April 2022 - 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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From Slackware to which distro?
by William Park 15 Jun '22

15 Jun '22

Hi All, I've been running Slackware since forever. It's time to grow up and see the world. Which distro would you recommend that I move to? Yes, I know it's personal, and reasons will be varied and educational. - Ubuntu -- OK. I use it at work in VM and in WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). For me, Mint is another flavour, just like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc. - Oracle -- I use it at work too. Was CentOS, but switched to Oracle because they said delivering end-of-life OS is bad marketing. - Fedora -- OK. Doesn't seem to have its equivalent in Ubuntu side. - OpenSUSE -- Difficult to pin down. It uses RPM but in their own way. It has rolling release (Tumbleweed) and versioned release (Leap). - Arch -- no. I don't need/want to learn what they are trying to teach. I run Slackware, so I already know all that. Thanks for any feedback. William

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Back to basics: upgrading from Windows to Linux
by Evan Leibovitch 12 May '22

12 May '22

Hi all. This topic is one I hope will be on many peoples' minds as they encounter frustration (and in some cases a dead end) moving their Windows 10 systems to Windows 11. This may soon become the source of a multi-stakeholder public campaign, but that's just in the planning stages. Now for the personal angle. Some ago I installed Windows on a desktop I use a lot. It replaced Linux because that was incapable of running the one game I like playing. I even gave a talk to GTALUG about that move, about Windows Subsystem for Linux and the things I thought were better about the Windows desktop. Turns out I was wrong. So very, very wrong. And now I can't wait to go back to my Linux desktop, especially since there's a recent LTS release of Kubuntu, my traditional distro of choice. Plus, according to ProtonDB, my game might just run well natively on Linux <https://www.protondb.com/app/255710>! But it's been a long time since I've done this so I have some remedial questions to ask from this group's wisdom ... to help me change from a Windows install to a dual boot, priority Kubuntu: 1. My motherboard takes a single M.2 SSD for my one and only drive. I have a larger M.2 card that I'd like to replace it with, cloning my existing setup to the new drive (in a temporary USB enclosure) then installing and shrinking the Windows partition in anticipation of the Linux dual-boot install. Can anyone recommend a good tool for doing the disk clone? Or am I better off to just fresh-install Windows on the new drive, and restore my data from the old one? 2. I want to have one partition for data that is visible regardless if I boot Linux or Windows. Previously the most reliable filesystem readable by bothwas FAT32. Should I still do that? Is Linux support for NTFS good enough now? Even better, can Windows be taught to read ext4? 3. I've never used snap or flatpack before. Others have told me to install as much native (ie, .deb packages) as possible, use flatpack when it's the only option and uninstall snap. Any comments or caveats here? And why did app installation sources become needlessly complex? Thanks for any advice. - Evan

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Ethernet alias triggering network security warnings
by Kevin Cozens 28 Apr '22

28 Apr '22

Greetings, all. I am using an embedded system that is running a version of an Ubuntu distro. The embedded system is being set up so that the physical Ethernet port will have two aliases. One is eth0:0 and the other is eth0:1. eth0:0 is set to get an IP address via DHCP when a network cable is plugged in (assuming a DHCP server is available). The eth0:1 is set to have a static IP address. This allows an installer to connect a laptop to the system and do some onsite configuration (setting WiFi parameters). The network settings I'm using are: auto eth0:0 iface eth0:0 inet static address 192.168.100.110 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.100.1 auto eth0:1 allow-hotplug eth0:1 iface eth0:1 inet dhcp This was working at one point but lately a Windows machine on the network will start complaining either about possible ARP poisoning or it will say there is a duplicate IP address. The program on the Windows box reporting the problem is esset Internet Security. I know nothing about the program. It is on the machine of the person preparing boxes to be sent out in to the field. When I check the system that seems to have triggered the duplicate IP address warning I see no duplication. I have checked all the MAC addresses, inet v4 and inet v6 IP addresses listed by the ifconfig program. Does anyone on this list know anything about that security program or why the person setting up the embedded systems would be seeing the duplicate IP warnings? -- Cheers! Kevin. http://www.ve3syb.ca/ | "Nerds make the shiny things that https://www.patreon.com/KevinCozens | distract the mouth-breathers, and | that's why we're powerful" Owner of Elecraft K2 #2172 | #include <disclaimer/favourite> | --Chris Hardwick

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U of T alumni mail + Thunderbird
by William Park 24 Apr '22

24 Apr '22

To those with @alumni.utoronto.ca email account, I have an old UofT account, and I'm trying to set it up in Thunderbird. (1) Getting Email: I can download via IMAP. But can't via POP3. Is it same experience for other people? (2) Sending Email: I can't send email via their SMTP server. Thunderbird asks for password which errors out.

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Google Gsuite Legacy domain replacement
by Andrew Heagle 19 Apr '22

19 Apr '22

Hello, I have one of those Google gsuite legacy domains that I use for personal use/family. I signed up in 2009. I figured that at some point I'd have to start paying for it and the time has come. But the pricing they are asking for is a bit high for use. $7.80 (Plus tax I assume) per user per month, or $420/yr. This is a bit pricey for a family of 4, 2 of which are kids and don't really even use it much, just a vanity thing. I thought they might ask around $10/mth for the domain for 5 users or something like that for personal/family with business apps removed, etc.. but no. So anyway, I am just wondering if anyone else is in the same boat and what plans you have? Or does anyone have recommendations for other services? Mostly just interested in email and calendar which can also use my own domain name. Andrew

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[GTALUG-Announce] April Meeting
by Alan Heighway 11 Apr '22

11 Apr '22

Open Source Program Officer <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2022-04/> with Evan Leibovitch <https://gtalug.org/> 12 April, 2022 at 07:30 PM More companies are creating an Open Source Program Officer. Why create this position? What is it and what do they do? The answer to these quesitons and more. We're going to use Big Blue Button for this meeting: *Time:* April 12, 2022 07:30 PM Eastern Time *Join Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing] --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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OT: NYT article "How To Construct a Chip Factory
by Ivan Avery Frey 09 Apr '22

09 Apr '22

The Huge Endeavor to Produce a Tiny Microchip https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/technology/intel-chip-shortage.html?unlo…

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Gmail + Thunderbird
by William Park 06 Apr '22

06 Apr '22

For a while, I couldn't send out through SMTP@Gmail using Thunderbird. POP@Gmail was okay though. It turns out Gmail switched to "app password" like Yahoo did. Once you generate "app password" (2-factor needs to be ON), you have to use it for both POP and SMTP. Web login is the same as before. --

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