- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Ubuntu update gone bad
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 16 Aug '15

16 Aug '15

I'm writing this at the point of annoyance. Maybe I'll find a fix in a minute or two. I took an Acer Revo out of service as an HTPC. It was dual boot Win 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I applied all Win 7 updates. Fine. Stupid, but fine. I applied all Ubuntu 12.04 updates. Fine. Not even stupid. It offered me Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I said to go ahead. I almost never do version upgrades, out of fear, but I didn't have much to lose. And everyone always says Ubuntu version upgrades are smooth as silk. Negative observation one: version upgrades take more real time than re-installations. (But they should take less of my attention and care, a win.) Negative observation two: I thought that the slow upgrade process could happen while I was asleep. Yes, but not in one night: there were three steps in the middle that required me to answer a question. It would have been better if the questions had been moved to the beginning or the end. Fedora does that. Negative observation three: It all appeared to work. The updater disappeared from the screen (a little odd). top(1) showed no remnant. So I rebooted. Now I have the prompt: grub rescue> which means I have nothing, not even Win7. I don't think that I can type anything useful into that prompt. Obviously the third is the lulu. The fact that I am using LTS should indicate my risk aversion. I will fix this but I will remember.

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Mycroft an Open Source AI [was privacy [was Alternative to KOrganizer (KDE) ?]]
by Myles Braithwaite 14 Aug '15

14 Aug '15

D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote: > Many, but not all, of these leaks come with advantages to the user. > For example, Cortana, Siri, and Google Now(?) may be fun but they are > always listening to you and sending something home. Google (and > other) search have to send the queries upstream. Has anyone checked out/backed Mycroft on Kickstarter <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-an-open-source-a…> as an open replacement for speech driven AI (i.a. Siri, Cortana, Google Now) that easily hackable?

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Dell Latitude E6400 -- free
by William Park 14 Aug '15

14 Aug '15

I bought a $40 Dell Latitude E6400 without harddisk: - Core 2 Duo P8400, 2GB DDR2-800, 1280x800 screen - DVD-RW, battery, 130W power adapter - SATA interface for disk - keyboard is better than ThinkPad T43. A little heavier going down, but return is very crisp. This was main reason for buying it. I added SSD, and installed Windows-10 to see if all components are working. And, they were. Then, I decided to upgrade its old BIOS (from A14 to A34). Windows gave me error, and told me to reboot. Well, now, the laptop won't boot! So, it's free for anyone needing parts. I can bring it to next TLUG meeting. -- William

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Locking KDE 5 screen from shell script
by Randy Jonasz 13 Aug '15

13 Aug '15

I recently installed kde5 on debian stretch. I have a yubikey which I use to log in with. I'd like to lock the screen when I remove the yubikey. I have it working with cinnamon and lxde but I can't quite get it with kde. I can lock the screen if I run the shell script from a terminal as root but when I remove the yubikey the shell script returns error code 1. Here's my shell scripts: ykgone.sh Konsole output #! /bin/sh if [ -z "$(lsusb | grep Yubikey)" ] ; then if [ ! -z "$(ps aux | grep cinnamon-session | grep -v grep)" ] ; then /bin/su rjonasz -c "DISPLAY=:0 cinnamon-screensaver-command -l" elif [ ! -z "$(ps aux | grep startkde | grep -v grep)" ] ; then /usr/bin/sudo -u rjonasz -H -i /usr/local/bin/lockkde.sh else /bin/su rjonasz -c "DISPLAY=:0 xscreensaver-command --lock" fi fi lockkde.sh Konsole output #! /bin/sh kde_pid=`pidof kdeinit5` export `cat /proc/$kde_pid/environ|grep -ao 'DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=[[:graph:]]*'` /usr/bin/qdbus org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver Lock I can't seem to figure this one out. Thanks for any help! Randy -- Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.' Immanuel Kant

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Alternative to KOrganizer (KDE) ?
by William Park 13 Aug '15

13 Aug '15

KOrganizer is a calendar program in KDE. And, it's the only thing that's tying me to KDE desktop. What calendar program do you guys use in other desktops? I know of and test drove - Evolution (GNOME) - Orage (XFCE) But, they can't pull me off KDE, yet. -- William

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Where Should We Dine Before the August 2015 GTALUG Meeting? (was GTALUG Meeting on 11th August, 2015 at 7:30pm)
by Myles Braithwaite 12 Aug '15

12 Aug '15

On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Myles Braithwaite <me(a)mylesbraithwaite.com> wrote: > * 6:00 pm - Before each meeting a group of GTALUGers dine at Love At > First Bite (96 Gerrard Street E). Let's try doing this again, vote for where you want to go for dinner before the August GTALUG meeting <http://survey.gtalug.org/index.php/642325>.

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Slightly OT: git question
by Giles Orr 12 Aug '15

12 Aug '15

I'm writing a Python script that checks git repositories in the user's home folder (other folders is an option that should be added soon) and then tells you their status, both local and remote. I want to release it publicly using github, but I'd like to maintain a private repo, and only push certain releases to github. I admit this is mostly because I keep extensive notes in the source code and am perhaps a bit embarrassed what those notes say both about my memory and my limited coding skills. I should probably just get over it - particularly since the code itself probably says more than the notes. But - git is flexible enough that I imagine that this is an option: has anybody done this? As my knowledge of Python is somewhat rudimentary, so is my knowledge of git. The only thing I'm fairly sure about is that rebasing will be involved. If I wasn't concerned about pull requests (as novel as it seems now, I like to hope they'll happen) this could be done in any number of sloppy ways. But it seems like I need either a branch or a separate repo (which, and why?) that includes only the github data, and I need my private repo to have the github one as a "tracked branch" or something like that that I can merge from. Is this making sense, or am I thinking about it all wrong? I welcome all suggestions and thoughts, thanks. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Love at First Bite Closed
by Myles Braithwaite 11 Aug '15

11 Aug '15

Bill, Ivan, and me are heading to Z-Teca at 66 Gerrard Street East.

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Re: [GTALUG] UEFI bios/firmware
by Abby 11 Aug '15

11 Aug '15

Sure us crazy! Sent from my Samsung device -------- Original message -------- From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca> Date: 08-11-2015 13:23 (GMT-05:00) To: phiscock(a)ee.ryerson.ca, GTALUG Talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> Subject: Re: [GTALUG] UEFI bios/firmware On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 11:01:24AM -0400, phiscock(a)ee.ryerson.ca wrote: > I had this same problem on an Acer laptop until I discovered you need to > enter a password and enable the password. > > When you are finished disabling things, you can then disable the password. So you have to set a supervisor/admin password for the bios before you can change the secureboot setting? Crazy. :) -- Len Sorensen --- Talk Mailing List talk(a)gtalug.org http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

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Thinkpad T420 as a VM host
by Alex Volkov 11 Aug '15

11 Aug '15

So I replaced a 4GB memory stick in my Thinkpad T420 with an 8GB one bringing the total amount of available ram to 12GB with maximum of 16GB.Even though Lenovo say that the laptop supports only 8 GB of ram total. As it stands now this 4 year old machine becomes a pretty cost-effective platform for virtualization: * Intel Core i5-2410M * 16GB max memory (~$65 per 8GB stick). * 2 SATA ports (built-in and ultrabay) * 2 mSata ports (one could be used for solid state storage) * 1 eSata port. * 1 Gigabit ethernet * 1 SD card Canada computers sells refurbished ones for about $300 and I think there are some available in Brampton. Also I saw a few similar refurbished machines on Amazon. Alex.

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