May 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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Toshiba Satellite L500 rejects Linux
by Giles Orr 16 Jun '23

16 Jun '23

I've recently acquired (through a friend who stopped using it) a Toshiba Satellite L500 - Core i3 (3rd gen?), 4G RAM. I'm determined to get Linux onto it (preferably Debian). I thought I had succeeded: I booted from a Debian USB stick, installed to the HD. All appeared to go well, but the system won't boot. It returns to the Boot Menu and says "HDXXXX has failed." What the search engines are telling me is that with this generation of Toshibas, the problem is generally Secure Boot / CSM etc. Which makes sense, but ... there is absolutely zero mention in the BIOS/UEFI ("Phoenix SecureCore Tiano Setup") of "Secure Boot," "CSM," "Legacy," or "UEFI." Acccording to notes I found online, "SecureCore Tiano" has "full support" for legacy booting. Another issue with this machine is my mixed success booting from USB sticks: I have an old-ish USB stick I built myself that has GRUB and a large menu of ISOs: works great on most systems, won't boot on this thing - probably because it's an old-style BIOS-boot only(?). One of my ideas was to upgrade the BIOS: it appears there's a newer version available, but it's NOT available from Toshiba, which is the only place I'd want to download it from. The rest look like dubious secondary download sites (if you know one you consider reliable, let me know). What I read online said that Fedora's installer puts an EFI partition on the HD as part of the install, while Debian doesn't. And that may(?) be why I can't boot from my Debian install? So ... I downloaded the Fedora installer, put it on a USB stick ... and no joy: the Toshiba doesn't recognize the Fedora USB stick as a bootable item. Would this be because I burned it on a "Legacy" system? Is there a fix for that? Except ... I'm about 99% sure the Debian Installer USB stick was created on the same machine. Worst case, I can stick the HD from the Toshiba into another machine, install Fedora on it, repartition to make room for Debian, put the HD back into the Toshiba ... but that's getting damn complicated and annoying. As always - any suggestions welcomed. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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War Story: distro version upgrades can be dangerous
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 04 Jun '23

04 Jun '23

One of my gateway machines uses Fedora. I used to use CentOS for that kind of purpose, but no longer. When CentOS changed, I decided to try Fedora instead. The first downside is the torrent of updates. But that doesn't really seem to be a problem. The second downside is that support for a release of Fedora is two and a bit 6-month release cycles. An upside is that version upgrades are automated (unlike CentOS) and that automation generally works. This upgrade takes the machine offline for perhaps an hour at a time of your choosing (If one isn't diligent, one can fall way behind upgrading distro versions. This is particularly easy in systems like CentOS or debian where there is a combination of long support periods and no automated version update procedure. Ubuntu LTS appears to get this right: long support and update automation.) Fedora has been working pretty well on my gateway for the last few years. I like it that the packages are up to date (CentOS packages tend to be old). I upgraded the gateway machine from Fedora 36 to 38 a couple of days ago. It didn't go smoothly. A couple of small-ish hangups caught me. This is not ideal in a gateway. Luckily, I have more than one. ==== Problem 1: firewalld firewalld had a new bug. Or maybe it was iptables. I don't need to know which. The firewalld settings could not be loaded. So the firewall had default settings. These were safe but not functional for a gateway machine. I could manually install what I wanted in the running firewall but those settings would not persist. I could not make persistent changes. I reported the bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2209199 Within a day or so, a work-around is suggested and a bug fix is initiated. This shows outstanding support for which I pay nothing. (Actually, I have done free support for specifically for Red Hat as part of an upstream project. But there is no connection.) ==== Problem 2: GNOME now suspends the machine when it thinks nobody is using the console. See <https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/gnome-suspends-after-15-minutes-of-u…> Guess how I found out? No, not reading the Fedora 38 release notes. I discovered it when my gateway suspended. What the heck?!? This is a disaster for any machine that has tasks that need to run all the time. Clearly this applies to a gateway machine, but even on my desktop machine, this isn't correct: - I want to be able to SSH into my desktop at any time - I run Hexchat IRC client 24/7 on my desktop so that I can know of activity while I'm not there. - My desktop is an internal mail server and needs to handle mail at all times. There is a "Fedora Server" version that gets this right. I haven't figured out how to get Fedora Workstation to stop suspending generally. The work-around is that you can get each possible console user to turn this feature off. And you have to do this for GDM (the login screen) too.

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Chromebook death dates
by Stewart C. Russell 03 Jun '23

03 Jun '23

TIL that Chromebooks brick themselves when they hit a hard-coded date: the date when Google stops providing updates: https://coloradosun.com/2023/05/26/colorado-schools-chromebooks-churn-outda… The article's about Denver Public School District, who are finding a whole lot of their Chromebooks bought during pandemic are running out of life. The environmental and cost impacts are huge. Stewart

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an odd question about well on going service factors.
by Karen Lewellen 31 May '23

31 May '23

Hi folks, Tapping into your genus once again. At this moment Bell and I continue to fight, land line wise and otherwise. they seem to be preventing Teksavy from helping me either, I get an announced visit when not home, then weeks of someone will call you with a solution. If I am honest, because my analog phone services support my brain health and I expected to be back on track all this is rather emotionally challenging. then there is the television situation, which leads to my question. My landlord is including access to his Fibe TV account, he already provides internet as a part of my rent. That means I need a set top box of some kind, my television is conventional, I do not use the Internet for viewing, its not inclusive for my combination of disability experiences. Here is the question..or two of them. first, is there a universal box of some kind that I can get which will let me access the available Fibe TV services without using one from Bell specifically? if not then... Second, can one just rent a set top box by itself? Thanks all around, Karen

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ISC DHCP server is reaching End of Life.
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 30 May '23

30 May '23

I've been using ISC DHCP server for a long long time. I just noticed this article. It focuses on Kea DHCP server as a replacement. <https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/04/27/use-kea-dhcp-server-as-isc-dhcp-ser…>

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I have a new article up at ACM Queue
by David Collier-Brown 29 May '23

29 May '23

I haven't done much with performance for a while, but the ACM is restarting their "Jack" series, so I wrote an article about how we all go down the same blind ally when we're starting out doing performance work. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3595862 --dave

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CodeLobster IDE
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 28 May '23

28 May '23

Our mailing list blocked a message from CodeLobster. They would like our community to know about their product. Here's my summary (haven't tried it): http://www.codelobsteride.com/ - targets "web languages" -- PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript - seems to be a free level and then a paid level - there are packages for at least Ubuntu, Fedora, and debian - it seems to know about a lot of frameworks (perhaps only for the paid level). I don't see a claim that it is open source.

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Upcoming TPRC conference / One day course on Go
by Alex Beamish 21 May '23

21 May '23

Howdy all, Just a reminder that I'm organizing the Perl and Raku Conference that's happening here in Toronto, July 11-13. We have a full three day schedule of talks lined up, and I've just added a one day Go course on Friday, July 14 that's separate from the conference, but at the same venue, the Doubletree right behind Toronto City Hall. You can visit the conference website at https://tprc.to, and you can get right to the Go course here: https://sched.co/1NIEL The course is being taught by Dave Rolsky, a long-time Perl developer and author of over a hundred Perl modules, and the price is just $125USD. Cheers, Alex -- Alex Beamish Software Developer / https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alex-beamish-5111ba3 Speaker Wrangler / Toronto Perlmongers / http://to.pm.org/ Chair, The Perl and Raku Conference 2023 / Toronto, Ontario / http://tprc.to Baritone, Operations Manager / Toronto Northern Lights, 2013 Champions / www.northernlightschorus.com

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war story: buying RAM
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 20 May '23

20 May '23

I bought a ThinkCentre M75s through ebay.ca It came with a single 8GiB stick of RAM. I wanted more! DDR4 RAM is pretty cheap these days. I bought 8GiB (to pair with the original stick) and 2 x 32GiB. Lots! I got it from amazon.ca - DDR 32000MHz, as per the "psref" documentation for the computer - DIMM, not SODIMM, since it is a desktop - fairly low latency When I got it, I could install it in my machine but I could not reassemble the machine. I needed "low profile" DIMMs. Not mentioned in the manual. So I have initiated a return with Amazon.ca. They would even come to pick the 2 x 32GiB units up, but that's no use since they require me to drop the 8GiB DIMM off at a Purolator establishment. I have now tried to order low profile versions. This time, Canada Computer was cheaper. They offered free shipping for the 32GiB x 2 but $10 for the 8GiB. I asked if the 8GiB could piggyback on the free shipping for the other DIMMs: no. Shipping from memoryexpress.com was more expensive. NewEgg.ca didn't seem competitive. So I'm not going to buy a mate for my 8GiB. So this is what I bought for $159.99: <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=24_311_1326&item_id=…> I think I paid roughly the same for 64MiB of RAM for my first PC clone in the mid 1990's.

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