August 2021 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

war story: power failure makes CentOS system unbootable
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 30 Sep '22

30 Sep '22

tl;dr / spoiler: change fstab so that /boot/efi is not automatically mounted. See the recommendation at the end of this message. My gateway computer is a little PC running CentOS. It does not come back after a power failure. The reason (as best I can tell) is interesting and I think that I have a fix. My system is UEFI. It boots from a UEFI system partition, known as /boot/efi to Linux. If this gets corrupted, it won't boot. It is a VFAT partition. On my gateway (a Zotac Zbox RI321, a cute little box with two ethernet ports), the UEFI firmware apparently won't boot if the dirty bit is set in the system partition. CentOS normally runs with /boot/efi mounted. So when the system isn't shut down cleanly, the dirty bit will be on. Consequence: the system is not going to boot after a power failure. Odd observation 1: if I put a live Fedora 25 USB stick in the system and try to boot in this otherwise-unbootable state, CentOS boots from the main disk. So this really looks like a firmware bug/quirk. Odd observation 2: fsck doesn't seem to automatically fix the system partition. Once CentOS 7 booted, I dismounted /boot/efi and did an fsck on it. $ sudo fsck /dev/sda1 fsck from util-linux 2.23.2 fsck.fat 3.0.20 (12 Jun 2013) 0x25: Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt. 1) Remove dirty bit 2) No action ? 1 Leaving filesystem unchanged. /dev/sda1: 16 files, 2420/51145 clusters Googling got me to <https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=50917> In particular, this advice seemed quite good: ==== recommendation ==== Two other changes I recommend for UEFI systems, to each OS's /etc/fstab. - For the /boot/efi mountpoint, add the mount options x-systemd.automount,noauto - Change fs_passno (last column) to a 1 or 2; the canonical fstab instructions suggest 2, but systemd treats 1 and 2 as the same. The first change means the EFI System partition will not be automatically read-write mounted at boot time; it's a bad idea this is the default because it puts the ESP at risk especially if ther are crashes, FAT has no journal and will therefore always be marked dirty in such a case; no other UEFI OS mounts the ESP by default. Second, if anything tries to access /boot/efi (read or write), systemd will automatically mount it, and because of the fs_passno 1 or 2, it will fsck it first and that fixes and clears the dirty bit in case it's set. Right now without these changes, it's just a matter of having the right number and bad timing of crashes to render the EFI System partition corrupt.

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Red Hat is hiring -- a lot
by Evan Leibovitch 03 Sep '21

03 Sep '21

I do not work for Red Hat but I know a number of friends who do. One of them has indicated to me that the company is aggressively hiring. I believe there are more than 40 positions open for implementation consulting, most of which can be done by remote working. Their Toronto office is at 40 Eglinton E. Certifications (RHCA, RHCE, LPIC-1 and LPIC-2) will help. https://www.redhat.com/en/jobs Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Win 11 requirements may be windfall for cheapskate Linux users
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 31 Aug '21

31 Aug '21

Win 11 has requirements that seem to obsolete a bunch of quite recent processors and devices. Windows can be manually updated on these machines but they will feel obsolete. - TPM 2.0 required. Documented a lot of places. It can be added to many systems that don't have it. - obsolete: Ryzen 1 and older AMD - obsolete: most Intel Core 7th gen and all older - obsolete: any device that has no DCH driver (these can include things on the motherboard) - unknown: Atom-based processor (like I'm typing this on). All these will still work fine with Linux. I don't think any of my systems will qualify for Win 11. <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/loosened-windows-11-requirements-co…> <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/why-windows-11-has-such-strict-hard…>

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Re: [GTALUG] 30 years today
by D. Joe 25 Aug '21

25 Aug '21

On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 07:54:30PM +0000, D. Joe via talk wrote: > > Thought it might be appropriate to mark the moment: > > Linux is 30 years old today according to the common reckoning dating it back to the comp.os.minix announcement. Sorry, that was sloppy of me, forgetting to strip the In-reply-to: as was my original intention. Anyway, here we are, out from under the previous thread.

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Re: [GTALUG] intel graphics announcement
by o1bigtenor 25 Aug '21

25 Aug '21

Greetings Found an announcement from INtel that they are getting back, I think, into graphics cards - - - in a big way. Did some searching - - - - all I can find is 'purdy pitchers' and swag for sale. Is this some more fud or is intel serious? Anyone out there know - - - if so I'm guessing it will be 24 months before anything useful shows up - - -yes? Please advise

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Index Exchanging is adding some entry-level positions
by David Collier-Brown 24 Aug '21

24 Aug '21

We have two new positions in our Network Operation Centre, as folks move up to line engineering. They're posted at https://www.indexexchange.com/careers/# and search for NOC. Right now, we're 100% remote, but some day we'll be back in our offices near King and Spadina. I usually say we're a payments processor in the on-line advertising business. If you have an ad-supported web site (like the Globe and Mail) we post your page to advertisers, hold an auction to find the highest bidder, and get you paid for it. Think micropayments: hundredths of a cent at a time, done in milliseconds. --dave -- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb(a)spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting Tomorrow
by hi＠gtalug.org 12 Aug '21

12 Aug '21

https://gtalug.org/meeting/2021-08/ The Linux 3D graphics stack with Alyssa Rosenzweig GPUs and spinning cubes - what could go wrong? In this talk, we'll learn how 3D graphics works on Linux, from an OpenGL or Vulkan application down to the hardware, detouring through the dizzying world of shader compilers. Lightning talks This is GTALUG's version of an un-conference, a loosely structured short talks emphasizing the informal exchange of information and ideas between participants, rather than following a conventionally structured GTALUG meetings. If you already have a topic in mind please send an email to speakers(a)gtalug.org to be added to the list of scheduled talks. Location We're going to use Zoom for this meeting Time: Mar 9, 2021 07:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82282849562?pwd=SVhTbFpSZnNldEdQNllkM2w2YzNoQT09 Meeting ID: 822 8284 9562 Passcode: 338328 One tap mobile +16475580588,,82282849562#,,,,*338328# Canada +17789072071,,82282849562#,,,,*338328# Canada Dial by your location * +1 647 558 0588 Canada * +1 778 907 2071 Canada * +1 204 272 7920 Canada * +1 438 809 7799 Canada * +1 587 328 1099 Canada * +1 647 374 4685 Canada Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kektZkjYKb Schedule * 7:30 pm - Meeting and presentation. 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 jeopardise 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 honoured 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: https://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 https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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war story: horrible colours on Seiki TV under Fedora 34
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 10 Aug '21

10 Aug '21

I updated to Fedora 34 on my desktop a month or two ago. Afterwards, everything on the screen had a horrible yellow cast. I couldn't get much help because I use the nvidia video drivers. Nouveau always goes sideways when I try it on this system, even though the card is old enough to be well supported -- GeForce 650. I fiddled about everywhere, half-heartedly, and just lived with it. - perhaps the in-place upgrade from F33 to F34 was botched. I installed F34 from scratch and had the same problem. So: no. - perhaps new Nvidia driver had a bug - perhaps chroma subsampling was botched (monitor supportss 4:2:2 at UltraHD resolution) - ??? Clue 1: when I moved the HDMI cable from the Seiki to a Dell, without taking the machine down, the Dell display looked yellow too. Clue 2: if I rebooted while connected to the Dell, the display looked fine. I did not try movine the HDMI cable to the Seiki after booting with the Dell. The Dell is a higher-bandwidth monitor and it's settings would not work with the Seiki. In the end, I discovered that the mysterious colour management system has a bad colour profile for my monitor. (It turns out that before F34 there was no colour profile for my monitor.) Under settings: Color, I selected the monitor and clicked right-pointing caret. Could see a profile called SE39UY04, which should be right for my Seiki SE39UY04. But it isn't. Added a profile, picking semi-randomly the Dell 2405FPW. It worked a lot better. I don't have the tools or the time to calibrate my monitor. The SE39UY04 was created by HP on 2018 Dec 20. I wonder why -- they have nothing to do with Seiki. This seems to be managed by colord, the color daemon. It seems poorly documented, at least in man pages. Profiles seem to live in two sqlite databases in /var/lib/colord. The following test shows both databases have entries for this monitor. grep -i SE39UY04 /var/lib/colord/*.db The same command on an old F33 installation shows no hits. So my problem boils down to the color management system learning about my monitor, but getting it all wrong. See <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1991561>

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'Unable to connect' to https://www.mixingmusiclive.com/
by Chris Aitken 10 Aug '21

10 Aug '21

Hi, Firefox suddenly can't load anything at https://www.mixingmusiclive.com/ I don't have a firewall - no that I know of. Searching on Internet for things to try, but as usual hitting problems like advice is to hit Alt, then Tools, then Options, and, of course there is no Options. I have checked with the web admin and she says everything is good at her end. Ideas? Chris

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