- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

How to unpack/repack Debian initrd.img?
by William Park 07 Nov '25

07 Nov '25

(It's double posted. So, reply to your mailing list). :-) How do I * *unpack* an existing /boot/initrd.img-x.y.z (Debian) * *repack* back. Of course, I need to do some work in between... hence, the question. To unpack, I can use 'unmkinitramfs'. But, I can't seem to repack an initrd from *current* directory. 'mkinitramfs' always takes stuffs from my system directory (/lib/modules/x.y.z/). Current directory has many add-ons from the original initrd, that I don't have, so I don't want to lose it. mkinitramfs -v -r ./ -o ~/new_initrd.img x.y.z According to manpage, "-r ./" should force the root directory as current directory, but it doesn't seem to.

1 0

GTALUG General meeting
by Alan Heighway 05 Nov '25

05 Nov '25

OBS: Open Broadcast Software <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=253> Description: OBS: Open Broadcaster Software – What Is It, How Do I Set It Up, and How Can It Work for You? Curious about streaming, recording, or running a live show? Join us for a hands-on session all about OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) – the powerful, free, and open-source tool used by content creators worldwide. Alan will take you on a guided tour of OBS, showcasing its core features and how it can be used for everything from simple screen recordings to fully-produced livestreams. Whether you’re a beginner or just looking to refine your setup, you’ll learn: - What OBS is and what it can do - How to set up your first scene - Adding video, audio, images, and screen captures - Best practices for smooth streaming and high-quality recording - Tips and tricks to make your production look polished and professional Stick around for an open Q&A session, where Alan will answer your questions, troubleshoot common problems, and help you get comfortable with broadcasting. No experience required – just bring your curiosity! Speaker: Alan Heighway Agenda: 1. Business Meeting 2. Presentation 3. Discussion 4. Adjournment 5. More Discussion @ the Pub (Optional) Date / Time: November 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. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

1 0

Hyprland borked my Fedora 43 upgrade
by Evan Leibovitch 04 Nov '25

04 Nov '25

Before I go any further, let me begin by saying that this problem is solved, so this is more of a war story and cautionary tale than anything else. TL;DR: Hyprland was not officially included in Fedora 42 so I used an external repository to install it. This completely broke my KDE installation after a seemingly-smooth upgrade to 43. As some of you know, over the last few months I have been playing with (and eventually dropping) the Hyprland window manager. Because Hyprland was not a native part of Fedora 42 I used an external, non-supported repository. Most Linux systems that use package managers allow for the use of such repositories. In Fedora it's known as COPR, in Ubuntu they're "PPAs" and in Arch it's the well-known AUR. I have no usable experience with Arch. But when I used to rely on Ubuntu, one of the first things that happened automatically during a major update was the disabling of all PPAs. This makes sense. However, the Fedora 43 update now *added* Hyprland in its main repositories but did not disable my COPR that had previously provided it. Not only did this screw up my Hyprland installation, but also kept KDE from installing properly either. I had error messages such as *file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kickoff/contents/ui/main.qml:21:1: > Cannot load library > /usr/lib64/qt6/qml/org/kde/plasma/private/kicker/libkickerplugin.so: > /lib64/libKF6Runner.so.6: undefined symbol: > _ZN14KWaylandExtras18xdgActivationTokenEP7QWindowRK7QString* My fix, once I thought this might have something to do with duelling hyprlands, was to: 1. Mabually sisable the relevant COPR entry 2. Remove hyprland and autoremove its dependencies 3. Clean and re-sync the package cache 4. Re-start the upgrade 5. Re-install hyprland (optional, and I didn't bother) Maybe someone can convince Fedora that disabling COPRs during a major upgrade would be a Good Idea, following Ubuntu's practice in disabling PPAs.. - Evan -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

2 1

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.

5 5

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?)

3 3

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?

3 5

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

1 0

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.

1 0

Does anyone use TekSavvy's VoIp?
by Michael Galea 23 Oct '25

23 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

3 3

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".

8 18