- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Coworking space
by Greg Martyn 08 Jan '15

08 Jan '15

Hi all, Has anyone worked in a coworking space? Have a favourite? I'm just starting my search online, and from what I see, there are plenty to choose from. Any anecdotal tales would be really helpful. I'm completely new to this. Thanks! I live by the Main St subway stop, but have a slight preference for more centrally located locations, because the company I work for might start hiring in the Toronto area in the near future. Thanks, Greg

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Anyone on the list know what I need to read ancient Apple disks?
by David Collier-Brown 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

An elderly relative has a PPC iMac, the so-called "sunflower mac" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/02/Imac_sunflower2.jpg It eventually died, but the symptoms hinted it wasn't a disk crash. This apparently came with MacO OS 9.2 and a 60.0 GB Ultra ATA/66 hard drive (5400 RPM), so what modern machines can read Mac file formats? I have an Ubunutu-based PVR with an ATA interface that's doing the DVD right now, could I read it from Linux? My old SPARC read Mac SCSI formats... --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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Rogers and MTU size
by James Knott 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

One thing I noticed recently was that my firewall, running Linux, was getting a MTU of 576 bytes, instead of the normal 1500 bytes. This was being set by the Rogers DHCP server (option 26). 576 was common back in the days of non-error correcting modems, but hasn't been needed since then. If you're running dhcpcd, you can edit /etc/sysconfig/network/dhcp and change the line 'DHCPCD_USER_OPTIONS=""' to 'DHCPCD_USER_OPTIONS="-M"'. This will disable the DHCP MTU setting and use the configured MTU. Using a 1500 MTU will improve network efficiency, as 576 bytes will cause 3 packets to be sent, instead of 1, each with an IP header and also causes a lot more work for all the routers along the path. You can verify the MTU with a ping -s 1500 <destination>. If that works, then you have a 1500 byte MTU along the entire path to the destination. I found this because I was curious as to why the Ethernet port connected to the cable modem was not getting an IPv6 link local address. IPv6 requires a minimum MTU of 1280 bytes so, with 576, IPv6 wasn't allowed. I have advised Rogers of this and the person I was speaking to agreed it should be 1500. Let's see if they fix it.

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war story: bad ADSL packet loss
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

My internet connections are confusing and complicated so I will spare you those details. One connection is via ADSL2 to telnetcommunications.com. It started to get flaky. I measured 50-90% packet loss over various periods of time. I also have a VDSL2 connection with telnetcommunications.com that did not have the problem. Tentative conclusion: telnetcommunications.com's network is not the problem. I use a TP-Link TD-8816 as a modem, but not as a router. I have a Linux box that does the PPPoE thing. I tried: powercycling things, one at a time, to see if things got better. They didn't. I tried: phoning support. They suggested switching phone cable or ethernet cable before trying to talk to Bell. I tried: switching cables. No change. I tried: taking other phones off phone line and removing splitter where the ADSL modem was connected to the wall jack. No change. I tried: swapping ADSL modem for an identical one, purchased at the same time. It worked! Lesson's learned: - being a hoarder has its advantages (why did I buy two ADSL modems 3.5 years ago?) - being a hoarder has its disadvantages. Both modems are out of (2 year) warranty. The splitter that came with the newly unwrapped modem doesn't work and I have no recourse. - ADSL modems sometimes fail. My previous ADSL modem (Speedstream something or other) failed, but I don't remember the symptoms. - ADSL modems don't always fail hard. - with so many pluggable parts, there is a very large number of configurations to test. The modem has: power, phone, ethernet, all of which could have been swapped. The wall jack needs a splitter, an ADSL filter on one side, and cables connecting all of these. Of the right length. And other jacks in the house need to be played with too. I didn't even bother to see if the replacement modem would work as well with the original modem's power supply, or vice versa. Life's too short.

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GnuPG Woes...
by Peter King 03 Jan '15

03 Jan '15

I could use some help from people who are more expert at GnuPG than I am, which is most people. Using GnuPG 2.0.26 and libcrypt 1.6.2, running under Gentoo with kernel 3.17.4, all at the command line. I have a gpg key (since 2004) and it's always worked well for me. Just today, though, I tried to use it to decrypt a file I'd successfully decrupted many times in the past: $ gpg -d File_to_Decrypt > decrypted_file I kept getting a "bad session key" error. After doing some googling, I eventually tried the suggestion to run: $ gpgconf --reload After doing so, however, when I try to decrypt the file as before: $ gpg -d File_to_Decrypt > decrypted_file gpg now asks for the data file, and when I offer File_to_Decrypt, I get back a list of of signatures, each correctly identified with my DSA key ID (as shown by the command gpg --listkeys), but each entry is followed by the line "BAD signature from <my_ID> [ultimate]" -- which seems like very bad news indeed. Naturally, the encrypted file is valuable (to me), and I have backup encrypted copies, but nothing in clear... Well, the gnupg key hasn't changed since February 2004, and it's worked fine all the way to at least mid-October 2014, the last time I encrypted/decrypted the file. Now I'm more or less clueless. What should I try next? -- Peter King peter.king(a)utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-978-3311 ofc Toronto, ON M5R 2M8 CANADA http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/ ========================================================================= GPG keyID 0x7587EC42 (2B14 A355 46BC 2A16 D0BC 36F5 1FE6 D32A 7587 EC42) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 7587EC42

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HummingBoard-i2eX First Impressions
by Scott Sullivan 02 Jan '15

02 Jan '15

This Christmas I got myself another ARM dev board. In this case the HummingBoard-i2eX from SolidRun. The Vendor ========== http://www.solid-run.com/ SolidRun is an Israeli company producing small form factor computers. They previously produced the CuBox (know to many on this list). In recent history they moved to creating their devices with FreeScale's iMX.6 SoCs. They started with a common SoM (System on a Module), and developed two complimentary product lines of base boards that the SoMs connect to. These are the CuBox-i and the HummingBoard. The CuBox-i is a continuation of their 2'x2'x'2' cube computer design. The HummingBoard is a Raspberry Pi-like form factor (more on this later). The Board ========= Vendor Product Page: http://www.solid-run.com/product/hummingboard-i2ex/ Local Distributor Product Page: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813455003 This is the Hummingboard base board, with the Dual Core + 1GB + Extra Features SoM. This boils down to a system with extra features of a mSATA slot on the bottom of the board, a miniPCIe slot on the top, and an extra 2x4 header with two USB extra connections on it. The Board is nearly perfect match for the Raspberry Pi B (not B+) form factor. All the connectors (HDMI, USB, Power, etc...) line up where they would on a Raspberry Pi B. The only trick bit is the height of the mSATA connector on the bottom which will not fit in any of the Raspberry Pi B cases I own. This should not be an issue with the Hummingboard-i1 or -i2 as they don't have mSATA. First Boot ========== The board as purchased from NewEgg comes only with the board. You will need to provide your own USB supply 5v@2A. You will also need your own microSD card for the OS. Prep the microSD Card --------------------- If your familiar with the Raspberry Pi, there is a NOOBs-like OS installer called Ignition. You dd this to your microSD card and then on the first boot you get a GUI that will then download and install the Distro of your choice. http://www.solid-run.com/wiki/Ignition Install your OS of Choice ------------------------- First Note: There is check box to show all OS options. Check this as it by default hides all but four (Android 4.4, and three XBMC variants). Second Note: There is a debug window, click it, and then re-arrange the two windows so you can see both. Some of the installs are broken, I discovered this when trying to install Fedora 20 via Ignition, it never downloaded an install image, and some of the partitioning looks to be broken. This is not a fault of the Fedora Project, but of the solidRun community member that put together the Iginition script. I haven't started debugging it yet. I ended up choosing Debian Wheezy, and the install took about 10-15 minutes downloading and installing. Your millage will vary. Poking Around ============= The boot loader is on microSD card. You need it to boot. The boot loader is uboot. Kernel lists as a 3.14.14-cubox, so a custom build. lspci list just a 'bridge' device. I powered down, added a spare mPCIe wifi card I had around, and it showed up when I rebooted. Memory was listed as the full 1GB, so video buffer stealing doesn't seem to be happening. But I can't confirm that fully. That's it so far. -- Scott Sullivan

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GNU Hurd Is Enjoying User-Space Device Drivers
by Thomas Milne 29 Dec '14

29 Dec '14

Interesting: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU5OTI

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Replacing drive with /home
by Stephen 28 Dec '14

28 Dec '14

I have one drive on my system that just has /home on it. It is getting SMART warnings. I have the data backed up, and a new drive to replace it. I am running Ubuntu 12.04. My question is regarding booting without a /home directory mounted. How do I go about booting, mounting and restoring my data? Thanks! -- Stephen

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Success: On-Lap Ext Display, Mint 17, Acer Aspire E 15
by phiscock＠ee.ryerson.ca 25 Dec '14

25 Dec '14

Some times you get lucky. Today at Canada Computers I purchased an On-Lap 2501C external video display to increase the screen area of my Acer E 15 laptop, which is running Linux Mint 17. (Price: $200). The display is powered from the laptop USB (so an external power brick is not necessary) and can accept HDMI or VGA signals. This laptop has an HDMI output and the HDMI cable comes with the display, so I used that. It worked immediately without incident. The cables are too short and stiff to locate the display to the right of the laptop, it has to locate at the left. But the external monitor configuration wizard makes that a drag-and-drop operation. Working immediately may be somewhat due to the fact that the external monitor has the same resolution and display size as the laptop, I don't know how this would play out with a larger resolution monitor. The display colour rendition has been slanged in some reviews, but it looks fine to me, and certainly good enough for routine work. The display stand acts also as a cover for the display screen, which is convenient, but it puts the display at the wrong angle. You'll have to prop it up with a book or something. The whole thing fits nicely in a laptop case with the laptop. Now I can do Serious Work when I'm on the road... I remember when adding a monitor required some serious tinkering with configuration files, so this was a pleasant surprise. Peter -- Peter Hiscocks Syscomp Electronic Design Limited, Toronto http://www.syscompdesign.com USB Oscilloscope and Waveform Generator 647-839-0325

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[OT] One Plus One Invite to pass along.
by Scott Sullivan 24 Dec '14

24 Dec '14

I've got a spare invite to purchase the One Plus One phone. Anyone interested _MUST_ contact me off-list. First come, first serve. Thank you, -- Scott Sullivan

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