August 2022 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Linux on Chromebook
by Michael Galea 13 Nov '22

13 Nov '22

I am hoping to tap the wisdom of the list. I'm going traveling and I don't want to lug around my 5.2 pound T420. Not on this trip. If I buy a cheap refurb Chromebook from Best Buy or Canada Computers: - Will I have luck wiping ChromeOS and installing Debian? Can I still encrypt the disk? - If instead I just run Linux on Chromebook, can I run a wireguard VPN? - Can anyone recommend a minimum spec level for the machine? -- Thanks, Michael Galea

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GPG key signing
by Stef Dunlap 13 Nov '22

13 Nov '22

Hello! This is my first post to this mailing list. :) With the pandemic, what have folks been doing for key signing? Have folks tried doing it remotely, are people meeting 1:1, or are folks just not getting their keys signed? Thanks, Stef D (she/her)

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war story: power failure makes CentOS system unbootable
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 29 Sep '22

29 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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tpl Linux training?
by Karen Lewellen 02 Sep '22

02 Sep '22

Hi everyone, Recall a few here have been involved with this program. May I ask what distribution of Linux was taught, and if the program returned post pandemic? Thanks, karen

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Talk about sailboats...
by Colin McGregor 23 Aug '22

23 Aug '22

I'm getting ready to do a talk about Linux, open source software and sailboats. Are there any specific things folks would like me to address in the talk? Colin McGregor

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Ubuntu Studio ver 22.04 Desktop (KDE) does not seem to allow for images spanning multiple screens
by sciguy 22 Aug '22

22 Aug '22

Hi For the record I am using Ubuntu Studio 22.04 with a KDE desktop (Plasma version 3.0). Unless I am missing something major, I don't see a way that KDE Plasma allows for expansion of a desktop graphic across two screens. Graphic dimensions I have in mind are something like: 3840 x 1080. When I load the graphic for the desktop in the settings, I just get the graphic on one screen. If I select the jpg from the file manager (Dolphin) to set as wallpaper, I get duplicate graphics on each monitor, rather than the same graphic spanning both monitors, which is what I want. If anyone can be of help I would appreciate it. Paul

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"Accessibility in Fedora Workstation"
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 10 Aug '22

10 Aug '22

An article in Fedora Magazine talks about increased efforts to make the Fedora distribution more accessible. <https://fedoramagazine.org/accessibility-in-fedora-workstation/> This seems like a Good Thing. Karen Lewellen has been navigating these problems and posted some software problems here. It would be good to have more attention to these problems. Karen: Do you have any reactions to this article for us? Are there easy improvements that could be made?

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Info on post doc scholarship programs
by Warren McPherson 08 Aug '22

08 Aug '22

I know someone from the Philippines who has the chance to take a year to pursue a one year post doc scholarship program likely relating to artificial intelligence. Does anybody have ideas about good places to inquire?

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Reminder: General Meeting
by Alan Heighway 08 Aug '22

08 Aug '22

FireSide Chat! <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2022-08/> with You <https://gtalug.org/> 09 August, 2022 at 07:30 PM Bring your questions, your answers, and your stories to share with your fellow GTALUG members. We're going to use Big Blue Button for this meeting: *Time:* August 09, 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]

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scanner under Windows under Linux?
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 04 Aug '22

04 Aug '22

This message is also a test of the list. CZUR makes interesting page scanners: <https://shop.czur.com/> We actually have a couple. Until recently, all of their scanners' software only runs under Windows. The latest one has support for Linux but is very expensive. Can I easily run Window under Linux in a way that would drive these scanners? I think that the Windows system would need control of the USB port to which the scanner is connected. I seem to remember that long ago Sun/Oracle Virtual Box was the only VM that gave decent USB access to a virtual Windows. I don't know the state of the art now. Answering some of my questions (but not USB): <https://www.windowscentral.com/how-setup-windows-10-virtual-machine-linux> <https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-windows-10-in-a-vm-on-a…>

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