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Ted Harding
by Jonathan McDowell 29 Apr '25

29 Apr '25

I was delighted to see our very own Ted Harding mentioned in LWN's interview with Owen Le Blanc (creator of the first Linux distribution, MCC Interim Linux): https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1017846/738cd9cf2defd37f/ That caused me to go and see when we'd last seen him on-list - looks like it was back in 2019. Further digging revealed that he passed away in October 2020: https://edwardharding.muchloved.com/ A great loss. J. -- Web [ Know Thy User. ] site: https:// [ ] Made by www.earth.li/~noodles/ [ ] HuggieTag 0.0.24

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Recurring error message after updates to Linux Mint
by Phil Wade 27 Feb '25

27 Feb '25

Second attempt - hopefully in plain text :-( wonder whether anyone else has ever had this? The following text is displayed as an error message after downloading and installing updates to Linux Mint XFCE - every time. "W: Target Packages (main/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Packages (main/binary-i386/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Packages (main/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en_GB) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-all.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-amd64) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1 W: Target CNF (main/cnf/Commands-all) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list:1 and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq-focal.sources:1" If OK is clicked it just goes away, but I'm at an age where any perceived error on my part is worrying 🙁 Thanks, Phil Wade

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imap login slow
by Bev Nicolson 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

Hallo? Is this thing still on? Let's see. I use Betterbird and recently it's started to be slower at logging into my email accounts with imap. Not glacially slow, but not as nippy as it was. I have googled but I'd quite like some plain English advice about what I could try to speed it up a notch. Bev. P.S. And while I'm here, I have two Alug accounts. How do I ditch one of them?

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Re: imap loogin slow
by Peter 31 Jan '25

31 Jan '25

>Just wondering something. On Windows* (at least this was the case >decades ago) if you uninstalled then reinstalled a misbehaving program >all the settings stayed in place. Does the same work with an email >client on Linux? And is that even worth trying, more to the point? I think it does retain all settings. At least on Debian and claws mail. I seem to remember having to do a complete system reinstall, and just kept my home folder untouched, and everything worked fine on restart. I don't recall any more whether I had to point claws to the files again, don't think so. You can make completely safe by backing up the settings and mail files, and I would. Then if they do get overwritten during the resinstall you just copy them back. I have done this on Debian with claws when making a laptop in sync with a desktop. Just installed claws, then overwrote the new files it had created with the corresponding desktop ones, and all the files and settings were there just as on the desktop. Safest to back up first, why risk it. Is it worth doing? Don't know. I would be inclined first to try with another email client and see if it happens with that. I really like claws, its light and fast and it will handle many thousands of emails locally with no problem. At least that would tell you whether its the client or something common to both of them. Though I can't really imagine what that would be! Peter

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Re: imap login slow
by Phil Ashby 26 Jan '25

26 Jan '25

On 26/01/2025 12:00, Bev Nicolson <lumos(a)gmx.co.uk> wrote > > Hallo? Is this thing still on? Let's see. I use Betterbird and recently > it's started to be slower at logging into my email accounts with imap. > Not glacially slow, but not as nippy as it was. I have googled but I'd > quite like some plain English advice about what I could try to speed it > up a notch. > In addition to Chris' suggestion of a huge mail folder, it might be network connection time - sometimes my Thunderbird takes a while to resolve the server address (particularly if I've just opened the laptop and WiFi needs to connect first), once connected it's snappy to operate. > Bev. > > P.S. And while I'm here, I have two Alug accounts. How do I ditch one > of them? You can manage your membership here: https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman3/postorius/lists/ Pick a list (eg main), use the Subscription / Unsubscription bit :) Phil.

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Extracting a zip file
by Bev Nicolson 07 Sep '24

07 Sep '24

I may have asked this before but can someone patiently explain how to extract a zip file? It's a font I've downloaded and it's just stuck there on the desktop and neither use not ornamant at the moment. Terminal or GUI options. TIA. Bev

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Problems with epubs
by Peter 10 Jul '24

10 Jul '24

Since upgrading to Debian Bookworm epub reading doesn't work. Well, the only reader that works is fbreader, and that insists on putting a hyphen after every word! I have tried everything recommended on the net to fix this hyphenation addition, and they none of them have worked. But at least fbreader loads and opens the files. Otherwise, I have tried foliate, which fails with this: KMS: DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB failed: Permission denied Failed to create GBM buffer of size 960x593: Permission denied I don't understand either what this means or what to do about it. Bookworm, seems like its opening the epub file but displays nothing. Tried going to dark mode, doesn't help. Tried changing fonts, also doesn't help. Calibre, which imports, but its reader will not open the file. I have tried converting, epub to epub, but it doesn't help. Sigil opens the files and displays them properly (with no added hyphens!). But its not a reader, of course. I installed epub-tools, makes no difference. I know the files are OK, partly because both fbreader and sigil display them (though fbreader with added hyphens!), partly because they have opened in the past with no problems, partly because they open with no problems in a kobo e-reader. They may be old version epubs since many of them are classics from gutenberg. But a lot are from the kobo store, and none of them display either. Another funny thing is that bookworm can be selected from 'open with', and loads but fails to display, but I can't find it anywhere by searching for it, and when entered as a command from the terminal it says no such command. I installed it using gdebi, ass I did foliate, and in both cases all dependencies were met. There was also a strange thing, pcmanfm, which I usually use, would open the kobo e-reader, and then start to not recognise it as a usb drive and crash. Don't know if this is connected, don't really see how it could be, since the files that are failing to open are on the desktop machine and are failing when the kobo is not plugged in. I fixed this by using a different file manager, xfe, which works fine. Actually xfe is a very nice file manager at least as good as pcmanfm. I have an nvidia graphics card and am uising the nvidia driver, could that possibly have anything to do with it? Can't see how. Pdfs are displaying fine, graphics don't seem to have any problems. Its just epubs as far as I can tell. Any ideas? Peter

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Re: VPN options
by Mark Rogers 09 Jul '24

09 Jul '24

On Thu, 13 Jun 2024 at 11:08, BD <dzidek23(a)gmail.com> wrote: > An example that I have seen working was a ZTNA configuration with Fortinet hardware and SDN for network separation. That sort of thing will be out of my budget! > I suspect the same thing could be achieved using pfSense and network management (with > a nice GUI to control it). Quick search on the Internet for "pfSense zero trust" returned a > few interesting sites. Additionally pfSense can serve as a VPN concentrator too. I spent a bit of time looking into this. The biggest issue for me is that it's FreeBSD and most of our stuff is hosted at DigitalOcean, and they no longer offer FreeBSD as an option. I can of-course look elsewhere, but DO combine the bandwidth of all your services and we're nowhere close to using it all, so putting a VPN which could potentially be fairly heavy traffic somewhere it can use that bandwidth makes sense if I can. I spent ages playing with Wireguard - there are some useful tools for building the config ([1], [2]) but I never got a configuration which worked properly with my phone over mobile data (or my laptop using mobile data over a hotspot) and as that's one of the main things I needed to achieve I ended up walking away from my attempts (in part because I managed to get the old SSL-based VPN working over those connections by turning off "FastSSL". I'd like to get this working at some point but a day and half of experimenting and getting nowhere useful was as much (more if I'm honest) as I could afford to allocate to it. [1] https://www.wireguardconfig.com/ - Configuration builder [2] https://github.com/mvpsnet/wireguard4vps - PHP-based manager -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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OT Firefox 125 won't show me btl comments
by Bev Nicolson 17 Jun '24

17 Jun '24

Or at least, Firefox 125 and onward on Linux Mint won't show much content under a Guardian article, nor can I sign in. All I see is a kind of swirly whiteness like it might be trying to load but can't. It's fine on my tablet. I have tried it in safe mode and tried clearing the cache. I have no idea what else to do. Bev

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Re: LSI megaraid recovery
by Phil Ashby 17 Jun '24

17 Jun '24

On 15/06/2024 12:00, Laurie Brown <laurie(a)brownowl.com> wrote: > ... > Disk /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10: 931 GiB, 999653638144 bytes, > 1952448512 sectors > > Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): > 512 bytes / 512 bytes > ... > Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type > /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10-part1 1 4294967295 4294967295 2T ee GPT > ... > So it has a partition - but I can't find a way to mount it.> > mount /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10-part1 /mnt/test mount: /mnt/test: > special device /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10-part1 does not exist. Hi Laurie, I'd guess that whatever distro you are running doesn't like the GPT partition format, so hasn't created the device file(s) for each partition. I'd go for the simple option of creating a loopback device using the sector size & offsets in the partition table: # losetup -o 512 -b 512 -f /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID0 This should make you a new /dev/loop<n> that avoids existing ones (probably your USB boot stick), which you can mount as NTFS or whatever. If losetup doesn't like having a block device underneath, then more messing with dmsetup should be able to achieve the same (but I've never done that...) Good luck, Phil. PS: Did you check in /dev/disk/... for those partitions?

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LSI megaraid recovery
by Laurie Brown 14 Jun '24

14 Jun '24

I'm at my wits' end on this one, folks, and I could do with some help please. This is all for a customer who is desperate to get this data back... I have an LSI RAID card (Broadcom MegaRAID SAS 9341-4) which has suddenly stopped working. I've been to hell and back trying to get a couple of newer machines to recognise the card and let me near the BIOS. In fact, this card has been working as a 4-disc RAID10 array for more than a year in a 'Doze 11 machine but just stopped a couple of weeks ago. I bought a new card, a different mobo, new cables, the lot. Nothing. The customer shipped me the original machine so I have access to all that was there before. I eventually found an older (Ubuntu) machine in my junk pile in which the PCIe slot let me into the BIOS so I recovered the RAID array, but the megaraid_sas driver in Ubuntu refused to work, so I couldn't access the data. I won't go into the pain involved in getting to this point, but it was extreme and lengthy! I have finally given up on the card, and dropped the 4 drives straight into an Ubuntu box, where I'm trying to get to the data. What I have now is the four disks all seen by the system, and a /dev/mapper device which is the RAID array. ---- cut here ---- # blkid /dev/sda: UUID="LSI ^P" TYPE="ddf_raid_member" /dev/sdb: UUID="LSI ^P" TYPE="ddf_raid_member" /dev/sdc: UUID="LSI ^P" TYPE="ddf_raid_member" /dev/sdd: UUID="LSI ^P" TYPE="ddf_raid_member" /dev/sde1: LABEL_FATBOOT="Windows USB" LABEL="Windows USB" UUID="8B53-C0AB" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="a85d43c9-01" /dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs" /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10: PTTYPE="PMBR" ---- cut here ---- /sde1 is the USB stick I booted from. fdisk -l gives me 2 mapper devices: ---- cut here ---- Disk /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10: 931 GiB, 999653638144 bytes, 1952448512 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10-part1 1 4294967295 4294967295 2T ee GPT ---- cut here ---- fdisk on the mapper devices says this: ---- cut here ---- Disk /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10: 931 GiB, 999653638144 bytes, 1952448512 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10-part1 1 4294967295 4294967295 2T ee GPT ---- cut here ---- So it has a partition - but I can't find a way to mount it. mount /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10-part1 /mnt/test mount: /mnt/test: special device /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10-part1 does not exist. ---- cut here ---- ---- cut here ---- mdadm --examine /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10 /dev/mapper/ddf1_RAID10: MBR Magic : aa55 Partition[0] : 4294967295 sectors at 1 (type ee) ---- cut here ---- Any help appreciated! Cheers, Laurie. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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VPN options
by Mark Rogers 13 Jun '24

13 Jun '24

The scenario: Two individuals both with fast home Internet connections, plus an office on a pretty basic VDSL connection. All three have distinct subnets. Routers in all three locations have VPN support. The home ones support OpenVPN and Wireguard, the office OpenVPN only, but I'd consider replacing the router if it gave us what we needed. Objective: I want to link all three locations so that IPs on each network can be reached from the others, but in a configurable way. Ie neither individuals home devices should be accessible to the other individual (albeit they may use the VPN themselves to access them personally). Some office-based resources may not be shared. Etc. How can I do this? I'm assuming I'll get a cheap VPS somewhere to act as VPN server and have all three routers connect to that, and after that it's "just" a question of managing access and routing. But I need the result to be maintainable and ideally not just by me, which would mean either some kind of GUI or some really simple commandline tools. When I started looking at this I figured there'd be some simple appliance-type applications I could install on the VPS that would do this but I've come up short so far. I don't have any real budget for this - I'm OK with a few quid a month on a VPS and likewise on a subscription service if I have to go down that route (I'd rather not). (We do already have an office dial-in VPN option which could be used on the routers but I don't think putting all our domestic devices into one bit VPN is a good idea for all sorts of security reasons.) -- Mark Rogers

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Re: KVM shared folders (Mark Rogers)
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 03 Jun '24

03 Jun '24

I am finding this a very useful point of research for these kinds of question. Not always right, but it mostly gets you there if you persist. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-to-set-rxsxMNWDRjeuwX3WssHVRQ

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KVM shared folders
by Mark Rogers 30 May '24

30 May '24

I'm trying to migrate away from VirtualBox. One feature I use a lot in VBox is shared folders, ie making a directory on the host (Ubuntu) appear as a mapped drive on the VM (Windows). This is close enough to trivial in VBox but I've never quite made sense of how to do it in KVM, so I'm hoping someone here can advise? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: NAS
by Srdjan Todorovic 14 May '24

14 May '24

On Mon, 13 May 2024 at 16:42, <steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk> wrote: > On 09/05/2024 22:01, Srdjan Todorovic wrote: > And also this particular evening, I am battling a dead NVME drive > (with lots and lots of important files I've not yet had a chance to > backup to my NAS) which means I also cannot boot my desktop, even with > a Kubuntu Live DVD. So it's a poignant reminder to have a backup and > have something that is redundant as well in case of hardware failure > or bit-rot. :( > Ouch. Hope you made progress with this. I pulled the NVME out of the desktop and put it in my laptop, thinking I can just mount it and get the files. However my desktop OS booted up on my laptop - looks like NVME is fine, and the motherboard has something wrong with it. Ended up replacing the motherboard, which was a world of pain (long story, wifi, kubuntu upgrades, display, dnsmasq). I do need to organise my files and make sure they are on my NAS. Best, Srdj

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NAS
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 13 May '24

13 May '24

OK, so in my quest to simplify things, I'm going to eventually do-away with my server. Can anyone recommend a NAS? Old me would probably have rolled-my-own with FreeNas or similar, but perhaps I need to go "of-the-shelf". Should I get RAID, or not bother? My fileserver is RAIDed (mirrored). Any thoughts? Cheers Steve

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Mail Woes - new provider needed.
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 24 Apr '24

24 Apr '24

Posted Midday Friday 12/4/24 I'm not sure if my previous post yesterday about mail problems will get posted on the group or not. This supersedes it. Yesterday I became aware that I couldn't send outgoing email. I run my own mailserver, and it seems that due to my email addresses being harvested and used in spam, my mailserver's IP address had been blacklisted, so I couldn't send email. After emailing my ISP and one of the websites that had me listed, I find I can send email again. This is good. But being able to send email is quite important to me (!), so being unable to do has increased the need to migrate away from my own mail server soon. So - where to go? What do I do/need? I have taken advantage of my mailserver's forwarding, so that I can have email addresses like user-suffix@mydomain will all route to user@mydomain, no matter what suffix. I have no idea of what suffixes I have used over the years. :-( I'd like to be able to continue that, but if not, it shouldn't reject user-randomsuffix@mydomain and instead route it to a default recipient. Hopefully! 3 main users. For 2 I'd probably like to do a blanket redirect to other email addresses that they mainly use now. e.g. user2@mydomain, and user2-anysuffix@mydomain redirect to user2@gmail I can probably move the whole domain to a new provider. I don't have a website or FTP. I use VPN to remote in to it, to access machines, but I can probably hack that with a dynamic DNS. So it's mainly email. Any thoughts please? Steve

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Pruning online inbox to store on laptop
by Bev Nicolson 16 Apr '24

16 Apr '24

I finally decided to start using Betterbird a while ago. Given the way two of my accounts are set up (storage on my ISP's servers is limited) I need to prune them. I'd like to store the emails on my laptop but none of Betterbird's menu options make it clear how to do that. Are the local folder folders just for offline storage or what? (I have googled. It didn't help.) I'm sure this is a very basic question but all help gratefully received. Bev

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Kubuntu hard lockups since December
by Srdjan Todorovic 21 Feb '24

21 Feb '24

Hi all Anyone else experiencing hard lockups since approx December 2023 on Ubuntu / Kubuntu? I've got the same hardware, there's no hardware changes. I suspect it might have been a kernel / driver upgrade, I did pull some info from dpkg logs that said 12th December > 2023-12-12 09:47:49 upgrade linux-image-generic:amd64 5.15.0.89.86 5.15.0.91.88 Does this mean that I went from version 5.15.0.89.86 to version 5.15.0.91.88? How does one revert back to test for stability? When the lockup occurs, it seems that all graphics processes freeze, mouse freezes. No blinking lights on the keyboard. I vaguely remember that sometimes I can switch to one of the other terminals (what used to be tty2-6) but nothing seems to respond. When I tried to do this a couple of weeks ago, it seemed to be wanting to remove lots of things, and I never proceeded. > sudo apt-get purge linux-image-5.15.0-91-generic I had journal logging to Konsole back then and saw some messages (I have a phone on my phone) about PCIe Bus Error, BadTLP and BadDLLP and timeouts, Uncorrected fatal errors with AER, and nvme0: frozen state and PCIe bus error. How does one even know if their NVME drive is failing? AFAIK, smartctl doesnt work on them in the same way it does on spinning drives. Or is this a kernel bug? Thanks, Srdjan

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Choosing a distro
by Mark Rogers 02 Feb '24

02 Feb '24

I've been using Linux for a long time. I started out playing with RedHat around 25y ago but having been burnt by some RPM dependency issues that horribly broke a server (and not just once) I have been on Ubuntu since around 2005 and therefore far more comfortable with .deb/Apt. Recent Ubuntu versions have gone off in some odd directions. I actually didn't mind Unity (didn't love it either) but have never got on with Gnome 3. I'm currently running Kubuntu on my desktop (my first attempt to use KDE as my daily driver) and I'm getting on OK with it. Where I seem to get stuck frequently now is with Ubuntu's move towards Snaps, mostly due to the arguable reasonable sandboxing design just getting in my way all the time. So I'm wondering whether it's time to take a step back and reconsider my options. I assume that RedHat derived distros should no longer scare me because of packaging issues, but maybe the whole CentOS saga should be enough to keep me away? I use Debian quite a lot on things like headless Raspberry Pis but I like that Ubuntu tends to be more up to date. Should I grow a pair and look at Gentoo/Arch or their derivatives? Should I pick something like Mint? I quite like the idea of a rolling distro but maybe experience would change that. I guess my priority is "low hassle" - I'm not looking to spend my time playing with Linux just to get a job done. If there's software I need to install I want a decent chance of being able to do that without lots of extra work because I picked a niche distro that the developer/packager never considered. But I'm far more likely to be installing stuff from a terminal than a GUI, I'm not particularly looking for "user friendly". I guess "power user", with equal emphasis on both those words (I want something to use, not tinker with). Really that's why I keep defaulting to Ubuntu, but even that's getting in my way more often than it used to. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Choosing a Distro (Mark Rogers)
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 31 Jan '24

31 Jan '24

I've been using Debian for years now. Decades in fact! If Stable is not up to date enough you can move to Testing, which I did for a while without any problems, but for now am just sticking with Stable. Its always worked perfectly. Debian is where people end up. I use Fluxbox myself, as WM, which I find perfect, and Lightdm as DM. Its fast, keeps out of the way, handles workspaces very well, i have lots of keyboard shortcuts which makes it very convenient. It has a really neat feature, you can combine different apps into tabs in the same window. So for instance, you are writing something and need to refer to a web site and a spreadsheet as you write. You have all three apps open in tabs in the same window and can just click back and forwards between them. I have put in MATE on Debian for someone else, and that has worked out very well. MATE is also very simple and keeps out of the way, and the team have the rare ability to refrain from fixing what works. Its about like Gnome 2 used to be, before they went crazy and ruined it. Debian is Systemd now, which I don't much like. If you want Debian without Systemd, then probably MX Linux. I might go for this if changing distros, but am not bothered enough to move from Debian for it. Or there is Devuan. Mint with MATE for someone I put it in for was also fine. It depends what you want, Mint strikes me as full-on consumer grade. Whereas if you install plain Debian, Fluxbox with Lightdm, tweak the right click menu, startup and keyboard shortcuts to suit you, you have something which will probably suit you better and keep out of the way, but it would not be fair to install that for a naive user. I have tried tiling WMs, but they are not for me. i3 is said to be the best. So I think this is a vote for Debian with Fluxbox. Or, if you want to keep away from Systemd, MX Linux. One reason for going with Debian is that its going to be around for ever. Not sure about some of the less used distros, and that is a real factor for me. And if you decide you want a full-fat consumer experience, Mint. There is not going to be a huge difference between Mint with MATE and Debian with MATE. You could also put Fluxbox on Mint. I think Mint, like Debian, will be around. I have tried Arch in a VM, and didn't care for it, but it has a great user community and excellent documentation. Matter of taste, really. I use Foxclone for backups by the way. Really recommended. Peter

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Re: GIMP - book recommendations?
by Bev Nicolson 21 Jan '24

21 Jan '24

Thank you both. I shall have a look at those. Bev On Sun, 2024-01-21 at 11:06 +0000, BD wrote: > Hi, > > I never used gimp for anything more than simple image manipulation as > it is quite advanced. Similarly never had the need to look at other > options. > > In the past I had to learn how to use Inkscape and tutorial from "TJ > free" was more than enough. Have a look at this playlist as it might > be what you are looking for: > https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqazFFzUAPc4vITMJaF3Fnqh3pccSMnC4 > > Cheerio, > Bart > 21 Jan 2024 08:51:08 Bev Nicolson <lumos(a)gmx.co.uk>: > > > I confess I find GIMP baffling, for the most part. I've tried > > figuring > > it out, I got a book on it a while back but it didn't help that > > much to > > be honest. All I can do is simple stuff like re-sizing phots or > > (if I > > can find the widget again) resythnesizing. > > > > Does anyone know if there's anything like a Dummies Guide to GIMP > > out > > there? Something that explains it clearly and simply (like you've > > never > > used photo editing software before) *and* gives a glossary of > > terms > > too? > > > > Bev > > _______________________________________________ > > To unsubscribe send an email to main-leave(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above! >

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GIMP - book recommendations?
by Bev Nicolson 21 Jan '24

21 Jan '24

I confess I find GIMP baffling, for the most part. I've tried figuring it out, I got a book on it a while back but it didn't help that much to be honest. All I can do is simple stuff like re-sizing phots or (if I can find the widget again) resythnesizing. Does anyone know if there's anything like a Dummies Guide to GIMP out there? Something that explains it clearly and simply (like you've never used photo editing software before) *and* gives a glossary of terms too? Bev

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Transferring sms to computer
by Bev Nicolson 04 Jan '24

04 Jan '24

Are there any Linux apps for transferring sms messages to a computer? I'm getting new phone and am keen to keep the texts (or some at least) I have on the old one. The only caveat is that it is quite an old phone. (Android 7.1. Old.) TIA. Bev

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Editing SVG files at commandline
by Mark Rogers 04 Jan '24

04 Jan '24

I have some large svg files I need to edit that crash programs like Inkscape when I try to do much with them, but the changes I want to make are essentially removing bits from them that I don't want which are easily found within the svg if viewed as text, What I'm looking for is a way to do things like: - completely remove group B which is nested inside group B - remove all "path" elements residing inside group C, unless they match a regex pattern - move all elements from group D into group E (or ungroup them) I imagine that with the rightXML skillset, which I don't have, this is probably fairly simple? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Puzzle about networking, continued...
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 21 Dec '23

21 Dec '23

OK, it was indeed simple and stupid! It was one of the adaptors, just not the one that I had changed out! Finally at my wits end replaced it with one of the ones I had mistakenly swapped out, and everything is fine. Anyway, an instructive unguided tour of the wilds of modern networking, which is a lot more complicated than in my youth. Or at least different. Now for the next challenge, converting a bios system to efi. I have put together a system using Aorus from Gigabyte. It does not support legacy mode. At least it boots normally from an EFI stick so the build is OK. The next step will be to convert the cloned bios drive to EFI By the way, if anyone ever wants to clone a hard drive I strongly recommend foxclone. Absolutely brilliant, simple and foolproof. If you ever got tired and irritable wandering through the thickets of clonezilla you will love foxclone. Its a lot faster than CZ, and it will also clone a large drive to a smaller one, assuming there is space for all the files. Peter Also systemctl status NetworkManager gives this: NetworkManager.service - Network Manager Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2023-12-20 16:53:00 GMT; 1h 39min ago Docs: man:NetworkManager(8) Main PID: 769 (NetworkManager) Tasks: 3 (limit: 19064) Memory: 14.1M CPU: 545ms CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service So that's working. I have come on the suggestion to disable it and then configure /etc/network/interfaces manually. What do you think? Peter Puzzle about networking. Any suggestions? All of a sudden and for no apparent reason my ethernet connection isn't working. Its not the router, other machines on the router work fine. Its not the local powerline device, I have changed that out. The machine also works fine with a mobile data dongle plugged in to a usb port. So I think it must be something about the configuration, though why it should suddenly have changed is a mystery to me. I do ip link, and this shows as number two: 2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff So then I do ifup enp3s0, and get this: ~$ sudo ifup enp3s0 ifup: unknown interface enp3s0 When I use the gnome network control tool it fails to bring it up. ip link set appears to work, at least no error message. ifconfig gives this: enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 So why can't I bring it up with ifup? Rebooting doesn't make any difference. I don't know what else to try. Its probably something very simple that I am just missing.... Peter

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Re: Puzzle about networking
by Phil Ashby 21 Dec '23

21 Dec '23

On 21/12/2023 12:00, <peter.northerly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > ifconfig gives this: > enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 > inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> > ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) > RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) > RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 > TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) > TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 I'm suspicious of the complete lack of received packets there. It appears you are sending (probably DHCP requests), but getting nothing back. Things to check: 1/ The cable - swap out for a known working one (from another PC?) 2/ The sockets - dust bunnies cause havoc ;-) 3/ Everything other than the affected machine - pop a different device on the end of the cable if you have one (or borrow one!) 4/ The kernel message log (/var/log/kern.log and/or dmesg) might be shouting about something unwell. 5/ Recent software changes (updates perchance? new kernel?), can you roll back (kernel - most likely you can pick previous at boot) (more advanced detective work) 6/ Fire up a packet sniffer (tshark, wireshark) and watch for packets going in/out of the device on the affected machine. 7/ If you have a network *hub* (NOT a switch), then pop that in line and use another machine to watch for packets to/from the MAC address (I'd use tshark or wireshark, YMMV) on another port of the hub. My money is on a recent kernel change borking receive or dust bunnies. Phil.

1 0

Puzzle about networking
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 20 Dec '23

20 Dec '23

Puzzle about networking. Any suggestions? All of a sudden and for no apparent reason my ethernet connection isn't working. Its not the router, other machines on the router work fine. Its not the local powerline device, I have changed that out. The machine also works fine with a mobile data dongle plugged in to a usb port. So I think it must be something about the configuration, though why it should suddenly have changed is a mystery to me. I do ip link, and this shows as number two: 2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff So then I do ifup enp3s0, and get this: ~$ sudo ifup enp3s0 ifup: unknown interface enp3s0 When I use the gnome network control tool it fails to bring it up. ip link set appears to work, at least no error message. ifconfig gives this: enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 So why can't I bring it up with ifup? Rebooting doesn't make any difference. I don't know what else to try. Its probably something very simple that I am just missing.... Peter

2 1

Puzzle about networking, continued...
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 20 Dec '23

20 Dec '23

Also systemctl status NetworkManager gives this: NetworkManager.service - Network Manager Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Wed 2023-12-20 16:53:00 GMT; 1h 39min ago Docs: man:NetworkManager(8) Main PID: 769 (NetworkManager) Tasks: 3 (limit: 19064) Memory: 14.1M CPU: 545ms CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service So that's working. I have come on the suggestion to disable it and then configure /etc/network/interfaces manually. What do you think? Peter Puzzle about networking. Any suggestions? All of a sudden and for no apparent reason my ethernet connection isn't working. Its not the router, other machines on the router work fine. Its not the local powerline device, I have changed that out. The machine also works fine with a mobile data dongle plugged in to a usb port. So I think it must be something about the configuration, though why it should suddenly have changed is a mystery to me. I do ip link, and this shows as number two: 2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff So then I do ifup enp3s0, and get this: ~$ sudo ifup enp3s0 ifup: unknown interface enp3s0 When I use the gnome network control tool it fails to bring it up. ip link set appears to work, at least no error message. ifconfig gives this: enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet6 fe80::d2da:494:eadc:4e0b prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether 08:60:6e:e7:d2:be txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 982 bytes 158082 (154.3 KiB) TX errors 1 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 So why can't I bring it up with ifup? Rebooting doesn't make any difference. I don't know what else to try. Its probably something very simple that I am just missing.... Peter

1 0

touchpad weirdness
by Bev Nicolson 22 Nov '23

22 Nov '23

Every so often the touchpad, and indeed any mouse function as far as I can tell, fails. The cursor just flickers and dances about uncontrollably. I've found out how to close a window and shutdown the laptop using the keyboard but how do I figure out what's going on here? There are no outstanding updates to install if that makes a difference. Bev.

1 0

"New" PC
by Mark Rogers 10 Nov '23

10 Nov '23

I'm in the market for a new desktop PC ("workstation"). No interest in gaming, Will want to run (probably) Ubuntu and a handful of VMs, plus FF or Chrome with a couple of hundred tabs open. I'm more than happy to get one that's a few years out of date and refurbished if it gets me decent value. My existing PC is a i5-6400 CPU @2.7GHz, with 24GB RAM - I've probably had it about 7 years. I don't really have a budget in mind - probably max £1k inc VAT. It's so long since I looked at PCs or CPUs that I have no idea what to look for any more. Going to want at least 1TB SSD (preferably 2TB) but I can add that myself afterwards (although that would affect budget). Min 32GB, maybe 64GB RAM? What should I be looking for (and where should I be looking)? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

4 6

Transferring files over SSH
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '23

09 Nov '23

I often seem to find myself in this scenario: - I SSH into Server A using my personal key - I SSH into Server B using my personal key I find files I need on B that I need to transfer from B Usually the files are quite small so I'll just transfer them to my own PC as an intermediary. But I now need to transfer about 30GB from A to B so it seems like the right time to find a better way. I don't really want to have to give A permanent access to B (albeit I can always delete the key later, it seems like the sort of thing that would get forgotten). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Transferring files over SSH
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '23

09 Nov '23

On Thu, 9 Nov 2023 at 12:26, BD <dzidek23(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > How about using scp, it is like cp but over an ssh? scp/rsync is how I'd have done it in the past but that (to my understanding anyway) needs A to have SSH access to B (or vice versa) so I'd either need password based logins (which is how I used to do it but I'm trying to be better!) or creating a key on A and authorising it on B (or, again, vice versa) which I don't really want to be doing for a one-off file transfer. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

Transferring settings and data from Firefox and Thunderbird
by Bev Nicolson 02 Nov '23

02 Nov '23

It looks like I will be getting another laptop as my old one is reaching the end of the road. I want to be certain about what I'll be doing, hence asking. What I want to do is transfer all the bookmarks (I have *a lot*), passwords and settings for Firefox over. Is creating a profile the easiest way of doing that? I also want to ensure I have the folders of old emails saved in Thunderbird somewhere safe. Those are emails I have stored on the laptop, not online. Transferring Thunderbird's settings would be a bonus too. If I create a Thunderbird profile, will it do both of those things? Bev.

5 16

Re: Trojans....
by Peter Berrie 27 Oct '23

27 Oct '23

On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:00:02 +0100 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: Adam, Thanks for replying! > Have you ever saved or copied a browser cache onto this stick? No, this is the puzzling thing. I only seem to recall having used it on Debian. I've only used it to put some files on it which I then accessed from my laptop, which is also Debian. So I cannot think where these can have come from. I am wondering if possibly they were on the stick itself when I bought it. They are not going to be able to do anything in Linux, are they? I have also checked online and found a couple of similar trojans which MS AV says it detects, so they sound like Windows trojans. I am thinking now of having clamav run all night on my total Debian hard drive, in recursive mode. That ought to detect them, do you think, if they are on it? Is there anything else you would do? My laptop is dual boot, windows and Debian, so I will boot to windows and then run the MS AV in windows. I suppose run ClamAV in Debian after that. What a pain. But in Windows it would probably be a lot more than just a pain. Peter

3 2

Comparing XML files
by Mark Rogers 26 Oct '23

26 Oct '23

This has been driving me mad all afternoon. How can I compare xml files from the commandline? Specifically: If I have two XML files and one contains: ... <field name="A">ValueA</field> <field name="B">ValueB</field> ... and the other contains: ... <field name="B">ValueB</field> <field name="A">ValueA</field> ... ... then I consider those two files to be the same, but obviously a diff will not. How can I compare just the content and not the ordering/formatting/etc? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Trojans....
by Peter Berrie 23 Oct '23

23 Oct '23

This gets even more puzzling. Running clamav now for about two days non stop (lots of timeouts) and I am getting many reports like this: LibClamAV info: Suspicious link found! LibClamAV info: Real URL: http://www.globalkap.com LibClamAV info: Display URL: https://secure.skype.com But I can't tell where its finding those links, and don't recall ever visiting them anyway. I am now going through and checking some of them, and often not finding anything odd about them except that the name of the url is different from where the link ends up. And often the Real URL seems to be in the name of a real entity, but one that does not own the domain linked to! For instance another reported suspicious link, new.egg.com, takes me to Yorkshire Building Society, and seems like the real site of YBS. This is apparently due to YBS having taken over Egg. This really was different, though legit. But globalkap, the Real URL doesn't go anywhere, the Display goes to skype login, as you would expect. And globalkap seems to be a variety of real entities, a pool vendor in Aix en Provence, or a salesforce automation outfit somewhere! Another one is equally weird: LibClamAV info: Suspicious link found! LibClamAV info: Real URL: http://smitherfamilykitchen.com LibClamAV info: Display URL: http://www.lloydstsb.com But actually the display URL doesn't go to what clamav thinks is the real one, but goes to LLoyds TSB as it should. Not that I ever recall having visited them! Then when I try to go to smitherfamilykitchen.com (either just http:// or http://www.) its showing Server Not Found. But SmitherFamilyKitchen seems to be a real place selling hot sauces, based in Texas! Though it apparently (oddly) does not have that domain, and I don't recall having ever heard of it before this. But why is it claiming that the display URL is different from the real one? It does not seem to be. The most unhelpful thing about clamav, at least run like this, is that it reports suspicion, but gives you no idea what to do about it, and if I wanted to delete these suspicious URLs I have no idea where to find them! Are they in bookmarks someplace? Or history? Who knows? Anyone have any ideas what to do? Is there any more useful AV to try? Peter On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 14:57:34 +0100 Peter Berrie <peter.northerly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:00:02 +0100 > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > > Adam, > > Thanks for replying! > > > Have you ever saved or copied a browser cache onto this stick? > > No, this is the puzzling thing. I only seem to recall having used it on Debian. I've only used it to put some files on it which I then accessed from my laptop, which is also Debian. So I cannot think where these can have come from. I am wondering if possibly they were on the stick itself when I bought it. > > They are not going to be able to do anything in Linux, are they? > > I have also checked online and found a couple of similar trojans which MS AV says it detects, so they sound like Windows trojans. > > I am thinking now of having clamav run all night on my total Debian hard drive, in recursive mode. That ought to detect them, do you think, if they are on it? Is there anything else you would do? > > My laptop is dual boot, windows and Debian, so I will boot to windows and then run the MS AV in windows. I suppose run ClamAV in Debian after that. > > What a pain. But in Windows it would probably be a lot more than just a pain. > > Peter main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..."

2 1

Recommended Webcam?
by Steve Mynott 21 Oct '23

21 Oct '23

I've been successfully using a Asus cloudbook running "motion" from the Debian repos https://motion-project.github.io/ to detect motion, record and push video of the cat at her bowl while we've been on holiday but the internal webcam isn't that great. So I've basically solved the software problem but I'm looking at a better external USB (?) webcam Most of the commercial webcams I've seen seem to push people into expensive subscriptions which I don't care about but does anyone have recommendations for cheap, good quality webcams? It would be ideal to be being able to move it remotely and maybe start using it as a more general security cam? -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> rsa3072/629FBB91565E591955B5876A79CEFAA4450EBD50

2 1

installing Linux over Windows
by Bev Nicolson 20 Oct '23

20 Oct '23

I have done this before but I think I may need a little help. Finally got round to wresting the info from my old laptop. (Note that if the keyboard is stuffed, clicking on the human figure on the top right of the screen brings up an on-screen keyboard. You probably know this, but I pass it on anyway.) But to the point of this email. Stuck the usb drive in which has Mint on it and powered the laptop up. Clicked on ESC as it said that would bring the boot menu up. It did not. Not fast enough? What speed should I aim for next time? I found out how to shutdown before it got me all the way through the Windows set up so that's something. Thanks in advance. Bev.

4 8

Trojans....
by Peter 19 Oct '23

19 Oct '23

I took some files today to a local print shop on a usb stick to get them printed. They have the very sensible procedure that, when given files on a stick, they first insert the stick into a laptop which is not on their network, and scan it. The stick is a Maxell FAT32, and my systems are Debian 11. To my horror they came back and said it had trojans! There were two phishbank.ajy JSI:trojan.cryos.3892 This last had three copies installed, the first only one. I'm pretty confident these are not false positives, they get their systems and network from a very competent IT shop. I don't know what AV they use. They are a windows shop of course, so it will be one of the usual windows AV products. So I am pretty sure these trojans were the real thing. They asked what did I want to do. Leave them alone, delete them? I said delete, after making a note of what they were. At the moment I am downloading and installing clamav for my Debian installation. I did a scan of the Windows 10 VM that I have running in Virtual Box, using the MS antivirus that comes with Windows, and it came up clean. I'm also proposing to insert the stick, hopefully now disinfected, into my Debian system, copy a few files to and fro, and go back to the shop to see if it has got itself reninfected from Debian. Unlikely, but it seems like a useful precaution. Should I be worried, and what else should I do? Be grateful for any thoughts. The only other thing about my Debian machine that I've noticed lately is that on one Wordpress site I sometimes get a 429 too many requests error, in Firefox. This happens on first clicking on a link on the site or first visiting it, so there has not in fact been more than one request. Don't see how that could be related but thought it best to mention, just in case. Peter

2 1

Using testdisk to fix a corrupt thumb drive
by Mark Rogers 12 Oct '23

12 Oct '23

I have a thumb drive which is formatted to FAT32 but not recognized in Windows. Using "testdisk" I can find the partition OK, but testdisk reports: Disk /dev/sdc - 30 GB / 28 GiB - CHS 29327 64 32 Current partition structure: Partition Start End Size in sectors Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 255 (FAT) != 64 (HD) Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 63 (FAT) != 32 (HD) 1 * FAT32 LBA 0 1 1 29327 63 32 60063712 [DATADISC] If I select the partition and view files then i see what I expect to see, and I can manually copy off individual files from there. So from a data recovery perspective I have everything I need. However, if I try writing the partition information back using testdisk the thumb drive is still not recognised in Windows and if I reopen it in testdisk it reports the same issues. I tried changing geometry to 255/63 as testdisk suggested, but then analyse says "Bad relative sector". What do I need to do so that the disk is recognised in Windows? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 1

Re: Weird freezes in Firefox
by Phil Ashby 11 Sep '23

11 Sep '23

On 11/09/2023 12:00, Peter<peter.northerly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Any ideas what this could be? Its happened a couple of times. > > I will be doing something perfectly ordinary in Firefox, like > shopping on Amazon was the last one. All of a sudden the mouse > cursor, as I move the mouse, turns into a broad black stream, which > makes a trail a half inch or so wide, quite jagged. Stays in place as > the mouse is moved on. In and out of the browser window. Its > impossible to close the window. More clicking brings up partial > truncated small windows. Right clicks have no effect. That sounds like the display output is frozen apart from a hardware mouse cursor. You should (hopefully) have something in an Xorg.log file (after a restart!) to help identify if the X server itself has died, or if Firefox has exclusively grabbed the screen then hung. As this only occurs with Firefox, then my hunch would be the latter. > The only thing I could find to do to get out of it was reboot. You could try Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (the default X server terminate 3-key-salute). If it's Firefox that has a problem you may get your login screen back. I have also used the magic SysReq keys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key) to sync disk blocks then reboot which might get you more useful log file contents... > This is Debian 11, fluxbox, using the Nvidia drivers for their card. > Never happened with any other app, including not with any other > browser. Doesn't happen often, maybe three or four times over > several months. Another thing to try then: the nouveau drivers, although you will likely lose some performance depending on your particular card. > I shall be upgrading to Debian 12 fairly soon, so maybe that will > make it go away. But what could it be? And what would you do, other > than upgrading? I made the switch to 12 (bookworm) a couple of months back - all ok so far running sway atop Wayland with or without Xwayland support for older X11 apps (apart from Java, but that's another story entirely*) Good luck! Phil. * https://www.ashbysoft.com/articles/swingland/

1 0

Weird freezes in Firefox
by Peter 11 Sep '23

11 Sep '23

Any ideas what this could be? Its happened a couple of times. I will be doing something perfectly ordinary in Firefox, like shopping on Amazon was the last one. All of a sudden the mouse cursor, as I move the mouse, turns into a broad black stream, which makes a trail a half inch or so wide, quite jagged. Stays in place as the mouse is moved on. In and out of the browser window. Its impossible to close the window. More clicking brings up partial truncated small windows. Right clicks have no effect. The only thing I could find to do to get out of it was reboot. This is Debian 11, fluxbox, using the Nvidia drivers for their card. Never happened with any other app, including not with any other browser. Doesn't happen often, maybe three or four times over several months. I shall be upgrading to Debian 12 fairly soon, so maybe that will make it go away. But what could it be? And what would you do, other than upgrading? Peter

1 0

Nextcloud upload and share from commandline
by Mark Rogers 11 Aug '23

11 Aug '23

Any nextcloud users here who are familiar with the API? All i want to do is have a script which uploads a file to my nextcloud server, creates a read-only share link for it, and outputs that link. So when I have a file that's too big or otherwise unsuitable for email, I can simply push it to nextcloud and paste the supplied link into my email instead. This seems like a fairly obvious use case but my attempts at Googling a solution have thus far failed me. Uploading a file from a script is easy and there are plenty of examples out there but creating a share link from that point has me (and ChatGPT, and Google Bard) stumped. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

MPC playback or file converter
by BD 26 Jun '23

26 Jun '23

Hi So I have this headless Debian machine serving miniDLNA on my network. There's good few hundred GB files in its library but I have a problematic bunch too. A very old cache of mpc files that don't want to play. Does anyone have a way to either force miniDLNA to transcode the files on the fly or to convert those file in place (preferably retaining files structure). Cheers, Bart

2 1

Viewing Quick Time videos on Linux?
by Bev Nicolson 24 Jun '23

24 Jun '23

I have two dvd's that use Quick Time. (Yes, they are rather old.) I wondered if there was any way of viewing them? Is there an alternative QT that could help here? Or would it depend solely of finding someone using Windows or Apple? Bev

4 6

Dnsmasq appears to be setting 2 default routes
by Srdjan Todorovic 13 Jun '23

13 Jun '23

Hi all, I'm trying to get some dnsmaq stuff working on my desktop machine (Kubuntu). I've got a wifi interface that is my default (and only) route to the Internet. I've also got a wired ethernet interface that I want to use to: - provide DHCP service to a headless server - provide NAT to that headless server so that it can connect to the internet I've setup a dnsmasq config (using the defaults, but with some tweaks), but whilst it does actually serve DHCP to a laptop (for testing), it appears to set 2 default routes on my desktop, and I can no longer get onto the Internet. Routing table while dnsmasq was running: srdjan@serenity:~$ route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface default dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 UG 100 0 0 enp37s0 default dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 UG 600 0 0 wlp38s0 link-local 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 docker0 172.17.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 docker0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 600 0 0 wlp38s0 dsldevice.lan 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 100 0 0 enp37s0 192.168.2.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 100 0 0 enp37s0 I'm not sure this is correct. Dhcp-option 3 and 6 were left as default, but I would have expected the impact of those to be felt on the client machine trying to get the IP address, and not the "server" (desktop). Perhaps option 3 might make sense to set to the same address as the wifi router? Once I tore down both enp37s0 and wlp38s0, and reconnected on wifi using the KDE network manager, did I manage to get back onto the internet. Of note, the default config uses: interface=enp37s0 port=0 dns-range that is on a different network to the usual wifi one Has anyone got any suggestions please on what plainly stupid thing I'm doing with my setup? Thanks, Srdjan

1 1

Spam
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 27 May '23

27 May '23

Hi y'all My mailserver has started getting a lot of spam in the last few days. Basically, people are sending emails with loads of random email addresses - approx 90+ per email. They're not getting through - they get rejected then blocked. I wondered if anyone else has noticed anything similar? I'm not entirely sure of what this gets them. The occasional spam getting through can't be worth it. Or are they trying a scattergun approach to try and find valid email addresses or accounts? Or are they trying to overwhelm mail servers to exploit bugs in them? Or something else? Anything I should do? I'm getting quite close to saying "ah to ${badplace} with it, lets use a commercial mail-server", but I'm quite attached to the features I have with mine. For my email accounts, I can have unlimited email suffixes on them e.g. example(a)mydomain.invalid example-mailinglist(a)mydomain.invalid example-somecompany(a)mydomain.invalid example-ALUG(a)mydomain.invalid etc - anything after the "-" can be specified. I use this so that I can work who spams email address, or leaks my email address to spammers, and for easy blockage. Does anyone provide a service like this for less than megabucks? Steve

5 11

Isolating a smart TV
by Peter 11 May '23

11 May '23

I just got a smart TV (android based), and going through the install process discovered that if you connect it to Internet it transmits a truly astonishing amount of data to a company based in Ireland, which is in turn a subsidiary of another company in Turkey. Neither of which I have previously heard of. I didn't particularly want the smarts, but there don't seem to be any dumb ones available any more, and our old one had expired in its sleep so we had to get something. There is basically nothing you do on this box that is not logged, if you have connected it. Heaven knows what they do with it when they have it. You watch Eurovision, and turn to another channel after 15 minutes, its logged to your particular box and IP address and hardware. Probably every commercial where you turn the sound down is logged (that's just my guess, I don't know it for sure). So I haven't connected it to our router and am using it like a dumb TV. But my question is, is it possible to put this device and only this device through something like pi-hole and so isolate it from the LAN, and also block it from sending data to these companies? Because I would quite like to be able to watch youtube music on it, but not at the price of sending my musical tastes to Turkey in real time! I see on Amazon that you can get fanless industrial mini-pcs for about 70.00. Or there are NUCs on ebay for around 50.00. The industrial ones have two network ports. Would it be possible to get one of the industrial ones, connect one of the ports to the TV, the other to our router, and install pi-hole so as to put the TV into a LAN zone of its own, and also to use pi-hole to block any transmissions to the company? I'm not clear how this would (or would not) work. Essentially, can you have the pi-hole box sit between the TV and the LAN so that the rest of the LAN is unreachable from it and it blocks unwanted calling hime? How should one handle addressing in this case? If you think it would work, that would be enough to encourage me to have a go and try and stumble through it. Any hints most welcome! Or suggestions for how to get the same result in some other way. Peter

3 2

Re: KVM/QEMU
by Phil Ashby 03 May '23

03 May '23

On 03/05/2023 12:00, Mark Rogers <mark(a)more-solutions.co.uk> said: > > What do I need to do to achieve something simple like creating a new > VM, booting it from a Windows ISO and installing Windows 10 on it? > > I need to do it all from the command line or via a web interface - > preferably having both options open to me. The server is headless so > a traditional GUI is no use to me. Hi Mark, For a number of years now I've used QEMU/KVM, via libvirt and associated clients: virt-manager (Gnome GUI), and the CLI tools in libvirt-clients package (in particular virsh). There's this available from RedHat on using virsh for remote admin that provides a good intro: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/virsh-subcommands ..and this walk through of creating a VM from an ISO.. https://adamtheautomator.com/virsh/ your chosen web search engine and 'virsh tutorials' is your friend as usual ;) HTH, Phlash.

2 1

Boot to a web browser (nothing else available)
by Mark Rogers 03 May '23

03 May '23

I need to set up an Ubuntu 22.04 box so that on startup it enters a graphical environment with a web browser showing a specified page. No access to other applications. (I'd call this a "kiosk" configuration but having spent some time with Google that phrase can mean different things so I wanted to be clear). There's going to be quite a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes in support of the web interface but I have all that working. It's just the boot-to-browser bit that's an issue. It's not public facing and I don't care if the boot sequence is visible, provided that as long as the box is left alone for a couple of minutes it will eventually end up at a web browser directed to localhost. I've done stuff like this before but Ubunti 22.04 uses snaps rather than .deb packages and that changes the way the applications interact with the O/S - previously I've had systemd start lightdm start a bash script which starts Chromium or Firefox in kiosk mode, but it doesn't seem possible that way any more. But the reality is that I don't need a minimal install so I may well have overthought things in the past. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 5

KVM/QEMU
by Mark Rogers 02 May '23

02 May '23

I've used VirtualBox for years, most recently either as a desktop tool (eg on a laptop) for testing things out (managed by the VBox GUI), or as a server tool hosting multiple VMs (managed via a combination of CLI and the web-based phpVirtualBox tool which mimics the VBox GUI via a web interface). For a long time I've thought I should use KVM instead so today I had a crack as installing it on my home Linux server (Ubuntu) but I've gone around in circles and got nowhere useful. What do I need to do to achieve something simple like creating a new VM, booting it from a Windows ISO and installing Windows 10 on it? I need to do it all from the command line or via a web interface - preferably having both options open to me. The server is headless so a traditional GUI is no use to me. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

No pdf thumbnails
by Bev Nicolson 15 Apr '23

15 Apr '23

I'd not been having any trouble with pdf's for a while but suddenly no recent pdf's show a thumbnail, just an Adobe logo. I've got Master pdf and the simpler Evince (for when I just want to read something.) In the past, if this happened, all I had to do was change the file name and then a thumbnail would appear. That doesn't work here. (I think I've asked a similar question before but on hunting through the archive couldn't see a clear answer.) Bev

2 3

Has anyone here used qawebhosting or know anything about them?
by Chris Green 01 Apr '23

01 Apr '23

I'm looking for a hosting service for a few web sites that I maintain for friends and family. One possibility is QA Webhosting who seem to be quite small but offer just about exactly what I want/need. Does anyone here know anything about them? -- Chris Green

2 1

Linux Tablets
by Peter Berrie 22 Mar '23

22 Mar '23

I recently had occasion to wish, yet again, that I had a proper Linux tablet. So afterwards I dug out an old Linx 8 windows tablet and tried various distros on it. It came with windows 8, which was pretty bad, and I had upgraded to windows 10, which is better but glacially slow. I tried various distros on it including several Puppies, some of which not bad but no touch support, Fedora, which would not finish booting, slitaz (failed to boot), MXlinux (no touch). Several others. Zorin (failed to boot). A desktop derived from Alpine. So far the best I have found is Peppermint 32 bit. XFCE. Touch works, it sees battery status, its reasonably fast considering the hardware. I haven't got on screen keyboard yet, but there seem to be several choices of this. My impression is that it would be a viable solution on a more recent and powerful x86 tablet. But which? I'm thinking now about getting a used Surface. It seems like the Surface 5 is the best choice among them, apparently a significant improvement on the model 4, and that it should work with Linux. It should be able to manage Fedora which is widely recommended for touch devices. There is also a Lenovo with detachable keyboard of lower cpu spec and similar vintage, at about the same price. Lenovo Ideapad Miix 700. Bigger screen. The Surface 5 seems to have been a significant upgrade from the previous Surface 4. Do you all have any thoughts about this? Any other x86 tablets to consider? Any other distros that are more promising than Peppermint? Is Chrome worth considering? Peter

1 0

gmail bouncing emails from my domain.
by Nev Young 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

I suspect this is a naive question but I'm at a loss how to fix this. I send emails using thunderbird and msmtp. I post via my ISP's smtp server (smpt.zen.co.uk) This has allowed me to send emails to any one as any one. e.g. this has come from alug(a)nevilley.org.uk very recently emails sent to gmail users have started to bounce undelivered with the likes of: (email address redacted) This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: ##############(a)gmail.com host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [108.177.15.27] SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined end of data: 550-5.7.26 This message does not pass authentication checks (SPF and DKIM both 550-5.7.26 do not pass). SPF check for [nevilley.org.uk] does not pass with ip: 550-5.7.26 [212.23.1.22].To best protect our users from spam, the message has 550-5.7.26 been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.26https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for more 550 5.7.26 information. p9-20020adfe609000000b002ca647fe919si1349235wrm.527 - gsmtp Do I need to do something with thunderbird on my PC or is this a problem for Zen? Any help gratefully received. Nev

2 2

Re: gmail bouncing emails from my domain.
by Nev Young 07 Mar '23

07 Mar '23

Hi, Some one (not me) has been "messing about" !! During a phone discussion with [1] at fasthosts we retried sending the previously bouncy emails. AND THEY WORKED !! The magic gremlins appear to have fixed it. What can I say? Thanks to all who put in effort. (no doubt it'll break again tomorrow) Nev On 06/03/2023 17:17, steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk wrote: > On 06/03/2023 16:54, Nev Young wrote: >> Hi Steve, >> >> This is too hard for my ikkle brain. > > Hi mate. > > Will have a look and get back to you. > > Just a mo... > > Steve

1 0

gmail bouncing emails from my domain.
by Nev Young 06 Mar '23

06 Mar '23

I suspect this is a naive question but I'm at a loss how to fix this. I send emails using thunderbird and msmtp. I post via my ISP's smtp server (smpt.zen.co.uk) This has allowed me to send emails to any one as any one. e.g. this has come from alug(a)nevilley.org.uk very recently emails sent to gmail users have started to bounce undelivered with the likes of: (email address redacted) This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: ##############(a)gmail.com host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [108.177.15.27] SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined end of data: 550-5.7.26 This message does not pass authentication checks (SPF and DKIM both 550-5.7.26 do not pass). SPF check for [nevilley.org.uk] does not pass with ip: 550-5.7.26 [212.23.1.22].To best protect our users from spam, the message has 550-5.7.26 been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.26https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for more 550 5.7.26 information. p9-20020adfe609000000b002ca647fe919si1349235wrm.527 - gsmtp Do I need to do something with thunderbird on my PC or is this a problem for Zen? Any help gratefully received. Nev

3 2

HP Microservers or similar
by Mark Rogers 20 Feb '23

20 Feb '23

Over the years I've used a handful of HP Micro servers to run a Linux-based web server application. To be honest I suspect it would comfortably run on a Pi, to give you some idea of power requirements. However it does need to be dependable and one of the criteria is RAID (software RAID 1 is fine). We replace the hardware every few years so the question I have is: what is a good small server for Linux these days? Apart from the requirement to host 2 SATA drives there isn't much in terms of hardware requirements. We don't even use a lot of disk space - maybe a few dozen GB. One HDD gets replaced annually so that no disk is older than 2y, using commodity disks in the 1-2TB range but partitioned to only use 200GB on each disk, just because we don't need more and it makes the swap to a new disk quicker. Hot swap not needed. Would consider SSD for the new server. I was about to get a quote for an HP Gen10 MicroServer when it crossed my mind that maybe just buying the same server out of habit wasn't necessarily the right approach! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

Test post
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 18 Feb '23

18 Feb '23

Not sure if I can post to ALUG at the moment. This is a test. Steve

2 2

SPF Record problem
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Feb '23

17 Feb '23

Hi all I have just seen a message saying that Gmail is going to reject all emails without an SPF set up, so I thought I'd try for my mail server. Of course I have immediately run into trouble. My email gets sent via a virgin media server, currently smtp.ntlworld.com but I may update to smtp.virginmedia.com in future I used an SPF Wizard https://www.spfwizard.net It generated v=spf1 mx a a:smtp.ntlworld.com a:smtp.virginmedia.com ~all which if I read it right, accepts my domain, or smtp.ntlworld.com or smtp.virginmedia.com as valid email handlers for my email, with a "soft fail". [I used a soft fail for debugging - I want to swap to hard fail, but can't until I get this right] I've sent a couple of emails to test, and here's the snag. By the time they get to google, they're coming from 212.54.57.96 212.54.57.97 If I do a whois on that, I get back ziggo.nl (VODAFONEZIGGO) I expect email to smtp.ntlworld.com gets redirected to another server, or group of servers, inside virgin media, no doubt with a name like MAILSERVER.virginmedia.com (for some value of MAILSERVER), and that's handled by a range of IP addresses. How can I craft a valid SPF record, if I don't know which IP addresses or name to put in the spf? Why is virgin media mail ending up on a server in NL, or is that just an out-of-date or wrong whois lookup? Any ideas????? I'm struggling! Steve

1 1

SPF Record problem
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Feb '23

17 Feb '23

Hi all I have just seen a message saying that Gmail is going to reject all emails without an SPF set up, so I thought I'd try for my mail server. Of course I have immediately run into trouble. My email gets sent via a virgin media server, currently smtp.ntlworld.com but I may update to smtp.virginmedia.com in future I used an SPF Wizard https://www.spfwizard.net It generated v=spf1 mx a a:smtp.ntlworld.com a:smtp.virginmedia.com ~all which if I read it right, accepts my domain, or smtp.ntlworld.com or smtp.virginmedia.com as valid email handlers for my email, with a "soft fail". [I used a soft fail for debugging - I want to swap to hard fail, but can't until I get this right] I've sent a couple of emails to test, and here's the snag. By the time they get to google, they're coming from 212.54.57.96 212.54.57.97 If I do a whois on that, I get back ziggo.nl (VODAFONEZIGGO) I expect email to smtp.ntlworld.com gets redirected to another server, or group of servers, inside virgin media, no doubt with a name like */MAILSERVER./*virginmedia.com (for some value of MAILSERVER), and that's handled by a range of IP addresses. How can I craft a valid SPF record, if I don't know which IP addresses or name to put in the spf? Why is virgin media mail ending up on a server in NL, or is that just an out-of-date or wrong whois lookup? Any ideas????? I'm struggling! Steve

1 0

JOB | Engineer (London, UK)
by James Tobin 03 Feb '23

03 Feb '23

Hello, I'm working with an employer that is looking to hire someone to run a team of system engineers responsible for all on prem servers and related tools. Consequently, I hoped that some members of this list may like to discuss with me further. I can be reached using "JamesBTobin (at) Gmail (dot) Com". Kind regards, James

1 0

Mouse trouble
by Bev Nicolson 09 Jan '23

09 Jan '23

So the light comes on under my optical (wired) mouse but the cursor doesn't move. I've just tried the usb slot with a usb stick and it's fine. Ideas? Other than get a new mouse which I am doing? lsusb brings: Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c45:648b Microdia Integrated Webcam Bus 001 Device 003: ID 413c:8197 Dell Computer Corp. Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bev

4 5

Looking for E-Mail hosting as opposed to web hosting, recommendations wanted
by Chris Green 24 Nov '22

24 Nov '22

I am having trouble with my E-Mail at the moment. Since the move from 'Cloud' hosting to their cPanel services my E-Mail at TsoHost hasn't run very well. So I'm wondering if I might move my two, basically E-Mail only, domains away from TsoHost. There's basically four users with lots of forwarding and other such things. I need to host two domains, have the ability to create IMAP/POP3 mailboxes, multiple forwarding, etc. So it's not *big* but does need to be flexible (and cheap!). Does anyone have any recommendations? -- Chris Green

6 7

A remaining puzzle with AMD
by Peter 18 Nov '22

18 Nov '22

This is about my new AMD installation. After finally figuring out how to upgrade just the kernel so as to be able to make pm-suspend work properly, there is one remaining issue I can't seem to figure out, and that is the temperature sensors. I have lm-sensors installed and this is what it shows: k10temp-pci-00c3 Adapter: PCI adapter Tctl: +31.5°C amdgpu-pci-0b00 Adapter: PCI adapter vddgfx: 856.00 mV vddnb: 737.00 mV edge: +30.0°C PPT: 0.00 W nct6792-isa-0290 Adapter: ISA adapter in0: 864.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +1.74 V) in1: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) in2: 3.34 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in3: 3.34 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in4: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) in5: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) in6: 808.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in7: 3.41 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in8: 3.25 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in9: 1.83 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in10: 176.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in11: 128.00 mV (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in12: 1.84 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in13: 1.68 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) ALARM in14: 0.00 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +0.00 V) fan1: 384 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan2: 1023 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan3: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan4: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM) fan5: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM) SYSTIN: +119.0°C (high = +0.0°C, hyst = +0.0°C) sensor = thermistor CPUTIN: +30.5°C (high = +80.0°C, hyst = +75.0°C) sensor = thermistor AUXTIN0: +37.0°C (high = +0.0°C, hyst = +0.0°C) ALARM sensor = thermistor AUXTIN1: +108.0°C sensor = thermistor AUXTIN2: +109.0°C sensor = thermistor AUXTIN3: -128.0°C sensor = thermistor SMBUSMASTER 0: +31.5°C PCH_CHIP_CPU_MAX_TEMP: +0.0°C PCH_CHIP_TEMP: +0.0°C PCH_CPU_TEMP: +0.0°C TSI0_TEMP: +31.5°C intrusion0: OK [small snip...] I don't get it. First, its impossible there can be 100C+ temps. The case fan is silent, the psu fan is not moving, the system works fine and feels cool in fact cold to the touch. Second, how can it possibly be -128.0C on one of the readings? The system itself seems to be running quite fast and perfectly silently. I have a Noctua low profile CPU cooler which should be more than equal to the cpu installed, the psu is a Corsair SFF, Gold 450, and it all seems fine. You hear the fans for a few seconds at startup, after that, silence. I am running Debian stable but as in the earlier post when trying to get suspend to work, have the testing kernel installed. Was hoping that would clear up the temp problem but no luck. By the way, acpi -t returns nothing. Any suggestions? Or should I just stop worrying? Peter

3 3

Re: A remaining puzzle with AMD
by Peter 18 Nov '22

18 Nov '22

The only thing I could think of, as an alternate source of temp information, was to restart the system after it had been on for a few hours and go immediately into bios and look at the temps provided in the HW Monitor tab. Well, fans were reported as doing roughly the same speeds as reported by lm-sensors, and the cpu temperature is reported as 43C. So I guess its a matter of not worrying about it, and maybe in some update at some point it will get fixed. Thanks. Its good to know that others get similarly erratic results from lm-sensors, so its not just me doing something stupid! Peter

1 0

Re: A remaining puzzle with AMD
by peter 17 Nov '22

17 Nov '22

The only thing I could think of, as an alternate source of temp information, was to restart the system after it had been on for a few hours and go immediately into bios and look at the temps provided in the HW Monitor tab. Well, fans were reported as doing roughly the same speeds as reported by lm-sensors, and the cpu temperature is reported as 43C. So I guess its a matter of not worrying about it, and maybe in some update at some point it will get fixed. Thanks. Its good to know that others get similarly erratic results from lm-sensors, so its not just me doing something stupid! Peter

1 0

Handling Twitter data file
by Bev Nicolson 16 Nov '22

16 Nov '22

So, I downloaded my Twitter data to be on the safe side and found this which offers a way of making that info readable/useable offline. https://github.com/timhutton/twitter-archive-parser But I'm not at all clear how to do 3 and 4. I didn't think it was possible run a command within a folder? Help, please. Bev

6 15

Two things I have learned...
by Peter 06 Nov '22

06 Nov '22

I suppose to many this may be childishly obvious, but in case it helps anyone, here are two things I have learned. The first is to do with the Kobo e-reader. I find the Plato reader much nicer than the regular one it comes with, and the way to install it is given here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=314220 The simplest is to use the install script provided here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3797096&postcount=2 I first tried installing KOReader, which a lot of people seem to like, and you can install both of them from the install script, but it led to a very messy layout, so I reset it to factory and then installed just Plato. This is on the Kobo Aura One, which I find perfect. Its small enough to handle, but it has a 7.8 inch screen which is big enough to read comfortably on for a long time. You can control the amount of blue light, as well as brightness. The other thing about the Kobo is the registration procedure, and there is a very simple way of avoiding having to do this. During the activation you choose 'no wifi'. You can then access the files on the device from terminal or file manager. So you open a terminal, enter the folder containing KoboReader.sqlite, and run the following: sqlite3 KoboReader.sqlite "INSERT INTO user(UserID,UserKey) VALUES('1','');" Restart and you have activated. Wonderfully simple, private, and it avoids having to mess with the sqlite database. The second thing I learned was about AMD and suspend. Having put together a new machine with an AMD processor I was expecting to be able to use xautolock, with pm-suspend as the lock program. But the result was that it did indeed suspend, and when a key is hit, it seems to wake, but the screen remained black. I did two things after which it works flawlessly, but I am not sure which of them was effective, or whether you need to do both. I installed the AMD and RTL non-free firmware. And I also took the kernel to the testing branch of Debian, and the way you do this, without taking the whole installation to testing, is to modify /etc/apt/preferences as follows (I had to create since not already there): Package: * Pin: release a=bullseye Pin-Priority: 500 Package: linux-image-amd64 Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 1000 Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 100 So the idea is that it only takes the kernel updates from testing. And amazingly enough this has worked, its now on 5.19 whereas bullseye came with 5.10, and xautolock loads at startup and works perfectly! Two small victories. Peter

1 0

How to get a dumb WiFi only device to use a proxied connection?
by Chris Green 03 Nov '22

03 Nov '22

I need to provide 'proxied' WiFi when I'm on my boat in France so that, among other things, I can log on to my doctor's web site to order repeat prescriptions and to allow my Kobo Forma (reader, like a Kindle) to access my public library. Both of these fail when tried directly from abroad. So I thought a VPN might be the way to do this but every time I look into doing it I seem to hit a problem. The Kobo Forma has little flexibility, all it can do is connect to WiFi, you can't tell it any more than the SSID and password. Thus I need to somehow provide a 'proxied' WiFi connection that makes the Kobo look as if it's connecting from a UK IP address. The router on the boat is a TP-Link Archer MR200 and it does have VPN ability, however on looking into it it seems to be a VPN server which is little use. I want it to be a VPN client and connect to a VPN server in the UK (don't I?). I can easily enough set up a router here at home in the UK that runs a VPN server, but again I fail to see how that helps as I can't get the Kobo to log in to the VPN. Everyone tells me that VPNs are the solution to everything but I still fail to see how they can help me at all! :-) Can anyone here help me to a solution of my problem? I'm fairly techie, I'm familiar with proxying using ssh and reverse tunnels and all sorts of things like that but this still has me stumped. -- Chris Green

4 5

No input levels?
by Bev Nicolson 13 Oct '22

13 Oct '22

I've had this problem for a while and tried a few things, but before I finally give up I thought I'd ask ALUG about it. Without headphones plugged in, there is a clear input level showing on the sound settings. With any headphones plugged in, however, none. So I can watch videos or whatever, but it's impossible to use video conferencing tools as no-one can hear me. Ideas? Mint 19.1. on a Dell Latitude laptop. Bev.

3 5

Re: No input levels? (Bev Nicolson)
by Peter 13 Oct '22

13 Oct '22

I had this problem some time ago. I think I fixed it in pavucontrol, where for some reason it had got set to mute. I find alsa mixer very opaque also and remember struggling with it. Anyway thinking about this, I just reinstalled Debian, so I ran amixer to see what mine says, and its just this: Simple mixer control 'Master',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 65536 Mono: Front Left: Playback 65536 [100%] [on] Front Right: Playback 65536 [100%] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',0 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 65536 Front Left: Capture 65536 [100%] [on] Front Right: Capture 65536 [100%] [on] This does work. Its much simpler than yours. I don't have a mic installed on this machine however, and my headphones are driven off a headphone amp which is fed over spdif. Have you got zoom installed? And is it still a problem with zoom? I remember also getting a systematic walk thru on diagnosing the problem, I think it was here: http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/sound/sound_troubleshooting.htm The other thing that occurs to me is, try booting from a 'live' distro like Puppy, or a live version of Mint, and see if that helps. At least that rules out hardware and it gives you a working configuration as a reference. I know it took me quite a lot of fiddling to make it work, and I am not really sure what did it, apart from this vague recollection on pavucontrol. Which I don't seem to have installed now on the new install. I think I also found some material by Carla Schroder which helped. It was a struggle, and I never did get clear what had caused the problem.

1 0

Re: No input levels?
by Bev Nicolson 12 Oct '22

12 Oct '22

On 11/10/2022 18:26, Bev Nicolson wrote: > On 11/10/2022 16:59, Phil Thane wrote: >> Can you try either another mic/earphone in the laptop, or the existing >> mic/earphone in a different machine? It could just be the mic is >> broken. Also, >> some mics on some earphones have a tiny on/off switch. >> >> -- > <big snip> > > I have tried a number of other headphones and have the same problem. > > But can anyone guide me through Alsa? I'm not too sure what slider does > what. Ta. > > Bev [Bit of Googling later] Also no capture. Well it's listed but it may as well be on mute. These are new headphones that work with my tablet, by the way. I'm assuming capture and input are closely related. Bev.

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HP / MSI mobo issue
by Phil Thane 07 Oct '22

07 Oct '22

Hi Folks, I used to be subscribed as phil(a)pthane.co.uk but couldn't figure out how to change the email address so here I am re-subscribed. Same old codger with weird issues though... I have a 'new' desktop PC made from random parts. The MoBo is made by MSI but was an OEM product for HP. Searching for advice on MSI site says refer to HP. The HP support site appears to be crashed, permanently. I think I need a BIOS update and hundreds of sites offer them but how do I find a reliable one? There are two issues: 1. The BIOS fails to find a bootable disk unless I hit f9 and select one. I can enter the BIOS setup via f10 and set boot order there but it doesn't remain in CMOS memory, on next boot I have to do it again. 2. The PC is set to suspend after 30 mins inactivity. On re-awakening the clock is precisely 86 hours fast! Same happens if I put it to sleep manually. It can't be reset via the OS (Mint, Cinnamon), or via hwclock. It resets correctly when rebooted, without needing to fiddle the Date and Time settings in BIOS. I thought maybe the CMOS battery was failing so scrambling the memory. Volt meter showed 3.1V but having tried everything else I replaced the battery anyway, but to no avail. Neither problem is a show stopper, I can set the sleep timer to 'never' and remember to hit f9 during boot, but it's annoying. Any ideas? Or a reliable source of BIOS upgrades? -- Phil Thane Email: philthane(a)gmx.co.uk Tweet: @pthane Web: https://pthane.weebly.com

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Peterborough LUG meeting
by B D 04 Oct '22

04 Oct '22

Hello ALUG users, I'm not sure if you heard that Peterborough LUG got revived recently? At the beginning of September we had a meeting which attracted in excess of 10 users. It's been agreed that regular meetings will take place on first Wednesday of each month. We though that you might want to join us and if so here are the meeting details. This time we will gather at Brewery Tap (PE1 2AA) on 5th October at about 7:30pm. Anyone attending will be charged £3 to cover the venue costs. Long gone are days when people were shamed for using anything other than a Linux computer at Linux meetings so feel free to bring you Mac or Windows laptop. Nevertheless you should expect some cheerful banter ;) Meeting agenda include installing proxmox on a blade server and tackling boot issues on an older laptop. Some other subjects will be covered too. It would be great to see ALUG reps joining us. Cheers, Bart

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Web hosting recommendations wanted
by Chris Green 04 Oct '22

04 Oct '22

I currently use TsoHost but I'm not very happy with them. I'm migrating from their cloud to their cPanel and I'm hitting all sorts of snags while their support is very slow. So does anyone have any recommendations for alternatives please. I'm hosting about ten web sites so something around the same capabilities as their Ultimate package. I need that sort of amount of 'help' too. I do have a VPS on Gandi but I don't want to have to manage other people's web sites on that, I want someone else to shout at when it all goes pear shaped! :-) -- Chris Green

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Any TsoHost users here?
by Chris Green 03 Oct '22

03 Oct '22

Does anyone here use TsoHost? Have they gone seriously downhill recently? I have raised some tickets with them over the past day or two and haven't even got an acknowledgement, let alone any help. -- Chris Green

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change of email address
by Phil Thane 03 Oct '22

03 Oct '22

Hi (admin) folks, After years of maintaining my own website and email for work I'm finally admitting I'm retired and retiring my site. phil(a)pthane.co.uk will stop working next month so please update my membership details (or tell me how). The reply to address: philthane(a)gmax.co.uk will be my address from now on. Thanks. -- Phil Thane

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BIOS / EUFI
by Phil Thane 21 Sep '22

21 Sep '22

Hi folks, Still having fun with my 'new' PC. I mentioned before I thought the BIOS CMOS chip wasn't remembering stuff. Replaced the battery and it appears it does. But not everything. Two problems; a As previously remarked it won't retain choice of boot disk (SATA 0) and throws an error, 'no bootable media' unless I hit f9 to choose a disk, then it boots Grub properly. Even more weird the BIOS date changes, and Mint uses that that to set system time. It jumps forward sometimes by about three days. Most things work OK but emails are rejected as the date is implausible. can't reset it from Mint, have to reboot to BIOS and set there. Not every time though, seems random. -- Phil Thane Email: philthane(a)gmx.co.uk Tweet: @pthane Web: https://pthane.weebly.com

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erratic mouse
by Bev Nicolson 21 Sep '22

21 Sep '22

Erratic mouse behaviour is, I understand, usually a graphics card issue. How do I determine that? Symptoms: neither mouse (wired) or the mouse pad (Dell latitude e5530 - so not in the first flush) behave entirely as they should. I can try clicking on a link or icon and it won't recognise that I have done so till say the third click. It will highlight whole paragraphs of text if I click on a space to add a letter and delete them without my pressing the backspace key. But not always. Mint 19.1 all updates. Bev. P.S. The usb slot for the wired mouse is not as snug as it could be. Is that a factor?

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FLAC CD Ripper?
by Steve Mynott 21 Sep '22

21 Sep '22

Can anyone recommend a native Linux FLAC ripper which auto tags music with basic info like band and song name? Maybe something which resembles EAC since I've used EAC under Wine in the past which used a Free CD metadata library, but I'm not sure if the library is available any more? (note for admin there is a queued duplicate of this email which is HTML. Please ignore) -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> rsa3072/629FBB91565E591955B5876A79CEFAA4450EBD50

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Server email with minimal overhead
by Mark Rogers 20 Sep '22

20 Sep '22

I always seem to struggle with this most simple of configuration tasks! Starting from a clean install of (say) Ubuntu/Debian, and with a set of SMTP server credentials in your hand, what's the best/simplest way to get email set up so that emails from cron jobs get sent, and so that there's a minimal "mail" client at the commandline? I don't want the overheads of postfix + MySQL that things like mailutils bring in. (Or maybe I should accept those overheads?) The broader objective is that I can set the recipient address for email to root or other users, and the sender address from which emails get sent by default. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: Server email with minimal overhead
by Phil Ashby 20 Sep '22

20 Sep '22

On 15/09/2022 12:00, Mark Rogers <mark(a)more-solutions.co.uk> wrote: > > I always seem to struggle with this most simple of configuration tasks! > > Starting from a clean install of (say) Ubuntu/Debian, and with a set > of SMTP server credentials in your hand, what's the best/simplest way > to get email set up so that emails from cron jobs get sent, and so > that there's a minimal "mail" client at the commandline? > > I don't want the overheads of postfix + MySQL that things like > mailutils bring in. (Or maybe I should accept those overheads?) > > The broader objective is that I can set the recipient address for > email to root or other users, and the sender address from which emails > get sent by default. I would opt for msmtp-mta (standard package) which fakes sendmail: https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/msmtp-mta No daemons, queues, special accounts or other malarky, just an API that other programs know how to operate and a protocol engine that can talk SMTP to your real mail system. P.

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FLAC CD Ripper?
by Steve Mynott 17 Sep '22

17 Sep '22

Can anyone recommend a native Linux FLAC ripper which auto tags music with basic info like band and song name? Maybe something which resembles EAC since I've used EAC under Wine in the past which used a Free CD metadata library, but I'm not sure if the library is available any more? -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> rsa3072/629FBB91565E591955B5876A79CEFAA4450EBD50

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cmos jumper?
by Phil Thane 30 Aug '22

30 Aug '22

Hi, After years of upgrading and tinkering with my old desktop, I bought a 'new' one. 'New' as in assembled cheaply by my local computer shop from less than state of the art bits for £300. The machine came with a smallish SSD so I've fitted the 1TB HDD from my old PC alongside. Installed Mint on the SSD and linked my Nextcloud directory on the HDD onto my desktop. On the whole it works fine except the boot routine. On boot I get something like 'Unable to find operating system'. If I tap f9 during boot I get a table of boot options and choosing SATA 0 (ie the SSD) makes it boot as expected. But obviously it's annoying. f10 (I think) takes me into BIOS settings and it appears I can set boot order something I've done on various machines for donkey's years but on this one it doesn't stay in memory, on the next boot it once again cannot find the OS. Also, I noticed the date/time settings keep going wrong. Usual cause of this is either corrupted CMOS settings or more likely a faulty mainboard battery. Either could also be preventing BIOS storing settings. So off with the cover and look for the CMOS jumper. Can't find it. Can't find a decent hi res image of the board online and the instructions on the board manual tell you to move the jumper from pins 1 + 2 to 2+3 (which I knew) but not where it is. Near the battery is a 2 pin header with no label (could be a fan?) and a bit further away a multipin header but I can't make out what that's for, possibly USB? neither has any connectors or jumpers on. So, next step, I removed the battery and tested it. 3.12V which is fine. Left out for a few minutes which should reset BIOS but it didn't cure the problem. I've spent ages searching for info on this specific board with no luck. Can anyone help? Details: Mainboard MS-7778 VER 1.0 On boot I get an HP logo so I suspect the shop recycled it from an HP machine. -- Phil

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Re: How to Change Group
by Phil Ashby 14 Jul '22

14 Jul '22

On 13/07/2022 12:00, steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk wrote: > > Hi All > > Due to some historical ineptitude, I have ended up with this situation. > > On my Server, I have UserA, with User ID 1001, and Group ID 1001. > > On my main laptop, I have > > User A UID 1001 GID 1002 > User B UID 1002 GID 1001 > > I've just discovered this. Now, when I open files on a NFS share, > they're shown on my laptop as owned by User A, Group User B, despite the > server thinking they're both User A. > > On my laptop, I need to change the group IDs round in the /etc/group > file so they're consistent with the user IDs. I also need to change any > files legitimately owned by User A or User B to have the "correct" group ID. > > User A is my main laptop user. I have got another - User C I can login as. > > I suspect, what I'll have to do is > > Login as User C > > #something like... > > #change files gid 1001 to gid 4444 > sudo find {magic to find Gid 1001} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod > :4444 "the file" > > #change files gid 1002 to gid 1001 > sudo find {magic to find Gid 1002} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod > :1001 "the file" > > #change files gid 4444 to gid 1002 > sudo find {magic to find Gid 4444} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod > :1002 "the file" > > Then I'll need to change the GID numbers somehow in the Group file. The > simplest way I can think of is just edit the file, save it, then > immediately reboot. > > Before I do this, can anyone see any GOTCHA!s? > > Any suggestions or advice please? Hi Steve, I've had to do similar a few times (also ineptitude in the past, and adding different people to different machines, while having an NFS store in the middle). Gotchas: - everything will be weird until the users log off/on again. - you should re-mount the NFS to drop caches (or restart machine). - files on the server need processing too if there are any from userB Process: - as suggested, go via a non-affected user C, do the sudo/su dance as appropriate for your setup. - use 'vigr' (and 'vigr -s') to update the group files so that you have the IDs allocated as desired (using vigr tell the kernel to re-cache) - unless you know there are files outside user home folders (unlikely), do not attempt a find/chgrp, simply apply a recursive change to the home folder # cd ~userA # chgrp -R userA . # cd ~userB # chgrp -R userB . - safest to restart the machine, and check all is as you expect :) - if you want to try a find/chgrp.. here's the magic I know: # find / -mount -group <gname> -print0 |xargs -0 chgrp <newgname> > from the root, without crossing mount points (you might omit this if you're sure the NFS mount isn't there!), find files with the specified group name or number, spit 'em out with \0 separators to avoid pain with white space in file names. Pipe to xargs which expects \0 separators, then runs chgrp to the required group name in large (efficient) blocks. Cheers, P.

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How to Change Group
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 12 Jul '22

12 Jul '22

Hi All Due to some historical ineptitude, I have ended up with this situation. On my Server, I have UserA, with User ID 1001, and Group ID 1001. On my main laptop, I have User A UID 1001 GID 1002 User B UID 1002 GID 1001 I've just discovered this. Now, when I open files on a NFS share, they're shown on my laptop as owned by User A, Group User B, despite the server thinking they're both User A. On my laptop, I need to change the group IDs round in the /etc/group file so they're consistent with the user IDs. I also need to change any files legitimately owned by User A or User B to have the "correct" group ID. User A is my main laptop user. I have got another - User C I can login as. I suspect, what I'll have to do is Login as User C #something like... #change files gid 1001 to gid 4444 sudo find {magic to find Gid 1001} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod :4444 "the file" #change files gid 1002 to gid 1001 sudo find {magic to find Gid 1002} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod :1001 "the file" #change files gid 4444 to gid 1002 sudo find {magic to find Gid 4444} {exec's strange syntax to} chmod :1002 "the file" Then I'll need to change the GID numbers somehow in the Group file. The simplest way I can think of is just edit the file, save it, then immediately reboot. Before I do this, can anyone see any GOTCHA!s? Any suggestions or advice please? Thanks in advance. Steve

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[OT] Firefox loses cookies periodically
by Bev Nicolson 11 Jul '22

11 Jul '22

I'm on vs 101 I think now, and periodically Firefox will dump the cookies that I have given an exemption to. (I ask it to delete all the others on closing the browser and have a limit on how much disk space the rest can take up.) What can I do about it? Bev. (Mint 19.1)

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Sharing disk space between servers
by Mark Rogers 27 Jun '22

27 Jun '22

I have several virtual servers with the same provider. Typically I have around 50GB disk space. On some I have largish databases, with consequently large database backups. The backups are for recovery from cock-ups rather than disaster recovery so retaining them on the same server is convenient, but they do tie up disk space, and the ones with the biggest databases lose the most to database backups. So ideally I want to do something to share the spare capacity on other servers, but safely. for example in the event that one server got hacked I don't want that to provide a backdoor to another server, and nor should any data that's been shared onto it be easily accessible. In an ideal world, it would be nice to ring fence (say) 15GB of capacity on server A and make it available over the network to server B such that A can't access B's files even though they're stored there (I accept that I can't stop someone with root on A deleting the files, but they should at least be encrypted so that they can't be read). And whilst B can use that allocated chunk of A's disk, it must not be able to access anything else on A. Ideally the capacity that's shared should be pretty easy to change so I can easily adapt if A needs more space. (I wondered about trying to remotely mount an encrypted file on A as a filesystem on B, but adapting the size later would be difficult.) As anything I do will be making changes to already functioning servers A & B the changes need to be relatively narrow to avoid the risk of breaking something. Thoughts / suggestions / experience of doing something like this? I can think of various paths to take, from simply pushing files over scp and working out how best to secure it (and manage the quota), to something far more complex like GlusterFS, with lots of options in between. So it's not really a lack of ideas as any idea which ones would be best! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Editing files on remote servers over SSH
by Mark Rogers 26 Jun '22

26 Jun '22

What's the best way to edit files on remote servers over SSH? Using a text editor directly over SSH is fine, but a GUI editor like VSCode is easier to work with. But I never have much luck getting SSH/SFTP plugins to work reliably, so I wondered what other people do. Preferably cross-platform as I have to switch between platforms a lot. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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SSD HDD and simlinks?
by Phil Thane 01 Jun '22

01 Jun '22

After plaguing this list for months about my ailing desktop PC I finally skipped it and bought a (basic) new one. It comes with 128GB SSD. It's fast of course but not very big. So here's the plan but any advice would be good... I took the (almost new) 1TB drive out of the old PC and there's a lot of stuff on it. I've fitted it to the new machine but not installed anything yet as my ancient keyboard with a PS2 plug won't fit! Once that's sorted I'll install Mint. I *think* I'll do a standard install to the SSD and ignore the HDD. My user data on the HDD is mostly in /home/phil/Nextcloud and it was synced to my Nextcloud server. I assume, hope, I can keep that synced data on the HDD and just link the directory to my new /home/phil/... Not sure if that means using the link as the Nextcloud directory when setting up the client or maybe Nextcloud will allow me to connect direct to the HDD. Either way though I'm hoping to avoid taking all day to sync my data across the network. I remember long ago having a PC with 2 small HDD and setting it up with / on one but /home on the other. Is that still a thing? Is it worth doing in this case? Though bearing in mind it means formatting the HDD and re-syncing all the data. -- Phil

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Re: Comparing large folders of mostly identical file contents with different filenames (Mark Rogers)
by Peter 31 May '22

31 May '22

A query, not a suggestion, because you are all far, far better informed than me about this stuff! I was curious and looked up what tools are available for this, and came on: rdfind Fdupes dupGuru which all seem to find dupes by content. I am sure Mark is well aware of these and more. So why can't one of them be used to find the dupes? Also, is any of them significantly better than the others? Different but related issue, the app I have used to sync folders in the past is Unison, which I found very simple and effective. Also Grsync. Do people use these? Or is something else preferable? Peter On Sun, 22 May 2022 12:00:03 +0100 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > Send main mailing list submissions to > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or > body 'help' to > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > You can reach the person managing the list at > main-owner(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..."

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Sharing 2FA (TOTP)
by Mark Rogers 31 May '22

31 May '22

Are there any good ways of sharing 2 factor authentication credentials? Scenario: I have probably 20 accounts secured by 2FA using (currently) Authy to manage them. A colleague similarly has their own 2FA setup (not sure what they use). However there are some accounts we both need access to, and therefore at present we haven't enabled 2FA on. I want to set up 2FA in such a way that either of us can generate a code without sharing anything else to do it. I believe this is using TOTP protocol? I don't know enough about how it works but I can't see any technical reason why the shared secret can't be shared between multiple people (Authy already lets me share between multiple devices, but in an "all or nothing" way.) Obviously sharing 2FA credentials weakens security. But at present the alternative is not using it at all, and surely shared 2FA is better than that. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Comparing large folders of mostly identical file contents with different filenames
by Mark Rogers 23 May '22

23 May '22

I have a backup of a GMail account which creates folders by year, month, date and within them .eml files for each email. I'm migrating to a different GMail account so I'm moving the emails to the new account, and I have a backup also of the second account. So it's something like: Account1/2022/5/1/aaaa.eml and Account2/2022/5/1/bbbb.eml .. with each being identical emails (a diff of the two files will confirm that). Of course I don't just have 1 email. I have about 200,000, and the number of files in the two backups is slightly different so I want to find the discrepancies. So: Any suggestions? I could run a standard dedup program but that'll be very slow given that it'll be comparing 200k files with another 200k files. In most cases I suspect the missing file(s) will stand out just from their file sizes on a per-directory comparison. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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RAM
by Phil Thane 17 May '22

17 May '22

Hi, Over the last few months I've posted a few enquiries about my steadily worsening PC. A few tweaks have sometimes improved things slightly for a while but long term it's getting worse. It's now very unstable given to hanging whenever asked to do anything like move/close a window, so hope I get to the end of this without a problem. I *think* there might be a problem with RAM and/or mainboard RAM slots. There are 2x4GB modules fitted. (Crucial Ballistix not cheapo stuff). UEFI setup and lshw both report 8GB but free only shows 4GB. That was the case under Mint, and still is with a fresh install of Kubuntu. Any suggestions before I lash out on new RAM? Because if I do it's pretty much guaranteed to be something else. Or do any of you have old DDR 3 you've replaced with bigger sticks and not got around to selling on Ebay? Cheap preferred but no reasonable price refused! If all else fails I guess a new MoBo/CPU/RAM bundle might be required... -- Phil

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Re: RAM
by Srdjan Todorovic 13 May '22

13 May '22

On Fri, 13 May 2022 at 19:59, Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> wrote: > > Memtest isn't installed and isn't available from Ubuntu repositories. > probably could get it from elsewhere but chances are I just crash/hang > the thing again! Memtest is supposed to be booted off a usb drive or a cd. You can get it from https://www.memtest.org/archives and get version 5.31, follow the instructions to write that to a bootable media and then test the ram. Secondary computer you could use? > Kubuntu system monitor shows 4GB but no error messages, and trying to > run it just hung the PC again so doing this from a different machine. Nothing in the kernel logs? dmesg? No exotic PCI cards in the system or other experimental drivers loaded? > uname -a shows kernel version 5.15.x.x and AMD X86-64 > > Can't see anything in UEFI to suggest setting problem. It shows 8GB > installed and 8GB available. Suggests your linux install is messed up? Can you reinstall or re-download the ISO again, verify that the ISO is not corrupted and burn another install disk and try re-installing? > On 13/05/2022 19:41, Srdjan Todorovic wrote: > > On Fri, 13 May 2022 at 19:30, Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> wrote: > > > >> It's now very unstable given to hanging whenever asked to do anything > >> like move/close a window, so hope I get to the end of this without a > >> problem. > > What does Memtest86 say about your ram? This should be the very first > > thing you do. > > > >> I *think* there might be a problem with RAM and/or mainboard RAM slots. > >> There are 2x4GB modules fitted. (Crucial Ballistix not cheapo stuff). > >> UEFI setup and lshw both report 8GB but free only shows 4GB. That was > >> the case under Mint, and still is with a fresh install of Kubuntu. > > Which version of Kubuntu? > > What kernel version and architecture? uname -a > > > > Are you sure your kernel is not 32bit without PAE extensions? That > > would limit to 4GB usable RAM even if you had more. > > Any weird BIOS / UEFI settings that might put it into some sort of > > legacy mode to only give you 4GB? > > > >> Any suggestions before I lash out on new RAM? Because if I do it's > >> pretty much guaranteed to be something else. Or do any of you have old > >> DDR 3 you've replaced with bigger sticks and not got around to selling > >> on Ebay? Cheap preferred but no reasonable price refused! > > I have 2 sticks of 4GB each, DDR3 ECC server ram - not sure if it > > would work (you would need to check if your CPU + motherboard could > > support it), but might be open to taking £10 or something + postage? I > > would need to do Memtest86 on that ram to make sure it's ok. > > > > Thanks, > > Srdjan

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"Upgrading" Ubuntu via fresh install
by Mark Rogers 25 Apr '22

25 Apr '22

Over the years I have upgraded my Ubuntu desktop twice a year using do-release-upgrade. My root drive SSD is nearly full so I've just bought a bigger one, and I'm looking at migrating across to it. But... Ubuntu 22.04 is nearly here, so maybe it would make more sense to clean things up with a fresh 22.04 install on the new SSD instead? I know lots of people avoid upgrades and just do a clean install retaining /home (or something along those lines) but I've never done it myself. Is it the right way to go? It's a desktop PC, but 99% of the time I access it via SSH. Over the years it's had all sorts of stuff installed and uninstalled (or installed and no longer used but still there). So a clearout definitely seems like a good idea. So it seems like what I ideally want is a managed migration where I choose which things I have on the old install I migrate and which I leave behind. Is this going to be more hassle than it's worth? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: "Upgrading" Ubuntu via fresh install (Martin Collins)
by Peter 24 Apr '22

24 Apr '22

I've been meaning to ask this question for a while, and this seems like a good occasion. I'm moving someone from a very old i3 machine to a new AMD machine. The key difference apart from performance is that the old machine was bios, and the new one is of course compulsorily EFI. So what I did was, do a new install, then use Clonezilla to make a copy of the /home partition, and moved it to the new machine. Everything seems fine, with one exception. The old machine is on Debian Mate. All the files seem to have moved fine. But desktop layout is a different matter. The user has an enormous desktop file on a quite large screen with every inch covered with folders, in a familiar order and positioning. Unfortunately the layout of the desktop doesn't seem to survive the transition, its alpha order. Where is the layout of the desktop file kept? And is there a way to keep its layout while doing the transfer? Its not the end of the world if it just has to be accepted, but it would make life a lot easier if I could keep it. This was never a problem in previous machine moves, because I made a clone of the hard drive, then booted on the new machine. But with the arrival of compulsory EFI this isn't possible any more. They have removed legacy mode on the new main board. I have looked up converting an installation from bios to EFI. It seems like a very fraught procedure. And after all these years there's a case to be made for a clean install, as people here have said. So if I could overcome the desktop layout problem that would be what I would rather do. Peter

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Firefox
by Phil Thane 24 Apr '22

24 Apr '22

Well, last week Firefox was grinding slow so I resurrected Ghostery Dawn which I'd previously tested but not used in earnest. GD is faster and I got all the same FF plugins installed and copied my saved logins and bookmarks. One snag, whilst it responds correctly to clicking on links in webpages it won't open links in other apps, eg email or Twitter. Even if GD is already open clicking a link (from another app) opens a new instance at the home page. So I did a 'Remove Completely' of FF in Synaptic, ran updates and re-installed. And lo, it works much better. But after a time it goes slow again. Running it from a terminal I get this: *phil@phils*:*~*$ firefox [GFX1-]: glxtest: libEGL missing methods for GL test [GFX1-]: glxtest: libEGL missing eglGetDisplayDriverName Checked libEGL is installed and it is. So moving on, opened a YouTube video and get this in the terminal: 2022-04-24T12:56:32Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" [2022-04-24T12:56:32Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" [2022-04-24T12:56:32Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" [2022-04-24T12:56:33Z*ERROR* mp4parse] Found 2 nul bytes in "\u{0}\u{0}" Despite the error the video plays OK. Every time I choose a different video I get the same four lines though with different (time/ID?) numbers before 'ERROR'. Does anyone understand this? And is it likely to have anything to do with the performance issues? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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