- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Mozilla engineer thinks 15% of crashes are due to memory errors!
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 10 Mar '26

10 Mar '26

<https://mas.to/@gabrielesvelto/116171750653898304> <https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/bit-flips-cause-up-to-15-per…> OK, there is the qualification "up to". This seems implausibly large. If it was even 1.5%, I'd want ECC on my RAM. Actually, I do want it but it has been quite expensive to get. And only a very few PCs support it now. I wonder how many machines had such crashes. A few bad machines could generate a lot of crash reports. He suggests that memtest86 could catch these errors so that implies they are somewhat repeatable. PS: see the same engineer complaining about Intel Raptor Lake CPUs: <https://mas.to/@gabrielesvelto/114813152373394985> <https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/firefox-dev-says-intel-rapt…>

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Self-hosted email leaks home IP address
by Ron 10 Mar '26

10 Mar '26

Anyone running Postfix to self-host email and notice that their home IP address is leaked in the first "Received: from" header? If you haven't noticed, send yourself a message and check if it's happening. If you have noticed, do you care? What have you done to prevent it? If you don't self-host, are you still leaking your home IP? Gmail seems to remove this first header, so in some sense more privacy via Gmail than self-hosting. I've got a temp work-around via header_checks: `apt install postfix-pcre` main.cf: -------- header_checks = /etc/postfix/header_checks.pcre /etc/postfix/header_checks.pcre: -------------------------------- ## WORKS for some messages, not all (this one has ?? delimters - telnet?): /^(Received: from ).*$[0-9\.\-]+cable.teksavvy.com.*$(.*by .*) from .* (.*)$/AU REPLACE ${1}***ISP name hidden*** ${2} ${3} /^(Received: from ).*$[0-9\.\-]+cable.teksavvy.com.*$(.*by .*)$/AU REPLACE ${1}***ISP name hidden*** ${2} NOTE: for testing header_checks.pcre, postmap does *not* create a DB and will throw an error if trying to do that like one does with a hash map. Just test by copying an offending header to a script and run it with: postmap -vq "Received: from ..." And the output (of mine) should show: REPLACE Received: from ***ISP name hidden*** ??by mail.bclug.ca (Postfix) with SMTP id 09F5081D15??for <cc(a)bclug.ca>; Sat, 7 Mar 2026 20:39:30 -0500 (EST) from=<canto_telnet(a)maow.net> to=<cc(a)bclug.ca> proto=SMTP helo=<bclug.ca> NOTE: Thunderbird can be configured to set the elho to ehlo.thunderbird.net, which Android client does by default, I believe. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-smtp-ehlo In the config editor, add or change this key: mail.smtpserver.default.hello_argument to value: ehlo.thunderbird.net

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REMINDER: Monthly General Meeting
by Alan Heighway 08 Mar '26

08 Mar '26

GTALug Monthly Meeting <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=399> Topic: TBD Description: TBD Speaker: TBD Agenda: 1. Discussion 2. Adjournment Date / Time: March 10th, 2026 19:30 EST Location: Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i NOTE: *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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Fedora 43 and X11
by Howard Gibson 06 Mar '26

06 Mar '26

I have just installed Fedora 43 on my old laptop. Fedora 43 no longer provides X11. On the GDM login window, there is no longer a way to select window managers so that I can launch the FVWM I have been running since 1995, I think. X11 support will be phased out of future Fedora distributions. Apparently X11 is buggy, and no one wants to maintain it. I have spent the last thirty years making FVWM behave exactly the way I want it to. Now, I have to figure out Gnome_4, which I do not particularly like. Maybe I should look at KDE again. There appears to be no way to set up GDM to launch alternate X11 window managers. In the distant past, I have used SDDM to work around GDM's antics, but if X11 is being phased out completely... What happens to X11 applications? I am using LaTeX to prepare documents, and I use Xfig to do graphics. Xfig files can be converted to PostScript, PDF, and PNG from shell scripts and makefiles, so it supports web pages as well as LaTeX. I am using Xreader to read PDF files. I used to use Xpdf. Are there any other X11 applications people insist on running? -- Howard Gibson hgibson(a)eol.ca http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson

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Degraded systems (all of mine, yours too (probably))
by Ron 06 Mar '26

06 Mar '26

For reasons unknown, I ran the following on a machine today: > # systemctl is-system-running > degraded Uh-oh. *All* my machines were like this. Some due to, i.e., `certbot` failing to renew a cert for an expired domain. To find out what's going on, I ran: # systemctl list-units --state failed UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION ● cantonese-milter.service loaded failed failed Rewrite Cantonese Word-of-the-Day LOAD = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded. ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB. SUB = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type. 1 loaded units listed. I was then able to fix the failed unit(s) and now: # systemctl is-system-running running Curious, am I really sloppy, or is it common to have a failed unit on machines? What are your results?

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Fwd: [linux] XDC 2026 in Toronto Sep 28th-30th
by Ron 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

If anyone is interested... -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [linux] XDC 2026 in Toronto Sep 28th-30th Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:02:24 -0500 From: Lucas via linux <linux(a)linux-ottawa.org> Reply-To: linux(a)linux-ottawa.org To: OCLUG Linux <linux(a)linux-ottawa.org> Hey all, In case you weren't aware the X.Org Developers Conference is going to be happening this year from Sep 28th to 30th at Daniels Spectrum in Toronto. Which isn't that far if you want to attend! The event is free to attend. For those unfamiliar the event is hosted by the X.Org foundation which manages many of the Linux graphics stack projects like Mesa, wayland, DRM/DRI, X.Org display server and more. http://xdc2026.x.org/ The event is great if you're interested in meeting people working on the Linux graphics stack, want to learn about new developments in the various graphics projects, or if you want to learn how you can contribute to the various projects. I'll likely be attending and presenting about my work in Mesa. If you're planning to go, please let me know. Would be fun to have an Ottawa meetup there! BR, Lucas

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OAuth(2) / OpenID Connect / LDAP / "?" / ...
by Ron 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

I was hoping Stalwart would be able to act as my central ID server along with handling email, quotas, etc. via OAuth2 / OpenID Connect. I'm kinda struggling with that in Stalwart though; new concept, new software. I've never been fond of LDAP, so I tried Keycloak. It's *really* complicated, but it does work in the sense that I can configure Nextcloud to "Log in via My Keycloak" and ... it works. I'm not yet sure if it works as managing quota though, without massive headaches. Anyone have experience / opinions on any of the above? I'm not sure I'm even heading down the right path. Goal: One central authority for user IDs / authentication / quota management for email / calendar / contacts / documents & files.

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Off Topic .ca Domain Providers
by Ivan Avery Frey 03 Mar '26

03 Mar '26

I'm asking for a friend. Does anyone have a preference for .ca domain providers? Ivan.

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(off topic) Water heater recommendation
by William Park 02 Mar '26

02 Mar '26

Hi all, My water heater started to leak this weekend, so I'm shopping for water heater. From your experience, which brand is better? - Rheem brand at Home Depot, or - Giant brand at Rona

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Bunnie's Baochip board available through CrowdSupply
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 02 Mar '26

02 Mar '26

This is a really open microcontroller. Kind of like a RaspBerry Pi Nano. Not only is it open (including the circuitry), the software is Rust, all the way down. <https://www.crowdsupply.com/baochip/dabao> Here's a talk he and Sean Cross gave at the 2025 3c (Chaos Computer Conference): <https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/xous-a-pure-rus…> The video is somewhere, including on YouTube.

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