January 2025 - 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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war story: testing a disk with a large capacity
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 05 Mar '25

05 Mar '25

Currently Best Buy is selling a 14 TB external disk for $250. Sadly, the days of exponential disk growth of capacity and reduction in price are over. So this is a good sale price. <https://forums.redflagdeals.com/seagate-14tb-external-hd-249-99-save-120-27…> I want an internal drive but externals are cheaper, so I bought this. I will have to "shuck" it (remove the case). That will void the warranty, so I wish to test it with Smart Mon Tools. After a certain amount of thrashing about, I discover that - a Seagate USB <-> SATA system has/had bugs switching between "UAS" mode and plain old USB Mass Storage mode - UAS mode is faster for disk operations, so the kernel blocks USB Mass Storage mode on Seagate external drives. - SMARTmon Tools needs USB Mass Storage to deal with this drive To get out of this corner, read: <https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/SAT-with-UAS-Linux> <https://blog.karssen.org/2022/05/19/getting-smart-information-from-a-seagat…> The key thing is to: - disconnect the drive - add a "quirk" to suppress UAS for this drive: See "Temporary Settings" in the page linked above - connect the drive again. Check if it is USB Mass Storage - do SMARTmon things - disconnect the drive - unquirk NOTE: The quirk setting didn't work for me. The suggestion was: echo "0x0bc2:0x231a:u" > /sys/module/usb_storage/parameters/quirks The first hex number is the disk manufacturer (Seagate is 0bc2) The second identifies the model. In my case, it should be 2038. I got this from a line in dmesg output about the drive: usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=2038, bcdDevice=18.01

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Finally ordered a new laptop
by Lennart Sorensen 20 Feb '25

20 Feb '25

I decided it was finally time to get a new laptop after 12 years. The old machine has lost the NVIDIA chip (forcing it to run only on the intel video works, but don't even think about running 3D games and the external monitor port does not work). Also the fingerprint scanner and color meter haven't worked in years (not that I really cared much about those two things). Also the top of the screen has a chunk of dead pixels showing white all the time. I guess it was time. So my choice that I ended up with using the cyber Monday discounts and rakuten was a Thinkpad P1 Gen 7. 21KV001CUS which is: Intel Core Ultra 9 185H NVIDIA RTX 4070 Mobile 8GB 64GB LPDDR5 CAMM2 2TB NVMe 16" 2560x1600 IPS 165Hz 5MP Camera Fingerprint scanner (Seems those are just standard) Backlit US keyboard 2x2 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 I think I am set for another decade or so. I will have to try putting Debian on it to see how well supported the hardware is, although it will most likely only ever end up running it in WSL for the most part. I have other systems dedicated to running Linux. Cyber-Monday deal knocked 59% of the list price (do they ever sell for list price?) and then rakuten provided 15% cash back after that. Still not cheap, but I don't buy computers very often. -- Len Sorensen

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Service resource management: i.e. Mailman3 vs Mailman2
by Ron / BCLUG 11 Feb '25

11 Feb '25

I found a nifty trick for measuring the resource consumption of various services using systemd. This was while trying to gauge the differences between Mailman v2 and Mailman v3 resource management. I have ranted about how much more expensive MM3 is in resource consumption (basically, about ¾ of a 2GB RAM VPS is consumed). I wanted further details. What I found was, a setting (or several) that systemd provides: There are a couple methods for enabling the *Accounting= features: Edit /etc/systemd/system.conf and enabling: DefaultCPUAccounting=yes DefaultIOAccounting=yes DefaultIPAccounting=yes DefaultBlockIOAccounting=yes DefaultMemoryAccounting=yes DefaultTasksAccounting=yes If one wants it for a single service, also a couple methods: systemctl set-property mailman3 TasksAccounting=yes MemoryAccounting=yes systemctl daemon-reload Or add these lines (my preferred method, no systemctl daemon-reload needed): # systemctl edit mailman3 [Service] MemoryAccounting=yes TasksAccounting=yes Or: do it manually This makes it really easy to measure resources used by a service that has many processes running, i.e.: # systemctl status mailman ... Tasks: 9 (limit: 2256) Memory: 46.5M CGroup: /system.slice/mailman.service ├─1054 /usr/bin/python2 /usr/lib/mailman/bin/mailmanctl ├─1056 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner ├─1057 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner ├─1058 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner ├─1067 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner ├─1068 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner ├─1071 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner ├─1083 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner └─1084 /usr/bin/python2 /var/lib/mailman/bin/qrunner And for comparison, mailman 3 (which has TWO service files): # systemctl status mailman3 ... Tasks: 17 Memory: 889.9M CGroup: /system.slice/mailman3.service ├─4112698 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112711 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112712 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112713 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112714 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112715 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112717 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112718 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112719 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112720 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112721 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112725 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112726 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112790 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python └─4112791 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python # systemctl status mailman3-web ... Tasks: 12 Memory: 182.4M CGroup: /system.slice/mailman3-web.service ├─4112890 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/uwsgi ├─4112904 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/uwsgi ├─4112905 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/uwsgi ├─4112906 /bin/sh ... ├─4112908 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112910 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112912 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112913 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python ├─4112914 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python └─4112915 /opt/mailman/venv/bin/python It's now quite clear: mm2 uses 9 process and < 50 MB RAM, but MM3 uses 17+12=29 processes (and that's with the default NNTP bridge disabled), and 889.9+182.4=1072.3 MB RAM. That's a *lot* of Python processes! Also, both require Apache (or NGINX), and MM3 requires PostgreSQL. As it is, I can see a lot of small mailing list users abandoning MM3 over this issue (plus its complexity). For my list, that's about one Python interpreter loaded into RAM for each list subscriber!

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DeepSeek and FOSS - some thoughts
by Evan Leibovitch 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

Hi all. As I watch the stock market and geopolitical analysis melt down over the emergence of DeepSeek, I am reminded of a Linkedin (of all places) post by Meta's chief AI scientist. Deepseek is not a triumph of Chinese innovation over US sanctions and unlimited capital. It's a triumph of open over closed models. It could not have existed without building on top of Llama and other open tools. it wrecks the pseudo-openness of OpenAI with something completely transparent. Having said that, neither Llama nor DeepSeek is truly open source. The rub is limitations on use, disallowed by both the FSF Four Freedoms and the OSI Open Source Definition. For DeepSeek, the code is under the MIT license, but the data may not be used: - In any way that violates any applicable national or international law or regulation or infringes upon the lawful rights and interests of any third party; - For military use in any way; - For the purpose of exploiting, harming or attempting to exploit or harm minors in any way; - To generate or disseminate verifiably false information and/or content with the purpose of harming others; - To generate or disseminate inappropriate content subject to applicable regulatory requirements; - To generate or disseminate personal identifiable information without due authorization or for unreasonable use; - To defame, disparage or otherwise harass others; - For fully automated decision making that adversely impacts an individual’s legal rights or otherwise creates or modifies a binding, enforceable obligation; - For any use intended to or which has the effect of discriminating against or harming individuals or groups based on online or offline social behavior or known or predicted personal or personality characteristics; - To exploit any of the vulnerabilities of a specific group of persons based on their age, social, physical or mental characteristics, in order to materially distort the behavior of a person pertaining to that group in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm; - For any use intended to or which has the effect of discriminating against individuals or groups based on legally protected characteristics or categories. (from https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-LLM/blob/HEAD/LICENSE-MODEL) Now, some of these are pretty vague and a Chinese entity will have a hard time enforcing them internationally, but I think may people can live with these limitations. What do you think? If Deepseek is successful it could break proprietary models. Could it break open source ones too? -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Utility to parse HTTP response
by William Park 03 Feb '25

03 Feb '25

Hi all, To build HTTP request, you use 'curl'. After you get HTTP response, what utility do you use to extract stuffs you want? JSON format has 'jq', and XML format has 'xmlstarlet'. I'm looking for something like that but for HTTP format. --

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Re: [GTALUG] Service resource management: i.e. Mailman3 vs Mailman2
by Steve Litt 31 Jan '25

31 Jan '25

ac via talk said on Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:02:30 +0200 >Thank you for this info, imnsho, many projects are becoming 'over >developed' I think so. >(my pet peeve is all desktop environments) My experience is that LXDE and LXQt are still reasonably simple and I use LXDE when I'm in front of an audience. That being said, on my daily driver I use just OpenBox. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com

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February Meeting Reminder: Open Source AI with Marcel Gagné
by Alan Heighway 29 Jan '25

29 Jan '25

Open Source AI with Marcel Gagné <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=198> Description: *In this session, we’re going to take a practical, hands-on look at the state of generative AI, with a special focus on open-source models, particularly DeepSeek R1. I’ll cover what makes DeepSeek R1 noteworthy, how it compares to other models, and why there’s so much excitement around it. More importantly, I’ll show you how to run these models locally on Linux using tools like Ollama and LM Studio, so you can experiment without relying on the cloud. Since this is a friendly crowd of Linux enthusiasts, I’ll tailor the discussion to practical, real-world applications—including AI-assisted scripting, coding, and documentation generation, among other things. Expect a lively Q&A, so bring your curiosity—whether it’s about self-hosting models, fine-tuning, or the broader implications of AI in open source.* Agenda: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment 5. More Discussion @ the Pub (Optional) Date / Time: February 11th, 2025 19:30 EST Location: In Person: TMU George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street (just north of Dundas), Room 201 (See note below) Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i 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.

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Meetup Today
by Sun, Max (CA) 19 Jan '25

19 Jan '25

Hey all, Max here from the meetup today. I'm the one in the purple shirt in the classroom. Great to see the enthusiasm about open source, programming, and hardware from Ron and everyone! I plan on going to the next meetup in Toronto. Hope you see you all again :) Max DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this e-mail transmission (including any accompanying attachments) is intended solely for its authorized recipient(s), and may be confidential and/or legally privileged. If you are not an intended recipient, or responsible for delivering some or all of this transmission to an intended recipient, you have received this transmission in error and are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from reading, copying, printing, distributing or disclosing any of the information contained in it. Please note that BCA Research Inc. accepts no liability for the content of this e-mail, or for the consequences of any actions taken on the basis of the information provided. The recipient should check this e-mail and any attachments for the presence of viruses. The company accepts no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this e-mail. Should you have any questions please contact BCA Research Inc. at (514) 499-9550 or e-mail at support(a)bcaresearch.com. Les informations contenues dans cette transmission électronique (y compris les pièces jointes) sont destinées exclusivement à leur destinataire autorisé, et peuvent être confidentielles et/ou légalement privilégiées. Si vous n'êtes pas le destinataire, responsable ou partialement responsable de la transmission à un destinataire ou si vous avez reçu ce message par erreur, veuillez être informé qu’il vous est strictement interdit de lire, copier, imprimer, distribuer ou de divulguer toutes informations contenues dans le courriel. Veuillez noter que BCA Research Inc. n'assume aucune responsabilité pour le contenu de ce courriel, ou pour les conséquences de toutes mesures prises sur la base des informations fournies. Le destinataire doit vérifier la présence de virus dans ce courriel et les pièces jointes. La société décline toute responsabilité pour tout dommage causé par un virus transmis par ce courriel. Si vous avez des questions veuillez contacter BCA Research Inc. au (514) 499-9550 ou par courriel à support(a)bcaresearch.com.

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Arch Linux doc tries to explain PC sleep modes
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 18 Jan '25

18 Jan '25

PC sleep modes are a mystery to me. I don't play with this stuff because I don't understand it. But I have a few itches I want to scratch: - my MacBook Air's battery charges lasts a lot longer sleeping when running MacOS than when running Fedora Asahi. - tablets with only "Modern Standby" capability didn't sleep well under Linux (haven't tried in a few years) This documentation might help. I haven't done the experiments. <https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernate> Arch Linux documentation is often very useful.

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