- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

dinner suggestion
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 10 Jan '17

10 Jan '17

I'm interested in dinner. I propose Kaiju, in the food court in the basement of the Aura building, 384 Yonge St. We were last there in April. Each of us can choose which vendor in the food court to use. <https://wiki.gtalug.org/pre-meeting_dinner#kaiju_japanese_curry> If another venue has already been selected, please announce that.

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Toronto Mesh - "State of our Networks" mini-conference
by Giles Orr 10 Jan '17

10 Jan '17

https://tomesh.net/state-of-our-networks/ I thought this might be of interest to some people on the list (this weekend): Brought to you by Toronto Mesh, ‘State of our Networks’ is a one-day, hands-on conference about the past, present, and future of building our own network infrastructures to communicate and access the internet in our city. Join us for: - hands-on workshops* to build mesh nodes and learn about low-power networks - talks about a history of Toronto’s internet - planning how to build resilient and accessible communications networks and connections to the internet -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Anyone want an Apple TV?
by David Collier-Brown 10 Jan '17

10 Jan '17

I have the second-last model, which I've tried and didn't like. I'll bring it to the meetings if anyone wants it. --dave -- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb(a)spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain

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Bash Problem
by Stephen 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

I am new to Bash scripts. I am trying to create a script to use avconv to convert mkv files to mp4 file. Run one at a time the command runs fine. When I execute this script I get an error about an unknown parameter. I am guessing that the expansion with the filename variables is failing. Can someone help me correct? Thank you! #!/bin/bash # Usage: convert file to mp4 shopt -s nullglob ext='.mp4' for f in *.mkv do base=$(basename $f .mkv) nFname=$base".mp4" echo $nFname avconv "-i $f -c:v libx264 -c:a copy $nFname" done -- Stephen

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Samba Nobody (File ownership) problems returns
by Stephen 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

Scenario Samba is installed and used on server running Ubuntu 16.10. In addition to server software, normal desktop programs are installed. Certain folders are shared. Guests may access and create files. Windows computers copy files to the shared folders. These files have ownership of nobody:nobody I have two Windows 10 computers. The problem happens with both, Desired behaviour These files are given ownership of the owner of the directory. Method The samba.conf file has an entry for each shared folder, like this: [public] comment = Stephen Public path = /home/stephen/Public writeable = yes ; browseable = yes guest ok = yes force user = stephen force group = stephen Situation This has been working as desired since I did a new install of 16.10. Today I noticed the nobody ownership problem. I had it after the install of 16.10 because I forgot to update samba.conf. Hence the return of the problem. It has been a week since I did a file copy that worked as desired. I copy files infrequently. It is worse. A sudo chown to change permissions to stephen:stephen executed without error. But within nautilus the context menu on the files had the commands to rename and delete greyed out. Even though the permissions section of the properties did say the ownership was changed. I have not made any configuration changes. I have performed one, maybe two, system updates. There has also been a Windows 10 update. Any and all help appreciated. -- Stephen

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processor progress sure has slowed down
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

I got an ad from NCIX for systems with Intel's new Kaby Lake processors. Here's the headline: UP TO [LARGER FONT] 28% BETTER PERFORMANCE* [/LARGER FONT] versus a 3-year-old-desktop The footnote shows that a i7-7700K processor system was being compared with a i7-4770K. Some of the improvement would be in DDR4 vs DDR3 and so on. OS and video card were the same. The power requirement of the CPU went up slightly. You'd normally expect a 7xxx processor to be compared with a 6xxx procecessor, but they've reached back an extra two generations to show even a modest 28% improvement. There are useful features added to the processors since the Haswell generation. Like a working TSX-NI: Haswell had it, with bugs, so Intel suppressed it with a microcode update. Not completely fair since the K models never had it. Intel has put a lot of extra transistors into on-chip video, something useful at least sometimes. Perhaps this shows where Intel feels it needs to compete -- AMD has a better on-chip GPU but an uncompetitive CPU. One can only hope that AMD's Zen/Ryzen lives up to AMD's talk.

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting Tomorrow at 7:30pm
by hi＠gtalug.org 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2017-01/> # Round Table Q&A Session A Round Table Q&A Session is where we take questions from the audience, and the audience discusses and attempts to answer those questions from their own knowledge. It's a great way to meet fellow members of our community and discover the skill sets we each bring to the table. ## Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Room 203 Ryerson University <http://goo.gl/maps/16oJ2> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23447525> ## Schedule * 6:00 pm - Please discuss on the general mailing list (i.e. <talk(a)gtalug.org>) where you want to go for dinner. * 7:30 pm - Meeting and presentation. * 9:00 pm - After each meeting, a group of GTALUGers move to The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socializing. # Code of Conduct We want a productive happy community that can welcome new ideas, improve every process every year, and foster collaboration between individuals with differing needs, interests and skills. We gain strength from diversity, and actively seek participation from those who enhance it. This code of conduct exists to ensure that diverse groups collaborate to mutual advantage and enjoyment. We will challenge prejudice that could jeopardize the participation of any person in the community. The Code of Conduct governs how we behave in public or in private whenever the Linux community will be judged by our actions. We expect it to be honoured by everyone who represents the community officially or informally, claims affiliation or participates directly. It applies to activities online or offline. We invite anybody to participate. Our community is open. Please read more about the GTALUG Code of Conduct here: <http://gtalug.org/about/code-of-conduct/>. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the GTALUG Code of Conduct please contact the GTALUG Board @ <board(a)gtalug.org>. --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Fwd: AirDrop-alikes
by Giles Orr 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

Mac's AirDrop ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirDrop ) is wonderfully simple and quite fast - but only supported on Mac (that I'm aware of). Has anyone tried NitroShare ( https://github.com/nitroshare/nitroshare-desktop ), Dukto ( http://www.msec.it/blog/?page_id=11 ), or any other cross-platform alternatives? Encryption is a requirement, which I think lets Dukto out. I'd consider a Linux-only solution, but would prefer cross-platform. I'm looking for local-only solutions, so "Dropbox" or anything else that reaches out to the Internet isn't a viable solution. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Cyber Monday cheap netbook
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 06 Jan '17

06 Jan '17

<https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msca/en_CA/pdp/ASUS-EeeBook-E402SA-UB0…> Typical netbook, with twists Points of interest: ++ FullHD resolution (1920x1080). I don't know any other notebook with this kind of resolution under about $500. + $249.00 today (list price is $399.00) + if you collect AirMiles, and you go through the AirMiles site, you can get about $25 worth of AirMiles back + 4G RAM (2G seems standard in netbooks so this is very good) - 14", so larger and heavier than I'd like. But you might like the size. - 32 eMMC "disk". Small, but enough for a full Linux distro. Normal for netbooks due to Microsoft's licensing model. - slow but useable: "Intel Celeron N3060 1.60 GHz with Intel Burst Technology up to 2.48 GHz" Might have problems with the Linux/Atom bug I keep pointing at. + free delivery (and return). MicrosoftStore's policies are pretty good + comes with 64-bit Windows 10 so it must have 64-bit UEFI firmware. Makes Linux installation a lot easier. I bet that this can run Linux well, but I haven't tried it. Nor have I googled to find other's experiences.

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Re: [GTALUG] A question about boot
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 05 Jan '17

05 Jan '17

[This is a copy of a reply I sent to another list.] | From: David Collier-Brown <davec-b(a)rogers.com> | Who can talk about (intel or arm) boot? I'm looking at a problem that can be | solved by setting up a device at boot time and not letting the OS have the | privilege or perhaps the physical ability to change it... Not enough information for me to understand the constraints. What's your threat model? - Are you scared of the OS, the user of the OS, or something else? - Are you scared of random misbehaviour or an intentional attack - Can you control physical access to all or part of the system? What would enforce change prevention? Some things come to mind: - the device itself could be set in an unchangeable mode after setup + eg. a physical switch that latches until "reset" (but this becomes a recursive problem: how to prevent the OS from resetting the device). - security through obscurity: ability to change the device is hidden behind a secret handshake only known to the initiates. We generally distrust this kind of approach. - security through a layer of indirection that implements the protection policy that you require + put a little controller (Raspberry Pi?) between the device and the computer. You would probably need physical protection of the device from the Bad Guys (an OS? A bad operator?) + run the OS under a VM system that implements the policy. + Conventional PCs have a mysterious "SMM" that overrides anything that the OS thinks it can do. It is part of the firmware commonly called the BIOS and isn't easily mucked with by mortals. With a high enough budget, SMM might be a useful vector. But maybe you already have a solution in mind, with some blank bits, and haven't sketched this for us.

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