October 2025 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Slic3r software...
by Colin McGregor 31 Oct '25

31 Oct '25

I have / like my 3D printer, but... At present I go to sites like Thingiverse where I can (normally) search for / find a .stl file to download that describes an object that I want. My 3D printer wants to see a .gcode file which describes what path the 3D printer's print nozzle should follow (ie: devil is in the details, a perfect .gcode file for a Brand A printer could cause problems for a Brand B printer). Okay, there is software available that will take .stl files and convert them to .gcode files while taking into account the ... quirks ... of different printer makes/models. For the last while I have been using the program "Slic3r" to do this .stl to .gcode conversion, because it is good, fast, easy to use, and free. Problem, in early August I moved my main desktop PC from Debian 12 to Debian 13 and the "Slic3r" program isn't available in the default Debian 13 repository. Also I have been unable so far to get the "Slic3r" flatpack file to run, all meaning getting "Slic3r" to run on my desktop machine will be no joy :-( . I have tried to find another .stl to .gcode conversion program for my main machine, so far without success :-( . My solution while not perfect, does work is to put one of my Raspberry Pi 5's to work, running "PrusaSlicer"... I'll do the grumpy old guy thing of noting I'm not super keen on the differences between "Slic3r" and "PrusaSlicer", but ... better a working but flawed (or at least different) ... software tool than no software tool.

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Fedor 43 out; plocate gone from Atomic releases
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 29 Oct '25

29 Oct '25

Fedora 43 came out today <https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-linux-43/> The GNOME desktop has worked with X or Wayland. Now it will only work with Wayland. (I don't like this because one of my systems is much worse with Wayland than X due to an ancient Nvidia GeForce 650.) In the Atomic (immutable) versions, plocate is dropped. plocate is the implementation of locate(1). I use this command fairly often, so I'm not happy. But I don't yet use an Atomic version anyway. Why did they make this change? <https://gitlab.com/fedora/ostree/sig/-/issues/81> - indexing an immutable system every night is a waste of time - so why not just index the mutable parts? - it gets rid of a setgid binary and a group for that binary. - let them eat cake: just use some GUI tool. (But could we not have a locate clone share the indexing with the GUI tool?)

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GNU tar incremental backup bug?
by Ron 28 Oct '25

28 Oct '25

I've had quite a struggle with tar incremental backups recently. Feels like a bug, even if only in the documentation. Curious to hear the wisdom of this crowd. Synopsis: I want to make an archive. Then, incrementally archive some time later. Extracting the archives should leave destination with results that match source (at time of last archive), including the *absence* of files captured in earlier archives then *deleted* from source file system prior to subsequent archive. This would not work as I anticipated, nor as the docs indicated (by my reading), nor as ChatGPT 4o-mini or Claude Haiku 3.5 all agreed should work. The key is using --listed-incremental=snapshot.file: # touch file1 file2 # tar --listed-incremental=snapshot.file 1.tar file? file1 file2 # rm file2 # touch file3 # tar --listed-incremental=snapshot.file 2.tar file? file3 # mkdir untar # cd untar # tar --listed-incremental=../snapshot.file -xvvf ../1.tar file1 file2 # tar --listed-incremental=../snapshot.file -xvvf ../2.tar file3 # ls -l file1 file2 file3 ^-- file2 should *not* exist at this point, per docs: https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Incremental-Dumps.html > The option ‘--listed-incremental’ instructs tar to operate on an > incremental archive with additional metadata stored in a standalone > file, called a snapshot file. The purpose of this file is to help > determine which files have been changed, added or *deleted* since > the last backup Turns out, it will *only* work if the source to tar does not contain a file glob, like `file?`. The snapshot file will contain no info about what was archived and tar won't therefore know to remove file2. Does this make sense, or sound like a bug? Turns out, it can be made to work: Extracting ../2.tar with --incremental-listed: drwxr-xr-x root/root 15 2025-10-26 21:48 ./source/ tar: Deleting ‘./source/file2’ -rw-r--r-- root/root 0 2025-10-26 21:48 ./source/file3 If I run `tar ... file*` then no incremental archive. If I run `tar ... $folder_name` then everything works as desired. Very weird, counter-intuitive, and not documented (IMHO). What do you think?

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TASK meeting tomorrow -- Bruce Schneier
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 28 Oct '25

28 Oct '25

<https://www.task.to/schedule/v3f7p4b6zhdyhz42w5flrfk9042n1b-awj77-rdbak-fdc…> - 18:00 - in person at TMU or online on Discord - no registration required

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Fedora and VirtualBox -- 256MB video memory
by William Park 27 Oct '25

27 Oct '25

God, I spent a week on this... I just couldn't install Fedora (42, 43-beta) on VirtualBox (7.2.4). Solution: Set *Video Memory* to 256MB.

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Does anyone use TekSavvy's VoIp?
by Michael Galea 24 Oct '25

24 Oct '25

Hi, TekSavvy supports VoIP by selling you an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA). I'm figuring out how to open a open holes in my firewall to connect it to TekSavvy's server. I've asked them what subnet their servers are in so I can restrict traffic from the ATA to it. But the TekSavvy techs seem really confused by the question. Have I got it wrong, is it the ATA that makes the connection in VoIP? -- Michael Galea

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Free web storage for static HTML?
by William Park 23 Oct '25

23 Oct '25

Trying to help out few non-techie people, but I'm also interested personally... How do you make few *static HTML* files available online for *free?* I looked at * Google Site -- you can't upload html file * Dropbox -- it shows you the text content of HTML files. * GitHub -- same thing. Failing that, I'm considering * Put the files on USB stick, and plug it into router. It has web/file server. I would have to register DDNS, though. * Set up web server on a Linux computer. But, I don't want to be "tech support".

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Oct 26 - Hacklab's Junk Independence Day
by Scott Sullivan 22 Oct '25

22 Oct '25

It's the time again, a Hacklab Toronto Junk Independence day. Bring out spare, disused electronic or e-waste. Maybe find some treasures in what others bring. Sunday October 26 12 Noon – 6PM https://hacklab.to/archives/junk-independence-day-october-26/ -- Scott Sullivan

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history question on dos partiton tables
by CAREY SCHUG 21 Oct '25

21 Oct '25

Boy, I am out of it. Memory failure, or not keeping up I remember when there was an absolute limit of 7 usable partitions on a disk. I forgot or never realized this limit went away for a DOS-formatted disk (I know Solaris and other basically different disk formats had different limits). Going back to MSDOS 5.0. The primary partition table 64 bytes, per AI) had 4 entries, but one of those could point to an "extended" partition with its own partition table, also of 4 entries (and 64 bytes), so the other 3 primary, and 4 extended partitions were all I could use for my data. If I tried to create one more extended partition, the format program refused. Some thing(s) could ONLY be in a primary partition (certain operating systems? multi-boot loader? I don't remember). Apparently, now there can be many extended partition tables, thus a practically unlimited number of partitions. 1. When did that change? Meaning with what level of Microsoft software, and what level of Linux, if Linux had also been limited to 3+4 originally? 2. I presume some old operating systems only recognize the first 4 extended partitions? Or can they totally not recognize a disk with a "new" DOS format mbr at all? This could be as a data disk if I am transferring data from a legacy computer to a current one. 3. Where are the groups of 4 extended partition definitions located? All in the first sector of the extended partition? Somewhere else? 4. If the extended partition tables are all in the first block of the extended partition, for a 512 byte sector size, wouldn't that mean a limit of 8 x 4 extended partitions? Hmmm, 32 is starting to jigle some memory cells as a possible limit for extended paritions. (nb the AI queries seemed to deny there was ever a limit on the number of extended partitions, probably because it wasn't trained on information that old) Carey

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Testing Android app on real phone
by William Park 21 Oct '25

21 Oct '25

Hi, I have question about testing or controlling Android app on a real cell phone. How would you test "user interaction" of Android app, that you didn't build and don't have access to code? Eg. Calculator app. As user, you would press on screen, 2 + 3 = and you get 5 on the screen. So, how would you duplicate this user interaction, without actually pressing the screen buttons? What *keywords* should I search online? On Windows, there is TeamViewer that you can click and type remotely. I did use it manually, but never via scripts or macros. On Linux, there is VNC macro which duplicates key press and mouse click. I did use it, long long ago.

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