The main advantages of 
conventional desktops (ability to accept PCIe cards) doesn't seem to 
matter as much these days.

If you like Think*, consider ThinkCentre M75s (small form factor) or M75q 
("tiny").  I think that M75n ("nano") may have too many compromises for 
size.  Being an anti-salesman, I will lead with the problems:

- expensive, even after the 50% discount from good sales

- the processors are currently older

If you are willing to gamble, there are a lot of emerging Chinese brands 
that are producing mini-PCs.  I prefer the AMD processors (more 
computation per Watt, and heat dissipation matters in this format).  Here's 
one that looks like a reasonable deal (but then next AMD generation should 
be coming):



Right now, I see a price of $589.00 - $100 coupon.  This changes 
regularly.

This has 32G of RAM.  If you want more, buy one with 16G of RAM and then 
replace it.

The Ryzen 7 5800H is powerful but newer AMD processors have better iGPUs.
The next generation 6800h is actually old hat and has disappeared.
The current/coming Ryzen processors are 7xxx.  But beware, a lot of them 
are older models with a new label.  You need a map to tell which 
processors are of the latest processor or GPU technology.


This one has a newer processor but is considerably more expensive:
($799.90 - $130):

[GTALUG] brands matter; Lenovo's brands

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

(This was part of a reply to Peter, but I decided to make it a separate 
message.  I hope you don't find it too didactic.)

Brands matter.  They are meant to telegraph certain things to the 
customer.  Of course the brand's meaning can be changed: it isn't a 
contract.

The perception of a brand in the potential customer base takes a long time 
to develop.  It is cultivated by marketing, but not just marketing.  We 
techies get a feeling based on past products.

A wise vendor does not jerk around the message of a brand.  Unless it is a 
throw away brand.  It takes a long time to build a brand but it can be 
destroyed quite quickly.

Think of how Loblaws, over the last 40 years, has elevated the house brand 
"President's Choice" to actually have a premium connotation.

In the computer field, IBM's and then Lenovo's Think* brands have 
commanded tremendous loyalty, only occasionally misplaced.  A large part 
of that is that the Think* devices have mostly lived up to their implicit 
promise.

Lenovo's Think* brands are mostly solid conservative business machines.  
Most Think* systems that support Windows also support Linux.  (There are 
Think* things that don't: non-computers and Android or ChromeOS 
computers.)  The markups are high and the discounts can be large. They 
have long support cycles.  I have had Think* firmware updated a decade 
after the machine was released.


That makes Lenovo's occasional ThinkPad slips much more notable:

- old timers often claim that ThinkPads are going down hill.

  + part of that is that thin and light is something a majority of 
customers want but it has to come at the cost of serviceability.
ThinkPads were known to be rugged as tanks but tanks are heavy

  + part of that is users don't like change.  But some changes are good.
Objectively, touchpads are way better now than 10 years ago, and
part of that involved getting rid of physical buttons.

  + some features (wired ethernet port, serial port, VGA port) are really 
niche now but those who want them really want them

- the ThinkBook line really seems to be exploiting the brand without 
  matching the values

- ThinkPad displays are often mediocre.  Not bright enough (nits), not 
  great colour gamut.  Inexcusable in an expensive notebook.

- the ThinkPad Android Tablet was a disaster that I got fooled by.

Lenovo's Legend brand, as I understand it, is aimed at gamers.  It is 
intended to compete on price and performance.  It isn't aimed at you or 
me.  I've never bought one.

- in the notebook range, gamers want gaming performance (GPU) at the cost 
  of weight and power consumption (heat, noise, short battery life).  I 
  want the opposite.

- in the desktop range, gamers want NVidia dGPUs.  I don't.

Lenovo has other desktops, none of which has seemed a good buy to me.

Sometimes their other notebooks have been interesting.  I have a nice 
Lenovo Yoga 2 pro notebook that is about 10 years old.  For all of those 
ten years, it gets a machine check during the Linux booting process but 
works anyway.  The ThinkPad team was able to duplicate this but could not 
interest the IdeaPad team to fix it!

Apple has a great brand too.  Sometimes it seems like a cult.  I know
little about Macs because they are the opposite of what I want: an
expensive closed proprietary system.  I did buy a used MacBook Air M1
but that is for running Fedora Asahi when that's ready.

Dell branding confuses me.  Ditto Acer.

HP Elite brand seems to be roughly similar to Think*

HP Envy Brand was being developed by HP (my desktop is one) then the
diluted it to the point of it being meaningless.

From reading the ads, HP seems to have completely gibberish names for
its consumer laptops. For example HP 15-fc0004ca, HP Laptop 15-dy5024ca, HP
17-cp2030ca are the first three I find here:
n
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Re: [GTALUG] Websites down after upgrade

[William Witteman via talk]

Everything was fine.

Something went wrong during the upgrade and one of the troubleshooting
things I tried was to uninstall and reinstall apache. I didn't realize that
that disabled all of the sites and modules.

On Fri, Sept 15, 2023, 10:40 William Park via talk  wrote:

> That begs a question... how was it before the upgrade?
> --
>
> On 2023-09-15 10:03, William Witteman via talk wrote:
> > FIXED!
> >
> > I looked at /etc/apache2/ports.conf, and the "Listen 443" directives are
> > wrapped in a conditional that requires the ssl module.
> >
> > So I ran
> > sudo a2enmod ssl
> > ...and then
> > sudo systemctl restart apache2
> >
> > Now all my sites are back. Thank you!
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Re: [GTALUG] Websites down after upgrade

[William Park via talk]

That begs a question... how was it before the upgrade?
--

On 2023-09-15 10:03, William Witteman via talk wrote:

FIXED!

I looked at /etc/apache2/ports.conf, and the "Listen 443" directives are 
wrapped in a conditional that requires the ssl module.


So I ran
sudo a2enmod ssl
...and then
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Now all my sites are back. Thank you!

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Re: [GTALUG] Websites down after upgrade

[BCLUG via talk]

William Witteman wrote on 2023-09-15 07:03:


FIXED!

I looked at /etc/apache2/ports.conf, and the "Listen 443" directives are 
wrapped in a conditional that requires the ssl module.


So I ran
sudo a2enmod ssl
...and then
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Now all my sites are back. Thank you!


That's awesome, congrats on having everything back up!


rb

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Re: [GTALUG] Websites down after upgrade

[William Witteman via talk]

FIXED!

I looked at /etc/apache2/ports.conf, and the "Listen 443" directives are
wrapped in a conditional that requires the ssl module.

So I ran
sudo a2enmod ssl
...and then
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Now all my sites are back. Thank you!


On Fri, 15 Sept 2023 at 09:56, William Witteman  wrote:

> Thank for your the hint!
>
> I think that the HTTPS redirect isn't working.
>
> The curl --head $site gives me this:
> HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
>
> But it doesn't connect to port 443.
>
> sudo netstat -ntupl | grep :443 doesn't show anything. Perhaps I am
> missing a Listen 443 directive?
>
> Similarly, if I hit the bare IP address I get the default virtual host,
> and if I "lynx localhost" I see the same, so Apache and PHP are definitely
> in play.
>
>
> On Fri, 15 Sept 2023 at 09:04, BCLUG via talk  wrote:
>
>> William Witteman via talk wrote on 2023-09-15 05:47:
>>
>> > The websites are a mix of static pages and Wordpress blogs - all
>> Virtual
>> > Hosts.
>> >
>> > None of them resolve, and I am getting "unable to connect" messages -
>> > but nothing is showing up in the /var/log/apache2/error.log or the
>> > access.log.
>>
>> Do the vhosts have separate log files? If so, anything in those
>> indicating an issue?
>>
>>
>> > Apache is running - I can see the restarts in the error log - but
>> > nothing is happening when I try to hit a page.
>>
>> Anything revealed by running
>>
>> `curl --head $site`
>> `curl --head --location $site`
>>
>> ?
>>
>>
>> > Does this ring any bells for anyone? Is there a new configuration
>> > wrinkle that I didn't adapt to?
>>
>> I don't run Debian, it doesn't ring any bells, but I thought I'd throw a
>> couple ideas out there to see if it helps at all.
>>
>>
>> rb
>>
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Re: [GTALUG] Websites down after upgrade

[William Witteman via talk]

Thank for your the hint!

I think that the HTTPS redirect isn't working.

The curl --head $site gives me this:
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

But it doesn't connect to port 443.

sudo netstat -ntupl | grep :443 doesn't show anything. Perhaps I am missing
a Listen 443 directive?

Similarly, if I hit the bare IP address I get the default virtual host, and
if I "lynx localhost" I see the same, so Apache and PHP are definitely in
play.


On Fri, 15 Sept 2023 at 09:04, BCLUG via talk  wrote:

> William Witteman via talk wrote on 2023-09-15 05:47:
>
> > The websites are a mix of static pages and Wordpress blogs - all Virtual
> > Hosts.
> >
> > None of them resolve, and I am getting "unable to connect" messages -
> > but nothing is showing up in the /var/log/apache2/error.log or the
> > access.log.
>
> Do the vhosts have separate log files? If so, anything in those
> indicating an issue?
>
>
> > Apache is running - I can see the restarts in the error log - but
> > nothing is happening when I try to hit a page.
>
> Anything revealed by running
>
> `curl --head $site`
> `curl --head --location $site`
>
> ?
>
>
> > Does this ring any bells for anyone? Is there a new configuration
> > wrinkle that I didn't adapt to?
>
> I don't run Debian, it doesn't ring any bells, but I thought I'd throw a
> couple ideas out there to see if it helps at all.
>
>
> rb
>
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Re: [GTALUG] Websites down after upgrade

[BCLUG via talk]

William Witteman via talk wrote on 2023-09-15 05:47:

The websites are a mix of static pages and Wordpress blogs - all Virtual 
Hosts.


None of them resolve, and I am getting "unable to connect" messages - 
but nothing is showing up in the /var/log/apache2/error.log or the 
access.log.


Do the vhosts have separate log files? If so, anything in those 
indicating an issue?



Apache is running - I can see the restarts in the error log - but 
nothing is happening when I try to hit a page.


Anything revealed by running

`curl --head $site`
`curl --head --location $site`

?


Does this ring any bells for anyone? Is there a new configuration 
wrinkle that I didn't adapt to?


I don't run Debian, it doesn't ring any bells, but I thought I'd throw a 
couple ideas out there to see if it helps at all.



rb

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[GTALUG] Websites down after upgrade

[William Witteman via talk]

Last night I ran an upgrade of my server (Debian trixie/sid), and
afterwards none of my websites are working.

Server version: Apache/2.4.57 (Debian)

The websites are a mix of static pages and Wordpress blogs - all Virtual
Hosts.

None of them resolve, and I am getting "unable to connect" messages - but
nothing is showing up in the /var/log/apache2/error.log or the access.log.

Apache is running - I can see the restarts in the error log - but nothing
is happening when I try to hit a page.

Does this ring any bells for anyone? Is there a new configuration wrinkle
that I didn't adapt to?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Wililam
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