August 2024 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

anyone have this bell item?
by Karen Lewellen 06 Mar '25

06 Mar '25

hi all, Layered times, leaving me reading more than commenting. My landlord wishes to provide, but cannot seem to successfully secure from bell, the box below. it's a basic bell cable box vip2502 https://www.bellmts.ca/support/tv/fibe-tv/installation-and-setup/arris-vip2… Anyone have this sitting in a closet? Might be wise to confirm the idea will work. This entire property, even outside, has bell fibe for home coverage including internet..But my on going issues with them have me a bit scared. Thanks, Kare Who has not given up on Over The Air, just gauging offered options.

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simple plug & play ethernet splitters?
by Karen Lewellen 23 Oct '24

23 Oct '24

Hi wise folks, I likely found my goal at amazon, say a tp-links unit, but if it is common enough where I could just dance into say a Canada computers, that would be preferred. Basically I seek a simple classic plug and play Ethernet splitter, say with 4 or 5 ports. something that does not require software, even fanless will work. I am hoping once I also find a quality power bar, to connect equipment that is on the other side of my home studio from my desk. Everything I personally use has standard Ethernet ports, with my hoping to set things up once, no removing cables and the like. Am I picturing this correctly, and is there a simple place I can get one inexpensively? Thanks, Karen

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access to iLO on HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8 Server
by Zbigniew Koziol 02 Sep '24

02 Sep '24

Greetings to all who may be remember me (it is already around 16 years as I left Canada). To others - too :) I have bought that machine for computer simulations in physics, not having before experience with similar ones. The first start and installing mint there went easy. My guess is that I shut it down improperly (I do not remember details). Now, it is my guess, the machine is in standby mode (when power is connected). The unfortunate thing is that I did not do any initial BIOS configuration and I did not care to write down iLO IP address. The lights on both power suppliers are off. The light on the front is amber. Two lights near iLO cable are green, one solid, the second is blinking, suggesting that iLO works properly. By reading the internet and documentation I found out that sometime people have similar problems. What is advised is resetting the beast to factory setting. That apparently can be done by 3 methods: 1) with some magic of removing/swapping power suppliers, 2) by changing S6 to ON on system maintenance switch and 3) by removing CMOS battery. I did try the methods 1) and 2). In case of method 3) - I do not know how to remove battery. It does not look the same as it is drawn in the original technical documentation. Now, I thought I will try to use iLO. First, I need its IP address. Yes, I know basics of using ping, nmap, etc. However, I have at home a simple Huawey router. It allows to have netmask of the type 255.255.255.0, only, hence scanning the entire possible IP range is in practice, impossible. It happened that that I discovered an option on my desktop computer to configure the network connection as "shared to other computers". Hence, connected to cable directly to iLO and found out that my IP is now 10.42.0.1. Does that mean that this is IP of iLO? That would be a something, however, the problem does not end there. How to connect to iLO anyway? My Huawey router does not allow me to change a configuraion in such a way that 10.42.0.1 could be an address of a connected device: it wants 10.42.0.1 to be the gateway address. Any advise would be greatly appreciated. -- Zbigniew Kozioł, PhD, National Center for Nuclear Research, Materials Research Laboratory, 05-400 Otwock-Świerk, Poland http://nanophysics.pl

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War Story : Acer Laptop with LFS OS
by ac 19 Aug '24

19 Aug '24

Hi, Hopefully this post will help someone somewhere and save a few days of their lives (which they will never get back) ISSUE : Suddenly and at boot time my very old and trusty laptop, which I know backwards and have changed many components on, over the years, including even at the component level, started flashing a weird and very unexpected ^[ set of characters at boot time. If you are allergic to long winded drivel you can safely stop reading here and scroll all the way down to the last para; for this particular issue and it's solution. If you are still reading, here follows what you may probably do (and what I actually did) - feedback and comments are most welcome :) So, habits. New BAD habits. use Google and 10 years of accumelated Fu. Gots to be that I am p0wned, and definately not just p0wned BUT actually p0wN3D, must be nation state or someone that knows what I know. but how? the resources are so very thin at those levels and there has to be a springboard. (we still need to make a name for that, or maybe there is a name and I just don't know aboot it as I haven't been on irc for over 15 years :) ) switch to new clean device, update all externals, update all passwords, planetary. run through all systems, logs, all the usual stuff, weird activity, weird network activity (uhm Donald and ethanol soaked dude? seriously?) - anyway, dump data, super paranoid, block half of North America (the island bits, you know who you are :) All of Korea, China, India, Russia and everything with a pulse... So, that day well spent, back to the Acer device... lemme see who this was and how I can waste a day, or more, of their lives and see how they like bad medicine. With REVENGE in mind, a spare week and few retirement zero's tucked away safely i start the next wasted day... Find the entry point. First step setup spare device, copy everything. But I do not have spare model laptop, so in this case the plan is to work on same frame, on copies ( I even have extra mainboard, so am good to go, or so I thought...) On the duplicated device flash bios. same issue. At this point I made a very basic rookie mistake. Instead of following the frame inputs I jumped to disk. Impatience, usually a thing of youth, but I think it is something that is and has been growing in culture for a decade or so now, EVERYWHERE. We are all getting much less tolerant and much less patient. We are in the drive trough of live and we want it now. not just now, now. and fsck.vfat you if you do not think like me, look like me or even if I just do not 'feel' you. One can get lost, very easily, on disks and OS. So, on disk, the issue is much more prominent. **IT** ==== (IT, the clown kid killing thing) is here. The HORROR is real. Terror, chaos and consternation, I struggle to kill it. it is under my bed. It is intermittently sending inputs to kernel as me, form my keyboard. I spend lots of time and lots of effort but I simply cannot find any reason, in code, anywhere, how this is happening. I read a lot of code (btw - we, all of us, should be so grateful to lgpl, shared libraries and the code we all use, even today, even when some of the dude's are dead already, they are remembered, in code, forever) wow, I have typed a lot, let's end this? this is the last para, so the solution to this problem is : My wife's hair dryer (after about a minute confirmed the issue) Over the years the high quality Acer keyboard was replaced only once, about 5 years ago but the new keyboard seems to have had dust (or gunk?) buildup on the bottom left side ctrl and one or two other keys. These would become intermittently stuck and produced chaos, horror and terror. If your keyboard is a few years old, even if you clean and wipe it, gunk and dust can become trapped. Solution: Take out, open the keyboard and clean properly. *sigh* yes, I am an idiot. but I am sure that there are many other idiots out there. In fact I happen to be convinced that idiots are now the majority and we RULE! :)

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Are we doing anything for Debian Day?
by Nick Accad 16 Aug '24

16 Aug '24

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay/2024

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Google is ruled a monopoly so Firefox is at serious risk
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 16 Aug '24

16 Aug '24

Apparently 90% of Mozilla's funding comes from Google. Google pays that money to be the default search engine for Firefox. Google may have to stop.

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Pre-Meeting Meals - Kabul Express Impression
by Scott Sullivan 13 Aug '24

13 Aug '24

The restaurant has really elevated itself since my pre-pandemic experiences. The interior is renovated, gone is the yellow hue. Replaced with soothing blue / grey combo of tiles and paint, a modest class to it. While ordering is still at the counter, sit in customers will have their food brought to the table. I don't recall if this was the case before. Food was tasty, though I found my chicken a bit on the dry side. Portions sizes were filling. Silver combo is your protein with salad and naan. Folks with a smaller stomach like mine will struggle with gold combo's addition of rice and soup. Price Range $14 - $21 + Tax Seating for 46, in clusters of 4 or 6 seats. Attendance was about 20 persons over my stay. Noise level was moderate, all conversation, no TV or music. -- Scott Sullivan

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The August GTALUG Meeting will be in person!
by Evan Leibovitch 12 Aug '24

12 Aug '24

Hi all. I apologize for the short notice since some of this hadn't been finalized till recently. However I am delighted to announce that Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has generously agreed to host GTALUG back in our pre-COVID location. Many thanks to Dave Mason and William Zereneh at TMU for making this happen. As a first trial of the new processes and facilities, the August meeting will be held at TMU and we will test our ability to have a hybrid meeting held both online and in-person. Please be patient while we work out any logistical and technical issues this first time back in many years. *Tuesday August 13, 19:30* *ONLINE:* https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i *IN-PERSON:* Room 201 George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street(just north of Dundas) *TOPICS:* - Testing out the new facilities - Progress report on new online services - Member round-table *NOTE*: The doors to the building are normally locked. There will be someone from GTALUG at the doors on the southeast corner of Church and Gould to let people in. If you come late or don't see anyone at the door please SMS at 647 657 6575 for THIS NIGHT ONLY. *Do not call.* *Pre-meeting:* Traditionally many GTALUG attendees have met for dinner at Kabul Express, 126 Dundas East, about an hour before the scheduled meeting. We will try this again on the 13th, but since the dining options in the area have expanded dramatically since we last met, we may decide on other locations for future meetings. See you there! -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Old and New Habits...
by Peter King 12 Aug '24

12 Aug '24

I just was in an extended argument with my two daughters, about something I suspect might be a generational thing. Let me know what you think. So the discussion started with me complaining that "because" Google respects neither uppercase/lowercase nor punctuation in their email, I get lots of email addressed to people whose email is similar to mine. I myself have always thought that the problem was that Google's email address parser did not respect these differences, as they should, and so I wind up receiving email meant for someone in Great Britain with a similar name. My daughters argued vigorously that this is not a bug but a feature -- you wouldn't want people to have to pay attention to either cases or punctuation when you write your email! I replied that back when there was a net but no web of course you paid attention to these differences: we were all trained as programmers to be careful about punctuation and case. (Hell, I learned on punch cards.) Their view was that this was a dumb view and that I wasn't in fact getting email for everyone who signed up for email with some version of peter.king.1(a)gmail.com, but also peterking1(a)gmail.com, peterking.1(a)gmail.com, and so on, but only when other people -- like, say, peter.king.11(a)gmail.com -- mistyped their email addresses when signing up for some service or other (for instance leaving off the last digit). The discussion was inconclusive, to say the least, and I thought (and think!) that we should respect case and punctuation. But I certainly hadn't considered the arguments against it... Thoughts? Experiences with gmail? Reflections on generational differences in the approach to computing? -- Peter King peter.king(a)utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-978-3311 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42

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Anyone hiding an old LG phone?
by Karen Lewellen 11 Aug '24

11 Aug '24

In a closet perhaps? My lifeline which I was trying to replace so desperately is now in pieces. Technically I have no phone at all, teksavvy and I are still at the CCTS over the land line. as it stands, before the cracked case finally broke completely, LG provided some mobile out of warranty options, including a place called fixt? www.fixt.ca I did not reach them before the break. fortunately I had already set a loblaws visit, it has a mobile shop. I have an older alcatel device that I am hoping will support my PC mobile sim card...so there is something that does not make me dizzy and seizure like when I us it. Still, if there is an unloved LG flip in a box somewhere, sing out smiles. Kare

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