February 2023 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

[GTALUG-Announce] Membership Dues
by Warren McPherson 13 Nov '23

13 Nov '23

With the agm coming up, now is a great time to renew membership and make a small twenty dollar contribution to the organization. For those looking forward to the chance to wind their way through the Interac E-Transfer process again here is my summary of how it works. (Actually I forget each time so the novelty never wears off -- luckily it is easy.) Log in to your bank and look for "Interac e-Transfers" you may need to go to the "Transfers" page and then you will see this option. Select "email method" and use the email address: membership(a)gtalug.org Putting your name in the message can be helpful as the notification I get can sometimes be a touch obtuse. Thank you to those who have already contributed! (I know who you are. Ha ha) Thank you, Warren --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) -- good deal?
by William Park 05 Mar '23

05 Mar '23

I just received email promo from Lenovo: ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 Intel (14”) - Black https://s.bluecore.com/Utrkeyg72dZq_0DQf820_NrJxD Is this a good deal?

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ppp inside private network, but no DNS returned?
by Stewart Russell 01 Mar '23

01 Mar '23

Hey - we've got a fun little problem happening right now. We're connecting a Linux box via LTE to a client's private network. They want us to connect to a host on that network and upload files via sftp. We've demonstrated that all of this works with every other LTE network, but in their walled garden LTE network, they're not returning any DNS server, so we can't find the host at all. This network does not have access to public DNS. Does one usually have to poke a ppp connection a little more to get useful routing information, or should we have "just got" all the gateway and DNS details on first connection? Stewart (as you can tell, I'm not a network person, but we might appreciate finding one and paying for support)

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war story in progress: NVMe drive
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

I bought a used ThinkCentre M75q tiny desktop computer through kijiji. I upgraded the RAM and disk. For a disk, I bought a WD Black SN770 2TB NVMe drive. I've installed it and installed Fedora Linux on it. All fine. I don't know that much about management of NVME drives. They mostly just work. But I got curious about firmware updates. - WD only supports firmware updates through Windows or MacOS! - this machine has no Windows license (surprising but true) or installation. Less surprising, it has no MacOS license or installation. - there seems to have been a firmware update a while back (some reddit queries about it five months ago). - My unit is probably new enough that it came with that new firmware. How to check? - this article points to an NVMe tool for linux: https://opensource.com/article/21/9/nvme-cli - nvme-cli works and seems useful but I don't really know how to read the output. It does say "frmw : 0x14" which might contain the required information. - When I try to log in to WD support, they say that I must change my password (their site must have been compromised since I last logged in). When I OK that, they say that they have emailed me a link but it does not arrive. How frustrating.

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[GTALUG-Announce] Reminder: GTALUG General Meeting - Feb 14, 2023 - 7:30PM
by Alan Heighway 12 Feb '23

12 Feb '23

ICANN <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2023-02/> with Gordon Chillcott <https://gtalug.org/> 14 February, 2023 at 07:30 PM Gordon Chillcott will be speaking to us about where ICANN. Who are they? What do they do? We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl *Time:* February 14, 2023 07:30 PM Eastern Time *Join us on Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl. LocationVirtual - Big BLue Button *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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mystery: JVC TVs with "Linux" in their name
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 Feb '23

09 Feb '23

We all know lots of TVs have Linux in them. I'm typing this on an ancient dumb TV with Linux hidden underneath. I just noticed that JVC seems to have TVs with "Linux" in their name. For example: "JVC 43" 4K UHD LCD Linux Smart TV (LT43EC2512)" https://www.visions.ca/product-detail/67083/jvc_43_4k_uhd_lcd_linux_smart_t… I guess the line is now dead. That UltraHD TV is on "final clearance". Cheap too. That one is $248 (they only have one left in London On, and one left in Vancouver). The 55" one can be ordered on-line for $378 with free shipping. I haven't been able to figure out what is exposed to the TV user. Wikipedia says: JVC TVs for North America are now being manufactured by AmTRAN Video Corporation along with distribution, service, and warranty under license from JVCKenwood.

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Selenium question
by Michael Galea 07 Feb '23

07 Feb '23

Is there anyone on the list that can advise about selenium? I have given Selenium IDE a try at automating the download of files from my bank. It did not work out well. Additionally, I read that the IDE is not supported after Feb 2023. I'm hoping that Selenium webdriver/chromedriver will be less fraught. Does someone have a howto for installing on the latest Debian? All the ones I found on the web are a few years old and reference specific versions of software, not general procedures. Any advice would be welcome. -- Michael Galea

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Ubuntu Pro - a new, non-optional walled garden from Canonical
by Stewart Russell 04 Feb '23

04 Feb '23

I should really stop running Ubuntu for the good of my health. This morning, my various Ubuntu systems announced that a whole bunch of packages would be unavailable unless I registered for Ubuntu Pro — https://ubuntu.com/pro Ubuntu Pro is free-of-charge for "personal" users for up to five machines. Otherwise, pay up. I didn't see rates listed: you have to contact Canonical to find out. Whenever I see that, I expect an Oracle-style shakedown in the absence of transparency. The following packages seem to be under 'esmapps', only available through Ubuntu Pro: ansible imagemagick imagemagick-6-common imagemagick-6.q16 libimage-magick-perl libimage-magick-q16-perl libjs-jquery-ui libmagick++-6-headers libmagick++-6.q16-8 libmagick++-6.q16-dev libmagickcore-6-headers libmagickcore-6.q16-6 libmagick++-dev libmagickwand-6-headers libmagickwand-6.q16-6 libmaven3-core-java libopenexr25 libopenexr-dev libpython2.7-dbg libpython2.7-minimal libpython2.7-stdlib python2.7 python2.7-dbg python2.7-minimal Ubuntu Pro also seems to require snapd, my least favourite Canonical 'innovation'. On the system I have it blocked completely it tried and failed to install, hopefully with no hilarious side-effects. Anyone else experiencing this? I suppose I should've seen it coming with all the little messages that Ubuntu had been peppering into my apt chatter every day. Yours in absurdity, Stewart

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wake up really early: FOSDEM is Saturday and Sunday in Belgium
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 03 Feb '23

03 Feb '23

<https://fosdem.org/2023/> <https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/> Their times are UTC+1, Toronto is UTC-5. So: they start at 9:30 CET == 3:30 EST. Live streams: <https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/streaming/>

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RHEL Free Tier vs CentOS Stream vs Alma Linux vs Rocky Linux
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 01 Feb '23

01 Feb '23

They are all kind of the same. Competition is great. They are all, to some extent, parasites living off RHEL. Is that too many parasites? Too many in what sense?: - hurts Red Hat, but that isn't immoral - a free version allows the system to go more places. This should actually help Red Hat. - it sometimes causes Red Hat to take evasive actions that hurt the product + eg. chunking of kernel changes to make more work for Oracle + eg. buying CentOS and then repurposing it - causes duplicated cloning work Without sufficient research, I kind of like the smell of Alma best. How about you?

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