February 2016 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

another little computer: the kangaroo
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 07 May '16

07 May '16

I bought one of these little computers: <http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msca/en_CA/pdp/InFocus-Kangaroo-Signatu…> If you are a student you an get 10% off of the $149. I bought mine at newegg for $130 but the price changes regularly. I'm typing this from a live Fedora stick on this processor. The screen is 3840x2160@30 -- the best mode for this display and pretty good for an Atom. The CPU is an Intel Atom x5-z8500. I don't really understand the naming scheme. Scott pointed out that the Intel specs for this processor don't mention the VT-I feature. That scared me. <http://ark.intel.com/products/85474/Intel-Atom-x5-Z8500-Processor-2M-Cache-…> Here are the flags from /proc/cpuinfo: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes rdrand lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch ida arat epb dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid tsc_adjust smep erm As I understand it, vmx means it supports VT-I. Some of the other flags have to do with virtualization too. BTW, note that it supports AES-NI, something that the Haswell Celeron and Pentium don't do. Although this doesn't have ethernet, it has a single USB 3.0 port. I've used a USB 3.0 hub to connect a gigabit ethernet dongle and the Fedora live stick.

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distro support for 32-bit UEFI
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 12 Apr '16

12 Apr '16

I have a couple of devices with 64-bit Atom CPUs, built to be cheap Windows devices, that have 32-bit UEFI firmware. With no old-fashioned BIOS or emulation thereof. This seems to be intentional crippling by Intel: they only provide power management firmware in 32-bit mode. The devices I have are an Asus TF100 "convertible" (tablet with detachable keyboard) and a Dell Venue 8 Pro. The Intel / Microsoft idea seemed to be: build very inexpensive devices to compete with ARM / Android. But be careful to limit the damage to the market for full-fledged Windows systems. It worked to some extent. The Hugh idea was: cheap computers that should run Linux! Close, but no cigar yet. What I want is a 64-bit distro that can boot from 32-bit UEFI. That could be managed but it doesn't seem to be available now. (The 64-bit Linux kernel knows how to call 32-bit UEFI functions. This feature is not always enabled.) Almost as good would be a 32-bit distro that can boot from UEFI. After all, these cheap boxes are limited to 2G of RAM anyway (crippled: see above). Scott informed me that 32-bit Debian Jessie (8.0) does support UEFI. Wonderful! But I'm chicken: there is no 32-bit UEFI live image and I don't want to install without trying. After all, there may well be unsupported bits on these screwy devices. (Sadly Linux distros seem to be weak on touch, one of the strengths of these little devices.) These cheap devices come with very little "disk". Mine each have 32G; some have 16G; a few have more. That's not really enough space for both Linux and Windows. I have a netbook built in the same style, but with 64-bit UEFI. I've found 32G quite reasonable for Fedora Linux. <https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI> Another bit of news from Scott: the next generation of Atoms, or at least some of them, drop support for virtualization! What jerks.

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Doing a 30min Talk at 8th March GTALUG Meeting
by Myles Braithwaite 29 Feb '16

29 Feb '16

If anyone is interested in doing a 30 minute talk at the next GTALUG meeting (8th March) get in touch with me @ me(a)mylesbraithwaite.com.

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looking for an inexpensive vps
by Dave Cramer 28 Feb '16

28 Feb '16

OVH has approx. $10/mth virtual servers. But it doesn't look like you get root access ? This is the price range I am looking at. Is there anything else out there ? I'd like to run debian and be able to install my own packages. Dave Cramer

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Upcoming Linux Conference in Toronto
by Christopher Browne 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-america This is upcoming, August 22-24, at the very south tip of Yonge Street, at Westin Harbour Castle. There's a call for papers on through April 26th. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

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Job Posting: Innovator in Residence, TPL - Mobile App Development
by Giles Orr 22 Feb '16

22 Feb '16

Toronto Public Library is looking for a Mobile App Developer for their Innovator In Residence program: this is as much a teaching position as anything. It's also part time and temporary: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/content/about-the-library/pdfs/jobs/2016… -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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warning: Mint website served malware-infected .iso files (and more)
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 22 Feb '16

22 Feb '16

<http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/linux-mint-hit-by-malware-infection…>

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VPN Recommendations?
by phiscock＠ee.ryerson.ca 21 Feb '16

21 Feb '16

I've been using Hola to create a VPN, and then a friend pointed out this: http://lifehacker.com/hola-better-internet-sells-your-bandwidth-turning-its… so maybe Hola isn't such a good idea. Any recommendations from this group? Maybe OpenVPN? Thanks - Peter -- Peter Hiscocks Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto http://www.syscompdesign.com USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator 647-839-0325

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Getting debian "dwww" to work on Ubuntu Studio
by sciguy 21 Feb '16

21 Feb '16

I have Ubuntu Studio on which Debian "dwww" is installed. I needed to fix some directories by adding symbolic links to get everything to work. But for now, if I click on a command to see its manpage or documentation, I am asked to download the gzipped file. It is not uncompressing and converting to html. I imagine it should do something if it is appending ?type=man to all of the links. But I don't see a script to run the CGI query. There are none in the dwww directory, nor under dwww/cgi-bin (to non-Debian users, that's http://hostname/dwww) There was never a cgi-bin directory at any rate. I actually had to create one so the links to the manpages wouldn't break, but there are no scripts in there unless I wrote it, and I didn't write any. What is this script supposed to be called? There are no clues in the HTML. Can I download it from somewhere? pkingman

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Fedora Partitioning
by Howard Gibson 21 Feb '16

21 Feb '16

Updating my desktop to Fedora_23 continues to be a challenge. I figured out how to connect to the network. Now, it insists on a /boot partition separate from /home. This appears to be a new feature. I am trying to upgrade, rather than re-install everything. I don't recall how I managed to do this, but my root partition is /dev/sda1. My other partitions are contained in the extended partition /dev/sda2. Does anybody know how I can use the Fedora installer to split /dev/sda1 into two partitions /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda6?. I tried deleting /, and creating the two new partitions, and it did not work. Alternately, is there a way to use my root partition for booting? I have looked at my partition table using fdisk. It looks like I can delete /dev/sda1 and create the two new partitions sda1 and sda6. Definitely, this destroys my current setup, and my new install had damn well better work. Partitions sda1 and sda6 will be next to each other, followed by sda2. Has anybody done this safely? I have a Ubuntu DVD here. When I "Try Ubuntu", I was able to make it claim that my network was connected, but I was unable to ping the machine, or connect the browser to http://www.google.com. Is this how Ubuntu behaves in demo mode? The Ubuntu installer seems to over-write boot. If I play with it, I am forced to re-install something. Fedora_20 was a dead cinch to install. How did everything get so complicated? -- Howard Gibson hgibson(a)eol.ca howard.gibson(a)teledyneoptech.com jhowardgibson(a)gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson

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