August 2015 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Pre-Meeting September 2015 Dinner [was GTALUG Meeting on 8th September, 2015 at 7:30pm]
by Myles Braithwaite 19 Aug '15

19 Aug '15

Myles Braithwaite wrote: > * 6:00 pm - Vote for where we should dine before the meeting here: > <http://survey.gtalug.org/index.php/437662>. Vote here for where we should go for the pre-meeting dinner: <http://survey.gtalug.org/index.php/437662>.

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Poweredger server question
by o1bigtenor 19 Aug '15

19 Aug '15

Greetings Managed to buy a Dell poweredge 2950II server. What an odyssey to set up the bios!!! I have 2 drives I got with the machine - - - they were part of a Raid 5 array. Now there are only 2 drives (will never by a raid 5 array by definition) and I need some way of formatting them so that I can turn them into a Raid 1 array. (Its all hardware raid on this box.) Anyone with any idea on how to do that to scsi drives when the controller won't let me change their settings and I have no other pox to put them in. (Connector is a wee bit different than for SATA!) Dee

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[GTALUG-Announce] GTALUG Meeting on 8th September, 2015 at 7:30pm
by Myles Braithwaite 18 Aug '15

18 Aug '15

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2015-09/> # Samba Progress Over the Last Six Years with William Murrithy The talk is a continuation of William's previous talk on Samba in 2009. It looks at how close samba has closed the gap between AD and samba with samba 4, what's still left, packaging/deployment improvements and a demo of the samba deployment and and management. ## Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Room 203 Ryerson University <http://goo.gl/maps/16oJ2> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23447525> ## Schedule * 6:00 pm - Vote for where we should dine before the meeting here: <http://survey.gtalug.org/index.php/437662>. * 7:30 pm - Meeting and presentation. * 9:00 pm - After each meeting a group of GTALUGers move to the The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socializing. # Code of Conduct We want a productive happy community that can welcome new ideas, improve every process every year, and foster collaboration between individuals with differing needs, interests and skills. We gain strength from diversity, and actively seek participation from those who enhance it. This code of conduct exists to ensure that diverse groups collaborate to mutual advantage and enjoyment. We will challenge prejudice that could jeopardize the participation of any person in the community. The Code of Conduct governs how we behave in public or in private whenever the Linux community will be judged by our actions. We expect it to be honored by everyone who represents the community officially or informally, claims affiliation, or participates directly. It applies to activities online or offline. We invite anybody to participate. Our community is open. Please read more about the GTALUG Code of Conduct here: <http://gtalug.org/about/code-of-conduct/>. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the GTALUG Code of Conduct please contact the GTALUG Board @ <board(a)gtalug.org>. --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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hardware inventory -- what's in my machine?
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 18 Aug '15

18 Aug '15

Sometimes I don't remember what's in each of my machines. Here's what I use to figure this out: - taking the machine apart (often inconvenient) - dmesg(8) shows the kernel log. If nothing has flooded the log it will still have the messages from the booting. You can see entries from the kernel's discovery of most resources. Downside: it is long and arcane. Upside: you might find some surprises (eg. warnings). - dmidecode(8) "DMI table decoder". The output is a little arcane but useful. The man page says that it can be unreliable. - (new to me) lshw(1) "list hardware". The output seems easier to read that dmidecode's. It uses a variety of sources. It can output in a bunch of formats (but I've ignored that). - /proc/cpuinfo will tell you about the CPU. Apparently lscpu(1) shows pretty much the same thing (I've never noticed it before). - /proc/meminfo will tell you how much RAM you have (MemTotal is roughly the physical RAM, after some overhead has been removed). - /var/log/Xorg.0.log: shows what devices and capabilities X has found. Hard to read but sometimes it's what you need. - lsusb(8): list USB devices (including hubs). - lspci(8): list PCI devices and buses - sdparm(8)/hdparm(8): show (or set!) parameters of disk drive. hdparm seems to be mostly obsolete. This will tell you stuff: sudo sdparm -i /dev/sda - smartctl(8) "SMART Monitoring Tools". SMART == Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. This is about disk drive issues. This command will pour out a lot of information: sudo smartctl -x /dev/sda

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Ubuntu (or debian): apt-get auto-remove?
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 17 Aug '15

17 Aug '15

After my update from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04, apt-get tells me that there are a lot of packages that apt-get auto-remove could remove. Is that safe? What is the underlying idea? I think that it removes things that were added due to dependencies where those dependencies no longer exist. In the back of my mind, I worry that sometimes dependencies might be things that I wanted independently of why they were installed, but I'm not sure of that. Do people fine apt-get auto-remove works great or do you find that it throws a few babies out with the bathwater?

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Fwd: PyCon Canada November 7-8
by Bob Jonkman 17 Aug '15

17 Aug '15

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 For those of you who are interested in Python (the programming language). Albert O'Connor is the organizer of the Waterloo Region Python Users Group, previous PyCons, and the Government Open Data conferences. - --Bob. - -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Albert O'Connor <amjoconn(a)gmail.com> Sender: WatPyMeetup-announce(a)meetup.com Subject: [WatPyMeetup] PyCon Canada November 7-8 Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2015 11:14:12 -0400 PyCon Canada is coming back this year and will be held at the University of Toronto on November 7-8, 2015. The Call for Speakers is accepting submissions until yesterday*. We are accepting lightning talks (5-10min), regular talks (25-30) and tutorial sessions. * My bad for not posting this until today! If you have a submission ready to go I would try to send in this weekend, they might accept it depending on how many submissions they have had. They will be releasing more details as the date nears, so people can stay in touch via Twitter and Facebook (@pyconca <https://twitter.com/pyconca>ethttps://www.facebook.com/pyconca <https://www.facebook.com/pyconca>) , and sign up for their mailing list at https://2015.pycon.ca/. - - Albert on behalf of the PyCon Canada Organizers. - -- This message was sent by Meetup on behalf of Albert O'Connor <http://www.meetup.com/WatPyMeetup/members/34695742/> from WatPy <http://www.meetup.com/WatPyMeetup/>. To report this message or block the sender, please click here <http://www.meetup.com/WatPyMeetup/abuse/34695742/?table_name=ml&table_id=77…> To unsubscribe from special announcements from your Organizer(s), click here <http://www.meetup.com/WatPyMeetup/optout/?submit=true&_ms_unsub=true&email=…> Meetup, POB 4668 #37895 NY NY USA 10163 <#> | support(a)meetup.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Ensure confidentiality, authenticity, non-repudiability iEYEARECAAYFAlXRLEUACgkQuRKJsNLM5epBxQCgulY2PSRk4ATxVEri87INv2WS NWYAnRz7lNRuZnfQVTjGl8Kxjw2+s5lr =NGfC -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Ubuntu update gone bad
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 16 Aug '15

16 Aug '15

I'm writing this at the point of annoyance. Maybe I'll find a fix in a minute or two. I took an Acer Revo out of service as an HTPC. It was dual boot Win 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I applied all Win 7 updates. Fine. Stupid, but fine. I applied all Ubuntu 12.04 updates. Fine. Not even stupid. It offered me Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I said to go ahead. I almost never do version upgrades, out of fear, but I didn't have much to lose. And everyone always says Ubuntu version upgrades are smooth as silk. Negative observation one: version upgrades take more real time than re-installations. (But they should take less of my attention and care, a win.) Negative observation two: I thought that the slow upgrade process could happen while I was asleep. Yes, but not in one night: there were three steps in the middle that required me to answer a question. It would have been better if the questions had been moved to the beginning or the end. Fedora does that. Negative observation three: It all appeared to work. The updater disappeared from the screen (a little odd). top(1) showed no remnant. So I rebooted. Now I have the prompt: grub rescue> which means I have nothing, not even Win7. I don't think that I can type anything useful into that prompt. Obviously the third is the lulu. The fact that I am using LTS should indicate my risk aversion. I will fix this but I will remember.

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Mycroft an Open Source AI [was privacy [was Alternative to KOrganizer (KDE) ?]]
by Myles Braithwaite 14 Aug '15

14 Aug '15

D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote: > Many, but not all, of these leaks come with advantages to the user. > For example, Cortana, Siri, and Google Now(?) may be fun but they are > always listening to you and sending something home. Google (and > other) search have to send the queries upstream. Has anyone checked out/backed Mycroft on Kickstarter <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-an-open-source-a…> as an open replacement for speech driven AI (i.a. Siri, Cortana, Google Now) that easily hackable?

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Dell Latitude E6400 -- free
by William Park 14 Aug '15

14 Aug '15

I bought a $40 Dell Latitude E6400 without harddisk: - Core 2 Duo P8400, 2GB DDR2-800, 1280x800 screen - DVD-RW, battery, 130W power adapter - SATA interface for disk - keyboard is better than ThinkPad T43. A little heavier going down, but return is very crisp. This was main reason for buying it. I added SSD, and installed Windows-10 to see if all components are working. And, they were. Then, I decided to upgrade its old BIOS (from A14 to A34). Windows gave me error, and told me to reboot. Well, now, the laptop won't boot! So, it's free for anyone needing parts. I can bring it to next TLUG meeting. -- William

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Locking KDE 5 screen from shell script
by Randy Jonasz 13 Aug '15

13 Aug '15

I recently installed kde5 on debian stretch. I have a yubikey which I use to log in with. I'd like to lock the screen when I remove the yubikey. I have it working with cinnamon and lxde but I can't quite get it with kde. I can lock the screen if I run the shell script from a terminal as root but when I remove the yubikey the shell script returns error code 1. Here's my shell scripts: ykgone.sh Konsole output #! /bin/sh if [ -z "$(lsusb | grep Yubikey)" ] ; then if [ ! -z "$(ps aux | grep cinnamon-session | grep -v grep)" ] ; then /bin/su rjonasz -c "DISPLAY=:0 cinnamon-screensaver-command -l" elif [ ! -z "$(ps aux | grep startkde | grep -v grep)" ] ; then /usr/bin/sudo -u rjonasz -H -i /usr/local/bin/lockkde.sh else /bin/su rjonasz -c "DISPLAY=:0 xscreensaver-command --lock" fi fi lockkde.sh Konsole output #! /bin/sh kde_pid=`pidof kdeinit5` export `cat /proc/$kde_pid/environ|grep -ao 'DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=[[:graph:]]*'` /usr/bin/qdbus org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver Lock I can't seem to figure this one out. Thanks for any help! Randy -- Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.' Immanuel Kant

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