- main - earth.li

hevin a fie out (again)
by mick 02 Aug '21

02 Aug '21

All I am clearing some old junk (again) and have found that I have a load of old (and some not so old) routers which I have replaced over the past few years with better/faster models. Before I take them all to the recycling centre I offer them here free, gratis and for nothing in case anyone fancies tinkering/reflashing or just using any of them. With the exception of two (the Asus RT-NT12E) and the Netgear WNR2200) they are all ADSL modem routers, the two exceptions are routers only and would need to be connected either to a modem or another router. (I have a split network - an outer net, a separate DMZ and an inner net. The two obvious ISP routers are included because I always ditch such things and substitute my own.) All have been factory reset by hardware button so I should not be disclosing anything sensitive by giving them away. The list is: Sky Hub (about 5 years old) Plusnet QNSC (about 3 or 4 years old) Ausus RT-N12E Technicolor TG582N Pro Netgear WNR 2200 TP Link Archer VR400 TP link AC750 Thomson Speedtouch 780W2 (this is quite a sophisticated router and incorporates VOIP capability) First come first served. All would need collection and I am happy to leave any items in our porch for collection so no need for personal contact. Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 https://baldric.net/about-trivia ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Kill or close process?
by Bev Nicolson 30 Jul '21

30 Jul '21

Me again. While Mint remain wobbly, it frequently claims that (ie) Firefox is running but not responding. I've tried $ kill $(ps -x | grep firefox | a and nothing happened. Got the same message. killall firefox has usually worked in the past but not now. So what do I do? Bev

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replacement laptop
by Phil Thane 28 Jul '21

28 Jul '21

While I was struggling with low water and debris in the Ashton canal some b*****d got into my canal boat and nicked my laptop. I think my insurance will pay up but the laptop was unusual and currently out of stock due to CPU shortage so a 'like-for-like' replacement will be impossible. It was a Pinebook Pro, AMD64 running Manjaro imported from the US. I imagine it's value in the backstreet pubs of Manchester is about £fuck-all so it's probably adding to the debris in the Ashton by now. After VAT and delivery it cost me just under £300 so I need a replacement in that ball park capable of running Linux. I guess the options are a Chromebook and a lot of buggering about removing Chrome or a basic Windows machine. But apparently recent cheap laptops come with Windows Home (S) and the (S) is some kind of security system to keep you tied into Windows and Office 365 and paying an annual Windows tax. Any advice on what to look out for, and what to avoid? At this price nothing powerful obviously but I want a decent desktop environment (probably KDE but not that bothered), LIbreOffice, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird. If it can run those, look not to shabby and weigh not too much while having a decent battery, it'll do. -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Mint wobbly
by Bev Nicolson 23 Jul '21

23 Jul '21

Not really sure what's up. A couple of times my laptop has frozen. Either the program won't respond or won't launch. I've had to do a fsck check each time to get back in or I'd be stuck in initramfs, unable to log in again. (My phone had not packed up so I was able to google this info.) Anyone got any ideas? Bev. (Cinnamon Mint 19.1 with all updates.)

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uMatrix and Firefox
by Peter 22 Jul '21

22 Jul '21

Hi everyone, thought this might be useful to someone. Suddenly Firefox stopped connecting to any sites. At the same time, email worked fine and all the other browsers worked fine. So I disabled all the extensions, and it now connected. Turned them back on one at a time, and so discovered that uMatrix was the problem. Played with all the uMatrix preferences and settings to no avail. Found various explanations and suggestions, none of which worked for me. Turned out that installing the latest version from github fixed it. I think it probably is just due to having changed the sources of the blocking lists, in assets. uMatrix I find really useful - proper detailed control of what's going on. Sorry that he has decided to stop updating it, but this latest version seems to work fine, for now. Debian stable, so mine is a few releases behind the latest Firefox. Peter On Thu, 22 Jul 2021 12:00:02 +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 the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > or, 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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Kubuntu updated nvidia drivers behind my back?
by Srdjan Todorovic 21 Jul '21

21 Jul '21

Hi all, I had an nvidia driver module update behind my back, while the system is running. I did not issue an apt-get upgrade, or enter my sudo password anywhere. Yet, launching any application that uses GLX (e.g. glxgears) gives me this: X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation) Major opcode of failed request: 151 (GLX) Minor opcode of failed request: 3 (X_GLXCreateContext) Value in failed request: 0x0 Serial number of failed request: 35 Current serial number in output stream: 36 And dmesg output is full of entries that tell me that the Nvidia client is newer than the running kernel module version. I've had this before, and the usual remedy is to reboot. It's just that I didn't (knowingly) authorise the system to do an update. Anyone know what might be doing these unattended updates? It'd be useful to know, so I can schedule the updates at the end of the day. Thanks, Srdjan

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Firefox 90 - toolbar text illegible
by Bev Nicolson 19 Jul '21

19 Jul '21

I've got a screenshot of what I mean but I'm not really sure what the best way of posting that is. The problem is this though. I updated to Firefox 90 and cannot use any dark theme now. The menu options File, Edit, View, History etc become almost the same colour as the border. I've noticed that if I want to check the progress of a download that's hard too. What have they done? I have tried switching proton off (those with context, doorhangers, enabled and modals as part of the text) but it didn't work. Firefox suggested using the troubleshooting tool. I confess I'm unconvinced how that will help. Cinnamon Mint 19. Ideas? I am using Firefox colour in the meantime, but it doesn't solve it. Bev.

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Zoom on Linux?
by Steve Mynott 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

Does anyone regularly and successfully use the Zoom app on Linux? I've had it working in the past but it's not 100%. Frequently the audio output seems to break (remote person can hear me but I can't hear them). Does anyone use the web version? I've not really had any problem with Teams just Zoom. I'd really not use any of these but its often not my choice. -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

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Audacity - now controversial
by Bev Nicolson 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

For info. They've changed the terms and conditions and it's really not good. https://fosspost.org/audacity-is-now-a-spyware/ Bev

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Laptops
by Michael Goddard 28 Jun '21

28 Jun '21

If you were in the market for a laptop, which make, model, size etc would it be, and why? Tia Michael

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Linux Mint updates issue
by Bev Nicolson 24 Jun '21

24 Jun '21

Right after I've logged in, I can update anything that needs updating, via the Update Manager. After that, I just a get a red cross in the shield and the message 'Could not refresh the list of updates.' Ideas? I've tweaked the sources list but that does nothing. Bev.

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Lets Encrypt renewals via DNS
by Mark Rogers 21 Jun '21

21 Jun '21

Sometimes you can't find the answer to your question on line. This is one of those examples where the answers seem plentiful but I can't get my head around them. I have a couple of domains with Lets Encrypt wildcard certificates. Creating the certs manually is easy (if a bit laborious): add the specified ._acme_callenge DNS entry and a handful of files under docroot .well-known/acme-challenge. But they can't be renewed automatically so every three months I need to go through the whole process again. Reading the docs, if my DNS is with one of the supported DNS providers (eg DigitalOcean, who I have an account with) then it can be automated via the API (the files under docroot I think can be automated with the --apache plugin?) but that's not where my DNS is. The docs suggest that I can use a CNAME but don't go beyond that. Has anyone done this, or otherwise automated wildcard certificate renewals where the DNS isn't in a supported provider? Also (probably simpler): once the certificate is created, can all the .acme-challenge files and DNS records be deleted? -- 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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Ubuntu upgrade disaster
by Jenny Hopkins 21 Jun '21

21 Jun '21

Hi folks, I'm attempting to upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 -> 20.04. The 18.04 has been brought completely up to date, and has no broken packages. However, when I run " sudo do-release-upgrade -d", the system starts preparing for the upgrade then bails out. The log file shows: 2021-06-20 09:39:31,393 DEBUG Marking 'ubuntu-desktop' for upgrade 2021-06-20 09:39:31,850 DEBUG Marking 'xubuntu-core' for upgrade 2021-06-20 09:39:32,694 WARNING Can't mark 'xubuntu-core' for upgrade (E:Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.) 2021-06-20 09:39:32,694 DEBUG Marking 'xubuntu-desktop' for upgrade 2021-06-20 09:39:33,631 WARNING Can't mark 'xubuntu-desktop' for upgrade (E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.) 2021-06-20 09:39:33,632 DEBUG Marking 'ubuntu-mate-core' for upgrade 2021-06-20 09:39:34,559 WARNING Can't mark 'ubuntu-mate-core' for upgrade (E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.) 2021-06-20 09:39:34,561 DEBUG Marking 'ubuntu-mate-desktop' for upgrade 2021-06-20 09:39:35,491 WARNING Can't mark 'ubuntu-mate-desktop' for upgrade (E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.) 2021-06-20 09:39:39,951 ERROR Dist-upgrade failed: 'Broken packages after upgrade: xubuntu-core, xubuntu-desktop' 2021-06-20 09:39:39,952 DEBUG abort called However, I don't have any broken packages - both the graphic packages manager and CLI searches confirm this. Trying to run the upgrade from the GUI just crashes. Can I do this the debian way, and alter the sources file and do the upgrade that way? Many thanks, Jenny

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Re: [ALUG] When did this start?
by Phil Ashby 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

On 01/06/2021 12:00, Bill Hill <mail(a)wbh.org> wrote: > > Just been re-zapping a RaspberryPi and noticed that / has: > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Mar 4 22:45 bin -> usr/bin/ > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Mar 4 22:45 lib -> usr/lib/ > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Mar 4 22:45 sbin -> usr/sbin/ > > When did bin lib and sbin become links, and what's the rationale? Is > this from Debian? > This was enlightening, and it's been a thing for several years outside Debian / Raspbian it seems (it arrived with systemd and majority use of an initrd to mount the rootfs). https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/266517/why-is-bin-a-symbolic-link-… Phlash.

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When did this start?
by Bill Hill 31 May '21

31 May '21

Just been re-zapping a RaspberryPi and noticed that / has: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Mar 4 22:45 bin -> usr/bin/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Mar 4 22:45 lib -> usr/lib/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Mar 4 22:45 sbin -> usr/sbin/ When did bin lib and sbin become links, and what's the rationale? Is this from Debian? -- Red to red, black to black, switch it on, but stand well back.

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Thunderbird problem
by Bev Nicolson 12 Mar '21

12 Mar '21

I use Thunderbird as a client for 4 email addresses. From yesterday, it's begun taking an age to log in to one POP server. It gets there eventually, and no error messages come up, but it would be great to sort it out. I've cleared the cache but that hasn't helped. Ideas? Bev.

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How to check if a cron.daily job has run?
by Chris Green 12 Mar '21

12 Mar '21

I run a daily backup on four systems. It's a bash script called 'backup' (original eh?) which is in /etc/cron.daily and thus gets run by Anacron in the early morning. I need to check that the backup has run somehow as, very occasionally, the backup system's USB disk 'falls asleep' and as a result any attempt to access it just hangs. Thus the rsync backup job doesn't fail (and produce an error message) it just never returns. So how can I check and get an error message if this happens? The next day is soon enough, it's not an urgent problem, I just need to know if my daily backups are working. However this needs to be 'no message means it has worked', message only if it has not worked. -- Chris Green

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Rust in Norwich
by Patrick Laslett 08 Mar '21

08 Mar '21

Hi All, Does anyone know how I find coders in Norwich familiar with Rust. Thanks in advance. Yours, Patrick

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spamassassin and bayes db
by Jenny Hopkins 08 Mar '21

08 Mar '21

Hello, I might need to join the spamassassin mailing list for this Q, but just in case anyone here can help first: I've got a mail set-up where exim4 hands mail to spamassassin before delivering to mailboxes local on the server. Users put any missed spam into missed-spam folders, and misfiled ham into missed-ham folders, and a cron job runs regularly to allow sa-learn to run learning from these folders. The problem is - it says it is learning, but it isn't. It is letting through handfuls of the same spam over and over. It's as if SA is running without paying any attention to the bayes-db, which would be weird as that is what I thought was a core integral part of spamassassin. Am I missing something in the basic setup? An example header of a missed spam shows something like: X-Spam_report: Spam detection software, running on the system "example.co.uk", has NOT identified this incoming email as spam. -then a few lines further down: 3.5 BAYES_99 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 99 to 100% [score: 1.0000] 0.2 BAYES_999 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 99.9 to 100% [score: 1.0000] Any ideas? It's driving me nuts. Thanks, Jenny

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How to disable headphones mic autodetection?
by B D 02 Mar '21

02 Mar '21

Hi All, I know this might be a bit too late, as we are all supposedly finishing with lockdown, so no more online meetings and video calls but it really bugs me. Whenever I connect headphones to my Linux Mint, pulseaudio forces use of headphone mic (which does not exist). This disables internal microphone and I have to go to sound hardware selection to change to internal mic array. Same happens on my kids laptops running Mint 20.1 (my is Mint 19.3). I think there is a priority setting somewhere in pulseaudio config which should allow to 'lock' mic to the internal array but I thought I'll ask first. Cheerio! Bart

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What's running at midnight?
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 02 Mar '21

02 Mar '21

Hi folks, My *buntu server runs a mail server. At 00:00 on some days, it complains that it can't reach the spam analyser or the virus analyser, despite the fact that they're still running and always have been, as far as I can tell. Other than stopping up to see what's running at midnight, is there a way of monitoring what's running at a particular time. I know you can see what's slowing things down at boot time using "system-analyze blame", or using pybootchartgui. Is there a way to do something like this around midnight? Also, of the top of your collective heads, can you think of any services update or hog processor at 00:00. How are scheduled tasks started, so I can have a root around and see what's happening? I can think of various ways. 1) A program (daemon) can constantly run, and may update at a specific time. 2) crontab 3) "at" perhaps. Any others? Any comments or advice appreciated. Steve

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DNS issues
by Mark Rogers 22 Feb '21

22 Feb '21

I have an Ubuntu 18.04 server running VirtualMin. I logged in today to do routine updates to discover it has lost its ability to resolve DNS queries. The server otherwise seems fine but I can't update it. /etc/resolv.conf tells me that it's using 127.0.0.53 for DNS, which is systemd-resolvd. systemd-resolve --status lists no nameservers, which will be where my problem is, but I work out where that information should come from. I temporarily set Google DNS in resolv.conf and did the updates, but a reboot restored the 127.0.0.53 DNS configuration (as expected) and the problem is back. I *think* VirtualMin is a red herring (it's not used for much and I've been planning to decommission it for years but not today!), and in any case it's just a glorified configuration tool with a GUI so any relevant settings should still be hiding under /etc somewhere, but where I have no idea. Suggestions? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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sequential numbering app?
by Phil Thane 09 Feb '21

09 Feb '21

Hello, Anyone know if this exists or would anyone like to create it? (Not seq command, won't do what I want, I don't think). Read on... I'm the membership sec of GOBA (Great Ouse Boating Assoc). We've just launched a new website using WP and sundry plugins. Central to things is Paid Memberships Pro which allows new members to join or existing ones to renew online. PMP allows users to specify their own username and password. BUT, under the previous regime and going back to the dark ages (pre internet) GOBA assigned each member a membership number, and just to make life more difficult didn't just use a straightforward sequence. Each 'number' is actually alphanumeric based on initial letter of the member's surname, then the next number available in that sequence. Thus I'm T596 and there is one person after me T597 but in the S list there are over 1200 (too many Smiths). Two things make this a nuisance. First, we imported data from the previous system into PMP and had to choose a field to be the key ID. PMP would prefer this to be an email address but many members joined long before they had email and have never updated their details to include it. The one field they all did have was a membership number, so for all previous members Username = Membership number. Secondly GOBA is full of people who don't like change, they want us to convert new members with their personalised username into the 'traditional' system. That's do-able via the WP dashboard but a bit of a pain. Finding the last number issued on a particular sequence involves inspired guesswork and wildcard searching. I believe a previous membership sec had an app on an ancient version of Windows that kept a log of the last issued numbers so he just input an initial letter and got back the number. Obviously I'd have to find 26 last issued numbers manually to get started but subsequently it'd be a lot easier. So, anyone know of a Linux app that would help? Or is anyone able to script something? It doesn't have to be pretty, just idiot-proof. Or is there anyone with infinite patience who'd like to teach an old dog a new trick? My experience of scripting and programming is very limited and has rarely ended well but I'll give it a go with some advice. -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Testing reliability of Internet connection
by Mark Rogers 09 Feb '21

09 Feb '21

What is the best way to test the reliability of an Internet connection? I am getting lots of dropouts on things like Zoom meetings or Netflix, but a speed test is always healthy (typically close to 200Mbps on my Virgin connection). But speed isn't everything - a stop-start connection with lots of gaps can still get a high average speed. Problem is I don't even know what to search for! Ideally a simple "here's a rating" tool but happy to get my hands dirty if needed, eg if there are things I could monitor with Wireshark or whatever. I have an important meeting tomorrow and at the moment I'm going to struggle to take part! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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PulseEffects Audio
by Phil Thane 27 Jan '21

27 Jan '21

hi, Long ago on a previous distro I used to use PulseEffects to enhance the audio output on my desktop. Until recently I wasn't able to get it working on Mint (Cinnamon) but now with a new repository it does, sort of. The GUI opens OK and the various options seem to switch on/off OK (previously everything was greyed-out and not working at all) but if I switch off 'Global Bypass' I get horrible distortion unless all the settings are at default. With Global Bypass on of course everything is bypassed so fiddling with the sliders has no effect. All I want is a bit of bass boost. Any suggestions? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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cat docx files?
by Steve Mynott 22 Jan '21

22 Jan '21

For years I've used "catdoc" to cat old msword docs. Is there an equivalent command for docx? (I don't want to have to open libreoffice or whatever) -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

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Repairing/Copying Windows disk using Linux Tools - A bit OT
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 17 Jan '21

17 Jan '21

Greetings clever cloggses! Sprog's Windows laptop is occasionally saying "I have to reboot - disk error" "Check Disk" isn't really finding anything wrong. I used to be up to date with windows tools for fixing things, but now I'm out of date with Windows tools, though I'm up-to-date with Linux stuff. I'm wondering if likely that booting from Ultimate Boot CD and/or System Rescue CD and running fsck and proprietary disk check utilities (e.g. seagate's disk utility if the disk turns out to be a seagate) is a good idea. Is it possible to use DD to clone a windows hard disk, assuming the destination disk is bigger than the source. Once cloned, would the clone work as a bootable disk so I could swap out the damaged one and swap in the new one? Any advice appreciated. Anyone know a reputable computer fixer in the city? Thanks in advance. Steve

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Are VPNs really this complex to install and use?
by Chris Green 14 Jan '21

14 Jan '21

I'm looking at ways of connecting a small Linux system (a Beaglebone Black, but a Raspberry Pi is near enough) on my boat in France which is headless and behind a NAT WiFi (or 3G/4G) server to my home desktop or laptop so I can 'talk' to it. Currently I have ssh reverse tunnels set up by outward connections from the remote Linux system that allow me to ssh into the system. This works OK except that the marina WiFi it uses is a 'captive portal' system where you have to open a web browser and it pops up a login screen where you enter name and password before it connects you to the internet. The connection, once made, stays up for several weeks but when it disconnects for any reason there's no easy way to reconnect automatically, has to be a human being to do it. So, I'm considering getting a 3G/4G USB dongle to connect via the mobile network so I don't have to jump through the marina's WiFi hoops. I can continue to do my reverse ssh tunnel connection but everyone I talk to about this says a VPN is the answer. However I'm having a hard time seeing how to get this installed and working without a huge amount of effort. For example wireguard is supposed to be a simpler, easier alternative to OpenVPN but take a look at:- https://www.wireguard.com/quickstart/ It's horrible! It's do-able, I can understand all the stages but it's just not nice. Similarly VPN tutorials are full of misinformation, take a look at this one:- https://thishosting.rocks/how-to-set-up-openvpn-on-ubuntu/ It's rubbish! ... and all the others I've looked at are either similarly wrong or more complex than the wireguard one. Is VPN *really* this difficult? If so I'll stay with my ssh approach. -- Chris Green

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Unattended remote access - what ways are there to provide it?
by Chris Green 02 Jan '21

02 Jan '21

I have a Beaglebone Black (SBC like a Pi) on my boat in France that I want to be able to connect to using ssh, how can/should I do it? I have a number of possible solutions in mind but I won't give them here as that might prevent open and lateral thinking being applied. Speed is not an issue, a 2400 baud dial up connection would be sufficient. Security is not a big issue, there is no sensitive data on the Beaglebone Black. I guess it needs to be reasonably secure against misuse but thats all. It's inside the boat in a fairly secure marina so the hardware is safe enough. Cost is important, this isn't something I want to spend lots of money on. A solution costing £7/month seemed a bit expensive to me, I'm aiming at significantly less, one or two pounds a month is fine. The boat is moored in an urban environment, power is (fairly) freely available. When I visit the boat I have lots of time to do fairly complicated set-up if needed but once I've left it's totally inaccessible, it has to work totally unattended, there's no one to phone up and ask to 'press the reset' or similar. So, let your imaginations run wild and come up with some ideas! :-) -- Chris Green

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Backuping up gnome desktop settings
by Steve Mynott 31 Dec '20

31 Dec '20

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 but with a customised desktop setup which is using gnome-session, the ubuntu dock and "move clock" extension (intended to fix the excesses of both Canonical and Gnome). I was quite happily running this on two systems but had to force power off on one because my screen wasn't responsive (screen res mode issues after running an emulator under wine). To my horror this broke many of my customisations, and I was unable to fix them via the Gnome Settings and Tweak Tool. I had to "rm ~/.config/dconf/user" in order to use Tweak Tool successfully which leads me to suspect that this (binary) file became corrupted. First Question: is it usual for this file to become corrupted? I can turn it into a human-readable form by "dconf dump /" it seems. Second Question: How can I regenerate the binary file "~/.config/dconf/user" from a copy of this dump? I don't want to manually do all the config if this happens again, and I'm unimpressed that gnome seems to lose its settings. -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

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email lunacy
by mick 30 Dec '20

30 Dec '20

Hi and Merry Christmas to all I am having a problem with my email server and would like some advice as to the best way forward. I have run my own SMTP server for about a decade now (beginning at bytemark, but now hosted with Hetzner - which /may/ be the problem). The server (at tap.rlogin.net) runs postfix and dovecot on debian 10 and uses a letsencrypt TLS certificate to transmit mail securely. The server has valid DKIM and SPF records and is not listed on any RBL at mxtoolbox.com. I have no problem sending email to any of the major email providers but recently I have had mail refused by two organisations. One is a small company which uses mimecast filters, the other is ntlworld.com (who use cloudmark). The rejections I receive are "hard" 550 refusals with messages referring to the respective filter mechanisms. I have, of course, contacted the companies using these filters and neither are interested in doing anything about it - they simply refer me to the respective filter providers. Here I enter the catch 22 world of email delivery in that I cannot send email to eiether cloudmark or mimecast - because they use their own products. This is a classic example of why RBLs are a bloody stupid idea, but hey. To make matters worse, the preferred feedback mechanism for both cloudmark and miimecast is via on-line feedback forms. Feedback to cloudmark vanishes into a black hole and I have never had a response from them. Mimecast's is even worse in that it doesn't actually work ("internal server error" would you believe). So I'm a bit stuck. I have resorted to sending email to them from a free GMX account I have, but I should not have to do that (and I still await replies anyway). So - I /believe/ (but have no proof) that the reason my mail server fails a "reputation test" is that it is on a network block used by many others, and which may include Tor servers for example. Certainly I have a Tor node on Hetzner (but on a different network block). It strikes me a simply lazy for any admin to block a whole range of addresses on the grounds that it /may/ contain problematic servers, but hey. admins can be lazy. The reason I am seeking advice here is that some of you also run email servers (or may have dome so in the past). Ideally I would like to continue to run my own server. I like the control and flexibility it gives me. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in the face of the kind of opposition I see. I see only two options. 1. I find a new VPS provider which can guarantee that its network will not be blocked by lazy idiots and I move to them. or 2. I give up and move my email to a third party provider (such as Ionos) I am reluuctant to do 2 because apart from the loss of control, I would have to pay for each and every email address I use, and there are several, spread across (currently) four separate domains, there are often limits on the size of the emailboxes, or number of emails you can send, and there are also often limits even on the number of /aliases/ you can have. My current Hetzner server costs me less that three euros a month. I'd be willing to pay more (Bytemark used to cost me £12.00 a month) if I could be sure that I woudn't have to move again. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good VPS provider that would meet my requirements? If not, does anyone have a recommendation for a third party email provider that can accomodate multiple domains and email addresses without charging stupid amounts? Any and all advice gladly accepted. Best for the New Year Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 https://baldric.net/about-trivia ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] email lunacy
by Phil Ashby 25 Dec '20

25 Dec '20

On 24 Dec 2020 14:34:25 mick <mbm(a)rlogin.net> wrote: > Subject: [ALUG] email lunacy > ... > Does anyone have a recommendation > for a good VPS provider that would meet my requirements? If not, does > anyone have a recommendation for a third party email provider that > can accomodate multiple domains and email addresses without charging > stupid amounts? I operate a very similar setup (albeit with Exim not Postfix =), and have done so almost without incident for 20ish years. For the last 5 years I have hosted in Azure on a paid account with a fixed IP, who seem to be rather more trusted than the cheapest providers such as Hetzner. Prior to that I was sharing a physical machine hosted by Atomwide (small org), and I'm planning to switch back to an arrangement as described by Chris Green, hosting at home and using my ISP's relay, now that I have sufficient bandwidth locally (this was the only reason I had an external relay at all). It remains to be seen if they block outgoing mail for the various domains I support... testing TBD! Cheers, Phlash.

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Exim4 filtering
by Jenny Hopkins 20 Dec '20

20 Dec '20

Hello, I'm trying to make a global version of the .forward file for exim4, instead of each user having their own. I want this to send messages flagged as spam straight to that users spam box. To do this, I need to extract the user part of the email address. I've found this helpful line: # echo "john(a)somewhere.com" | cut -d@ -f1 john but can't work out how to put it in a format that exim will like. if $h_to: blah then save /home/$home/Maildir/.spam add 1 to n0 endif That "blah" need to extract the name from the header and set it as $home. Any hints welcome! Thanks, Jenny

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Ebay, Firefox and Linux?
by Phil Thane 26 Nov '20

26 Nov '20

Has anyone else come across this recently? I normally use FF but for the last couple of days the Ebay.co.uk website doesn't work properly, it just displays text and links, no images. I've did an online search and it appears to have happened to others in the past though I didn't see any recent examples. Various people suggested back in 2016 that it was OK on Chrome, so I installed Chromium and it does work on that, though it's a bit clunky, the images tear when scrolling. Does anyone know of any FF settings that might fix it? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Re: [ALUG] Ebay, Firefox and Linux? (Mike Montgomery)
by Mike Montgomery 25 Nov '20

25 Nov '20

Hi. This has happened to me before. Turned out to be a DNS issue. Try a different name server. hth. Mike On 25/11/20 12:00, main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > Re: Ebay, Firefox and Linux? (Chris Green) >

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Changing a laptop disk drive (with MS Windows as well as Linux on it)
by Chris Green 26 Oct '20

26 Oct '20

What's the easiest way to change the disk drive in a laptop? I want to change the drive in a Thinkpad from a 240Gb spinning disk to a 480Gb SSD, both are SATA drives. The laptop has only one SATA socket. Can I simply connect both drives to SATA interfaces on another system and (very carefully!) us dd to copy from the old disk to the new one? Will this copy the boot sectors, the windows partitions and everything correctly? I know I'll need to resize the partitions after doing this but the alternative of recreating all the partitions from scratch and then copying the contents of each (there are four partitions I think) seems rather messy. -- Chris Green

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Why is anacron usually set up to only run checks from 07:00 to 23:00?
by Chris Green 24 Oct '20

24 Oct '20

I have a daily backup that is run by a script in /etc/cron.daily, this is thus controlled by anacron so that it gets run once a day even if the system isn't turned on all the time. I noticed that the backup gets run at about 07:30 and on checking how anacron is configured I notice that it only runs hourly from 07:00 through to 23:00. On modern systems this is configured by systemd (systemctl edit --full anacron.timer), on non-systemd systems there are other mechanisms but it still has the same configuration with anacron only being run from 07:00 to 23:00. Is there any reason that it's configured this way? In particular is there any downside to changing it to, say, 03:00 to 23:00? I can't really see any reason why one shouldn't schedule the anacron check *every* hour but maybe there is a reason for having an 8 hour gap. I want my backups run earlier so that there's less chance of me using the system when the backup is running so I have changed the systemd setting from "OnCalendar=*-*-* 07..23:30" to "OnCalendar=*-*-* 03..20:30". My systems are *mostly* turned on all the time but not absolutely always so anacron rather than cron is the best way to run the backups. -- Chris Green

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Gnome character applet
by Bev Nicolson 10 Oct '20

10 Oct '20

A while ago I expressed some frustration that there wasn't a character applet with Mint [Tessa] that included fractions etc. (I know you can use unicode but I've never found that method works for me.) Well I found the Gnome version in Synaptic today but I can't work out how to use it. By this I mean, how to find it in a menu or see it when I right click the panel so I can add one to the panel. I think I have enabled everything I should, and restarted this laptop just in case but nada. I have had a look at the Mint forum. Bev.

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Re: [ALUG] Spectacle file save failing
by Srdjan Todorovic 08 Oct '20

08 Oct '20

On Thu, 8 Oct 2020 at 14:12, Peter Berrie <peter.northerly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Whatever this is, it survived both upgrade and dist-upgrade. I guess the next thing would be to try it in a VM. You might be able to try it out be creating a new user account - it will have the defaults for all the ~/.config/* files. I'm guessing you can still launch Dolphin fine and browse folder and open files that way? > Its not the end of the world, it is saving the files where they are supposed to go, so just not being able to trigger file opening from that particular menu isn't game over. But it seems very weird. This is very weird indeed. What version of Spectace? I have 19.04.3 Also, check out the 3rd post here: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=224&t=143366 You can see the full list of mimetype associations via: K > System Settings -> Applications -> File Associations -> and find inode/director to check that one. > You helped me once before with Sigil, which is working fine for me now, that was very much appreciated by the way. Oh, I have to admit, I don't remember that. I'm not all that active on ALUG these days (but still use Linux 100% at home :D ) Best regards, Srdjan

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Spectacle file save failing
by Peter Berrie 08 Oct '20

08 Oct '20

Does anyone have any idea how to approach this situation? I am using spectacle, the kde screenshot taker. It has an option to go to the folder in which it stores screenshots. When you try this, it ends up trying opening it in deadbeef the music player! I took a look at .config/mimeapps.list, which didn't help much. There was an entry for deadbeef, something to do with inodes. I deleted it, which did not change anything. Then I uninstalled deadbeef with the result it now goes to vlc! I suppose I could go on deleting all the player applications... but then it would probably start trying to open the folder in something else equally useless. I have noticed this behaviour before but forget exactly when. When answering yes to a prompt of 'open in file manager', what I got was an attempt to open the file in a (different) music player. Does anyone know where this stuff is configured? This is Debian stable, up to date. Something has clearly gone wrong, but what? The nice thing about spectacle is that it allows you to repeat the same screen area selection while taking a series of screenshots. So if for instance you are trying to do a tutorial showing how to edit a picture, you can just keep taking snaps of the small changes without having to redraw the whole area each time you take a shot. Same thing with if you are reading a document in an app and want to take a shot of several pages one after the other. Peter

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Local IP addresses in external DNS
by Mark Rogers 03 Oct '20

03 Oct '20

I have the following configuration: - External hosted DNS for *.example.com - Some hosts point to "local" IP addresses, eg test.example.com => 192.168.0.100 If I use dig or nslookup on my laptop, test.example.com resolves correctly to 192.168.0.100. But if I put that into my web browser I cannot access the site (to be clear here: 192.168.0.100 is on my local network and I can access it using its IP.) Chrome reports a DNS lookup error. My home network uses OpenWRT (on a Pi4) and if I use the network diagnostics on that to lookup test.example,com it fails. (It works for hosts configured with routable addresses, but not for any on my local network.) OpenWRT uses dnsmasq. Any suggestions how I can get this to work? Or even just why it doesn't? (Yes I know it's an odd configuration! But I am not aware of a reason why it shouldn't work and I've never had a problem with it before.) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Re: [ALUG] Pinebook Pro
by Chris Green 03 Oct '20

03 Oct '20

On Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 10:38:48AM +0100, Phil Thane wrote: > On 03/10/2020 09:26, Chris Green wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 09:18:29AM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote: > > > On Sat, 3 Oct 2020 at 08:46, Chris Green <cl(a)isbd.net> wrote: > > > > Do you *really* need any/all of those apps? [...] > > > > > > > > Everthing else is on the laptop. > > > Each to their own, obviously, but these days I increasingly ask myself > > > if I need the laptop; there isn't anything I can't do on the phone, > > > and plenty I often can't do on the laptop for the simple reason it's > > > not with me at the time I want to do it. (Much like the best camera is > > > usually the one you have with you, I find the same with laptop > > > functions.) > > > > > Yes, I can understand that. However when I see other members of my > > family (all younger than me) struggling to reply to E-Mail on their > > phones or trying to buy things on line I realise why (for me) the > > laptop is so much faster and easier. > > > > It's the 'unix philosphy' use small dedicated 'things' each good at > > what they do. :-) I have a digital camera which is pocketable but > > is *way* better than even the best smartphone camera and it's a > > fraction of the price (proper viewfinder, 30:1 zoom, etc.). > > > There's also the online banking app which works on the phone to generate a > code to login on the PC. > Works perfectly on a feature phone like mine, it's just an SMS message. -- Chris Green

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Re: [ALUG] Pinebook Pro
by Chris Green 03 Oct '20

03 Oct '20

On Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 10:57:19AM +0100, Phil Thane wrote: > > On 03/10/2020 08:45, Chris Green wrote: > > Do you*really* need any/all of those apps? > > I don't actually have many, my personal take is that most ought never to > have been developed when you could achieve much the same via the web. But > companies like apps because they have more control and harvest more data so > some things are hard or even impossible unless you cave in and get the app. > And some odd, niche things really do need them. For example I have OSMand > (satnav based on OSM). I have had, but lost when I upgraded, a canal/river > satnav app with useful info for boaters. I'll reinstall when I go away next > year (Covid willing). I have used a phone tracker app to upload details of > my solo trips for friends and family to keep a track of where I am. As per > previous mail there's online banking too. > A phone is too easily lost or stolen IMHO to be safe for personal banking. > Some of the other apps (Nextcloud for example) could be replaced by the > desktop versions on Linux, but I'm not sure how they'd scale to fit the > screen. And the functions are different, Nextcloud on the desktop is chiefly > designed for syncing files. On a phone that'd be mad because the multi-GB > server isn't going to sync with a phone. The phone app is mostly for syncing > contacts, calendar, downloading files when needed rather than syncing > everything. But I don't have contacts or calendar on my phone so there's no point in syncing them. I so rarely have my phone with me or turned on that calendar in particular would be pointless. I have a calendar on my laptop which is on almost all the time, and with me. > It also has an Instant Upload function so (given a data > connection) photos are uploaded to the server within seconds of taking them. > Useful for an oaf who might at any time fall in the water! > As I said I don't use the camera on my phone, I have a much, much, much better camera in my pocket more often than the phone. -- Chris Green

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Pinebook Pro
by Phil Thane 03 Oct '20

03 Oct '20

Hello Lugs, Pinebook Pro still going well. Issues so far: Changed OS to Manjaro with KDE (default on newer releases). Built-in speakers are tiny, therefore tinny. They were stupidly quite too until I discovered you can use KDE settings to crank up volume. Currently run them at 150%. Earphones OK at 100%. Then app vol sliders work OK. Zoom app not available and Zoom web won't work on FF. Does work on Chromium but is a bit flaky. KDE themes don't always work, fail during install. Maybe some rely on dependancies not ported to Arm64. Struggling to find my ideal KDE theme. AFAIK a light, transparent panel also means a transparent app launcher which is unreadable when it pops over a window with text in. Opaque panels look a bit clunky and I don't like dark themes. Will carry on looking. Sleep mode works but battery consumption whilst asleep is too high. I shut down if I expect to leave it more than an hour or two. Still think it was a good buy. I've been following development of PinePhone too. As with Pineboook the prototyping is being done openly with early adopter versions for software devs released a while ago. There are about 6 OS projects being ported but only one is Android (AOSP) based. The others are 'pure' Linux eg UBports. It's tempting but so much these days relies on mobile apps and there aren't going to be many of them for Linux OSs. Any thoughts anyone? -- Phil Thane Tweet @pthane www.pthane.co.uk 01767 449759 07582 750607

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weird website
by Phil Thane 28 Sep '20

28 Sep '20

Here's an odd one, probably not a Linux issue but I am using Mint + Firefox and I guess the site is on LAMP so it's Linux-ish... I'm trying to buy some hardware from https://www.ironmongerydirect.co.uk <https://www.ironmongerydirect.co.uk> There was >£50 of bits in the basket and I went to Checkout. The site asked me to log in or register, so I registered. Firefox gave me a random secure password to use and saved it for me. So far, so normal. Now I'm back at the home page with the total still showing in my basket. But the 'My Basket' button doesn't work. Neither does Contact or 'Hi Phil' (My Account on sensible sites!) I'm sure you all now that on FF hovering over a link shows the real destination. Hovering over these buttons shows the link is to the current page. I can use the main menu to choose other pages in the catalogue but those three buttons always link to the current page. So all they do is refresh the page. This means not only can I not return to the checkout, I can't even logout via 'Hi Phil' I've tried closing all the pages then starting again, but FF helpfully remembers the password and logs me in again, with the same issue. I even deleted the saved login from FF, but I still get logged in automatically. Is there some magic way to log out of a disfunctional site? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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NHS Covid app
by Phil Thane 28 Sep '20

28 Sep '20

You may not: ...use the NHS App Native Version on any device or operating system that has been modified outside the mobile device or operating system vendor supported or warranted configurations. This includes devices that have been "jail-broken" or "rooted". That's me an my LineageOS phone out then. -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Covid 19 app?
by Phil Thane 27 Sep '20

27 Sep '20

Hello, I've gone to some effort to install LineageOS on my phone and remove all Google accounts. The UK Covid 19 app is unlikely I would think to ever be OSS and available on Fdroid (obvs it should, other countries have make OSS apps). So would anyone with a conventional Android phone who intends to install the app be prepared to make an APK file for me to sideload? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Printer sharing gone wrong(2)
by Phil Thane 19 Sep '20

19 Sep '20

Cancel previous, it works. First on PC connected to printer go to KDE printer settings and enable sharing in menu, not on tick box which is greyed out. Second on client PC (also KDE) ignore 'discovered printer' and go through set up new printer. Which it discovers all over again, but works. Weird! -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Printer
by Phil Thane 19 Sep '20

19 Sep '20

Cancel previous, it works. First on PC connected to printer go to KDE printer settings and enable sharing in menu, not on tick box which is greyed out. Second on client PC (also KDE) ignore 'discovered printer' and go through set up new printer. Which it discovers all over again, but works. Weird! -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Printer sharing gone wrong
by Phil Thane 19 Sep '20

19 Sep '20

Hello, Can anyone advise on CUPS? Wife and I have two PCs in the study, both Linux. For years we have had the printer plugged into hers via USB and Shared via CUPS setup so I can use it occasionally. It has worked like that through several changes of disro on both machines and one house move. But now it doesn't. It still prints OK from her machine but mine can't 'see' it at all. On CUPS (web interface) on Linda's machine if I go to Administration > Modify Printer there is a checkbox to 'Share this Printer' It's checked (ie blue). If I go to Printers on the menu bar and click the link to the printer in question (we've only got one) the status line says 'Not Shared'. Which probably explains why I can't print. Any suggestions? (KDE printer set up doesn't help either). -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Printing speeds, Linux vs Windows
by Mark Rogers 04 Sep '20

04 Sep '20

If I have a large file to print, on Linux it can takes ages spooling - hours even - where on Windows it can be printing in seconds. I've noticed this many times over the years, on all types of printer I've had use of. (Large typically means graphical, eg I tried printing a 2 page A3 PDF as my Windows PC was offline, and I managed to rebuild my Windows PC, transfer the file and be ready to print before I hear a peep from the printer, and on cancelling the Linux print, Windows had the printer clunking away a few seconds later.) Is there a good reason for this? Is it just me? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Dual booting Kubuntu install on EFI / Secure Boot Acer laptop not booting up
by Srdjan Todorovic 24 Aug '20

24 Aug '20

Hi all, I'm getting a bit stuck installing Kubuntu 20.04.1 LTS on my laptop with Secure Boot / dual booting with Win10. I can complete the installation process but Windows always boots. I can see that the ESP partition has the EFI/ubuntu/*.efi files (while I'm live-booted using the linux disk) and efibootmgr shows what appears to be correct entries for the bootup definitions for the ubuntu's .efi files. I've had conflicting advice when searching online as to where to install the bootloader - some say on the start of the disk (where MBR used to be) and some say at the Linux root partition. I've done the latter. I have booted off the CD immediately after the install to enrol using the MOK manager which comes up automaticall. The Acer UEFI "Security" menu doesn't show any files in the ubuntu folder to choose them as trusted components for boot. The Microsoft folder has entries, and also importantly the . and .. directory entries. I have already fsck.vfat the partition, initially showed incorrect free clusters but that was correct before another reinstall. Anyone have some advice please on anything I may have missed? Thanks kindly, Srdjan

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nextcloud move
by Phil Thane 19 Aug '20

19 Aug '20

Hi Lugs I was amazed how easy it is to set up Nextcloud on a Raspberry Pi using the NextcloudPi image (once I'd bought a bigger SD card). It works even on a first generation Pi but some things are slow, login via the web, moving around directories and apps. I've just bought a new Pi4 which I assume will be a lot faster but I already have about 50GB of files on an external HD attached to the original Pi. It took a long time to put them there and I'd rather like to avoid doing it again. Does anyone have experience of attaching an external drive with existing data to a new Pi? During installation of NextcloudPi there's an option to use external (USB) storage but it assumes a new disk and formats it. No good in my case. If I decline that and just set up on SD card how hard is it to mount an HD later without losing the data already on it? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Printer Recommendations
by Steve Mynott 19 Aug '20

19 Aug '20

Can anyone recommend a small, cheap monochrome laser printer which is easy to connect using wifi from linux? I'd rather avoid HP or anyone with bad karma and expensive toner and I'm not too bothered about colour. -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

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data deduplication / compare
by B D 18 Aug '20

18 Aug '20

Hi, I suppose that this could be an issue that the majority of us have faced at some point in the past. So you might have a simple solution. In last few weeks I had to move my small and old NAS box (adding some drives to make it a tad more resilient). I moved all the data to a portable drive and now I would like to merge all I have on my laptop with what's on the USB HDD. Content.. endless folders with various photos, music and video. The idea is that once files are organized the NAS will become a storage share for Nextcloud running on Pi. Any ideas are greatly appreciated Cheerio! Bart

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 7th August.
by Viperfang 04 Aug '20

04 Aug '20

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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Re: [ALUG] main Digest, Vol 182, Issue 2
by Peter 03 Aug '20

03 Aug '20

On Mon, 03 Aug 2020 12:00:01 +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 the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > or, 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..." I used unison. One or two oddities but a lot better than manually doing it.

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Mailing list software
by Mark Rogers 30 Jul '20

30 Jul '20

I want to set up a mailing list for a local charity, for the purposes of discussion/announcement between members of the club. mailman jumps out simply because it's all I know (and by "know" I mean I've used and administered lists hosted by lug.org.uk but that's it). So I thought I'd see if there are others I should consider. What ideally I want to achieve is: - A single list, with all members emails in it, mapped to something obvious like "everyone@<charity>.org.uk" - Messages sent to the list from members of the list get circulated automatically - Messages sent to the list from non-members get moderated: -- At moderation there are options to reject, accept, or accept and add sender to the list as allowed sender (not receiver), ie for the many of us with multiple email addresses who might email from any but only want to receive to one - Web interface for easy admin by people other than me The normal mailing list subscribe/unsubscribe stuff I don't need as the list will be managed by me and/or others (the GDPR stuff is handled separately). I manage an Ubuntu server which hosts the website but not currently mail for the charity's domain so there's going to be some configuration to do there (and probably some fresh questions when I get there) but for now: is mailman the tool I want? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Non-google phone tracker
by Phil Thane 30 Jul '20

30 Jul '20

Hello, Last year when I went away on my canal boat adventure I set up a tracker on my phone that plotted by position and track on a website, and embedded that page in my blog. Two snags this year, one Google has removed the app from their store and even if they hadn't it wouldn't help much because I've wiped the phone and installed LineageOS with no Google components. I really don't want to have to backtrack and sign up to Google again. Anyone know any alternatives? Yes, I have tried searching (not Googling) but all the apps seem to come from Google Play. I use OSM on the desktop and OSMAnd sat nav app on the phone and I have read it's possible to do what I want using those. However all the advice I can find is aimed at people logging journeys to update OSM (which I have done in the past) not using it to display a real-time (or almost) map showing where I am. Can anyone help? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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Horribly off-topc, sorry - uk telecoms groups/mailing lists/forums?
by Mark Rogers 14 Jul '20

14 Jul '20

I know this is off topic but I think there may be people here in the know and I've come up blank everywhere else I've tried. Back in the day there was a thriving community on uk.telecom* newsgroups but unless I'm missing something that has all gone. Does anyone know where such people can be found these days? Public forums, mailing lists, etc? Admin: feel free to delete if you'd rather I didn't ask here, Mark

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 9th July
by Viperfang 06 Jul '20

06 Jul '20

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 9th July at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Re: [ALUG] Sound problem
by Bev Nicolson 05 Jul '20

05 Jul '20

Sent this in error, just to Chris so re-sending to the list. Have just tried it unplugged and while it isn't perfect, it is better. Bev On 04/07/2020 17:36, Bev Nicolson wrote: > <snip> > > > Also, is there anything else plugged in to the laptop, USB > devices or whatever, if so try disconnecting them as well. > > > > > By the way - by 'hum' you do mean mains hum do you? I.e. a very low > > frequency hum of fixed frequency. > > > > Hopefully this short audio clip will explain the hum. I don't hear it as > I record anything, but only on play back. > > https://sndup.net/72c6 > > I have headphones and a mouse plugged in, to answer your other query, > but if anything it's worse without the headphones. > > > Bev

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Sound problem
by Bev Nicolson 04 Jul '20

04 Jul '20

I'm not sure if this is off topic or not but I could do with some help here. How do I reduce or remove the hum from my laptop? I use Mint and the sound gui doesn't offer much detail. (There's only one plug socket for headphones, btw.) Thanks. Bev.

2 3

How to extend a bash built-in but still use it within the new function?
by Chris Green 02 Jul '20

02 Jul '20

I want to extend the 'cd' command slightly so that I can execute some specific actions when entering (and leaving) a particular directory hierarchy. So I need to create a bash function called 'cd' to do this, but I still need to call the underlying bash built-in cd. Is there any way of doing this? -- Chris Green

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PC Sales Recommendations?
by Steve Mynott 02 Jul '20

02 Jul '20

So my hardware is usually years ago laptops and slow due to me being a cheapskate but I'm finding the new Ryzens quite tempting. I was wondering about a new linux desktop PC with 16Gb Ryzen (with in-built GPU) and a 1Tb M2 but in a medium to small case (due to lack of space in office) maybe for about 500quid. Can anyone recommend a more exact spec or recommend a website pc dealer? Back in the day I used to favour smaller local PC shops and I was wondering if there was anyone in East Anglia (who is linux friendly maybe) able to ship via delivery? -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

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using xrandr to set scale of monitor
by peter.northerly＠gmail.com 01 Jul '20

01 Jul '20

Can anyone help with how to do this? The problem is that my new monitor is 2K, so it has a native resolution of 2560x1440. My onboard graphics seems only to support 2048 x 1280, so that's what I am using it at. Yes, I do plan on getting a proper graphics card soon! However, even with it running at 2048 x 1280, the result is that the fonts and layout is a lot too small for comfort. Taking the resolution down does work, but it defeats the object of having bought a 2K monitor in the first place, and it apparently lowers quality, particularly of text, so I don't want to do that as a permanent solution . Apparently the correct solution is to use xrandr to set the scale factor to a whole number, in this case probably 2, and to use panning in some way so that the desktop display, being smaller than the display as configured, acts as a sort of moveable window into it. I have read the man pages on xrandr, and think I know what to do, but the problem is, it seems that if you get this wrong, your monitor becomes unusable. Maybe this is just alarm over nothing? Don't know. Has anyone actually done this successfully? Or have you found any other solution to the high DPI problem? Here is what my xrandr looks like in case that helps $ xrandr -q Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2048 x 1280, maximum 8192 x 8192 VGA-1 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI-2 connected 2048x1280+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm 2560x1080 60.00 59.94 59.98 2048x1280 59.99* 1920x1200 59.95 ..... and so on...... 2560 x 1080 isn't satisfactory because it elongates everything. I suppose a proper graphics card will enable 2560 x 1440. But that will only make the problem worse unless 'scale' and 'panning' can be used to fix it. I'm using fluxbox on Debian by the way so I don't have the Gnome or KDE GUI tools. Peter

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 3rd July.
by Viperfang 30 Jun '20

30 Jun '20

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

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ePub reader, is there really not one in Ubuntu/Debian?
by Chris Green 27 Jun '20

27 Jun '20

I want to read (well, 'use', it's a programming manual) that's in ePub format. There seems to be no default, or even available, ePub reader in Ubuntu. There are dozens of programs for creating ePub format but nothing for simply reading it. Am I missing something obvious somewhere? -- Chris Green

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Ensuring that a systemd unit starts *before* any networking
by Mark Rogers 25 Jun '20

25 Jun '20

Not sure if there are any systemd experts here, but I'll ask on the off-chance; I've already posted on Stack Overflow [1] if anyone knows the answer and wants credit for answering it there. How do I ensure a systemd unit runs to completion before any network tasks start? It sounds like a simple task but I've been banging my head on this for ages and every time I think it's working it turns out I was just lucky with timing. I have some code which generates dhcpcd.conf and wpa_supplicant.conf from settings in a database so obviously that needs to happen before any of those network tools start. But whatever magic I try in my unit configuration seems to have no impact on the start order of the unit. My current attempt is: [Unit] Description=Config generation from DB Before=networking.service [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=/home/mark/bin/db2config.py [Install] RequiredBy=network.target Any ideas? [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62574482/ensuring-that-a-systemd-unit-s… -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Mint mirrors
by Bev Nicolson 14 Jun '20

14 Jun '20

Anyone else having issues refreshing the mirrors? (WiFi is fine generally so I don't think it's problem at my end.) This isn't a one-off. I get this message: <<Failed to fetch http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/packages.linuxmint.com/packages/dists/te… 503 Service Unavailable [IP: 91.230.243.15 80]Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.>> Bev

2 2

dhcpcd fallback
by Mark Rogers 04 Jun '20

04 Jun '20

I have the following in /etc/dhcpcd.conf (on a Pi), which (as I understand it) should seek an IP via DHCP but fallback to 192.168.60.100 if none is offered. My problem is that more often than not I end up with the fallback IP address rather than one from DHCP, despite the Pi being on a network with a DHCP server. (The connection to DHCP is a bit convoluted: Pi cabled to Wifi access point, which is on my home wifi network, which gives it access to my home router's DHCP server.) Any suggestions how I can diagnose this? I'm not sure if the complex connection to DHCP is the issue or not (and it does sometimes work so I don't think it's a config issue) but I'm not sure where to start looking and I'd like this to work over unreliable links if possible. If I comment out the fallback line I get a reliable DHCP address. # fallback to static profile on eth0 profile static_eth0 static ip_address=192.168.60.100/24 static routers=192.168.60.250 static domain_name_servers=192.168.60.250 interface eth0 fallback static_eth0 -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 5th June.
by Viperfang 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Updating Ubuntu from 16.04 to 18.04 (xenial to bionic)
by Christopher Dawkins 01 Jun '20

01 Jun '20

I tried this first a year or two ago and came across the same problem - a problem with the rfkill package, one for which I have no use anyway. Last Friday I had three desktop Ubuntu 16.04 systems, set up at three different times. On Saturday one updated smoothly to 18.04 using the proper 'sudo do-release-upgrade' method. Both the others failed with the nasty 'Hash Sum mismatch' error on rfkill. As one did last year, when I learnt that it was a repository sync problem that would clear up later. I have googled widely and implemented (I think) every solution. I have cleaned, updated, upgraded, done dist-upgrade, autoremoved, wiped /var/lib/apt/lists and /var/cache/apt/archives, and made sure both Acquire-by-hash and Acquire::CompressionTypes::Order::=gz are operating. I have downloaded (with wget) both the 4945 bytes of the xenial version and the 5005 bytes of the bionic version and installed them at separate times in /var/cache/apt/archives before trying the update again. Every time, it barfs on rfkill with a 'Hash Sum mismatch'. I find in my notes three other reported sizes for rfkill: 5045, 8530, 8580 and 8612 bytes. Since I don't need rfkill, can anyone suggest any way to get over this? Maybe the problem is that I purged it half way through a long weekend of wrestling. It refuses to reinstall with the following message. ==================================================================================== Need to get 8,530 B of archives. After this operation, 33.8 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 rfkill amd64 0.5-1ubuntu3.1 [8,530 B] Err:1 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 rfkill amd64 0.5-1ubuntu3.1 Hash Sum mismatch Fetched 4,945 B in 0s (238 kB/s) E: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/r/rfkill/rfkill_0.5-1ubuntu3.… Hash Sum mismatch E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing? =================================================================================== and I note that it fetched only around half of what it needed, but it seems to always do this. When I try again with apt --fix-missing install rfkill I get the same with a final error: E: Internal Error, ordering was unable to handle the media swap The usual error message involves two GETs: ==================================================================================== Get:1 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 rfkill amd64 2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.6 [24.8 kB] Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 rfkill amd64 2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.6 Hash Sum mismatch Fetched 4,945 B in 0s (0 B/s) Get:1 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 rfkill amd64 2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.6 [24.8 kB] Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 rfkill amd64 2.31.1-0.4ubuntu3.6 Hash Sum mismatch Fetched 5,005 B in 0s (0 B/s) Could not download the upgrades ====================================================================================== though at times there is a second occurrence of the second four-line message. -- Christopher Dawkins Garnetts Corner, Jollyboys Lane North, Felsted, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3DU 07816 821659

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ALUG] Peculiar DNS clash on Ubuntu 18
by Al 24 May '20

24 May '20

This is what I did: :~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf # Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8) # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN nameserver 9.9.9.9 nameserver 9.9.9.9 nameserver 127.0.0.53 search lan :~$ sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved [sudo] password for xxxx: Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/systemd-resolved.service. :~$ Al On Sun, 24 May 2020 12:00:01 +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 the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > or, 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..."

2 1

odd DNS lookup results
by mick 23 May '20

23 May '20

Hi Guys This may be deemed off topic because it is not strictly directly Linux related, although all the machines involved are running Linux. However, there are some networking experts here and I would welcome a view on something that is driving me nuts. The background is that I am experimenting with moving all my DNS lookups to DNS over TLS (to preserve privacy). I run local dnsmasq caching resolvers on two of my internal networks and for a while now I have forwarded upstream DNS requests to one of four unbound resolvers running on my OpenVPN end points. (So if I use the VPN on the machine called tap, I forward requests to unbound on tap). Because any observer between my VPN endpoint and the root, TLD or other domain DNS servers can see my requests I want now to encrypt all requests leaving my networks. I /could/ retain my unbound resolvers with suitable configuration changes so that they accept DoT requests from my local nets and then in turn forward upstream using DoT, but there are a limited number of servers accepting DoT requests in the wider world. So if I retain unbound, I would end up forwarding my upstream requests over DoT to third party resolvers such as Google, Quad9 or Cloudflare. I see no point in doing that when I can (and indeed have) install stubby on my local DNS resolvers and simply pass requests from dnsmasq through stubby to a public resolver (or actually a round robin list). Because I really don't want to pass my DNS requests to a large resolver which then logs them (as does Google) or both logs and interferes with them (as do cleanbrowsing, OpenDNS or Quad9) I have been testing outside DNS resolvers using a shell script tool called dnsperftest I found here[1]. I modified that script to add some additional resolvers taken from the defaults provided in stubby's configuration plus some others taken from privacytools.io [2] and dnsprivacy [3]. I also added some other domains to the test set so that I had 20 domains to test across some 18 public resolvers. Some of those resolvers (such as google 8.8.8.8 and Quad9 at 9.9.9.9) I will not actually use in real life, but they are big anycast systems and I wanted a benchmark for my likely slower choices which are privacy conscious. I then ran the test script from my desktop using an untampered connection through my ISP, followed by connections through each of my four VPN endpoints. As expected, I got faster lookups without the VPNs than with. I then ran the same tests from the machines I use as VPN endpoints. And again, as expected, and because those VMS are in large datacentres dotted around europe, I got much faster lookups from there. Herein lies the interesting bit. The bit I really don't understand. Take a look at the results (averages only) in the attached text file. You will see there that on all the tests run from my desktop either straight through my ISP or through my VPNs, cloudflare's anycast servers on 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 come out fastest, But, and this is the bonkers bit, if I run the same test directly on the VPN end points, 1.1.1.1 is slowest (and in fact I cannot ping 1.1.1.1 from any of my VPN enpoints but I can when I run the connection through a VPN to that same endpoint.) This bothers the hell out of me because it should make no difference whether I try to reach 1.1.1.1 through my VPN or direct from the machine which constitutes the endpoint of that VPN /UNLESS/ my traffic is taking a route I do not understand. If that is the case, then my protective security stance has a major problem. So: does anyone out there have any idea what is going on? (Oh, and I know that cloudflare got the 1.1.1.1 address from APNIC, and I also know that 1.1.1.1 has been used as a "test" address in a lot of places in the past and that can cause some routing oddities, but if that were the problem then I would see the same difficulty from my desktop through the VPN as I see at the VPN endpoint. Wouldn't I?) Thanks in advance Mick [1] https://github.com/cleanbrowsing/dnsperftest [2] https://www.privacytools.io/providers/dns/#icanndns [3] https://dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/DP/DNS+Privacy+Public+Resolvers --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 https://baldric.net/about-trivia ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Peculiar DNS clash on Ubuntu 18
by Jenny Hopkins 23 May '20

23 May '20

Hello, I have a computer running Ubuntu 18.4 with MATE desktop. With no apparent reason (no changes to either PC or DHCP server) the PC lost its DNS entries a few days ago, and seemed to be querying itself using IP 127.0.0.53 (or was it 153?). I used systemd-resolve to re-add the missing entries, and this worked, however the next day they had gone again. I then used the GUI provided by mate system-administration-network, and this worked (seems to run some perl scripts in /usr/share/system-tools-backends) but again, next day they had vanished and only the 127.0.0.53 appeared in the GUI. Has anyone any clue of what could be running overnight to overwrite the DNS entries? I can't even find where my hand-entered entries are ending up. Thanks, Jenny

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Alternatives to TsoHost?
by Chris Green 13 May '20

13 May '20

I have been using TsoHost as my main web hosting provider for almost ten years, until recently they have been very good. However over the past few weeks when I have contacted their support they really haven't been anywhere near as quick as they used to be, nor have they been particularly good at answering my questins. My sites all work OK still, no issues there, and support have eventually come up with answers but it's just nowhere near as good as it used to be. There's no auto-acknowledgement of E-Mail/posted support questions and even though they say they've moved a lot of technicians to Live Chat it's more often then not unavailable (not that I like Live Chat for technical support really). So has anyone else here who uses TsoHost noticed the deterioration? ... and maybe more to the point any suggestions for alternatives? I have around ten hosted web sites with very low traffic at the moment and that's unlikely to change. The one significant requirement other than the obvious sort of stuff is ssh access so I can use the site as a bridge/buffer for outside connections to home. -- Chris Green

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Fwd: RE: GOBA News
by Phil Thane 11 May '20

11 May '20

Noswaith da, I've just got 3 emails from a boatie contact, one normal (html) email, one with an attachment and one to a mailing list that was cc'd to me. The first two are fine, the other is below. I've got all the headers and the whole message in html (or xml?) but as code, none of my email clients render it properly. I think the possible difference is that she's used gmail to email me direct for the first two but has (I think) done the mailing list thing via Microshaft Office. Anyone care to explain what went wrong? We need to know if everyone on the list has got this garbled message! -- Phil -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: RE: GOBA News Date: Sun, 10 May 2020 14:20:02 +0100 From: Claire Davies <clairecd27(a)gmail.com> To: steve(a)crossonsmith.co.uk <> " <steve(a)crossonsmith.co.uk>, "pebcsecretary(a)gmail.com" <pebcsecretary(a)gmail.com>, "warburtcar(a)aol.com" <warburtcar(a)aol.com>, "phow58(a)gmail.com" <phow58(a)gmail.com>, "darren.fergus(a)live.co.uk" <darren.fergus(a)live.co.uk>, "jane.moorman(a)ntlworld.com" <jane.moorman(a)ntlworld.com>, "lin.cox(a)talktalk.net" <lin.cox(a)talktalk.net> Cc: Phil Thane <editor(a)goba.org.uk>, Phil Thane <phil(a)pthane.co.uk> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8" X-Antivirus: AVG (VPS 200509-0, 09/05/2020), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean <html xmlns:o=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w=3D"urn:sc= hemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/of= fice/2004/12/omml" xmlns=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta ht= tp-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; charset=3Dutf-8"><meta name= =3DGenerator content=3D"Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)"><style></style></head><body lang=3DEN-GB link=3Dblue vlink=3D"#954F72"><div cla= ss=3DWordSection1><div>= Dear ColleaguesFurt= her to Phil=E2=80=99s note below, we hope you are all still staying safe an= d keeping well.Thes= e times are unprecedented and like you all, I=E2=80=99m really missing boat= ing.=C2=A0 We are still very hopeful that you will be able to provide some = news stories/contributions for the forthcoming GOBA magazine =E2=80=93 the = deadline is by 8th June.We assume most club events have been cancelled, though I ha= ve heard on the grapevine that some of you might be still doing socials/get= togethers via zoom, let alone the odd competition.However, we would still welcome your news/s= tories, and here are a couple of things to think about (especially if you a= re looking at recruiting members for the future):So you could do a couple of things =E2=80=93 = you could either give us an update including:</div><ol style=3D'margin-= top:0cm' start=3D1 type=3D1><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style=3D'margin-bo= ttom:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo3'>Have you found any inv= entive ways to keep in contact with your members? How are your members doin= g? Competition results, etc</li><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style=3D'margi= n-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo3'>Any stories about = unusual wildlife coming onto your site?<o:p></o:p></li></ol>Or <ol style=3D'margin-top:0cm' st= art=3D1 type=3D1><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style=3D'margin-bottom:10.0pt= ;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo1'>History about the club =E2=80=93 = when it was founded?</li><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style=3D'margin-botto= m:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo1'>Where is it based, info a= bout your premises/marina</li><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style=3D'margin-= bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo1'>Is the club for moto= r boats, sailing, rowing, paddling etc</li><li class=3DMsoListParagraph sty= le=3D'margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo1'>Number = of Members/family boats </li><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style=3D'margin-b= ottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo1'>Your facilities =E2= =80=93 slip, hoist, crane etc....</li><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style=3D= 'margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo1'>What sort of= social facilities do you have? This could range from bars, food, to the so= rt of events you would normally do?</li><li class=3DMsoListParagraph style= =3D'margin-bottom:10.0pt;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo1'>Your cont= act details, website, social media info, how a new member would join.</li><= /ol><o:p> </o:p></= p>I look forward to hea= ring from you all as soon as you can.Many thanksClaire DaviesAssistant Editor =E2=80=93 GOBA NEWS<o:p> </o:p><o:p> <= /o:p><o:p> </o:p>Sen= t from <a href=3D"https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=3D550986">Mail</a= > for Windows 10<o:p> </o:p><div style=3D= 'mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;pad= ding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'>From: <a href=3D"mailto:editor@goba.org.uk">Phil Thane</a> <b= > Sent: 29 March 2020 15:22 To: <a > href=3D"mailto:clairecd27@g= mail.com">Claire Davies</a> Subject: GOBA News</div><o:p> </o:p>Hello Boat Clubs= <o:p> </o:p>First, I hop= e you are all well, also friends, family and club members.<o:p> </o:p>Secondly, after asking in= the last few issues of GOBA News for an assistant= (and in due course replacement) I now have one - Claire Davies from OVRC. (She on the mailing list above if you want to make= a note). Claire will be editing the Club News sec= tion of the Summer 2020 issue so you'll be hearing=   more from her in due course.<o:p> </o:= p>The current lock down has put an end to boating = for the time being and I suspect cancelled a lot o= f the activities you'd normally include in your Cl= ub News pieces. Perhaps it would be better if you used the space to recruit  more members for happier times with a run d= own of the sort of things you normally do, where y= ou are based, details of your clubhouse, marina/ya= rd facilities if you have any, and photos of said facilities. Plus of course contact details.<o:p>&= nbsp;</o:p>If you are planning to send a news lett= er to your members in the near future, or have a s= ocial media presence or webpage to keep in touch with them, could you please ask if anyone would like to write something for = GOBA News. Being stuck at home it might be the ide= al time to recall boat trips and escapades gone by= and dig out some old photos. (We can scan old pri= nts and return them by post).<o:p> </o:p>= I'm planning to write something about electric boats, = possibly about how to convert an existing boat to = electric power. If you have any members who have a= n electric boat or are planning to convert please ask them to get in touch.<o:p> </o:p>-- <o:p> </o:p>Phil Thane<o:p> </o:p>Editor GOBA News<o:p> </o:p></= p>01767 449759<o:p> </o:= p>07582 750607<o:p> = </o:p>editor(a)goba.org.uk <mailto:editor@goba.or= g.uk><o:p> </o:p>= <o:p> </o:p>=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 The Great Ouse= Boating Association, founded over 50 years ago and =C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 still =E2=80=98Navigating the Future' for more than > 300= 0 boaters on The=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 River Great Ous= e and tributaries. <o:p> </o:p>=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 www.goba.org.uk <http://www.goba.org.uk/= > <o:p> </o:p>=C2= =A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 Insignia ordering available online. Change your details onl= ine.<o:p> </o:p>=C2= =A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 GOBA, Hermitage Lock Office, Earith Bridge, <o:p> </o:p>=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 Eari= th, Huntingdon, PE28 3PS<o:p> </o:p>=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 GOBA is a registered society under the C= o-operative and Community=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 Benefi= t Societies Act 2014. <o:p> </o:p>=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 Registered Number 22120R<o:p> </o:p><o:p> </o:p><o:p> </o:p></div><div id=3D"DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1= B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"> <table style=3D"border-top: 1px solid #D3D4DE;"> <tr> <td style=3D"width: 55px; padding-top: 13px;"><a href=3D"http://www= =2Eavg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=3Demail&utm_source=3Dlink&utm_campaig= n=3Dsig-email&utm_content=3Demailclient" target=3D"_blank"><img src=3D"http= s://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-green-avg-v1.png" alt= =3D"" width=3D"46" height=3D"29" style=3D"width: 46px; height: 29px;" /></= a></td> <td style=3D"width: 470px; padding-top: 12px; color: #41424e; font-size: = 13px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Virus-= free. <a href=3D"http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=3Demail&utm_= source=3Dlink&utm_campaign=3Dsig-email&utm_content=3Demailclient" target=3D= "_blank" style=3D"color: #4453ea;">www.avg.com</a> </td> </tr> </table><a href=3D"#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2" width=3D"1" heigh= t=3D"1"> </a></div></body></html>

3 2

Pinebook Pro
by Phil Thane 02 May '20

02 May '20

I promised you a report at some point, so here you go. I ordered a Pinebook Pro as soon the regular user version was available. Pine64 is a very 'open' hardware developer starting with an ARM64 SoC board rather like a Raspberry Pi but more powerful then creating the original Pinebook. The Pro is bigger and more more powerful, but very slim like a Macbook. They are currently developing a PinePhone and PineTime watch. They also have a cluster board and modules and have just begun to shift their own server stuff onto their own ARM64 cluster. All the hardware is released in limited numbers at a prototype stage to keen developers to hack on. Then there's a community edition when the hardware is sorted but the free software community get stuck in to tweak various distros and drivers before finally releasing a polished version to the masses. Mine arrived just after Christmas. Probably the best comparison with other devices would be a Chromebook with a full Linux distro installed. But without the hassle. At the time they were released with an ARM version of Debian. There were a couple of firmware bugs in the first few, a keyboard repeat fault that kkkkkeeeepppptttt repeating letters and a hyper-sensitive touch pad that sent your typing mad if your wrist touched the keypad ever so gently. There was a firmware upgrade issued almost straightaway with very detailed instructions. That omitted one step and sent me into a panic. Sorted though. Debian was OK but a bit dull. Last month Pine64 announced that the Manjaro port that various aficionados had been raving about on the forums was to become the default option on new PinebookPros. And Manjaro released a simple to install version to upgrade existing machines. If you are really keen and want to hack it seems possible to port all manner of OS but I want a laptop to use for all the usual stuff, writing, email, photos... I'm not a hacker. The early port of Manjaro had no installer, one had to use DD to copy an image to the internal EMMC which frankly didn't appeal. The final released version has an install script that works much like any normal distro installer. I chose the KDE version of Manjaro, though once again I failed to get on with Kontact and soon reverted to Thunderbird. When it works Kontact is the closest thing to Outlook (as I remember it from long ago) but it's been a pain ever since they based it around the Akonadi database server. That aside KDE is fine, I've changed the theme a few times and tinkered with the settings, there seems to be an obsession these days with 'Dark Mode' and flat icons nut as ever you can customise it to your heart's content. Manjaro is based on Arch, so my habit of sudo apt... doesn't work and I haven't yet learned the Arch equivalents. There's a good software installer and upgrader though. Software selection is more up to date than Debian, including Gimp 2.10. Both Debian and Manjaro have a problem with 'Sleep' so I suspect it's a firmware thing, there was something on the forum about it a while ago but it went over my head. By trial and error I've figured out that if I have T'bird or Firefox in an active window sleep doesn't work. It seems to, but then wakes up again after a few seconds even if the lid is shut. If you close, or even just minimise the windows then it sleeps like a log. Battery life is pretty good, it usually lasts me a couple of days, but I don't use it much. It was intended to be my connection to the outside world on this year's great boat trip but that's on hold for obvious reasons. All in all I'm pleased with it. It'd be better if there was a UK or even EU supplier, it's $200 US but with delivery and VAT came to £286 here. Still a bargain for a lightweight 14" laptop though. -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

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systemd services which only start on some MAC addresses
by Mark Rogers 29 Apr '20

29 Apr '20

Sorry for the vague subject! What I want to achieve is a single filesystem image (for a Pi) that can be installed on multiple devices (identical SD card contents) but the list of systemd services that runs will depend on the MAC address of the unit. I can think of various ways to do it, I'm after thoughts as to the best way (which probably isn't in my list!). My thoughts: 1. Have all "optional" services disabled but run a script on startup which selectively starts them (ought to be OK but I'm not sure how robust this would be and by starting manually I'd lose some of the benefits of optimised startup and dependency management by systemd) 2. Modify the actual scripts that the services run so that they do all start, but those that shouldn't run exit immediately. (Would work for my own scripts but not for other system services.) 3. Use systemd "ConditionPathExists" or similar; have a unit which starts first and creates temporary files for all optional units that should start, then those units won't start if the temporary file hasn't been created. Downside is that it means hacking unit files for system services but might be more robust than (1)? Note that I want the list of units started per MAC to be a single file (per MAC or combined, I don't mind) - ie I don't want each service to include the list of MACs that it starts for as that would be a maintenance nightmare. Any other suggestions, or comments about my ideas, or other thoughts? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 1st May.
by Viperfang 28 Apr '20

28 Apr '20

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Forum software that also allows E-Mail posting and reading - any recommendations?
by Chris Green 27 Apr '20

27 Apr '20

I used to belong to a very nice boating forum where you could visit the forum on the web but it also functioned as a mailing list. Sadly they moved platform and changed to a forum which didn't support E-Mail. I'm now looking for forum software which does what their old forum did, I want a web forum which also supports posting and reading by E-Mail. I've discovered Discourse which seems to do this but does anyone know of any other possibilities? To be installed on Ubuntu probably, either a real system or, more likely, a virtual server. -- Chris Green

1 0

Samba 4 as a domain controller
by B D 20 Apr '20

20 Apr '20

Hi, Where I work, we have a small disconnected network in which there is almost as many servers as users <rofl>. Some are old MS2008r2 some are newer Server 2016 machines and in the next couple of years they all will be out-of-support. With the imminent decision of what to do with the upgrade and my attempt to introduce Nextcloud to the environment I started testing Samba4 as AD. All seams to be working, if I have access to RSAT installed on a Windows workstation, but it gets more complicated from Ubuntu cli. With the help of some tools I found here and there I can manage the domain but it's is far from pretty (not to mention business continuity - if I was to leave such setup no-one would be able to manage - or maybe that's a good thing? ;) My questions here are: #1 - Has anyone came across Samba4 environment or has personal experiences? #2 - Do you know of any tools that would make it easier to manage Samba4? #3 (this is a lengthy one) How on earth RedHat is building its environment where it manages muiltiple client OSs (purely theoretical question but I could consider moving to CentOS if AD management is simpler). Cheers Bart

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Re: [ALUG] Samba 4 as a domain controller
by B D 20 Apr '20

20 Apr '20

Hi Stuart, Zentyal and Nethserver are options that I do consider but they are so heavily customised I'm concerned about installing Nextcloud & Collabora from other packages. That could lead to other problems after a while. Cheers pon., 20 kwi 2020 o 11:32 Stuart Bailey <Stuart.Bailey(a)ast-uk.com> napisał(a): > > Have you looked at Zentyal? > > ________________________________ > From: main <main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk> on behalf of B D <dzidek23(a)gmail.com> > Sent: 20 April 2020 11:29 > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk>; main(a)lists.plug.org.uk <main(a)lists.plug.org.uk> > Subject: [ALUG] Samba 4 as a domain controller > > Hi, > > Where I work, we have a small disconnected network in which there is > almost as many servers as users <rofl>. Some are old MS2008r2 some are > newer Server 2016 machines and in the next couple of years they all > will be out-of-support. With the imminent decision of what to do with > the upgrade and my attempt to introduce Nextcloud to the environment I > started testing Samba4 as AD. > > All seams to be working, if I have access to RSAT installed on a > Windows workstation, but it gets more complicated from Ubuntu cli. > With the help of some tools I found here and there I can manage the > domain but it's is far from pretty (not to mention business continuity > - if I was to leave such setup no-one would be able to manage - or > maybe that's a good thing? ;) > > My questions here are: > #1 - Has anyone came across Samba4 environment or has personal experiences? > #2 - Do you know of any tools that would make it easier to manage Samba4? > #3 (this is a lengthy one) How on earth RedHat is building its > environment where it manages muiltiple client OSs (purely theoretical > question but I could consider moving to CentOS if AD management is > simpler). > > Cheers > Bart > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.alug.org.uk/ > https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

1 0

DMARC and ALUG
by Mark Rogers 17 Apr '20

17 Apr '20

I've been made aware of some of my messages to this list going into spam because of a failed DMARC check. How should I fix this? Note: I have control over my sending domain's DNS. Should I just remove the DMARC DNS record? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Cheap Linux VPS
by Steve Mynott 16 Apr '20

16 Apr '20

Can anyone recommend a cheap Linux VPS? -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

3 2

Re: [ALUG] Installing Ubuntu dual-boot on an Asus X512FAC laptop
by Mark Rogers 15 Apr '20

15 Apr '20

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 at 18:32, B D <dzidek23(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > I wonder if your "corrupted" drive is a hibernated (locked) ntfs > partition... in windows 10 when you "power down" the OS it hibernates > more that switches off. Try to load hard drive pulled from windows > machine and you are more than likely to find "corrupted"/inaccessible > filesystem. The corrupted partition is where the EFI boot code sits, that is FAT not NTFS. That said I did disable Windows fast boot (or whatever it is called) as I know that doesn't play nicely with dual boot because, as you say, it leaves the main Windows partition locked. > I'm really interested what did you had to do to fix the EFI boot? Wiped the disk and let Ubuntu do its thing. >From what I read, if I now reinstall Windows it'll mess up grub (to be expected) but aside from that (which grub-repair will fix) that will allow dual boot. But I don't have sufficient need for dual-boot that I can be bothered now I have a working Ubuntu install. > For the num lock issues have you tried to update the BIOS to the latest version? Yes, and sadly no option, which seems an odd omission but there you go I have opened a support ticket with ASUS, I'm sure they can tell me if I have missed something.. Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Numlock at boot (grub)
by Mark Rogers 14 Apr '20

14 Apr '20

So now the laptop boots, and I have the boot disk encrypted. But like every good password it includes numbers, and the laptop boots with numlock off. Annoyingly there's no UEFI setting for it. Does anyone know if there's a way to force numlock on before entering the encryption password? Seems like an obvious need but the only answers I have found are to enable it in the BIOS which only works if the option is there. I do have numlockx installed but that only kicks in later in the boot. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Installing Ubuntu dual-boot on an Asus X512FAC laptop
by Mark Rogers 14 Apr '20

14 Apr '20

On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 at 12:57, B D <dzidek23(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Since Windows 10 was introduced it always messed up with Linux boot. > If your wife is happy with Ubuntu, why do you need to keep Windows at > all? I thought that more recently Win10 played more nicely? My concern here is that for whatever reason grub isn't getting a look in. If I go straight from Ubuntu install (inc grub, in theory) to booting Ubuntu (or at least trying to) then surely Windows never gets chance to "break" anything? If so a wipe and clean install of Ubuntu only could well leave me with nothing that boots at all. And I I might struggle to restore Windows at that point (I'd have lost the OEM install partition, and whilst I could reinstall Win10 from USB I'd have lost all the supplied ASUS drivers which may be problematic.) -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

2 2

Lineage OS
by Phil Thane 13 Apr '20

13 Apr '20

Hello LUGS, Am I allowed to ask Android questions? It is a Linux distro, right? Backstory: I bought a WIleyfox Storm mobile several years ago, mostly because it ran Cyanogen out of the box. (My previous phone was a discount job from Orange that I'd rooted and wiped and put Cyanogen on). I was pretty pleased with it right up to when Wileyfox went into administration around the same time Cyanogen closed. Three years ago I tried to put the last Cyanogen version on it, but failed and reverted to stock. It has been getting slow and was full of crap so I decided to install Lineage OS (fork of and follow on to Cyanogen). So it's unlocked and rooted and USB debug enabled, has been for years. As per Lineage install instructions I have Fastboot and ADB on my PC. Put phone into Fastboot mode and flashed a recovery ROM (twrp). Recovery mode works OK. Wiped data and cache partitions. Onto flashing Lineage OS and it seems to go well but ends with a message 'Signature Verification Failed'. Tried it both from ADB via PC and by loading Lineage to SD card and running from there. Same error. Lineage 'support' is via a Reddit forum and lots of people have asked the same question in relation to several different phones. The answers make no sense to me, I guess because the twrp screens vary. Some suggest that twrp cannot verify signed files so the user must verify it manually, but there's no clue how to do that. The Lineage download filename includes 'signed' but there's no sign of a downloadable key. Not to worry, I thought. There's a recovery mode... It boots OK finds my WiFi and accepts a password. The next screen requires my Google login. I used to use a fake ID on the phone 'will.e.ffox' (ie Wileyfox) but the setup won't accept that, it wants the 'email previously used on the device'. As I wiped the device there should be no record so I assume that the recovery rom has a username and pwd all of its own. But what? Advice online is all about recovering lost Google passwords to known accounts. I guess what I really need to know is how do criminals reset stolen phones and get past Google's checks? -- Phil Thane www.pthane.co.uk Tweet @pthane 01767 449759 07582 750607

1 0

Installing Ubuntu dual-boot on an Asus X512FAC laptop
by Mark Rogers 13 Apr '20

13 Apr '20

I'm trying to install Ubuntu on a new Asus laptop and not having much success. Or more precisely I can install it easily enough but cannot access it once installed. I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 Beta because of its new kernel which should give me access to all my hardware, so I'm mindful that might be an issue, but I'm hoping someone has seen something like this before and knows the workaround. Before I started I reduced the Windows partition size down to create space for Ubuntu. From Windows I then reboot to a USB key with Ubuntu on it, I then boot into Ubuntu Live desktop and run the installer. I proceed through the installation without issues and reboot. At which point Windows boots - there's no grub, no option to do anything else. If I go into the BIOS (UEFI laptop settings) I can force it to boot from Ubuntu, but that just gets me a blank screen on boot (no grub, nothing past the Asus boot logo). If I boot back into Ubuntu via the USB stick and install and run boot repair, it gives me no repair option to try (first time I've seen that: the repair button is just missing). Thoughts? The laptop is for my wife and she's used Ubuntu for the last few years with no issues, so I'm reluctant to send her back to Windows even temporarily. I can try 19.10 if anyone thinks that might be the issue, but the fact that even boot repair doesn't give me any options makes me think this is a UEFI/Windows issue not an installer one. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

3 5

ntpd can't resolve server but DNS is working
by Mark Rogers 24 Mar '20

24 Mar '20

I just noticed the time is wrong on my Pi (heavily modified version of Raspbian). syslog shows DNS issues: Mar 22 12:08:00 pi daemon.err ntpd[569]: error resolving pool 1.debian.pool.ntp.org: Temporary failure in name resolution (-3) .. but I can ping 1.debian.pool.ntp.org just fine, /etc/resolv.conf lists 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 so it ought to work. Suggestions? I don't want to reboot or anything until I understand the cause. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

4 14

Opensource remote conferencing
by Steve Mynott 17 Mar '20

17 Mar '20

Hi All, With the current situation it's obvious there will be more remot conferencing and I was wondering what open source solution (GPL/BSD or similar licence) people recommend? Ideally it would allow audio, video, text chat and shared whiteboarding and be cross-platform (Windows, macOS and Linux) and be fairly simple to operate. -- Steve Mynott <steve.mynott(a)gmail.com> cv25519/ECF8B611205B447E091246AF959E3D6197190DD5

3 2

Where does software RAID get configured and started?
by Chris Green 09 Mar '20

09 Mar '20

I have an old WD NAS that I'm trying to resurrect. It's actually mostly working and I can see the web configuration GUI and login to it with ssh. However its RAID setup has got broken somehow. It was configured to use its two 1Tb disk drives in SBOD mode to give what is supposed to look like one 2Tb disk. However something has gone wrong and it would appear that only one of the two disk drives is configured on the RAID array. It's not possible to unRAID it (I hate RAID) so one can't just configure it to have two disks. The web configuration GUI just shows that both drives are OK/good but that the second drive isn't joining the RAID configuration properly. So how is software RAID usually configured and started up? I can't find anything that looks as if it's "start up the RAID software" in any of the init files in /etc. So how's it done? The 'symptom' I see is that /dev/md4 isn't created and mounted, all the rest are OK (i.e. /dev/md0, /dev/md1, /dev/md2 and /dev/md3). -- Chris Green

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th March
by Viperfang 09 Mar '20

09 Mar '20

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 12th March at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

Re: [ALUG] Is there a way to discover what subnet a device is using?
by Chris Green 05 Mar '20

05 Mar '20

On Thu, Mar 05, 2020 at 01:06:47PM +0000, linusoft wrote: > Try netdiscover. It uses arp to find hosts on an interface. > Thanks, looks like it should do the sort of thing I want. -- Chris Green

1 0

Is there a way to discover what subnet a device is using?
by Chris Green 05 Mar '20

05 Mar '20

I have an old WD My Book NAS which has been sitting on the shelf for quite a while (i.e. three or four years). I just wanted to see if the disk drives in it have anything useful on them still so I powered it up and I'm trying to 'see' it. The lights on the front are doing the right sort of thing but I can't get the reset button to do anything. It does have custom software in it so it may be that the reset/power switches don't do what the manual says they should. I have of course tried simply connecting it to my main LAN which has a DHCP server but that hasn't got it working so it seems (if the WD box is working) that it must have a static IP. I've tried guessing what LAN subnet it might be set up for and connecting to my laptop with the same subnet configured statically in the laptop. The hardware interface comes up OK, gigabit duplex, but no actual data connection. I can't try many subnets this way. So is there any tool that I can install on my laptop which will try and get some sort of response from the WD box and help me identify the IP address? -- Chris Green

1 0

2600 meeting at 18:00 on Friday the 6th March.
by Viperfang 03 Mar '20

03 Mar '20

Quick heads up about this months Norwich 2600 meeting, more info at http://www.norwich2600.co.uk

1 0

Thunderbird problem OT?
by Bev Nicolson 06 Feb '20

06 Feb '20

I have googled this but haven't yet found anything that addresses the problem I have. Every so often I'll get emails that are directed to the spam folder. Some will be spam, but some are emails I'd like to know about. The difficulty is, I don't know there are any in the folder unless I look because, unlike other folders, it doesn't show a number for new emails. I've put the addresses into my address book, I've made sure I have subscribed to the folder. Nothing's worked so far. Any ideas? Bev. (Linux Mint 19.01., Thunderbird 68.4.1)

5 15

How to get the MAC address of the 'local' system given the IP address?
by Chris Green 31 Jan '20

31 Jan '20

You'd think this was easy but although I can find the information easily enough I can't find a concise way of doing it. What I want is to get same information for the system I'm logged into as is given by 'arp-scan -lx' for all other systems on the LAN:- root@t470:~# arp-scan -lx 192.168.1.1 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx DrayTek Corp. 192.168.1.3 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Fujitsu Technology Solutions GmbH 192.168.1.4 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Raspberry Pi Foundation 192.168.1.10 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx TP-LINK TECHNOLOGIES CO.,LTD. 192.168.1.20 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx DrayTek Corp. 192.168.1.50 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. 192.168.1.96 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx HUMAX Co., Ltd. 192.168.1.98 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx TP-LINK TECHNOLOGIES CO.,LTD. 192.168.1.111 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx TP-LINK TECHNOLOGIES CO.,LTD. 192.168.1.114 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx MICRO-STAR INT'L CO.,LTD 192.168.1.95 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Sonos, Inc. 192.168.1.104 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Amazon Technologies Inc. I can get IP address of my current LAN connection using 'hostname -i':- chris$ hostname -i 192.168.1.92 ... but I can't find a neat way of getting the corresponding MAC address and company information as for arp-scan. The MAC address can be obtained using ifconfig or ip but it's an exercise in frustration trying to extract the relevant bits:- chris$ ifconfig enp0s31f6: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether c8:5b:76:de:2a:fc txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 device interrupt 16 memory 0xec200000-ec220000 lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host> loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback) RX packets 639 bytes 279749 (279.7 KB) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 639 bytes 279749 (279.7 KB) TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 wlp4s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet 192.168.1.92 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 inet6 fe80::8239:9067:e11:92be prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link> ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 14315 bytes 7281010 (7.2 MB) RX errors 0 dropped 1 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 14719 bytes 1911802 (1.9 MB) TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0 You'd have to first find that the WiFi device wlp4s0 is providing the LAN interface (I want it to work when it's wired with enp0s31f6 when that's in use, can't just hard code wlp4s0) and then go to the 'ether' line to get the MAC address. Even then you don't get the company name. It's possible but hard work and messy, I'd like to find a simple way. -- Chris Green

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