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Windows Terminal: Everything you need to know now - TechRepublic
by James Knott 09 Jun '20

09 Jun '20

While not strictly Linux, this provides a choice of command prompts, including Linux shells. It's also more configurable than the usual Windows terminals. Now, all it needs is a VAX/VMS shell. ;-) https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-terminal-everything-you-need-t…

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UEFI + ACPI on Raspberry Pi: thoughts for a Lightning talk
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 Jun '20

09 Jun '20

Note: I'm winging this. I'd welcome contributions and comments from other. Nice news I heard at BSDCan (thanks Chris!): UEFI + ACPI for Raspberry Pi 4 <https://rpi4-uefi.dev/> Why is this important? The ARM ecosystem needs a universal environment to make OS distros universal. Almost every ARM system ("platform") is different, and this means that every Linux distro that supports it must be customized for that platform. (Contrast that with Linux Distros for the PC.) This works for the Raspberry Pi since that Platform is common enough. It works for Android (a Linux distro) because each SoC maker does the first half of the work and each phone maker finishes the job. That's just the cost of entry to the game. This is also why Android Phones lose software support so quickly: the SoC maker has no interest in long life, and neither do most phone makers. What is the solution? - the SoC maker has to want to do this (only they have specs for the device) (perhaps forced by Google?) - we need a consensus of the ABI for what ABI all firmware will provide OSes. Examples from previous platforms: - "BIOS" in CP/M (late 1970s) - "BIOS" in IBM PC - eventually: UEFI, APM, ACPI in successors to PC In ARM: - uboot [not really standardized] - "Device Tree" [not really standardized] - UEFI + ACPI [fat!] Unfortunately, consensus forming is messy and doesn't always happen.

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SpaceX rockets fly with software you can find on your Android phone
by James Knott 09 Jun '20

09 Jun '20

https://www.cnet.com/news/spacex-rockets-fly-with-software-you-can-find-on-…

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Tripp Lite OMNI1000LCD UPS
by Val Kulkov 09 Jun '20

09 Jun '20

After two years of problem-free service, my UPS unit started acting up. I thought it was odd because usually a UPS battery lasts for at least three years. I replaced the battery and it seemed to work for a couple of weeks, but then one day the unit switched itself off and stopped working. When pressing the power button, all I can see is the flickering LCD screen but the unit does not come on. Cleaning all possible contacts inside did not help. I don't know enough of electrical engineering to fix this unit myself. This OMNI1000LCD is actually quite nice when it works. It communicates with a Linux workstation through the usbhid-ups driver. If anyone wants to pick it up and play with it, or get the new battery from inside this unit, let me know. - Val

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SpaceX Sent NASA Astronauts Into Orbit Using Linux
by James Knott 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-nasa-astronauts-linux

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Anyone here doing PLC programming
by Dave Cramer 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

Friend is looking for a consultant. Thanks Dave Cramer

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JSON Standard for SQL Thoughts
by Nicholas Krause 08 Jun '20

08 Jun '20

Greetings, I'm aware a few people here keep up more with certain database trends then me including Chris Browne. I'm aware of the newest standard of SQL supporting JSON. Does anyone have any thoughts on this or how it may affect things going forward in the database world. Postresql supported operators before but seems their moving to the current SQL standard implementation, last I checked. Thanks, Nick -- Fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism. - Thomas Nagel

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Java
by Slackrat 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

Can anyone give me a pointer to what precisely I might do to correct the situation. The first three suggestions do not apply: # Reduce memory load on the system # Increase physical memory or swap space # Check if swap backing store is full The situation requires a cold boot to correct and that ABSOLUTELY nothing be done in the user account except launching an X server prior to launching the application. [QUOTE] bash-4.3# ./HamSphere_4.010a Fatal error: out of memory Uncaught exception: Out of memory An earlier version of the application at least privides a logfile when it crashes Server:www.hamsphere.com:8010 OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM warning: INFO: os::commit_memory(0x00007f942b028000, 262144, 0) failed; error='Cannot allocate memory' (errno=12) # # There is insufficient memory for the Java Runtime Environment to continue. # Native memory allocation (mmap) failed to map 262144 bytes for committing reserved memory. # An error report file with more information is saved as: # /inconnu/hs_err_pid23337.log [/QUOTE] bash-4.3$ free total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 5999704 217532 5033232 2760 748940 5392888 Swap: 7219376 0 7219376 bash-4.3$ LogFile - too long to be reasonably opened by emacs, but "cat /hs_err_pid23337.log |less" works fine but, at least to me, is not helpful. System is Slackware 14.2 on an "Ideapad 330 (17, Intel) | Durable, Easy-to-Use 17.3" (sic) ... Lenovo" disaster. Application Screenshot. -- William Henderson aka Slackrat http://billh.sdf.org/slackware.jpg 9HS5203 ON HamSphere Ham Radio

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Continuing Printer Woes
by Peter King 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

Eric S. Raymond was right about CUPS some fourteen years ago, in his essay "The Luxury of Ignorance" (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html) and things really haven't gotten any better. Here's an update since I last posted about six weeks ago. I had an HP LaserJet 1100a, which worked reasonably well until its internal memory went bad. These things happen. So I got a more recent HP Pro 1102w which is no end of trouble; I could print to it a bit, irregularly, but now not at all -- everything seems to be configured properly but CUPS reports "Waiting for printer to become available" and nothing I do, from writing udev rules to rebooting, makes it available. So I bought another printer, a Lexmark MS415dn, in part for its three-penguin rating [ = "works perfectly with Linux"] on openprinting.org, but it does not work perfectly, spitting out endless pages of gibberish when I sent it PDFs or PostScript files, to the point where it prints only once out of every two or three attempts. I won't go through all the details of what I've tried, but I have tried, and tried, and tried. More or less at my wit's end -- actually, I can see my wit's end receding in the distance in the rear-view mirror -- and proving that I cannot learn from experience, I'm considering buying something that should just work, that is, of getting a monochrome single-function laser printer with embedded PostScript to handle my needs, which, you'd think, would be a sufficiently humble set of requirements. You'd think. If anyone on this list can recommend such a beast, which can run reliably under Linux (specifically arch linux), I would be almost shamefully greatful. Nearly as good would be cautions about what to avoid. Thanks. -- Peter King peter.king(a)utoronto.ca Department of Philosophy 170 St. George Street #521 The University of Toronto (416)-946-3170 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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BSDCan 2020 this week
by Christopher Browne 04 Jun '20

04 Jun '20

https://www.bsdcan.org/2020/ The BSD folk are holding their annual conference that is normally in Ottawa this week via video conferencing. Talks are on Friday and Saturday, tutorials on Wednesday and Thursday. Some of the sessions are mighty specific to particular flavours of BSD, but there is doubtless some material that will be of interest to us. Some highlights include... - There's a session on "homelabs" which is about the concept of building a stack of servers at home for running experiments. A lot of the hardware issues will be pretty platform independent. - Warner Losh is doing a piece on the History of Unix, which is likely quite interesting. - Toronto local Andrew Cagney is doing a talk on Libreswan which I am pretty sure has some developers on this list :-) And we have had well-received talks from Jim Mercer at GTALUG where he explained merits of some of the differing development practices on FreeBSD; there are definitely useful things to be learned from the BSD folk.

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