Re: [GTALUG] GPU advice needed

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2024 at 12:13:35PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> Fun fact: Mac folks never cease to brag about how great Unified Memory
> is on the M1 etc.  That seems silly when you realize that integrated
> GPUs have always had this.  But there is apparently a case where the
> performance benefit is great:

Unified memory is a great idea when designed with the bandwidth
it requires.  The integrated video on PCs never was, it has no more
bandwidth than the CPU without the integrated GPU had, so it was always
costing you bandwidth your CPU needed.

What the MAC has done, and what SGI did as well as some of the Xbox
models, is design the system with lots of memory bandwidth, more than
the CPU itself could ever take advantage of, which means anything you
now put in ram is also useable directly by the GPU and neither is getting
starved for bandwidth.  So unified memory with high bandwidth is good.
Unified memory with low bandwidth is bad.

I remember a laptop my wife had with intel integrated video where doubling
the ram made the machine way way faster because it allowed it to switch
from single to dual channel access and doubled the bandwidth and suddenly
the video wasn't starving the CPU as much anymore.  It made way more
difference than a bit more ram normally should have done.

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Re: [GTALUG] Debian Live Linux -- Change Overlay Filesystem -- From Tempfs Ramdisk To Hard Drive ?? [was] Re: Debian Live Linux -- Overlay Filesystem -- Where Allocated ??

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 11:19:34AM -0400, Steve Petrie via talk wrote:
> Hello Lennart,
> 
> Thank you for your speedy explanation that, probably the Debian live linux
> overlayfs mechanism is using a non-persistent tempfs ramdisk to store data
> written to the root filesystem.
> 
> Your explanation could also explain why some Debian packages I install,
> disappear every time I boot my linux PC, which is often daily. So, I
> sometimes find myself occasionally re-installing a disappeared Debian
> package.
> 
> * * *
> * * *
> 
> I use a live Debian linux image booted from a USB memory stick, because the
> original Debian 9 linux installed on the 1.8 TB hard disk, was ruined when I
> ran a "fix broken packages" operation, on the advice of a web page, while I
> was trying to install some Debian package.
> 
> This "fix" removed a zillion packages and left me with a minimal linux that
> would only boot to a command line.
> 
> After struggling unsuccessfully to repair the broken Debian 9 on the 1.8 TB
> hard drive, I landed on the solution of booting Debian 11 live from a USB
> memory stick. (In an earlier post to GTALUG I described how I built the USB
> live boot stick from a Debian 11 CD image.)
> 
> * * *
> * * *
> 
> I would like to explore ways to change the writeable root ovwelay
> filesystem, from non-persistent tempfs ramdisk, to persistent hard disk
> storage.
> 
> This would: (1) eliminate significant RAM consumption by the overlayfs, and
> (2) (presumably) eliminate the current nuisance of having Debian packages
> disappear, every time the linux PC is booted.
> 
> According to the df -l report (below), it looks to me like the current
> tempfs ramdisk providing writeable root filesystem space, could occupy up to
> 7.8 GB of RAM.
> 
> Right now the free command shows RAM in 1KB units:
> ...
> user@debian:~$ free
>totalusedfree  shared  buff/cache
> available
> Mem:16258232 192500410446368 1758144 3886860
> 12276760
> Swap:  0   0   0
> user@debian:~$
> ...
> 
> So the linux PC has a total of 16 GB of RAM. Assuming my interpretation of
> the free command output is correct, the  tempfs ramdisk is currently using
> ("shared") approximately 1.7 GB of RAM (about 10 percent of total RAM), but
> could (presumably) grow to consume up to 7.8 GB of RAM (per df command
> output). At 7.8 GB this would mean the tempfs ramdisk would consume almost
> 50 % of total RAM..
> 
> My Debian live linux PC occasionally crashes, with the LED on the USB live
> stick flashing furiously, notably when I have many Firefox browser windows
> open. Maybe these crashes occur when the tempfs ramdisk gobbles up lots of
> RAM ??
> 
> * * *
> * * *
> 
> According to the df -l report (below), the 1.8 TB hard drive still has 958
> GB of free space available. So, moving the maximum 7.8 GB volatile tempfs
> overlay filesystem, from ramdisk to the 1.8 TB drive would consume only 0.81
> percent (7.8 / 958) of the available space on the 1.8 TB drive.
> 
> Scary to move the tempfs overlay filesystem to a new partition on the 1.8 TB
> drive ??
> 
> As I was trying to discover where the overlay filesystem is mapped, I read
> that some of the command line tools I was using, provide ways to
> RE-PARTITION disk drives.
> 
> I am a VERY PARANOID ancient IT dude, who would NOT ENJOY doing some FINGERS
> CROSSED messing around with the partitioning on the 1.8 TB drive.
> 
> Perhaps the stress-free way to move the overlay filesystem to (permanent)
> hard drive space, would be to add a second huge SATA hard drive to the linux
> PC ??
> 
> * * *
> * * *
> 
> Before buying another hard drive, I would research technical details of how
> to tell the Debian 11 live linux, to map the overlay filesystem to a
> partition on the new hard drive ??
> 
> Naturally I will look into this question myself, but I would gratefully
> appreciate suggestions from GTALUG members :)

Well my understanding is that the Debian Live is only intended as a trial
system and optionally an installer.  It is not meant to be persistent
at all.

Now having a quick look there is a page on the debian wiki with some
short instructions on how to add persistence to DebianLive. 

https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-manual/customizing-run-time-behaviours.en.html

It seems to explain how one can make Debian live have persistent storage
on a USB key.

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Re: [GTALUG] Debian Live Linux -- Overlay Filesystem -- Where Allocated ??

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 07:55:31PM -0400, Steve Petrie via talk wrote:
> Greetings To The GTALUG Community:
> 
> I'm trying to discover where an overlay filesystem is mapped, for a Debian
> live boot from a USB stick.
> 
> After perusing a dog's breakfast of output from various linux commands, I am
> appealing to GTALUG members for guidance.
> 
> * * *
> * * *
> 
> I boot live Debian 11 linux from a USB memory stick.
> 
> This provides an overlay filesystem:
> ...
> user@debian:~$ df -h
> Filesystem  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> udev7.8G 0  7.8G   0% /dev
> tmpfs   1.6G  1.6M  1.6G   1% /run
> /dev/sdb1   3.5G  3.5G 0 100% /run/live/medium
> /dev/loop0  2.9G  2.9G 0 100% /run/live/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs
> tmpfs   7.8G  1.6G  6.3G  20% /run/live/overlay
> overlay 7.8G  1.6G  6.3G  20% /
> tmpfs   7.8G 0  7.8G   0% /dev/shm
> tmpfs   5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
> tmpfs   7.8G  8.0K  7.8G   1% /tmp
> tmpfs   1.6G  1.7M  1.6G   1% /run/user/1000
> /dev/sdc159G  1.7G   57G   3% /media/user/245B-74A8
> /dev/sda2   1.8T  767G  958G  45%
> /media/user/32ec11e8-082c-4ca5-b751-dc2852f9d5e2
> user@debian:~$

So it appears that it uses a squashfs file (compressed readonly
filesystem) as root with a tmpfs (ramdisk) overlay.  That way you can
write to it, and the writes will go to the ramdisk, while any unchanged
file comes from the compressed squashfs.  overlayfs allows you to put
one filesystem on top of another and the second one handles writes and
any files it has replace (by hiding the original) existing files in the
base filesystem.

So with this setup, the system appears to have a writeable root filesystem
but is completely non persistent.

Another common use of overlay is docker containers.  Docker images are
built by taking an existing image as a starting point (well you can also
start from SCRATCH which is empty) and then make changes on top of that.
When you run a docker container, it mounts the base layer, then overlays
the next layer, then the next layer, etc for any number of changes made
to the docker image as it was built and finally a writeable layer on
top to store any changes made by the container relative to the docker
image it was started from.  So it provides a convinient copy on write
mechanism which saves space by allowing multiple images to share a base
image and multiple containers to share an image on disk and only have
to store the deltas they have made to it.

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Re: [GTALUG] .local question

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 01:43:36AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> I used to give all my machines permanent IP addresses and added entries 
> in my domain for them.  (I have /24 globally routable IP addresses.)
> 
> I then got lazy and let most be assigned dynamically.  But not servers.
> 
> Now I'm even more lazy.  I'm starting to use .local.  So machines declare 
> their hostname and mDNS / bonjour gets to resolve name.local.  Neat.
> 
> Tonight I'm creating an experimental NextCloud server.  Let's say it's 
> hostname is nc.
> 
> - ping nc.local works
> - ssh nc.local works
> - host nc.local works
> - Firefox and even links cannot see nc.local.
> 
> Why is that?
> Firefox is set to use the default DNS, not Firefox's own.
> 
> If I give Firefox the actual IP address, Apache balks because it cares 
> about the DNS name used.  But that's further than nc.local got.
> 
> I guess Firefox doesn't do mDNS.  Why would that be?  Or am I making a 
> wrong guess?
> 
> Clearly I could give to computer a real DNS name, but I'm kind of 
> stubborn and want to understand what's going on.

Is your firefox set to do DNS over HTTPS or normal DNS?

Apparently since version 104 firefox always does a search for words
entered in the address bar unless they end in standard domain suffixes.
Entering host.local/ apparently should skip that and use dns instead.

So does nc.local/ work in firefox?

Now links is odd.  Does it think it is a file name and not http since
the .local is weird to it?

Certainly on my system using 'links host.local' gives an error
that file:///home/lsorense/host.local does not exist while 'links
http://host.local' works.

Looking at the source, links (well links2) uses the contents in the
publicsuffix package at compile time to generate the internal list of
known suffixes that it treats as http by default.  Well that list plus
'onion' which for some reason mozilla doesn't want to include in the
official suffix list but links2 does.

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Re: [GTALUG] Odd Ethernet Behaviour

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Feb 06, 2024 at 07:58:40PM -0500, Peter King via talk wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I have a computer located in the University of Toronto network which shows
> some odd network behaviour.  For one, I have run speedtest-cli on it
> numerous times at various times of the day, and it consistently returns
> around 93Mbit upload/download.  For comparison, a laptop in the same LAN
> seems to get 700Mbit, while a computer in a different part of the UofT
> network gets 900Mb/570Mb.
> 
> The NIC has a RealTek chip and uses the r8169 kernel module.  Ethtool, which
> gives a live report, does list the card as running at 1Gb/s.  But that sure
> isn't the speed I am getting.
> 
> This same slow computer also has problems if I reboot it remotely: most of
> the time it doesn't come up, though dmesg has the card detected.  If I start
> from a cold boot rather than restart, it comes up correctly most of the
> time.  In either case just typing in #netctl start  starts it up
> just fine.  I was trying to solve this problem and saw that there are
> several complaints along just these lines having to do with the r8169
> module.  Some people suggested downgrading to r8101 but that module is even
> older.
> 
> If the module isn't working well, that might account for the slower speeds.
> 
> Is there any way to tell? Obviously I can buy another NIC with a different
> chipset but don't really want to go to the trouble if there is an easier way
> to diagnose the difficulties.
> 
> All advice appreciated! Thanks.

Well if you search for it you will find well over a decade of people
complaining about bed throughput on that chip.  Some people claim it
is a problem with the power management in the driver.  I even saw one
claiming a recent 6.5 kernel has finally fixed the performance for them.

I remember the dlink DGE530T used to be popular because it used a marvell
yukon chip with great performance (codeveloped with 3com).  Then rev C1
came out.  Same model name, same packaging, revision only difference.
Used a rebranded realtek 8169.  Different driver, much worse performance.
Many people stopped specing the 530T since it went from good to garbage
because someone made a cost saving revision.  I remember it well, and
not in a good way.  I suggest finding another network card.  Cards with
an intel chip usually behave well.

commit 93a3aa25933461d76141179fc94aa32d5f9d954a
Author: Lennart Sorensen 
Date:   Thu Jul 28 13:18:11 2011 +

r8169: Add support for D-Link 530T rev C1 (Kernel Bug 38862)

The D-Link DGE-530T rev C1 is a re-badged Realtek 8169 named DLG10028C,
unlike the previous revisions which were skge based.  It is probably
the same as the discontinued DGE-528T (0x4300) other than the PCI ID.

The PCI ID is 0x1186:0x4302.

Adding it to r8169.c where 0x1186:0x4300 is already found makes the card
be detected and work.

This fixes https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38862

Signed-off-by: Len Sorensen 
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller 

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Re: [GTALUG] RISC-V News

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Feb 05, 2024 at 12:30:55PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> High-end processor fabrication is now a specialized business.  Only 
> Samsung, TSMC, and Intel have the capability as far as I know.  There are 
> stories out of China suggesting that they are trying really hard to get 
> there (SMIC, for example).
> 
> Most ARM processor designs are done by ARM in-house and are licensed at 
> rates that seem to be good enough for the market.  Interestingly, ARM 
> charges considerably more for you to use their architecture without using 
> one of their designs.  The few companies with that second license include 
> Apple (who got their license by being a fo-founder of ARM as we know it) 
> and Qualcomm (I think).

Well there is a decent list of them.  Ampere making server CPUs, Broadcom,
Marvell (including Cavium), Nvidia (Although most of their chips use stock
cores), Samsung (Seems they have moved to only stock cores on newer chips
though).  Certainly not very many really making custom cores anymore.

> This second license requires conviction that your processor design team 
> can do better than an off-the-shelf design for your application.
> A few companies have tried and failed (eg. AMD).  Of the shelf ARM designs 
> have not been good enough to break into the datacentre but a couple of 
> non-ARM designs are doing OK (Amazon's Graviton, for example).
> 
> Note: users of the second license could just use RISC-V instead, for free.
> 
> In my opinion, the software support for RISC-V is mature.  Linux supports 
> it as a first class architecture and that's all I need.  Android supports 
> it or soon will (I don't remember which).  Microsoft does not support it, 
> as far as I know.

Well they certainly are starting to look interesting.  Microsoft support
doesn't seem to mean much, just look at their level of ARM support
so far.  And their support for powerpc, alpha, mips and itanium didn't
seem to offer anything of use to those architectures.

> Yes.  ARM has taken a lot longer than I expected.
> 
> The NetWinder was a credible machine for desktop or server Linux something 
> like 25 years ago.  It failed for several reasons but one was that there 
> was no ARM implementation that got near x86 performance.
> 
> Remember: that same fact killed off all the RISC desktops (HP, MIPS, 
> SPARC, Power) and 68k, NS32032, etc.

Alpha was faster than x86 for a while, but DEC internal infighting and
pricing strategies certainly didn't help it sell.  Can't have alpha hurt
vax sales, much better to let everyone else do it instead.

> NVidia is hamstrung selling to PRC.  Long term, this will likely hurt the 
> US.
> 
> NVidia tried to buy ARM.  That would have even further aided RISC-V 
> because NVidia competitors would be a bit wary of buying ARM designs.
> 
> Right.  The ARM China thing was crazy (we don't understand the importance 
> of corporate seals in China).  It has been resolved (that's an old 
> article).
> 
> RISC-V can be used by both sides of this divide.  ARM cannot.
> 
> China rightly views the capability of access to fast processor as 
> strategically important.  You can be sure that they have more money than 
> venture capitalists.  They will make it happen.

I wonder how LoongArch is doing performance wise.

> The US is trying to block PRC and they have somewhat clumsy defence in 
> depth.  They block AMSL from shipping recent lithographic systems to PRC.  
> They block ARM.  They are blocking chemicals for lithography from 
> Japanese companies.  This buys time but it won't work long-term.
> 
> This will prime the RISC-V pump.  But there are rumblings in the US of 
> kind of black-listing RISC V which is really sad.
> 
> Actually, it cuts both ways.

Certainly China can cut the US (and others) off just like the US can
try to cut off China.

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Re: [GTALUG] An anomaly with the `date` command

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 04:30:31PM -0500, mwilson--- via talk wrote:
> Discovered when I ran my script to run pcal and refresh my next-month
> calendar, and got March.
> 
> 
> mwilson@ningabel:~$ date
> Tue 30 Jan 2024 04:23:27 PM EST
> mwilson@ningabel:~$ date -d'this month' +%m
> 01
> mwilson@ningabel:~$ date -d'next month' +%m
> 03
> mwilson@ningabel:~$ which date
> /usr/bin/date
> mwilson@ningabel:~$ date --version
> date (GNU coreutils) 9.1
> Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
> .
> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
> There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
> 
> Written by David MacKenzie.
> mwilson@ningabel:~$
> 
> 
> Running Debian 12.2.0-14 patched up to last Friday.  I suppose that in a
> couple of days next month really will be March, and the bug will be gone.

Apparently the way 'next month' works is by adding 31 days.

A work around is to do this:

date +"%m" --date="$(date +%Y-%m-15) next month"

So use this year and this month and the 15th of the month then add
31 days.

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Re: [GTALUG] Ongoing war story (currently losing the battle)

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 10:43:24AM -0500, Peter King via talk wrote:
> The motherboard on the failing system is a non-UEFI Asus P6T.  The CPU is an
> Intel i7 950.  I have 32GB of Crucial DDR3 RAM in it.  The whole thing dates
> from 2009/2010 or so.  I'm pretty sure I replaced the motherboard at least
> once already.  There are four or five spinning disks of various sizes and
> ages.
> 
> A few minor updates.
> 
> First, the problem remains the same: I never get through the POST, much less
> to the BIOS.  No beep codes (or beeps at all), no display, no nothing; it
> just remains silent as the fans spin.
> 
> Second, there seems to be power to the computer.  The internal MB power
> indicator lights up, the fans spin up, the hard drives seem to all spin up,
> and the graphics card at least lights up.
> 
> Third, I tried putting in a fresh CMOS battery.  Still nothing.
> 
> Fourth, I tried swapping the memory around in various configurations.  Still
> nothing.
> 
> Next up I will see if I can find a graphics card to swap out the current one
> for testing. If that makes no difference, then there are only major
> components left as suspects -- the motherboard itself and the power supply
> (though that seems to be working: see above).  I don't have an extra power
> supply, but this one seems to pass the smell test.  That leaves the
> motherboard. I don't really know how to test a bare motherboard.  Is there
> anything else I should be trying before I give up?
> 
> (Where "giving up" means looking for another computer I can migrate
> all/most/some of the existing hardware to -- maybe an old tower that has
> room for lots of spinning drives.)
> 
> Thanks for any advice!

I have in the past had a board refuse to do anything until I removed
all the ram.  Then it gave beep codes.  I had to replace the ram.
Apparently the timing/voltage of that ram was just on the edge of what
the board worked with and it just decided to not work with it anymore.

I have also had a board where the bios flash chip failed which fortunately
was still under warranty (one of the boards that had a 5 year warranty).
But that one was just completely dead at that point.

Does it show anything on the screen at all?

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Re: [GTALUG] anyone have this bell item?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 05:17:04PM -0500, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> hi all,
> Layered times, leaving me reading more than commenting.
> My landlord wishes to provide, but cannot seem to successfully secure from
> bell, the box below.
> 
> it's a basic bell cable box vip2502
> https://www.bellmts.ca/support/tv/fibe-tv/installation-and-setup/arris-vip2502-reference-guide
> Anyone have this sitting in a closet?
> Might be wise to confirm the idea will work.  This entire property, even
> outside, has bell fibe for home coverage including internet..But my on going
> issues with them have me a bit scared.
> Thanks,
> Kare
> Who has not given up on Over The Air, just gauging offered options.

I see someone with one listed on kijiji in Toronto asking $75 for it.

https://www.kijiji.ca/v-video-tv-accessories/city-of-toronto/arris-bell-vip2502-wireless-tv-receiver/1682658529

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Re: [GTALUG] landline power [was Re: "AI" on getting correct technical answers]

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 09:23:18AM -0500, Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:
> The main phones in the house are cordless. The handset will still operate
> during a power failure but the base would not. For that reason my family
> also has one old style phone powered from the CO just in case we need to use
> a phone during a power failure.
> 
> It also means that none of our phones are of the type that can receive any
> text messages so all these sites that assume one has a cell phone that can
> receive messages as part of a 2FA process. I recently copied all of my
> source code repositories from github to gitlab due to the problems of 2FA.

My cordless phones have a charger for one of the handsets on the base,
and during a power failure that handset will power the base station.
The phone shows a message on it's screen to not remove it due to it
powering the base station when the power is out.  Pretty handy.  A dumb
old phone as a backup is still good to have around though.

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Re: [GTALUG] "AI" on getting correct technical answers

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 01:12:42PM -0500, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> Bell and Rogers are now both offering VOIP based home phone services.
> I assume that they have batteries to keep things running in the event of a
> power outage but It would be interesting to have someone on list confirm
> that.
> I remember many years ago working with an ISDN ATA device from Bell that had
> NiCad batteries that did not last all that long and had real degradation
> problems.
> 
> You could fix the power issue with a UPS.
> You could likely pay for the UPS in the phone line savings in the first
> year.

My new connection at my new house that I moved to (OK I started moving
things) about 10 days ago has rogers fibre service with phone running
on that.

There is definitely no battery in any of the equipment.  So the ONT and
the router would both need to be on a UPS to keep service running.
The router is doing the phone gateway as well as wifi and routing and
all that.  The ONT is just fibre to ethernet.

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Re: [GTALUG] Keeping old machines running.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 09:32:32AM -0500, Colin McGregor via talk wrote:
> Back when dinosaurs still ran the world (ie: +/- 72 million years ago)
> the standard for high performance mass storage was SCSI hard drives.
> Of course SCSI has been superseded by other storage solutions, but for
> various reasons some people want / need to keep those old machines
> that use SCSI drives in operation. The problem is those SCSI drives
> are old and failing. I've run across a solution for anyone desperate
> to keep one of those old machines in operation, BlueSCSI. In summary
> BlueSCSI uses an Arduino series Pico controller and a microSD card to
> mimic a SCSI hard drive. All the files required to build a BlueSCSI
> are available for free here :
> 
> https://bluescsi.com/
> 
> With those files you can build a BlueSCSI from top to bottom.
> Alternatively, you can get it as a kit or pre-assembled.
> 
> I don't (any longer) have any machines that use SCSI, but I know our
> community has a few people that love those old servers so might be
> interested in a way to keep those dinosaurs up and crawling with new
> hardware.

I use the zuluscsi for some of my machines.  Nice device.  Can even
emulate multiple scsi harddisk and optical drives at the same time using
different files on the SD card.

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Re: [GTALUG] Debian 12 takes too long to boot and login

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Dec 17, 2023 at 05:43:58PM -0500, Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:
> I have been a contributor to an Open Source project over a number of years.
> A lot of the devs seems to use Debian testing which means I often find I
> have to deal with (often minor, fortunately) dependency hell to be able to
> recompile the program when I haven't done so in a while.
> 
> I was trying out a Debian based version of Armbian and was impressed by how
> easy it was to get it up and running. I've been thinking of switching to
> Debian from Linux Mint. I decided to have another look at the Debian 12
> install I have on one of the root partitions I have for other OSs. I was
> *not* impressed.
> 
> It took about 7 minutes to from boot to login page. It takes so long that
> the system that provides the splash screen during boot gave up and it
> changed to a black screen during the last part of the boot process. After I
> enter my name and password it took about another 7 minutes to get to the
> desktop. Under Linux mint boot to desktop takes about 3 minutes.
> 
> Any clues as to why Debian takes 4 to 5 times as long? I'm hoping there is
> some bad configuration out of the box causing Debian 12 to be acting so
> slow. Anyone have any ideas where I should start looking? If I can't get to
> the bottom of the problem I will be staying with Linux Mint. Perhaps LMDE
> might be worth a try instead of pure Debian.

In my experience slow boot time is almost always a network configuration
problem causing some network service to take minutes to time out.

Of course I wouldn't expect that if it is a fresh install, more likely
after upgrading.

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Re: [GTALUG] queue unjamming [was Re: Meeting tonight?]

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Dec 17, 2023 at 02:36:05PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> There was a gathering at the site of what would have been a meeting.
> No meeting was organized.  This lack was not intentional.

An in person gathering.  Haven't been to one of those in a while.
Maybe once I finish moving I will try to make it down again.  18 days
until closing.

> No there was no announcement.
> 
> I hadn't seen any message newer than December 8 so I posted one.  When I 
> didn't see it come out on the list, I rebooted the machine 
> penguin.gtalug.org. That unstuck the system.
> 
> I should have tried to figure out how it got stuck but we intend to 
> replace the system soon so the knowledge wouldn't be useful for 
> long.

So next time it is stuck, email you rather than ask on discord.
Got it. :)

I even considered doing that.

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[GTALUG] Meeting tonight?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

Is there a meeting tonight given I think it is the second tuesday of
the month?

Wasn't sure if an annoucement was stuck in a queue somewhere waiting to
be permitted through.

Just wondering.

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Re: [GTALUG] ot: sort of, is it really impossible to get real cable anymore?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 09:29:25PM -0500, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> well, shaped the same is not an issue really for me, speaking personally.
> for me it is having the button actually do something other than put me in a
> menu with choices the button does not impact.
> One can mark creatively, if large enough, and my memory is understandably
> quite  good.
> Scott's mediasonics box suggestion is sitting in my cart..providing the
> manual was a deal maker.

Oh yes on screen menus with cursors would be useless.

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Re: [GTALUG] ot: sort of, is it really impossible to get real cable anymore?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 06:33:42PM -0500, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
>  make that atss..spelling is everything.

Assuming there is signal where you are, you would need an ATSC tuner box
(many exist at $50 or so price, and they tend to have HDMI, composite
and RF outputs) as well as an antenna to connect to it.

I guess the design of the remote for the tuner box would be somewhat
important if you need to be able to find buttons by feel.  Some companies
stupidly seem to think a remote with a rectangle of identical shape
buttons is good design.

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Re: [GTALUG] ot: sort of, is it really impossible to get real cable anymore?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 03:56:15PM -0500, Don Tai wrote:
> https://usermanual.com/support/toshiba/document/32af43-36af43-manual
> 
> page 19, "CH PROGRAM": how to automatically scan for new channels. Your TV
> can receive over the air OTA channels.
> 
> page 7, "ANT"L The antenna jack is very prominent
> 
> you can do OTA tv..

Yes, but since there are no NTSC channels to receive anymore and that
TV predates ATSC, it can tune zero channels these days unfortunately.

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Re: [GTALUG] ot: sort of, is it really impossible to get real cable anymore?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 08:23:10AM -0500, Don Tai via talk wrote:
> I've been using Over the Air OTA TV for 10 years now, and have been happy
> with the free service. The digital signals are uncompressed, providing
> visibly higher quality images than Rogers (My Mum's service). I receive 17
> digital channels, Southern Ontario and Buffalo, despite my neighbour's
> large evergreen. OTA works well during clear, rain and snow storms, but may
> go out during foggy weather.

ATSC is very much compressed (with MPEG2 unfortunately, unlike Europe that
went with MPEG4 for DVB-T when they went digital a couple of years later).
It is just not as insanely compressed as what Rogers likes to do to fit
more channels in to the bandwidth available.  Of course if you are only
using it for the audio and not visual, the compression level doesn't
matter at all.

> You will need a digital TV (slim width one), and an antenna. The antenna
> can be as simple as a coat hanger, but a better one will get you more
> stations. Simply attach the antenna to your TV, place the antenna near a
> window and rescan your TV with the antenna option and presto, free
> digital uncompressed TV stations will magically appear. There is no cost.
> If you dislike it you just rescan your TV to cable.
> 
> tvfool.com will generally tell you in which direction to point your
> antenna, though downtown there may be signal bouncing off nearby buildings,
> so you might need to experiment. A free TV guide is available at
> https://tvlistings.zap2it.com/ just put in your postal code, antenna,
> "Local Over the Air Broadcast" and a schedule appears.

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Re: [GTALUG] ot: sort of, is it really impossible to get real cable anymore?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 12:22:22AM -0500, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> Hi,
> If I could get the digital box, without having to use a modem, I would
> likely  be fine, because the digital box would tap into the existing blanket
> internet  wireless wise would it not?
> In fact that was my landlord's idea adding an extra receiver to his account,
> for which I would pay the rental, as it is just on another floor.
> I am curious how the antenna idea works, I am above ground for the area
> where   my television sits, so perhaps?  what do I need?
> Oh  boy does my television have optical outs..in spades
> The DVD player  has an HDMI port, I imagined connecting the cable box to
> this, and since the set is connected to the  player it would be enough.
> I still have my old Roger's  digital cable box, the one they provided for
> older televisions as well.
> wish I had fewer trees, not only is satellite less complex, from bell there
> are   channels automatically provided with audio description for the blind
> enabled..they do not provide this for Fibe.

The DVD player's HDMI is an output, no an input, so it is no help there.

For antenna, if your TV has an ATSC tuner (not the old NTSC tuner,
there are no channels left for that anymore), then you might be able to
connect an antenna to the TV and receive some local broadcast channels
(So CBC, CityTV, CTV, etc).  I suspect most TVs with an ATSC tuner also
have HDMI inputs, so if your TV does not have HDMI, it probably also
does not have ATSC.

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Re: [GTALUG] ot: sort of, is it really impossible to get real cable anymore?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 08:09:47PM -0500, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> Hi folks,
> before simply saying you avoid television, Part of what I do professionally
> means accessing  a great deal, news channels and other things for example.
> And for me, the, I will just watch it on my computer is a nailed shut door.
> This entire property is Bell fibe saturated which  while it might translate
> to one of their fibe TV boxes working for me, its almost December and I am
> no closer to my land line solution..even with photographs of the existing
> jacks.
> So,I am wondering if at all, it is still possible from anyone to simply find
> old fashioned cable box cable.
> I have all the rest of the equipment, and it all works..even my VCR.
> I am even wondering if, since the place is so saturated for wireless, if I
> got an older apple TV, third gen still had optical connectors, or a rocku, I
> could come up with something. not as good as regular cable, but I am
> grasping for ideas.
> thoughts?

Bell's Fibe service has only ever worked with their boxes.  Rogers cable
has been moving to all digital over the last quite a few years, and
analog cable (that a VCR could directly tune) has been gone for a while,
with everything going digital.  They even gave people free little boxes
for a while to connect to older TVs that could tune the basic digital
channels but I don't think they even do that anymore.  I think everything
now involves a digital cable box.  On top of that they have been moving
to IP based systems (Rogers Ignite) for a number of years and I doubt
they would install the legacy digital cable anymore for new accounts.
Definitely no analog cable left anymore.

Of course you can in theory receive over the air channels using an
attenna and an ATSC tuner, but if you are in a basement that seems
unlikely to work.

So unfortunately as far as I can see, the only things you can get these
days is Bell Fibe or Rogers Ignite, both of which require using a box
from the respective company and only outputs HDMI.  VCRs won't do anything
with that, and older TVs won't either.

The streaming method might work, although if you were looking to get
access to local TV stations, I have no idea if any of the streaming
services offer that.

As far as I can find, some of the Bell Fibe boxes have optical audio out.
The Rogers Ignite boxes do not appear to have it.  Of course some TVs
also have optical audio out, so it might not have to be optical out on
the box you are receiving with, if the TV has that.

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Re: [GTALUG] Browsers (and Thorium to be specific)

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 02:07:36PM -0500, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> I've been a happy (sorta) user of Firefox for a long long time but I found
> I have needed a Chromium-based backup because there are some sites that
> Just Won't Work under FF. Blank white screens, hanging, missing frames, the
> problem varies but it never exists on Chrome or Edge. (Sorry, Brave, just
> couldn't get into it.)
> 
> Now The YouTube recommendation algorithms have been of late feeding me with
> quite a few reviews of the Thorium browser, some of which come from
> channels I have watched before.
> 
> Is it worth the hype? At very least, is it a better alternative to Chrome
> or Edge? I would like to sync bookmarks, plugins and logins between devices
> and have some sense of stability (is that it will be around for a while).
> Is there something else even better?

It is pretty annoying that chrome has become the new IE.  Lots of web
developers only use chrome and don't care that their javascript or html
doesn't work on other browsers anymore.

I use chrome as little as possible, but yes a few sites are so badly
made that they don't work on anything else.

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Re: [GTALUG] "RISC-V technology emerges as battleground in US-China tech war"

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Nov 02, 2023 at 01:29:43PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 8:12 AM Lennart Sorensen <
> lsore...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> 
> Of course China has 1.5 billion people.
> 
> 
> Actually, not of course. It's 1.28 and shrinking, being officially bypassed
> this year by India as the world's most populous country. Credible research
> suggests that under average models it will shrink to under 750M by 2100.
> And that's based on official figures; some demographers don't trust those
> figures, and say it's much worse -- that India actually surpassed China as
> early as 2014.

At least the values you get if you search google says it is at 1.412
billion and growing at 0.1% as of 2021 (not negative).  Forecast that
it might drop to 1.31 billion by 2050, so the slowing growth is likely
to continue.  India is very close to it at 1.408 billion, so highly
likely to surpass it.

> The one-child policy is long-gone, but nobody is having kids and nobody's
> moving there.

Yeah you don't hear of too many people moving there.

My cousin's daughter moved there recently to study and live with her
boyfriend there.  I wonder how she will find life there.  She is in
Hangzhou.

> Indeed, enough of them travel abroad to study that countries are loathe to
> put restrictions on enrolment because universities have come to depend on
> their tuition income, at rates far higher than locals pay.
> 
> But priorities and focus seem to be changing. I've had the fortune to go to
> China a number of times; in the end, I'd concluded that the risk to my
> employer was not worth the benefits of being there, given the partnership
> deals offered by the government agencies.

It does sound like setting up companies in China is not trivial and you
don't actually get to fully be in control.

> My last trip was to speak at a FOSS conference in Shanghai. At the end of
> the session, the Q focused not on Linux or code or jobs, but obsessed
> with why my organization was perceived to treat Taiwan as a country. It was
> devastating and depressing, not a single tech question. Everything there
> (that I could see) was getting politicized, far more than I'd encountered
> elsewhere. And, as you know, most Western media is banned there, so we have
> access to their goings-on -- at least what people are able to say -- but
> not the opposite. An ICANN conference I attended in Beijing attracted
> double the normal volume of registrations -- not because locals are more
> interested in the DNS, but because attendees got access to uncensored wifi.
> 
> The jury is out, and not all measures have been implemented. IE, there are
> no restrictions yet on RISC-V and it may not happen.
> 
> It's already started. The fact you haven't heard about it much may speak to
> its effectiveness. China has targeted exports of specialty metals used in
> manufacturing of chips, batteries etc. but companies are so far having
> little trouble finding other sources (including Canada, which is ramping up
> production).
> 
> The rest of the world needs China's production more than they need us I
> > would think.
> >
> 
> Of course limiting trade hurts all parties, but the above assertion is a
> mistake IMO. Yes, the world has come to see China as its manufacturing
> plant, but the country also needs to import core necessities such as
> energy, food and fertilizer, without which it would have widespread famine.
> And given China's population decline, labour costs there are now higher
> than in neighbours such as Vietnam. One of the last holdouts, Apple, is
> moving significant production from China to India.

Well it will be interesting to see what happens.  It may not be good,
but definitely interesting.

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Re: [GTALUG] "RISC-V technology emerges as battleground in US-China tech war"

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Nov 02, 2023 at 07:00:34AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 2:32 PM Alvin Starr via talk 
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > > It is true that ARM's ownership has allowed the US government to make
> > > things very difficult for Huawei.  No wonder China likes RISC-V.
> 
> 
> 
> > I would be willing to bet the various law makers are taking advice from
> > Arm, Intel and AMD.
> >
> > Think back to the days of proprietary Operating Systems.
> > The main vendors were all going on about the evils of open source linux.
> 
> 
> I think there's something very different at play here. While I'm sure
> existing chipmakers are whispering in Congress' ear, they don't have any
> selling to do. Since the US has already put export controls on advanced
> chipmaking technology and equipment in China, RISC-V can be trivially
> advanced as a path to circumvent such controls. It's no secret that the HQ
> of the RISC-V consortium was moved from the US to Switzerland explicitly to
> inhibit any one country (or bloc of countries) from inhibiting its progress.
> 
> As you said, being open source hardware design it's available to all. That
> applies to China but also other countries under tech embargoes, as well as
> emerging economies like India that would also like to play in this field.
> The US and its allies can easily see chip-design superiority as a national
> security issue, and indeed they might prohibit their own nationals from
> participating and especially contributing IP. But they can't stop other
> countries from contributing, and it will be interesting to see if China --
> with all its tech universities and foreign-college graduates -- is as able
> to fill that vacuum, along with other countries disliking Western controls.
> 
> It is notable that, given that RISC-V tech is distributed under an
> Apache-like license, even the US chipmakers are able to take any
> existing RISC-V tech and incorporate it into their own proprietary
> components. So they could build upon any Chinese-contributed innovation
> without having to give back. You don't need to even acknowledge the use of
> RISC-V in your own tech unless you want their logo.
> 
> But this is only one part of the puzzle. The RISC-V consortium, like ARM,
> does not make chips but only chip designs. Once a spec is out you still
> need a Qualcomm able to turn it into silicon. Most advanced chipmaking
> hardware is also embargoed to China by the US, Taiwan, Japan, the
> Netherlands and others, so even if a sufficiently-advanced RISC-V design is
> created it will still be a challenge for an embargoed country to produce
> them. And China has had only limited success in making advanced chips for,
> say, post-embargo Huawei phones.
> 
> The deep global-geopolitics component of this issue renders it far
> different IMO from Microsoft's anti-Linux campaigns, That was purely
> commercially driven. Back then open source wasn't well-known, and you could
> still spread FUD about it. We're decades past that now, and many of FOSS'
> old worst enemies are at best friends and at worst respectful competitors.
> 
> Open source as a term is (generally) well understood and has spread to open
> source hardware, open source intelligence, and of course hardware. The
> players are different and the messages are different. Nobody is claiming
> anymore that open source produces inferior products; indeed, the proposed
> actions against RISC-V imply that its development model is seen as capable
> of producing something sufficiently advanced to pose an international
> security threat.

Of course China has 1.5 billion people.  A decent number of them are
well educated and of course quite a lot of them are very smart.  I don't
think such export limitations are going to buy you that many years of
delay before they are doing it all by themselves.  Meanwhile any
retaliazion from China is likely to be much more effective I would think.
The rest of the world needs China's production more than they need us
I would think.

The US has a tendancy to make polices based on an invalid assumption
that no one else could replicate what they have done from scratch.

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Re: [GTALUG] intel etherexpress pro 100+ safe driver download?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 10:38:02PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> My dream machine is being constructed. Thanks to the members here connecting
> with James.
> There is indeed a DOS packet driver included with the set Intel provides for
> the etherexpress pro 100+
> Trick seems to be finding a safe source, with my having access to the way of
> putting things on floppies.
> For example, I found an option form archive.org, that included a 1.57 .img
> file.
> Slightly too large for the 1.44  disks I sought to zip..only for pk zip to
> suggest the file may have a problem.
> Any ideas?

Intel briliantly decided a few years ago that old drivers should not be
downloadable anymore because they were no longer supported.  Apparently no
driver is better than an unsupported driver according to intel.

Now according to some discussions I saw on vogon, it seems that the 100+
might not ever have had an actual driver for DOS from intel (too new)
but someone else has written one themselves.

https://gopherproxy.meulie.net/sdf.org/1/users/sethsimon/e100pkt/

Looks like version 0.3 was the newest.  They even included source code.

The zip file contains drivers/e100pkt/e100pkt.com along with some
documentation and the source code.

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Re: [GTALUG] How do I get wlan0 interface for WiFi with any MAC

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 07:59:35AM -0400, Kevin Cozens via talk wrote:
> On 2023-10-11 16:26, BCLUG via talk wrote:
> > Kevin Cozens via talk wrote on 2023-10-11 12:05:
> > 
> > > What udev(?) rule do I need to add to have the WiFi device come up
> > > as wlan or wlan0 regardless of the MAC address that may be
> > > associated with the WiFi device?
> > 
> > My first thought: netplan, and found a link explaining it here:
> > 
> > https://askubuntu.com/questions/1317036/how-to-rename-a-network-interface-in-20-04
> The strange thing about it is that dmesg tells me the WiFi was originally
> assigned the interface name of wlan0 then it changed the name to one based
> on the MAC address. Someone must have thought most people have a problem and
> need this "feature" to make life easier but it has had the opposite effect
> for me.

One option might be a udev rule like this:

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="iwlwifi", NAME="wlan0"

So when a device is added using the driver iwlwifi, rename it wlan0.
Use the correct driver for your setup.

Normally the persistent network udev rules are mac address or pci slot
based, but they don't have to be.

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Re: [GTALUG] why I like shared libraries -- no longer a popular position

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 02:27:27PM -0400, mwilson--- via talk wrote:
> Transcoded must be the answer.  I composed the message in LibreOffice Writer
> then copied the text and pasted it into the SquirrelMail reply screen from
> vex.net.
> The characters shown as ? started out as single and double quotation marks.
> Hmm.

They ended up as backslash and a 3 digit number as if they were in some
non standard character set (certainly not utf8 or ascii) with non standard
escaping too.

Email header claims it is utf8 but clearly something was not.

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Re: [GTALUG] brands matter; Lenovo's brands

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 10:16:05PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> The "Thinkpad love" I see here IMO appears to reflect the age and
> experiences of the discussion participants. Early in the days of PCs there
> was way more diversity in hardware that could be explicitly Linux friendly
> or hostile, and IBM was friendlier from the start when not all were.
> Recall that in the 90s and 00s, HP, IBM and Dell (well DEC which was
> eventually consumed by Dell via Compaq) all had big legacy
> Unix/minicomputer businesses to protect, plus under Ballmer Microsoft was
> overtly and aggressively hostile. IBM probably did the best job in not
> letting all this get in the way of providing Linux support early on its
> high-end PCs, and that reputation has stuck to the Thinkpad brand to this
> day.

No, DEC went to Compaq went to HP where the itanium love finally killed
the Alpha.  Not Dell.

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Re: [GTALUG] brands matter; Lenovo's brands

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Sep 16, 2023 at 03:13:58AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> I forgot to mention.
> 
> One area where branding can come in handy is in identifying a niche in
> which the brand establishes a reputation for expertise.
> 
> If running Linux and having it explicitly supported by your hardware is
> critical to you, then you are part of the market that brands such as Tuxedo
>  and System76 
> are seeking. (The latter even makes its own distribution
> !) Conversely, if you want to support brands
> that identify your needs as explicitly worthy of support, then giving them
> your business will contribute towards keeping these brands healthy.

I saw a video recently where Louis Rossmann gave an update on having
used his Framework laptop for a couple of years now.  Mostly happy,
although he still misses the natural layout of the thinkpad keyboard.
He runs linux and most things work, except apparently sleep mode doesn't
work properly so the battery still drains quite a bit in sleep mode
which of course it shouldn't.

The Framework laptops at least look interesting.

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Re: [GTALUG] USB to Ethernet Dongles WAS: Debian Linux as-a-router Guide

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Sep 09, 2023 at 12:06:41PM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> Gret for you but did they use cat 5 or 5e wiring. Today you might need
> cat 8 (6 and 7 seems to have been obsoleted - - - dunno).
> I would have dragged in conduit then you would be very future proof -

Anything installed now still tends to be 5E or 6.  5E is good enough
for 10GbaseT up to 30m, so perfectly fine in a house.  6 increases it
to 55m and 6A to 100m.  I am perfectly happy with 5E or 6 in the walls.
I am still trying to get 10G equipment figured out so I can start
using that.

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Re: [GTALUG] Debian Linux as-a-router Guide

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 12:45:47PM -0400, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> Being closer to Cisco is not an advantage in my books.

No kidding. :)

> OpenWRT is a Debian based distribution that has been tuned to run in a small
> footprint that usually comes with consumer appliances but it is by no means
> limited to just that form factor.

Hmm, having used OpenWRT and Debian for many years, I have seen nothing
what so ever to make me think they are at all related in any way.

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Re: [GTALUG] Debian Linux as-a-router Guide

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 01:25:15PM -0400, Val Kulkov via talk wrote:
> To the best of my knowledge, OpenWRT retains all manually installed
> packages during system upgrade if you use their "sysupgrade" utility, with
> the exception of the x86_64 platform. On x86_64, upgrading is indeed a
> pain. But then there is the "Attended Sysupgrade", which I have not tried
> yet: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sysupgrade

I have to reinstall packages after every sysupgrade.  It will keep a
list of packages you installed, but it sure doesn't install them for you.

I think they have an option now to generate images with a list of extra
packages for you.  I haven't looked at that yet.

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Re: [GTALUG] Favorite desktop manager?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Jul 30, 2023 at 03:51:26PM -0400, Michael Hill via talk wrote:
>  Maybe they just decided to stop living in the past. It's not for everyone,
> but it works for some people.

Just because something has been around a long time doesn't mean it isn't
the better way to do something.

I remember when windows 8 betas came out, I tried it out.  I could not
figure out how to close any of their new "metro" apps.  I had to go look
it up.  Who would have guessed you dragged the top of the program down
to the bottom of the screen to close it.  Yeah brilliant design for an
OS used mostly on machines with a mouse, not a touch screen.  That's the
same idea the gnome developers have.  Do everything new ways with no
visual clues as to what you can do where and drop what people are used to.
Strangely that was of course the first time microsoft had totally
changed the UI of windows without giving you an option to revert to the
old interface.  Unfortunate that they chose to do that at the same time
they made their worst interface ever.

They could have started a new desktop project and done whatever they
wanted.  Making gnome 3 totally nothing like gnome 2 on the other hand
made no sense.  It was not an upgrade of the previous version.

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Re: [GTALUG] Favorite desktop manager?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2023 at 11:09:37AM -0700, BCLUG via talk wrote:
> Sounds like you guys hate CLI environments and probably use Siri / Google
> Assistant / Alexa / *voice* as a near ideal human-like user interface then?
> 
> Desktop environments take their name and derive the concept from offices in
> the pre-electronic age. Window managers sound like something only pertinent
> to computers. Like terminals.
> 
> Sounds quite un-Linuxy.
> 
> I say this partially in jest, but also to point out the seeming
> contradiction in what I inferred as the points being made.

Personally I want a window manage that lets me arrange my terminal windows
(although I mostly run them fullscreen with tabs for each session),
lets me open programs (preferable with alf+F2 and typing in what I
want), and has a minimize, maxmimize and close botton on the window.
I don't care about icons on the desktop (it's always covered up anyhow,
so useless place for icons), nor file managers (I have a shell thank
you very much).  And of course alt+tab has to cycle through windows,
preferably in most recently viewed to least recently viewed order.

Everything gnome 3 has done is wrong.  It's developers have no clue what
they are doing and sure don't care about user feedback.  They hijacked
a project name, threw everything away and started over with a terrible
idea of what a desktop should be, with no regard to users.

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Re: [GTALUG] computer hardware testing tools.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 08:28:12PM -0400, James Knott via talk wrote:
> My condo was new 30 years ago and it has the 2x15A circuits.

My current house from the mid 1970's uses 2x15A.  My new place from
right now (well supposed to be complete next January) is using 1x20A.
Code allows (and seems to recommend) using that, and it costs less,
so of course that is what new development is going to do.  I was just
surprised to see the change, although the space savings in the panel
seem like a good idea given how much space the kitchen outlets took up
in my current panel.  I would think using both a toaster and a kettle
at the same time from one pair of outlets may not work anymore.

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Re: [GTALUG] computer hardware testing tools.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 05:22:07PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> Thanks for getting back to my  question smiles.
> I believe i have been focused on Motherboards more than the ports for your
> exact reason,  the ports are connection dependent.  what about boards
> themselves?

Unfortunately software can only really test that the registers in the
chips are responding as expected.  The port on the board may still be
damaged and not working even if you can talk to the chip that drives
the port.  There is often another chip involved between the controller
and the port to convert voltage levels (a PHY in the case of a network
port or a level converter for a serial port).  If that chip is damaged
(and if a port has a surge that is the chip most likely to take
the damage) then you won't find out other than by trying to use it
unfortunately.

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Re: [GTALUG] computer hardware testing tools.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 03:11:03PM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> You bet - - - - totally accurate as to about 2023 - - - any idea what
> the code was
> in ??? when that particular house was built? AIUI the fridge on a separate
> circuit is from some time in the 80s so if the house was built in the 70s it
> would have been code legal to do otherwise.
> Is it a good idea to have the fridge on with other items - - - nope - - - but
> codes change over time - - - sometimes in good ways and sometimes in
> not so good ways.

I was surprised to find out the code for kitchen outlets has changed at
some point from having 2x15A circuits to each counter outlet pair,
to having 1x20A to each outlet pair.  That seems like a downgrade,
although sure saves some space in the panel.

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Re: [GTALUG] computer hardware testing tools.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 06:05:29PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> Hi folks,
> What I am seeking is an open source program that tests aspects of say your
> motherboard.  that the serial ports or parallel ports work, that the USB
> ports are sound etc.
> I am asking  because due to an as of yet not fixed hydro problem in my new
> apartment, the occasional power surges, even with machines attached to
> protectors, are causing slight damage to hardware.
> Need to know how much as I only have so many computers I can use.
> Any program ideas?
> Will be sharing suggestions with someone hopefully helping me troubleshoot.

I am not aware of anything that does that.  It gets complicated really fast.

You could have a loopback plug to test part of a serial port.  A better
test requires connecting two serial ports together and testing them with
each other (I used to work on a product where we did exactly that as
part of the manufacturing test of the product).  Parallel ports could
probably be done in a similar way, although something with a bit of
electronics on it you could do some latching on might make some of the
pins on the port easier to test.  It sure was simpler back when computers
had a fixed feature set and a test harness and software could be made
for it (lke the commodore 64 for example).

I have seen USB testers that you plug in and they have a display on them
that shows if the port is working correctly.  They very clearly assume
the user can visually detemine what it is doing unfortunately.

It seems for PCs people tend to assume it is working unless it obviously
isn't.  Not very convinient if you think there might be a problem and
would like to be sure.

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Re: [GTALUG] computer hardware testing tools.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2023 at 06:18:41PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> no one spoke of printer cables.
> Serial connectors are 9 pin, parallel cables are 25 pin.  while old style
> printer cables use  25 pin as well, there is no, or not to my personal
> experience a 9 pin connector at all for those printer cables.
> as a side note allot of external speech synthesizer hardware used  25 pin
> connectors. and lpt port allocations as well.

Serial ports on PCs eventually tended to be 9 pin.  Earlier on and on
most other platforms they were 25 pin.  Usually the serial and parallel
ports used the opposite gender, but on some systems that was not the case.
Even worse, some systems (Macintosh and Amiga for example) even used 25
pin ports for SCSI (with the same gender as the parallel port, sometimes
places right next to each other.  Mixing them up fried things).
There were too many standards made by too many people.  Many of them
conflicting with each other.

So the number of pins tells you nothing about what the port is
unfortunately.  Or at least not with much certainty.

If the device has a serial interface, it connects to a serial port on
the PC.  If the device has a parallel interface it connects to a parallel
port on the PC.  The cable might adjust the connector, but it does not
change the protocol, unless it is an active cable (like a USB to serial
or USB to parallel cable for example).

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Re: [GTALUG] Red Hat Paywall...

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 07:29:23PM -0400, Colin McGregor via talk wrote:
> Let's see if I understand this correctly, Red Hat has now put a whole
> lot of open source / GPL software behind a paywall, where you have to
> pay $$ for a subscription in order to access the source code. Then if
> anyone uses that subscription to produce an Red Hat style distribution
> (ie: Red Hat minus any support services) their subscription will be
> cancelled... Is the above what I am reading here? :
> 
> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/im-done-red-hat-enterprise-linux
> 
> If this is true then it confirms my decision to use Debian GNU/Linux
> as for all its' faults (and it does have several) Debian GNU/Linux
> just doesn't pull this sort of @#$% .

Red Hat charges for access to their software and support.  If you get
their software that way, they of course are required to let you have
the source code.

But then they do in fact tell you that if you share that source code
(which you are of course permitted to do by the license), they are allowed
to cancel your contract and decide to never do business with you again.
Well I think they say they can cancel your contract for any reason they
want, but that sharing the source code would very likely make them do so.

So similar to what the grsecurity people were trying to do, but at IBM
scale instead.  Red Hat is far from the company it was 30 years ago.

Yeah I am happy I switched to debian 25 years ago because Red Hat's
quality was so poor at the time.  Debian having a better designed
packaging system was a bonus.

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Re: [GTALUG] Debian 12

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 11:03:59PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> | From: Giles Orr via talk 
> 
> | Long release cycles are a real mixed blessing ...  
> 
> Thanks for your note on debian 12 / bookworm.
> 
> I'm personally interested in debian as a replacement for CentOS.
> (GTALUG is  going to have a speaker from Rocky Linux in the next few
> months.)
> 
> I'm not enculturated in the debian world, but my impression is:
> 
> - debian stable is about the same as RHEL.  Very stable, very old.
>   Suitable for those who value stability.
> 
> - debian testing is pretty reliable.  Perfectly fine on ones desktop.
> 
> - debian unstable is more of an adventure
> 
> Ideologically, isn't FF ESR a match for debian stable?
> 
> If you want firefox, isn't that an indication that you are a candidate
> for "testing".
> 
> I don't like snaps / flatpacks much.  For reasons that we don't need
> to go over.  But your situation might be a great use: you want a
> stable OS but need very select exceptions.
> 
> ==
> 
> We (GTALUG) run a debian stretch server that has fallen out of support.
> It falls on me (among others) to kick it forward.
> I was under the impression that the automated updating process is more
> recent then that.
> 
> Is there a royal road to bookworm from stretch?
> 
> My guess is that it gets complicated by out-of-distro things that we
> have installed.

You can upgrade one release at a time.  So upgrade to buster, then
bullseye, then bookworm.

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Re: [GTALUG] Debian 12

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 08:35:38PM -0400, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
> I've upgraded something like six of about 10 personal (Debian 11)
> machines.  The upgrade process is the easiest and smoothest that
> Debian's managed yet.  I haven't tried a new install yet, but if you
> have a Debian 11 system, my experience so far suggests that the
> upgrade process will go smoothly.
> 
> I was annoyed to find that this doesn't - exactly - bump the Firefox
> version.  You remain trapped in the ESR version, and even though it's
> a newer ESR release, it's still FF v102 which Slack will be disabling
> in September.  We use Slack heavily at work - I could survive without
> it running in the browser on my Linux machines, but I'd much rather
> not.  Further research yielded the suggestion that version 114 will
> become ESR in August ... I hope Debian will let that out the gate
> before Slack's September deadline, but I wonder if they will.  They
> don't like big version changes in the middle of a release.  I guess
> I'll be peering into the backports repository if that's what happens
> ...  (don't suggest flatpak or snaps, thanks - I avoid those when
> possible).

Well at this time I see
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=firefox-esr shows that buster,
bullseye and bookworm all have version 102 ESR.  I believe they will
update it as a security update when the ESR moves to a new version.

> The only other thing I was really concerned about with Debian's
> versioning was Strapi, another work thing.  Debian 11 had the ancient
> version 12 which the developers at work refused to work with.  As
> their systems administrator, that caused me major headaches.  Debian
> has now jumped to version 18 of Strapi.
> 
> Long release cycles are a real mixed blessing ...  

I can't even find a package named strapi in debian.  No idea what it is.

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Re: [GTALUG] CVT-RB: another video mystery

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 03:04:38PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> That's an odd resolution.  Of course that makes your point clearer:
> it's just arithmetic.
> 
> But of course it is not.  There is a certain amount of extra
> jiggery-pokery added.
> 
> My first post on this topic included a link to a table of bandwidths,
> taking into account blanking regime.  It also says how to adjust for
> sizes of different pixel encodings.
> 
> 
> 
> Is there a reason for them writing bits per colour as "bpc" instead of
> "b/c"?  I think / is clearer than "p" in a unit.

b/c could be read as b divided by c.  After all we use ppi for pixels
per inch.

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Re: [GTALUG] CVT-RB: another video mystery

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 11:16:05AM -0400, James Knott via talk wrote:
> Other than a small bit about lip sync, there is nothing about syncing the
> signal in that.

Well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5acgSK0kWTE has a lot of details
on how HDMI works.  I don't think it says how audio and video is synced,
although given they are being sent interleaved, it probably isn't very
complicated.

> First off, that RTP article mentions video, not just audio.  While the
> details may differ, the principles remain the same,  that is the framing is
> embedded in the data.  Don't confuse transport with signal.
> 
> In the case of my IPTV, the exact same signal is delivered to my TV, as I
> would receive over the old digital system.  And they both use HDMI to reach
> my TV.

The IPTV goes to some device that decodes it and converts it to
uncompressed video frames and audio.  HDMI just carries uncompressed
video and audio (either LPCM or some other digital audio format) to
the TV.  Of course if the TV itself runs apps, the decoded video doesn't
have to go over HDMI unless the TV internally is also using HDMI from
the processor to the video handling (which is actually commonly how it
is done).  If you have an ATSC tuner, the signal received is decoded
and decompressed and again sent as uncompressed video to be displayed.
HDMI has no involvement in MPEG or ATSC or IPTV or any other compressed
video system.  It only cares about RGB (or YUV) video data and audio
and a few control signals.  For some reason HDMI (and the compatible
DVI) decided to keep using CVT video signalling complete with blanking
intervals, although using reduced blanking (CVT-RB and CVT-RBv2), and
they put the audio and some other extra bits into that part of the signal.
Maybe this was so analog displays could also work with DVI and HDMI?

> By comparison, consider the audio in cell phones.  Way back in the dark ages
> of "1G" phones, the signal was analog.  Then came 2G, with a few different
> methods (CODECs) of converting the audio to a digital signal, with a major
> goal being to reduce the bandwidth, to the point where three or so digital
> calls would use the same amount of spectrum as one analog.  The difference
> between 2G and 3G, which used the GSM CODEC, is with 2G, the data was a
> continuous stream, but with 3G the exact same audio was transmitted in
> packets, though not over IP.  Saving bandwidth was still a goal.  Then, with
> 4g and lots of bandwidth available, the goals shifted from saving bandwidth
> to providing a better quality call.  IP was now being used to carry the
> calls.  Through all this, the goal remained the same, that is to carry a
> voice conversation.  With the digital systems, the sync was carried along
> with the call data, even though different CODECs might have been used at
> different times.
> 
> Again, there is absolutely no need for blanking intervals with digital TV. 
> I suspect Hugh's question arises because he is using an analog monitor, if I
> read his post correctly.  Then analog framing, including blanking interval,
> has to be created.
> 
> BTW, it is possible to have analog video without blanking intervals.  Back
> in the 70s, I used to maintain some video terminals where the sync was fed
> directly to the monitor, instead of being combined with the video.

My understanding was that on a CRT it needed a bit of blanking time in
order to have time to change the magnetic field so the beam could start
at the begining of the next line.  Whether you used composite sync or
seperate H and V sync didn't matter, it still needed the time.

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Re: [GTALUG] CVT-RB: another video mystery

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 10:40:31AM -0400, James Knott wrote:
> Is this documented anywhere?  Sure the audio is sent over the cable, but why
> should there be such a thing as a blanking interval on a digital system? 
> The blanking interval was used to sync the camera and TV.  There is
> absolutely no need for that with a digital signal.  Of course there is a
> sync method with digital, but that could be contained in the data.  When you
> have a digital signal, multiplexing of different data, including sync, is
> trivial.

Well HDMI has the audio and video multiplexed in the same signal.
HDMI 2.0 and older used 3 data links plus 1 clock link, while HDMI 2.1
uses 4 data links with embedded clocking at up to 12Gbps per link.

https://www.fpga4fun.com/files/HDMI_Demystified_rev_1_02.pdf gives a
nice explanation of how it worked in HDMI 1.3.  2.1 just got rid of the
dedicated clock to free up a 4th signal pair.

That was supposed to be a dual link HDMI B connector with 6 pairs instead
of 3 but it seems to have never been used.

> Read about Real Time Protocol for info on how this is done for audio and
> video over IP.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_Transport_Protocol

Sure but HDMI and compressed video of IP have nothing in common really.
Vastly different bandwidths and purposes.

> I have Rogers IPTV.  The TV comes over IP via the cable.  That would most
> certainly be compressed, as was the digital TV I had before it.  There are
> HDMI cables between the Rogers box and my A/V receiver and from the receiver
> to my TV.  Are those cables carrying uncompressed video?  I doubt it,
> considering the signal Rogers distributes originated with ATSC from the
> broadcasters.

Absolutely it is uncompressed over HDMI.  The signal from rogers is
compressed and encrypted and the rogers box decodes that and send out
the raw video over HDMI (with HDCP protection of course).

This is why HDMI is carrying 10.8Gbps or 18Gbps or even 48Gbps for the
latest standard.  Uncompressed video is huge.

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Re: [GTALUG] CVT-RB: another video mystery

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 03:11:44PM -0400, James Knott via talk wrote:
> That doesn't make sense, especially when you consider how the digital system
> works, with things like I, P and B frames.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types

Compressed video is not related to how the signal is sent over HDMI.
HDMI is sending uncompressed frames (not counting DSC as used sometimes
for 8K video on HDMI).

> As you mentioned blanking intervals are a relic of analog TV, dating back
> before WW2.  There is absolutely no need for them with digital TV.

Supposedly HDMI is using some of the blanking space to send audio,
so I guess it has some use.

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Re: [GTALUG] Anybody using rclone?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Jun 03, 2023 at 12:18:25PM -0400, Giles Orr via talk wrote:
> I saw a tech news article about a cloud storage provider reducing
> their rates ( 
> https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/02/dropbox-like-cloud-storage-service-shadow-drive-lowers-its-price/
> ) and this reminded me that I've been thinking about using cloud
> storage as backup ... so long as it's encrypted with a key that's on
> my side (only).  A quick search pointed me to "rclone" (
> https://rclone.org/ ) which sounds outstanding if their self-promotion
> is to be believed.  The fact that rclone is included as a standard
> package in Debian stable goes a long way to convincing me.
> Ironically, "Shadow Drive" isn't one of the providers that rclone
> lists themselves as working with.
> 
> This seems like a good starting guide (and makes rclone look fairly
> straight-forward).  I haven't used it so I'm uncertain of its
> accuracy:
> https://www.linuxuprising.com/2020/05/how-to-encrypt-cloud-storage-files-with.html
> 
> My current backup systems live and die by 'rsync', so I'm quite
> familiar with a program rclone seems to be partially based on.  I've
> been trying/hoping to move to 'rsnapshot', although it's kind of a
> PITA (but good).  I use Fedora occasionally, but mostly Debian.
> 
> This has left me with so many questions, to which I would happily take
> any and all answers:
> - is rclone good?
> - is rclone easy to use?
> - does rclone handle encryption of remotes (mostly) transparently?
> - in particular, is mounting remote encrypted cloud drives as local
> drives fairly easy?
> - what cloud storage providers have you used rclone with?
> - do you recommend a particular cloud storage provider?  Why?
> - do you disrecommend a particular cloud storage provider?  Why?

Personally I use rshapshot for backups with a target being a linux server
at my parents house and then they backup to mine the same way.

No cloud providers, nothing complicated, it just works and it's
automatically offsite.

Of course it's great for making a backup of your data, it is not for
making a system backup should you need to restore the system, but I
don't consider that to my a big task in general.  I also tend to use at
least RAID1.

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Re: [GTALUG] an odd question about well on going service factors.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 08:41:07PM -0400, Don Tai via talk wrote:
> Ask your landlord to get you a set top box and add the cost to your rent,
> or adopt you as a family member.

Yes to get another box for the fibe service it would have to be done by
the account holder.

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Re: [GTALUG] an odd question about well on going service factors.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 05:49:20PM -0400, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> Hi,
> While this answers my specific question, your comment  about sharing
> services  creates a different one.
> If you have a large house  with more than one television, it is  often the
> case that this second television has its own cable box, say to allow other
> members  of your household to  watch what they wish.
> How is indeed  sharing the Internet with the basement of your house
> different?

They seem to realize that not letting one household share wouldn't get
them many customers, while two households in one house they can claim
isn't allowed.

Is it really different?  One could certainly argue that it isn't, but then
the same argument could apply to all the units in a 20 story building.
Where do you draw the line and they seem to go by household.  Of course
is someone renting a room really different than someone renting a basement
apartment with it's own entryway?

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Re: [GTALUG] an odd question about well on going service factors.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 05:27:06PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> bell is not being nasty about my Landlord's choices.
> bell is being nasty about my body not matching their definition of
> disability.
> Your point about sharing service is an interesting one, If it is illegal,
> how can so many rental structures provide it as apart of their tenancy?
> In fact it is a part of my rental agreement, the one provided by the
> residential tenancies act.

Just because it is commonly done doesn't mean it isn't against the
provider agreement.  After all netflix also says in their terms of
service that you can't share your passowrd with other people, and yet
lots of people did and now that they are finally cracking down on it,
people are acting like they changed the rules.  The rules were always
there, they just weren't being particularly well enforced.  Just like
Bell isn't doing that much to enforce those rules.  They are probably
more concerned that you can't have a small building with 10 units and
use a single account to provide service to those than they are about a
house renting out a small basement apartement to one person and sharing
with them.

> Again my question is very specific.  Is there such a thing as  a universal
> Set top box?

No definitely not.  Only a box provided by Bell will work with their
service.

In the US in theory there could be a universal cable box due to FCC
rules about local channels being carried unencrypted on digital cable,
although I am not sure it is enforced and that all cable companies obey
those rules.  In Canada we have no such rules, and cable companies can
do whatever they want.

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Re: [GTALUG] ISC DHCP server is reaching End of Life.

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, May 28, 2023 at 06:58:20PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> I've been using ISC DHCP server for a long long time.
> I just noticed this article.
> It focuses on Kea DHCP server as a replacement.
> 

Kea definitely has much better high availability support.  The method
in the old DHCP server was terribly unreliable.  Also the config is much
more flexible in Kea and can be changed at runtime without restarting.
Being able to send json structures with commands is rather nice.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story #2: buying RAM

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 11:02:12AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> A couple of RAM manufacturers have product selectors that help you a lot.  
> Lennart pointed this out.  But then you don't get the advantage of buying 
> a commodity.

I think the problem is that while ram is mostly a commodity, high
performance ram is not.  If you just wanted 16GB ram in your machine
that works, you can buy just about any ram of the right type.  It will
work, but it will certainly not be at the best performance your machine
could have.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story #2: buying RAM

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 03:16:39PM -0400, Nicholas Krause wrote:
> Yes, Hugh will run into problems then of getting that speed. The JEDEC 
> default profile is 2400mhz
> from memory. Not sure how locked the Bios on his Thinkpad is. It seems that 
> lots of people are
> reporting XMP enabling not being possible. I don't know why they would lock 
> that considering
> RAM Speeds needing XMP for the full speed, for the last decade or so.

A thinkcentre is a business desktop system.  XMP is for gamers.
Business systems don't allow things that could make the system unstable.

> Not to mention AMD chips like faster RAM up to 3200mhz from memory. There are 
> suppose to be
> performance differences there as well. This seems like a very bad 
> manufacturer decision if
> this is occurring with Lenovo Laptops.

It is not a laptop.

> Hugh, are you just using the ram for web browsing or multitasking? If that's 
> the case I don't
> think the 800mhz bulk is going to be a big deal. It's up to you but Ryzen 
> only wants faster
> ram when I checked for applications like databases, GPU programming e.t.c. So 
> if your fine
> with the lower speed and I'm assuming that's the use case it should be 
> alright.

https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/lenovo/thinkcentre-m75s-gen-2#memory
would certainly work.  It is listed as compatible, it is 3200 DDR4,
it is 1.2V.  No silly XMP profiles involved.  So such memory does exist,
but it is not very common.  Most ram just ups the voltage using XMP
profiles to get the higher speeds.  You need really good chips to run
3200 at 1.2V.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story #2: buying RAM

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, May 14, 2023 at 03:41:47PM -0400, Nicholas Krause via talk wrote:
> XMP or a version  is on AMD. The problem your running into is CPUs these days 
> default to a certain Ram Speed. I'm not sure of what gen your on for the 
> Thinkpad but googling default memory speed of gen X, where X is your gen 
> should resolve that issue. If you need to go helper than you need XMP or the 
> AMD version to go beyond the default speed. For sure,3200 is beyond that for 
> memory with current gen.

Lenovo ships the machine with DDR4 3200 ram, and AMD lists that CPU as
running DDR4 at up to 3200.

The CPU/system supports 3200, but it only uses the JEDEC default profile,
not XMP.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story #2: buying RAM

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 06:31:47PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> | From: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk 
> 
> | So this is what I bought for $159.99:
> | 
> 
> 
> Surprise:  The ThinkCentre M75s gen 2 SFF seems this RAM as DDR-2400!  
> 
> Why???
> 
> Even though it is advertised as DDR-3200, when you read the 
> specifications, it will only run at 3200 under XMP.
> 
> 
> 
> FACTORY TIMING PARAMETERS
> • Default (JEDEC): DDR4-2400 CL17-17-17 @ 1.2V
> • XMP Profile #1: DDR4-3200 CL16-20-20 @ 1.35V
> • XMP Profile #2: DDR4-3000 CL16-19-19 @ 1.35V
> 
> XMP is an Intel "standard" and cannot be used by AMD systems (like the
> M75s).
> 
> There are hacks for AMD.  For example Asus' DOCP.  But a business
> computer line like the ThinkCentre is unlikely to use that.
> 
> Now I have to return a second set of RAM.  Canada Computer might not
> be as accomodating as Amazon.
> 
> I wonder how one searcsh for "DDR-3200 RAM, no REALLY DDR-3200 RAM".

Good question.  I think one needs to somehow find ram that is 3200 and
1.2V explicitly.  The ones using XMP profiles seem to be 1.35V at
that speed.

This for example looks right:
https://www.amazon.ca/Crucial-2x16GB-Desktop-Memory-CT2K16G4DFRA32A/dp/B07ZLD6Q1G/

I guess you hit the same problem as this review:
https://www.amazon.com/review/R17NJ5JNV9HE4D/

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Re: [GTALUG] war story: buying RAM

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 11:12:44AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> This is an M75s gen 2 SFF unit.
> I installed the DIMMs and then could not replace the tray with 2.5"
> and 3.5" bays.  It bottomed out on the DIMMs.
> 
> I suspect that the DIMMs themselves would fit but their flamboyant
> heat spreaders would not.  The heat spreaders had stickers saying "warranty
> void if removed" so I didn't want to try.  I have no idea how
> important heat spreaders are for RAM.

Oh OK.  Yeah the ones crucial was selling had no such nonsense on them.
They are just regular DDR4 DIMMs.  So it does not need low profile,
it just needs normal sized.

> Speaking of which, the NVMe drives I buy come without heat sinks.  Are
> they important?  My guess: perhaps for NVMe gen 4 because they seem to
> take considerably more power.

Some of the faster NVMe drives can get hot, especially when writing, and
if they get too hot they tend to throttle and loose speed, so the heatsink
can help keep the performance up.  Of course with normal use you probably
aren't accessing it that much so it probably doesn't matter that much.

> If heatsinks are needed, why don't they come with the drives?  Are
> they supposed to come with the motherboard?

It varies.  Some motherboards include them, some don't, some drives do,
some don't.  Of course a heatsink from a drive might not even fit with
a certain board or case, depending on the size and shape.

> In the case of the M75s, the NVe mounting kit that I cannot get from
> Lenovo does include a heat sink.
> 
> 
> There is no such heat sink in the M75q.

I suppose the case being so small they figure having a heatsink to help
cool the drive is a good idea.

> I may well be misremembering the number.  Perhaps it was $200 for each
> of the two 32MiB SDRAM DIMMs.  Or even some other price.  It was
> probably early fall in 1997, but I'm not sure.  (It was before Win 98
> was released.)

Yeah I am thinking February of 1997.  $200 each could have made sense
unless ram prices took a dive in 1997.  I don't remember.

> I do remember 64M being extravagant at the time.  I bought it with two
> 32MiB SDRAM DIMMs I think the motherboard was an Asus TX97.  That used
> an Intel TX chipset.  The TX had a limitation that it could not cache
> more than 64M of physical memory.  The CPU was an AMD K6 200 or 233.

Yeah I was working with my dad's new PPro 200 at the time.  It was his
CAD system, and it was maxed out.

> It was a while before I switched over to the K6/Linux box from the
> SPARCClassic.  Solaris was still better than Linux and the
> Sun's display was better.  The PC's CPU was a lot faster -- 200MHz vs
> 32Mhz.
> 
> At that time, "workstations" were still a higher tier than PCs.  PC
> stores didn't understand workstation users.  But there was almost no
> remaining technical reason so this disappeared fairly quickly.  Linux
> was one of the factors. It is hard to remember how bad the PC display
> situation was compared with workstations.

I thought PCs were able to have pretty decent displays, but they were not
cheap.  We used a 20" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 20 with a 486DX2-66 which
managed 1280x1024@60Hz, which was then replaced with the PPro 200 with
a 21" Hitachi CM803U in 1997.  1600x1200@85Hz seemed quite acceptable.
The 486 ran a Mach32 2MB VLB card, the PPro was a Rage II 8MB PCI card.
There was a 486DX50 before that with a #9 GXi Level 25 video card
(2MB VRAM + 1MB DRAM ISA card with a TI34020 processor on it), but it
was stolen and the other 486 was the replacement.  The #9 card was
displaylist based, which gave some amazing performance even though it
was ISA.  The software just sent commands to the card, and you kept the
actual data in the DRAM on the card and the TI chip executed the commands
to generate the framebuffer.  Where machines with standard Trident or
other VGA cards would need seconds to do a refresh in a CAD program,
this thing took miliseconds since the card did all the line drawing
and scaling.  It was also able to implement the entire GDI stack of
windows 3.1, so all window drawing, text rendering, fills, etc, were
all done in hardware.  Video playback is what killed TIGA since tat
required transfering new framebuffer data all the time, and ISA was no
good for that.

And I have no idea why I can still remember all that crap. :)

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Re: [GTALUG] war story: buying RAM

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, May 09, 2023 at 03:33:17PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> I bought a ThinkCentre M75s through ebay.ca
> It came with a single 8GiB stick of RAM.
> I wanted more!
> 
> DDR4 RAM is pretty cheap these days.
> 
> I bought 8GiB (to pair with the original stick) and 2 x 32GiB.  Lots!
> I got it from amazon.ca
> 
> - DDR 32000MHz, as per the "psref" documentation for the computer
> - DIMM, not SODIMM, since it is a desktop
> - fairly low latency
> 
> When I got it, I could install it in my machine but I could not reassemble 
> the machine.  I needed "low profile" DIMMs.  Not mentioned in the manual.

Strange.  Checking M75s (both SFF and Gen 2) on crucial.com doesn't
mention anything about needing low profile and their compatiblity list
is usually very accurate (often more accurate than the manual the system
came with).

> So I have initiated a return with Amazon.ca.  They would even come to 
> pick the 2 x 32GiB units up, but that's no use since they require me to 
> drop the 8GiB DIMM off at a Purolator establishment.
> 
> I have now tried to order low profile versions.
> 
> This time, Canada Computer was cheaper.  They offered free shipping for 
> the 32GiB x 2 but $10 for the 8GiB.  I asked if the 8GiB could piggyback 
> on the free shipping for the other DIMMs: no.  Shipping from 
> memoryexpress.com was more expensive.  NewEgg.ca didn't seem competitive.  
> So I'm not going to buy a mate for my 8GiB.
> 
> So this is what I bought for $159.99:
> 
> 
> I think I paid roughly the same for 64MiB of RAM for my first PC clone in 
> the mid 1990's.

I remember 4x32MB EDO Dimms were about $900 in early 1997.

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Re: [GTALUG] Meeting Reminder

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, May 08, 2023 at 07:03:52AM -0400, Alan Heighway via talk wrote:
> Digital Citizenship Workshop  with You
> 
> 
> 11 May, 2023 at 07:30 PM
> 
> “Being involved in open source indicates an interest in the ethical aspects
> of technology”
> 
> For this meeting we wish to get your input on what it means to you to be a
> digital citizen in 2023.
> 
> What is a Digital Citizen and why is it important?
> 
> https://www.digitalcitizenship.net/nine-elements.html
> 
> https://usidhr.org/what-is-digital-citizenship-and-why-is-it-important/
> 
> This will be in a workshop format and we expect everyone attending to
> participate in the discussion.
> 
> We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting:
> https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl
> 
> *Time:* May 5, 2023 7:30 PM Eastern Time
> 
> *Join us on Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl.
> *A*lan *H*eighway 
> heighway.ca
>VA3WAH / VA3YKZ
> 
> [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

So May 11 or May 5 or maybe somewhere in between and call it May 9th
and hence second Tuesday of the month?

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Re: [GTALUG] how many addresses possible

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 05:53:04PM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 5:21 PM James Knott via talk  wrote:
> >
> > On 2023-04-30 17:55, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> > > I just spent over 1/2 hour looking at a number of SoCs (3) and 
> > > microcontrollers
> > > (also 3) and I can't find one where I can give it this 'classless'
> > > address you're
> > > talking about.
> >
> > Is there nowhere to set the subnet mask?  Either with / notation or
> > a.b.c.d.  If you can set the address, you should be able to do that, one
> > way or the other.
> >
> > For example, a typical network would be a /24.  It could be expressed as
> > 10.0.0.0 /24 or 10.0.0.0 255.255.255.0, depending on the equipment.
> >
> 
> Nope - - - - all I'm allowed is a quad - - - - or ipv6.
> 
> You likely quite disbelieve me - - - you are welcome to check for yourself.
> I would be quite happy to be proven wrong!
> 
> (RaspberryPi 4B
> PasberryPi Pico w lan 8720 module (I lprefer wired communications - - 
> security)
> beagleBoneBlack
> ESP32 microcontroller
> can't find the other 2  - - - - sorry)

For example ESP32 has a netmask setting:

https://techtutorialsx.com/2020/04/21/esp32-arduino-set-static-ip-address/

It mentions 
IPAddress staticIP(192, 168, 1, 150);
IPAddress gateway(192, 168, 1, 254);
IPAddress subnet(255, 255, 255, 0);
IPAddress dns(192, 168, 1, 254);

So perfectly simply to change the subnet to (255, 255, 254, 0).  DHCP
works too of course based on whatever the dhcp server is configured to
hand out.

For the raspberry pi 4B, they are usually running Raspeberry Pi OS which
is Debian based, and for static ip it simply has /etc/network/interfaces:

auto eno1
iface eno1 inet static
address 192.168.0.2/23
gateway 192.168.0.1

or if using old syntax:

auto eno1
iface eno1 inet static
address 192.168.0.2
netmask 255.255.254.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

Again you simply set the netmask to 255.255.254.0 or whatever else
you need.

beaglebone black often also runs a Debian based OS so same thing applies
there.

Given classless IPv4 was introduced in 1993, there is no way any micro
controller doesn't have a netmask setting.  They all do.  It has been
around for 30 years after all.

Of course CIDR syntax is much nicer than netmask which is horrible as
an interface.

/24 = 255.255.255.0
/23 = 255.255.254.0
/22 = 255.255.252.0
/21 = 255.255.248.0
/20 = 255.255.240.0
etc.  Pretty ugly to read and a bit annoying to calculate.

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Re: [GTALUG] how many addresses possible

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 03:44:03PM -0400, James Knott via talk wrote:
> If you're on Rogers, you get 2 IPv4 addresses.

Well I am not currently, but in a few months I will be.  Currently using
Teksavvy.

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Re: [GTALUG] The good old days of oreilly.com

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 12:04:56PM -0400, sciguy via talk wrote:
> I am having very little luck poking around. And to correct what I said
> earlier, searching specific titles leads me to a "403" error (Forbidden),
> not a 404 as I had said. I searched on Programming Perl, which I have the
> second and fourth editions, and got a "403" when I clicked on the title. The
> message below reads: "Your free O’Reilly trial has ended, making this
> content unavailable to view. For unlimited access to all O’Reilly has to
> offer, purchase a membership here." I also notice that on the titles I see,
> there are no "purchase" links, just "read" links. It sounds like for the $50
> or so monthly fee, you can read anything you like. Still not sold on the
> idea, but clearly they have changed their marketing model.

It used to be you could access most of their books if you had the ACM
digital library, but that stopped last year sometime, around the same
time they apparently stopped actually selling books as far as I can tell.

Apparently ebooks.com still sells O'Reilly books though.

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Re: [GTALUG] how many addresses possible

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 09:35:04AM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> This sounds like a reasonable solution until you actually set up the router.
> On 192.168.0.0 - - - - well I haven't found a way to talk directly to more 
> than
> 254 devices - - - - or have you?
> 
> Now if you want to blow a lot of money on routers you could have a router
> for each of the 253 addresses in 192.168.a.x   (the "a" section) - - - then 
> you
> would need one more router to manage all the other routers - - - - which to me
> seems rather redundant power hungry and not worth my time.

Certainly my router has a field for specifying the subnet size when
configuring the local network.  Seems perfectly common.

Now if you use your AP provided by Bell with the default config, then yes
it will be a /24 and they might not make it easy to change the config,
but it almost certainly can be done.

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Re: [GTALUG] how many addresses possible

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 09:30:27AM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> Perhaps you might persuade my ISP to get their collective posteriors
> in gear - - - yes?

Yeah I certainly get a /56 IPv6 block from my ISP along with a single
IPv4 address.  Works nicely.

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Re: [GTALUG] how many addresses possible

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 09:40:00AM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> You seem to have this mastered - - - - then:
> 
> How do I write more than 254 addresses in ipv4 using only the quad?
> 
> (You get no / anything - - - - just the 4 quads!
> The idea is that these are all permanently set - - - not just flitting
> temporary
> demands a la Mikkie D's example.)

They are not permanent and as said, haven't been fixed block sizes for
like 3 decades.

Nothing wrong with 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.1.254 being one network.
192.168.0.255 and 192.168.1.0 are both valid addresses in 192.168.0.0/23
subnet.  In 192.168.0.0/24 192.168.0.255 would obviously not be a valid
address.

Every device that allows an IP to be entered also has either a netmask
(which you can set to 255.255.254.0 for /23) or has the /23 notation
available.

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Re: [GTALUG] how many addresses possible

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 12:18:26AM -0400, Val Kulkov via talk wrote:
> Next time you connect to some public WiFi network, execute "ifconfig" to
> see your IP address and your subnet. In my observations, airports WiFi
> networks typically use the /22 subnets (up to 1022 addresses). Most
> restaurants, McDonalds included, use /24 subnets, but I have seen ones that
> use /23. I have not yet seen a public Wifi network that uses a /21 subnet
> providing up to 2046 addresses.

I have seen /16 subnets on wifi networks.  I think some are even bigger
than that.

Some of the stadium setups are insane.  2000 APs is not unusual in a
single network.  If you have 5 people and most of them have a cell
phone and decide to connect to the network, you get a lot of devices.
No idea why people go to events with expensive tickets and then spend
so much time on social media while there.

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Re: [GTALUG] there is a solution! but.. continues wireless to ethernet adapter suggestions?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Apr 28, 2023 at 09:13:11PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> And some of you can, with my joining in, laugh at its simplicity.
> I located another outlet in the   room serving as my office, where the
> adapter is connected.
> Suddenly I have the best Internet personally enjoyed in recent memory.
> going from needing to log back in within minutes and 8 hour down time, to
> lag lasting as long as a sneeze.
> However?
> my, aquired from Canada computers Ethernet cable, while reaching, is well
> not reaching safely.  as in a tightrope for barbies to walk across the room.
> so, I ordered  Ethernet cable from amazon Canada, at least it says it is
> Ethernet cable.  I imagine? the non braided flat variety is the bees knees
> these days?
> What has me a tiny bit worried is how like, but not totally like the
> Ethernet plug I know well the ends look.
> I might have gotten too much..its 50 feet laughs!
> still it has these adorable little wall clip things  and this belt that
> feels like Velcro and was only $12.
> I read the description 4 times, making sure Ethernet was in the features.
> Should I be worried?
> Back in the Internet fast lane,

Given ethernet done using UTP (twisted pair) cable is allowed by the
specifications to be 100 meters, I can't imagine a 50 foot cable will be
any issue.  And certainly there are flat cables made for people that want
to be able to put them behind things.  Some have nicer connectors than
others, with rubber or other covers to protect the clip.  Some people like
those, some hate them (Some of them make the cable very hard to unplug.
Good if you don't want it falling out or getting knocked, not good if
you often need to plug and unplug a cable to do testing work).

I hope your connection decides to stay working now.

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Re: [GTALUG] Fedora 38 is out

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 11:51:17AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> | From: Stewart C. Russell via talk 
> 
> | I hear that it ships with the latest GNU grep, which removes fgrep and 
> egrep.
> | This could be considered a bad idea:
> | https://mastodon.social/@cks/110232377928840323
> 
> Ouch.  Thanks for the heads-up.
> 
> I hope that it gets fixed.  Unlikely to be fixed by GNU, I guess.
> 
> That mastodon thread has a number of UNIX notables.

It won't get fixed by the people that caused it.  This is a GNU change,
not a Fedora change.  I might be tempted to blame Fedora for many dumb
changes over the years, but can't tack this one on them.

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Re: [GTALUG] Fedora 38 is out

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 08:16:01PM +0200, Dhaval Giani via talk wrote:
> I don’t know why you think so. There is a real cost to maintaining
> software. Who is going to keep track of security issues? What about changes
> to libraries you are linking to? Unless you are stepping up to maintain the
> software, I think deprecating software is not only fine but necessary to
> maintain security and quality.

grep -E and grep -F are not going away, and egrep and fgrep are symlinks
to grep that simply operate as grep -E and grep -F by default.  There is
zero maintainance work involved.

But apparently someone involved with GNU grep decided some 15 years ago
that these commands only existed because originally on unix fgrep and
egrep were seperate binaries and that since that wasn't true anymore,
they must be removed, because reasons.

Seems like a change for the sake of making a change.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story: gtalug.org's filled up

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2023 at 10:51:34AM -0400, Peter King via talk wrote:
> I desperately miss mutt.  But the University of Toronto, in its
> administrative wisdom, moved us all to Microsoft365 which insists on token
> security of a kind mutt doesn't implement.  If I ever leave or find a way to
> implement it, I'm back to using mutt like a shot.

Some people seem to claim to have it working, but of course there are
different office365 setups so who knows.

https://www.vanormondt.net/~peter/blog/2021-03-16-mutt-office365-mfa.html

It does look rather complicated and not even sure how convinient it is
to use.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story: gtalug.org's filled up

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Apr 05, 2023 at 06:24:22PM -0700, BCLUG via talk wrote:
> 
> (Someone already replied to and addressed this, but since I'd already typed
> it up, gonna send it anyway.)
> 
> 
> o1bigtenor via talk wrote on 2023-04-05 12:34:
> 
> > a great way
> > to reduce the problem caused by a runaway var file was to use separate
> > /var and /usr partitions (from / and /home).
> 
> That *may* help with preserving space on /, but now you have 2 more
> partitions to manage, and if /var runs out of space, you're still in
> trouble.
> 
> 
> 
> Plus, if /usr runs out of space, there'll be trouble installing anything.
> 
> 
> Really, that just shifts the problem around without solving much.

Also most linux distributions no longer support /usr being a different
partition than / so those days are done.  And it wasn't even a good idea
when it was first introduced, but well they had to do what they could
with the disk size they had available.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story: gtalug.org's filled up

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2023 at 06:29:27PM -0400, Michael Galea via talk wrote:
>  I like to keep the debs around until after I have verified
> that the next version of a package hasn't borked me.

No need.  snapshot.debian.org exists.  Every version ever is there as
far as I know.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story: gtalug.org's filled up

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2023 at 05:50:13PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> (This post is also a test of whether the mailing list is working.)
> 
> GTALUG's server's filesystem filled up: little disk space left.
> 
> I discovered this when I tried to do "apt update; apt full-upgrade".
> The second step failed, saying that /var/cache/apt/archives had no
> room.  This means that / has no room because / contains that
> directory.
> 
> Tip: "df /some/path" will tell you how much space is used on the
> filesystem containing /some/path and it will tell you the mount point
> of that file system.
> 
> I wandered around the filesystem, doing:
>   sudo df -s * | sort -n
> 
> This command lists things in the current directory, and their sizes,
> largest last.  (It skips things with names starting with ".".)
> 
> Pretty soon, I found that most of the space was taken up by
> /var/cache/apt/archives after all.  This kind of surprised me.
> 
> Googling got me to others with this problem.  The advice:
>   sudo apt autoclean
> That gave back (only) 3% of the disk.
> 
> That directory was still way too big.  Most of the space was taken by
> 35 versions of gitlab-runner.  I have no idea why we need multiple
> versions.
> 
> Violence is sometimes the answer.
>   sudo apt clean
> 
> That left only 32% of / used.
> 
> Note /var/cache/apt/archives is only a cache.  If the system wants any
> of these, it should be able to find them in a repo.

My upgrades are always: apt update && apt full-upgrade && apt clean

Definitely no reason to keep all the downloads around.

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Re: [GTALUG] Update borked my system

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 01:39:54PM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> EPILOGUE
> 
> apt -f install and apt autoremove both reported that everything was fine
> and that I was up-to-date (except for more than 20 packages "held back").
> 
> Sometimes I find Linux troubleshooting a useful mental exercise. Not this
> week.
> Downloaded the latest KDE Neon onto a USB stick.
> Backed up and re-installed without reformatting.
> All seems well though I need to bring back the apps I had.
> 
> Thanks to all who helped.

Does 'dpkg -l |grep ^h' show any packages in state hold (starting with h)?

If it does you could unfreeze them with

echo 'packagename install' | dpkg --set-selections

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Re: [GTALUG] Update borked my system

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2023 at 04:20:12AM -0400, Evan Leibovitch via talk wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> Wondering if anyone can help with this.
> 
> A power glitch happened while I was updating a KDE Neon system and on
> reboot all sorts of things are wonky. KDE starts up fine on bootup but
> there are no window toolbars. All apps load at the upper right of the
> screen and can't be moved because there is nothing to drag and no keyboard
> shortcuts will work.
> 
> An attempt to complete the upgrade using `pkcon update` (the KDE Neon
> version of `apt dist-upgrade`) spits out a slew of errors (attached). The
> database is not corrupt (`pkcon repair` reports no problems) but there seem
> to be major pieces either refusing to install or "held back".
> 
> Is there a command that can let me just force everything to the current
> stable release without me having to go through the whole
> install-from-usb-stick thing? There's nothing critical on that installation
> so a fresh instrall is more of a PITA than critical problem. Still, it took
> me a lot of time to set up my apps
> 
> Thanks for any help. I like KDE Neon, it's a like "Kubuntu without snaps
> but with the newest KDE".
> 
> Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
> @evanleibovitch / @el56

> 
> WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in 
> scripts.
> 
> Reading package lists...
> Building dependency tree...
> Reading state information...
> Calculating upgrade...Starting pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 9
> Starting 2 pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 9
> Investigating (0) shim-signed:amd64 < 1.51+15.4-0ubuntu9 -> 
> 1.51.3+15.7-0ubuntu1 @ii umU Ib >
> Broken shim-signed:amd64 Depends on grub-efi-amd64-signed:amd64 < 
> 1.182~22.04.1+2.06-2ubuntu10 | 1.187.3~22.04.1+2.06-2ubuntu14.1 @ii pumH > 
> (>= 1.187.2~)
>   Considering grub-efi-amd64-signed:amd64 10201 as a solution to 
> shim-signed:amd64 5100
>   Holding Back shim-signed:amd64 rather than change 
> grub-efi-amd64-signed:amd64
> Broken shim-signed:amd64 Depends on grub-efi-arm64-signed:amd64 < none @un mH 
> > (>= 1.187.2~)
>   Or group keep for shim-signed:amd64
> Investigating (0) kwin-x11:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 -> 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33 @ii umU Ib >
> Broken kwin-x11:amd64 Depends on kwin-common:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 @ii mK Ib > (= 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33)
>   Considering kwin-common:amd64 11 as a solution to kwin-x11:amd64 209
>   Removing kwin-x11:amd64 rather than change kwin-common:amd64
> Investigating (0) kwin-wayland:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 -> 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33 @ii umU Ib >
> Broken kwin-wayland:amd64 Depends on kwin-common:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 @ii mK Ib > (= 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33)
>   Considering kwin-common:amd64 11 as a solution to kwin-wayland:amd64 103
>   Removing kwin-wayland:amd64 rather than change kwin-common:amd64
> Investigating (0) kwin-common:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 @ii mK Ib >
> Broken kwin-common:amd64 Depends on kwin-data:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 -> 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33 @ii umU Ib > (= 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14)
>   Considering kwin-data:amd64 0 as a solution to kwin-common:amd64 11
>   Added kwin-data:amd64 to the remove list
> Broken kwin-common:amd64 Depends on libkwineffects13:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 -> 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33 @ii umU > (= 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14)
>   Considering libkwineffects13:amd64 -1 as a solution to kwin-common:amd64 11
>   Added libkwineffects13:amd64 to the remove list
>   Fixing kwin-common:amd64 via keep of kwin-data:amd64
>   Fixing kwin-common:amd64 via keep of libkwineffects13:amd64
> Investigating (0) libkwineffects14:amd64 < none -> 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33 @un uN Ib >
> Broken libkwineffects14:amd64 Breaks on libkwineffects13:amd64 < 
> 4:5.25.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 | 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build33 @ii umH > (< 4:5.26.3)
>   Considering libkwineffects13:amd64 -1 as a solution to 
> libkwineffects14:amd64 8
>   Upgrading libkwineffects13:amd64 due to Breaks field in 
> libkwineffects14:amd64
>   Conflicts//Breaks against version 4:5.24.7-0ubuntu0.1 for libkwineffects13 
> but that is not InstVer, ignoring
>   Conflicts//Breaks against version 4:5.24.4-0ubuntu1 for libkwineffects13 
> but that is not InstVer, ignoring
> Investigating (0) libprocessui9:amd64 < 
> 4:5.26.5-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build14 -> 
> 4:5.27.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build19 @ii umU Ib >
> Broken libprocessui9:amd64 Depends on libqt5webenginecore5:amd64 < 
> 5.15.10+dfsg-3 @ii mK Ib > (>= 5.15.11+dfsg)
>   Considering libqt5webenginecore5:amd64 0 as a solution to 
> 

Re: [GTALUG] analog land line phone service in Toronto?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 05:30:53PM -0400, Karen Lewellen via talk wrote:
> First, I am deeply sorry you are losing your landline soon.
> I do appreciate your sharing the last mile rule though.
> What bell is using fiberactic wise is a modem, in which several services
> reincorporated, not a strict analog connection into a digital box on its
> own. What Evan suggested via Teksavy may be the ticket, will find out when I
> speak to bell accessibility in the morning.
> As for accessibility mandates?
> search Bell human rights complaint you will discover that right now David
> Lepofty is fighting Bell at the federal human rights commission..over an
> issue I raised at the CRTC in 2018.  Bell knows human rights have no teeth
> in Canada, or take a very very very long time to manage change.

Of course in theory it shouldn't make any difference if the conversion
from analog to digital happens in the box in your house or at the local
bell building.  Assuming of course that they implemented it the same
way in both placed, which they should, but maybe they didn't.

I have seen multiple people claim fax machines work over thair VoIP
connection, which surprised me, because I was under the impression that
they didn't.  Apparently some VoIP systems actually are fully compatible
with what the phone system has been doing at the central office and
hence work with the exact same equipment as the "analog" phone line did.
If hasn't really been that analog for decades after all.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2023 at 11:45:18AM -0500, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> For a while Linksys was selling a version of the WRT54 that was specifically
> for OpenWRT.

Well the WRT54G v5 cut the ram in half and put vxworks on it, which ruined
performance and upset people so they made a WRT54GL with the original
specs and linux again.

> So at some point they were not anti-OpenSource.
> Linksys did get acquired by Cisco around 2005 and Cisco is not OpenSource
> friendly.

Cisco sold it to Belkin in 2013 and Belkin was bought by Foxcon in 2018.

> Always remember. "the key to job security is product obscurity."
> Making support harder keeps people from making your products last longer.
> If the products last longer then people will not buy the newer version as
> quickly and your stock-options may suffer.

Make it too crappy and not last long enough and people won't buy another
product from you again.  It needs a balance at least as long as you have
any compatition.


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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2023 at 10:02:52AM -0500, Alex Kink via talk wrote:
> I'm sure there are more, but Linksys recently released a spiritual successor 
> to the WRT54GL, the router that gave a boost to the development of the 3rd 
> party router OSes (ddwrt, openwrt, tomato). Ability to install open source 
> OSes is even in the marketing material of this new router.
> 
> https://www.linksys.com/ca/wrt3200acm-ac3200-mu-mimo-gigabit-wi-fi-router/WRT3200ACM-CA.html

That was released in 2016.  That's 6 or 7 years ago.  It was the follow
up to my WRT1900AC.

There must be something newer around by now.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2023 at 10:16:02AM -0500, David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
> Yes: the penalty for fq_codel or CAKE should be an indicated percent or so,
> and often is a benefit instead (:-)). Older software is often bad enough
> that it eats bandwidth.
> 
> Look for a openwrt release that mentions one or the other of those keywords,
> preferably CAKE. There is more information about what code is best.

Well enabling cake on openwrt using their instructions dropped throughput
on the bandwidth test by 75% while improving latency slightly.  A much
bigger drop than I thought was reasonable.

That's on a WRT1900ACv2.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 05:04:52PM -0500, William Park via talk wrote:
> Mine is
> 

Well I get an F.  I then followed their instructions to add sqm to my
openwrt setup, which made it a D, but at a cost of 75% of the throughput
(so 6Mbit instead of 25Mbit), so I turned that off again since that was
too high a price for a slight latency improvement.  Perhaps some tweaking
could make it better.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 01:46:24PM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote:
> That will depend entirely on how your work is connected.  Many small
> businesses have the same sort of connection as home users.  Others have a
> dedicated fibre to their Internet connection.  It could be to an ISP or to
> an Internet exchange point and they'd have their own autonomous network. 
> The fastest I've come across in my work is 10 Gb for a Scotiabank data
> centre.

The office appears to have a fiber connection to allstream which I seem
to recall is a known ISP in Toronto.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 02:51:41PM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote:
> Yep, you can have multiple devices, each getting it's own public address.

Do they offer IPv6 service yet or is that still something they don't
know about?

My DSL service has had IPv6 working for years after all.

> I don't think so.  My modem is in bridge mode and IPTV works fine. BTW, the
> modem also provides 2 public IPv4 addresses, 1 on each port.

I haven't seen the new ignite TV boxes.  I thought they were wifi
connected and need some specific SSID.  I guess if they can do wired,
that would be more reliable (but slightly less flexible in placement).
I have had cable boxes for years but that defintely won't be the same
on a fiber connection.

If they provide a switch I would suspect they give you more than two IPs,
or perhasp the switch they provide for 8Gig service is also a router?
I wouldn't have thought the ONT did NAT or firewalling.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 11:53:34AM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote:
> Rogers uses Cisco gear, at least at the cell sites.  I don't recall what
> they use in the cable head ends, as it's been a few years since I was in
> one.  However, I have some work coming up there shortly, so I'll have to
> take a look.

Well for FTTH it seems they use Nokia ONT adapters along with XFi
Ap/routers (XB8/XB7/XB6 depending on speed it seems).  For 8Gbit service
they also give you a 10Gbit switch to put between the ONT and gateway
for devices you want to have fast wired internet sine the gateway only
has a 2.5G WAN port and 4 (or less) 1Gbit client ports.

Connecting your own stuff entirely to the ONT is apparently perfectly
fine although if you want access to their TV services you probably need
to use their gateway as well.

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Re: [GTALUG] New WiFi router?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2023 at 10:28:09AM -0500, Don Tai via talk wrote:
> Can you even detect the increased speed difference? I cannot. More is not
> necessarily more effective in my use case.

I can tell the difference between my 25Mbit down at home, and the 1Gbit
at the office.  File transfers are a lot faster at work.

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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2023 at 05:31:27PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
> My understanding is that the shared part is at least 10Gbit for each
> segment.  Not sure how many houses would share one segment.
> 
> I still expect a fiber connection to be faster than my 25Mbit DSL
> connection.  And it's not like people are constantly downloading, so
> I would think for the most part you ought to get decent speed in most
> cases, although of course what speed the server at the other and can
> provide you is a different story.  It's only as fast as the slowest link.

At least what I have read says Rogers is using XGS-PON and they say they
offer up to 8Gbit symmetric (so has to be XGS-PON based).  And I did
find at least one article say rogers is in fact one of the companies
deplying XGS-PON.  Apparently NG-PON2 is too expensive still.  Of course
the fiber itself in the ground doesn't care so they can upgrade later
if they want.

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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 09:37:10AM -0500, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> Feel free to correct me but I believe that all the "optical" and co-axial
> cable based services are shared(GPON).

What internet isn't these days?  My current 25Mbit DSL link goes to a
box a few hundred meters down the street and then to a shared fiber link
back to Bell.  They are all "up to" some speed.

> So you could be sharing your 2.5Gb with up to 100 other people and if
> everybody decides to download a few hundred GB of video files at the same
> time you could be seeing speeds like 25Mb.
> So last mile bit rate is almost always much greater than the bandwidth that
> is available from the end node(home) to the core(151 front).
> I have seen 6Mbit DSL reduced to hundreds of bps by chronic back-haul
> congestion.
> 
> So a fiber/cable modems buffering with a 1Gb output may be enough to cover
> the practical bandwidth available on a reasonably loaded network.

My understanding is that the shared part is at least 10Gbit for each
segment.  Not sure how many houses would share one segment.

I still expect a fiber connection to be faster than my 25Mbit DSL
connection.  And it's not like people are constantly downloading, so
I would think for the most part you ought to get decent speed in most
cases, although of course what speed the server at the other and can
provide you is a different story.  It's only as fast as the slowest link.

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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 09:56:06AM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote:
> Actually, they're up to 8 Gb.

Hmm, they do in fact offer 8Gbit at that location, starting at $400/month
versus $125/month for 2.5Gbit.  $400 seems a bit steep.

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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 02:54:37AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> We don't need more that 1Gbit now.  That might change in the lifetime
> of your house.  But the wires are the hard part to upgrade -- switches
> are easy.  My 5-year-old wiring is CAT 6e -- we'll see how far it can
> actually be pushed.

CAT 5e can handle 10GbaseT for runs up to 30m as far as I remember.

> I am not sure that 2.5G is enough of a step to cause me to turn
> everything over.  I am buying 2.5Gbit things when there is little
> price premium.  So far, that amounts to:
> 
> - 1.5Gbit down FTTH from Bell [some folks get 3G, I think: oops on the
>   2.5Gbit step]

Rogers offers 2.5Gbit fiber in some places.

> - four 2.5Gbit ports on my recent little-PCs-that are routers (not yet
>   deployed)

Yeah I am considering picking up one of those.

> And that's it.
> 
> I might buy 2.5Gbit switches some day.  Currently you can get 8-port dumb
> ones on AliExpress for US$140-ish.  That isn't yet worth it to me.

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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 12:57:33PM -0500, David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
> Agreed, but one of our main uses of laptops at work is teleconferencing.
> Using wi-fi lead to stalls, drops and disconnections, so much that we issue
> each person two docking stations with wired ethernet ports. One is for home,
> the other for the office.
> 
> A few colleagues have home routers that are far enough from their desks that
> wiring isn't easy, and they suffer disproportionately.

Never any issue with wifi at our office, unless you go to the lab area
where the amount of wifi present is incomprehensible and even finding
an SSID in the list to connect is nearly impossible.  Makes you wish
there was a search field on the connection page.  It the main part of
the office it just works all the time.  Of course if it didn't someone
would not be doing their job given enterprise wifi is our business.

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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 12:43:42PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> Current laptops rarely have Ethernet ports.  Wireless is good enough for 
> most purposes and ethernet sockets add thickness.  You can always add a 
> dongle (USB 3.x and Thunderbolt are plenty fast enough).

I have a USB gigabit adapter for my work laptop.  Haven't used it once
yet in 3 years.

> Perhaps "workstation" (eg. ThinkPad P series) and "gaming" notebooks have 
> them.  Those are not optimizing for minimum weight and minimum size.

The 3rd gen P series dropped it.  They do have 40Gbps USB4/thunderbolt
ports though.

> I think that's dead except on systems that require more than 100w.  Not 
> sure.

Certainly the Thinkpad P16 uses a rectangular 230W power connector.
Looks the same as the previous P series as far sa I can tell.

> I like the ThinkCentre M75q tiny at the moment.  Not perfect by any means.  
> I just bought one and will try to use it to replace my almost 10 year old 
> conventional desktop.
> 
> It all depends on what you value.
> 
> I always think I want upgradability.  So lets look at what I did upgrade 
> in almost 10 years of my disktop.
> 
> - more RAM (4 sockets!).  M75q has 2 sockets (I've maxed it)
> 
> - video card (PCIe sockets).  M75q cannot be upgraded.
> 
> - faster ethernet card (PCIe sockets): I never needed it.  M75q cannot.  
>   But now I have a mild need: we got Bell FTTH with 1.5g down.  I expect 
>   it doesn't matter.
> 
> What do you imagine that you might expand?

Well you don't have to have more than 1Gbit on a single machine just
because you have 1.5Gbit to the house.  Although I guess if you don't
share with anyone, you want to use it all yourself.  I am currently
pondering whether 10Gbit switches are easy to find to wire up my new
house when I move this fall.  Well if I wanted to spend $1 they are
easy to find, but that seems a tad unreasonable to me.  Now if I could
buy one at cost from work... maybe I should ask.

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Re: [GTALUG] war story in progress: NVMe drive

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 01:24:41PM -0500, Jason Shaw via talk wrote:
> You may be able to use virtualbox and a Windows image to run the upgrade.
> 
> Here's a nice list of where you can find images:
> https://github.com/SheepKid12/msft-modern.ie-images#available-images

Well certainly PCIe passthrough should be able to pass through NVMe
drives to a VM, but that means you can't be using that NVMe drive from
the host at all, so you need another drive to be running your OS from
while running the VM with windows to update the NVMe.

Do bootable USB versions of windows exist?
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-run-windows-10-from-a-usb-drive seems
to say it's possible.

That might be simpler for just running a firmware update if needed.

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Re: [GTALUG] ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 06:40:16PM -0500, Michael Hill via talk wrote:
> It seems like a good deal but I couldn't find any evidence that it was
> possible to increase the RAM.

You can not upgrade the ram.  That model (like most of the slim s
versions) is not upgradable.  You have what you bought and that's it.

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Re: [GTALUG] Cannot get a network in Linux (Ubuntu) after using Windows 10

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 03:14:00PM -0500, sciguy via talk wrote:
> When I say I can't get a network, I mean that my Linux OS can't see any
> external hardware, including the router. And of course, I can't get the
> Internet.
> 
> When in W10 (as I am now), I checked the router "config pages" and I noticed
> that it has two different IP addresses - one to the W10 hostname and one the
> Linux hostname, on the same machine.
> 
> Any ideas?

I do remember reading about issues where the driver in windows would
leave the hardware in a weird state when shutting down windows and
the linux driver wouldn't know how to bring the hardware up again.
Sometimes doing a power off and on before booting linux would fix it.

The two different IPs is likely just the difference in DHCP request as
others have said and probably has nothing to do with it.

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Re: [GTALUG] [GTALUG-Announce] Membership Dues

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 11:50:27AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> Don't forget to join ahead of today's AGM!

How about during?  Does that work?

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Re: [GTALUG] RAID SATA controller card recommendation?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 09:45:57PM -0500, Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> A raid card can offload some of the overhead that the OS would have to deal
> with in terms of co-ordination of  multiple writes.
> In the case of raid-1 the extra overhead of multiple writes should be
> minimal but for raid-4 and above there are a number of data manipulations
> that need to be preformed and these will burn up CPU cycles.
> 
> Raid cards often include a battery backed up cache which can significantly
> improve disk performance.
> The cache also helps with an issue called "write-hole" which can happen in
> raid-4,5,6 ( For those with trouble sleeping I suggest
> https://lwn.net/Articles/665299/ ).
> 
> Otherwise I do not believe that raid cards have any features that are
> unavailable in Linux using the md tools.
> 
> Once again if your running raid of any type make sure you have an automated
> check that will test the array health and send out a warning if there is a
> problem.

Not sure what the performance is like these days but I certainly remember
putting raid cards in IBM servers 15 or 20 years ago, and the performance
dropped to 1/3 of what linux could do with software.  Sure the cpu load
dropped a little bit but it wasn't using that much in the first place.
That's before considereing the firmware bugs in the raid controller
that allowed you to create volumes over 2TB each, but refused to allow
resizing or changing of them afterwards if you did.  Software raid is
way more flexible, faster, and much easier to change and move to a new
machine later.  And cheaper too.

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Re: [GTALUG] How to keep using an old CIFS device

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Dec 08, 2022 at 07:44:46PM -0500, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
> Ever since NTLM support was removed from the kernel
> 
> last year, I've been unable to access my network scanner. It's quite old (~
> 2012), but it has a huge scan area and I have a colour-calibrated workflow
> for it, and there's no way I could afford a suitable replacement.
> Curiously, for something so old, it supports AirScan, so I could resort to
> that, only the colour calibration is off and it needs my computer's full
> attention to pull scans over the network as they happen.
> 
> I know no-one here has a crystal ball about where projects are going, but
> I'm getting a little worried that the only other way to access the scanner
> is via smbclient and the following options in my smb.conf:
> 
> client min protocol = CORE
> client use spnego = no
> ntlm auth = ntlmv1-permitted
> 
> Every time I access the share, I get the dire warning that 'The "client use
> spnego" option is deprecated'. The documentation has even more dire
> warnings about these features being removed entirely.
> 
> Are there other ways to access a CIFS share? I thought there might be a
> fuse driver, but I can't find one. I really don't want to have to trash
> perfectly good hardware that's never shared outside my local LAN.

Is smbclient an option?  It's like an ftp client except for cifs.

Should mean not mounting or worrying about what the kernel thinks.

Not sure if it is willing to connect to old things that the kernel no
longer supports, but worth a try if it is only for an occational transfer.

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Re: [GTALUG] RAID SATA controller card recommendation?

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Thu, Dec 01, 2022 at 02:00:24PM -0500, Aurelian Melinte via talk wrote:
> I am looking to get a RAID card to put my SATA HDDs in a mirror. Has to
> be hardware RAID for that particular machine which is quite old. Can
> anyone please recommend a reliable one, $250 or less?

How many disks?

Personally my main server box in the house runs software raid6 with nine
drives, and then for the root disk I have a pair of SSDs running on a
hardware raid controller.  It's a peculiar extremely cheap one:

0b:00.0 SATA controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE9128 PCIe SATA 6 
Gb/s RAID controller with HyperDuo (rev 11)

Has a menu for setting up the raid at boot, then after that it's just
an AHCI disk as far as linux is concerned.  There does exist software to
monitor it for linux, although it is ancient and was meant for redhat 6.
I did manage to get it to run once just to see, but I generally haven't
bothered with it.

It supposedly even supports port multipliers, but I haven't tried that.
The idea of running 8 drives of 2 sata ports with a x1 PCIe connection
seems like a bandwidth problem to me, and too many points of failure
that could take out the raid.

They do seem to be hard to find these days though but if you can, it's
about $50.

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Re: [GTALUG] Forced off DSL by Bell

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Sat, Nov 26, 2022 at 05:53:34AM -0600, o1bigtenor wrote:
> I'm in a similar situation - - - they're dragging in fiber out in the country.
> Its being worked on at this point so I'm not connected yet but soon I hope.
> 
> Lennart - - - you're talking about connecting direct to your firewall
> (likely an
> appliance). I've acquired a mini pc (like the intel nucs), a second mini pc
> that I will be dropping likely pfsense (firewall) on and also a managed
> switch.
> 
> I got this equipment idea from reading recommendations for businesses.
> 
> Besides less equipment - - - - is there any other advantages to only
> running a firewall and then your home lan?

Well as far as I can tell, rogers is using the XB8 gateway which has 3
gigabit ports and 1 2.5Gbit port.  It uses the 2.5Gbit port to connect
to the ONT, so you have no way to get wired connections faster than
1Gbit each plus whatever the wifi does.  Having a proper routers able
to actually handle 2.5Gbps wired would seem nice.  Is it essential?
Of course not, very few devices have more than 1Gbps wired ports.
It just seems wrong to not have the option.

I also doubt a single wifi AP will provide coverage for the whole house.
For my town house it has been fine, but the new house is bigger.
I figure I need at least a couple, and wifi repeaters are a bad idea
(they usually waste at least half the bandwidth available).

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Re: [GTALUG] Forced off DSL by Bell

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2022 at 02:37:26PM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote:
> Rogers is now offering 8 Gb.

Well in some places.  2.5 was the max I could see when doing the
availability check.  I used 43 Longworth Ave in Richmond Hill since
that's one of the first houses in the development that appears to now
be lived in.  I assume Rogers plans to offer the same service to the
entire development. :)

I think the equipment in the long term is supposed to support up to
10Gbps.

> I forgot you were talking about fibre and was thinking the box they provided
> for coax.

Yes they call both Ignite, but they don't use exactly the same equipment.
I think the gateway/wifi and TV boxes are the same, but not the actual
incoming connection.

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Re: [GTALUG] Forced off DSL by Bell

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2022 at 05:20:46PM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote:
> The bare fibre is more reliable than copper, as it doesn't need all the
> extra equipment to carry today's digital signals.  Fibre can carry data much
> further than copper ever dreamed of.  Years ago, a company might get a DS1
> (T1) line, which ran at a blazing 1.544 Mb/s!  It also required repeaters
> about every 6000', IIRC.  The coax based cable network likewise has distance
> limits that require amplification.  Depending on the bandwidth and fibre,
> distances with it can be thousands of Km.

True, but a plain old phone line was powered by Bell and worked during
power failures.  VoIP on a fiber line doesn't do that.

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Re: [GTALUG] Forced off DSL by Bell

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2022 at 05:10:12PM -0500, Michael Galea via talk wrote:
> I am not anti-progress. But if it was real progress, reliability would
> exceed that of POTS, the cost would be cheaper and I could rely on the
> service working even in an emergency.

That would be nice.  I am hoping that if I put all the stuff on a UPS
it can stay working during a short power failure.

I do know that when I move and switch the internet to rogers, the cell
phones will be moving away from rogers.  Rogers has clearly demonstrated
that they are not competent at keeping their network running, so I am
not going to have all my services in one basket.  Right now my cell
phone is with rogers and internet is teksavvy over Bell ADSL2 line,
and the home phone is just a plain (severly over pried) Bell line.

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