- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Pi in-place upgrade with weird side-effects
by Giles Orr 29 Nov '21

29 Nov '21

I have two Raspberry Pi 4s. Both had Raspbian 10 (buster) installed on them initially, and both have now had in-place upgrades to Raspberry Pi OS 11 (bullseye). I'm aware that the original and new OSes aren't quite the same beast (Raspbian vs. Raspberry Pi OS). For the most part, this went fine, but has left some unfortunate artifacts. The first (that I know of, there may be many others) is /etc/apt/sources.list.d/raspi.list, which includes one active line: deb http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/ buster main Notice that this is pointing to buster. Which made me do some digging: # for package in $(dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package}\n'); do if apt info $package 2> /dev/null | grep -q buster ; then echo $package ; fi ; done chromium-browser chromium-browser-l10n chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra libraspberrypi-bin libraspberrypi-dev libraspberrypi-doc libraspberrypi0 raspberrypi-bootloader raspberrypi-kernel rng-tools-debian These are all packages that are installed from the buster repository, and they seem like some seriously important packages (the kernel? the bootloader?) that are being held back at an older version of the OS. I would rather not re-install the OS, so any suggestions about what's going on or how to fix it (or if that's necessary) would be appreciated. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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war story: Fedora 35 and Nvidia GTX 650
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

I've been using a GTX 650 on my desktop for over seven years. This may surprise you since I am an open-source fan. The reason I chose it is that it was all I had that would drive my UltraHD TV at full resolution. Things are better now (not as much as one would like) but I'm still using the same setup. The open source Nouveau driver isn't up to the job. It wouldn't drive the monitor seven years ago. I try it every few years but it never does the job I need. Currently it seems to be OK until I start my million-tab Firefox session. I upgraded from Fedora 34 to 35, using the in-place dnf method. <https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf-system-upgrade/> After that, the nvidia driver would not run. I thrashed about for a considerable amount of time and I cannot explain what happened, but I got it working. Here are some of the things I found useful. I used the RPM Fusion repository for the drivers. (Red Hat doesn't distribute closed source drivers.) This document is useful: <https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA#Legacy_GeForce_600.2F700> When nvidia drivers fail to load, the log is not at all helpful. (One reason can be that the firmware has Secure Boot enabled, but that was not my problem.) Nvidia considers my card "legacy" so the mainstream drivers no longer support it. The RPM Fusion drivers for Fedora 34 and earlier did but not for Fedora 35. Basically, I have to switch to the nvidia-470xx series of drivers. Hint: I think you only want one generation of nvidia driver installed on a machine (I could be wrong). If you are changing generations, rip the former ones out before installing the new ones. In the Fedora 34 time frame, something else when wrong (see an earlier war story) so I created a new F34 installation that shared the /home partition with my old one. I had two root partitions, one for the old F34 and another for the fresh F34. This was handy when I was experimenting with this problem. But it exposed my ignorance of grub2 in Fedora. I always thought that you could fix the grub configuration by sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg Not so since Fedora 34. Read this: <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2> (It even covers the case where you have screwed it up like I did.)

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Upgrading SSD -> NVMe
by William Park 27 Nov '21

27 Nov '21

Has anyone upgraded from SSD SATA to NVMe M.2? Spec says it's 10x the speed. What did you really see? --William

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Swapping ThinkPad drive
by James Knott 26 Nov '21

26 Nov '21

I've bought a 1 TB SSD drive to replace the 750 GB drive in my ThinkPad. I was considering using the opportunity to change to UEFI. I'll be mounting the old drive in an external case so that I can copy over the partitions, one of them NTFS. Anything I should worry about in converting to UEFI? Any suggestions? tnx jk

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[GTALUG-Announce] New Board and Officers
by Evan Leibovitch 26 Nov '21

26 Nov '21

Hello everyone, As you know, GTALUG held its Annual General Meeting earlier this month, and after that and a subsequent Board meeting I am happy to announce the coming year's Directors, Officers and supporting volunteers. Directors: - David Collyer-Brown - Alan Heighway - Evan Leibovitch - Warren McPherson - Alex Volkov Officers: - President: Evan - Treasurer: Warren - Secretary: Alan Operations Team: - High Redelmeier - Scott Sullivan I want to thank everyone for service to date; I am honored by the selection and hope to serve my role well. Please feel free to email me with any questions, speaker ideas or anything else on how we can make GTALUG better. As an initial move, GTALUG has created a Discord server where we hope to meet with all our friends who are using that platform. Thanks again, Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56 --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Swapping SSD Drives
by Jim Ruxton 24 Nov '21

24 Nov '21

I am currently booting off an SSD drive that boots both Linux (Ubuntu 20.04) and Windows. The partition scheme is shown here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zED6cbDncGz-fd1KF2bMjYEf5v3VWSOn/view?usp=… <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zED6cbDncGz-fd1KF2bMjYEf5v3VWSOn/view?usp=…> I want to get a larger SSD and replace it. Can I just clone this drive to a larger one using Clonezilla? My thought is to put Clonezilla on a USB drive and then clone the current NVMe to another USB key. Then remove current SSD and replace with a larger one. Boot back into Clonezilla and clone what is on the second USB key to the new SSD in the laptop. Then reboot and voila. Is it that straightforward? I guess another option is to get a NVMe to USB adapter and clone directly to that? Is that a better solution? I've never used Clonezilla before so in unfamiliar waters here. I also have a large HDD in the machine so maybe could copy the current SDD to that as well? Feeling a little lost as to best way to move forward. Thanks for any tips. Jim

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Linux Computer Charity
by Joseph Rocklin 19 Nov '21

19 Nov '21

Good morning, I have founded a charity that takes in older, used computers and puts a user-friendly Linux Distro on, and gives them to those in need. We do ask for a donation from those that can afford it. But this is waived for anybody saying they are unable to afford it. We are applying for charitable status and hope to be able to give tax receipts after a CRA review. If anyone here knows of someone in the GTA who has need for a computer to serve them in average user tasks, but can't afford the rising costs of computers, please direct them to RocklinReboots.com. Also, if anyone has older machines they don't need anymore, that can support current versions of distros like Linux Mint (xfce), please reach out to me at rocklin(a)rocklinreboots.com. Lastly, I am open to any suggestions from anyone here relating to the organization, the website, or any other detail of the charity's operation. Have a good weekend, Joseph Rocklin Rocklin(a)rocklinreboots.com.

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UPS brand recommendations?
by Scott Sullivan 16 Nov '21

16 Nov '21

For the first time in half a decade, I find myself needing a new UPS. My 1500VA APC UPS gave up the ghost this weekend. What brands are folks favoring theses days? -- Scott Sullivan

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Seeking recommendation: KVM vs Virtualbox
by Michael Galea 14 Nov '21

14 Nov '21

I have an old Win XP (32 bit) instance loaded with dozens of games, that I would like to take traveling. I would like to run it in a VM. The host will be a laptop running 64 bit debian i3 core. I would really like to just turn the XP NTFS partition into an image file which I can run on the VM. This would save me hundreds of hours of reinstalling stuff. The best bet for this seems to be using virtualbox, and there are (pretty tricky) howtos for it. I do not think you can do this at all with KVM. Has anyone ever managed something like this before? Let me learn from your pain! PS: Another alternative is to install the higher performing KVM to install a fresh XP instance and use a commercial PC program mover to copy the games from the PC XP to the instance, via the network. There are tools such as PcMover that claim to do this. Has anyone ever done this before? Thanks -- Michael Galea

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[GTALUG-Announce] GTALUG AGM - Tues. Nov. 9th, 7:30pm
by hi＠gtalug.org 11 Nov '21

11 Nov '21

# GTALUG AGM - Tues. Nov. 9th, 7:30pm The next Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group (GTALUG) will take place virtually at 7:30pm on November 9, 2021. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81924329473?pwd=MndSWHNaRGNZSUtIeVB0WG1xTkZTQT09 Meeting ID: 819 2432 9473 Passcode: 655996 Find your local dail-in number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kd2rxnbq6D All Members of GTALUG in good standing are able to elect new Directors (four vacancies are to be filled). To ensure that your membership is up to date, please ensure that annual dues are paid by sending $20 by Interac e-transfer to [membership(a)gtalug.org] If the member for whom the dues are paid is not the sender of the Interac transfer, please indicate that in the note message accompanying the payment. For any inquiries please email [membership(a)gtalug.org] or ask on the discussion email list. We are able to accept new memberships and renewals up to and at the beginning of the AGM. If you are eligible to vote but cannot attend this meeting, you may designate someone else to act as your proxy to vote on your behalf at the election of Directors and regarding other business at the AGM. The only scheduled agenda item besides the election is the presentation of annual financial statements. At the start of the meeting, GTALUG’s designated Returning Officer will verify who is able to vote and who is running as a candidate for Director for the purpose of the election and any votes to be taken as part of the AGM. -- GTALUG board(a)gtalug.org --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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